Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to an askaram episode. The show where leaders bring their tough questions and a RAM offers actionable, practical insights rooted in psychology, strategy and real world experience.
So if you're looking to lead with clarity and confidence, you're in the right place. Let's get started. How do I know when it's the right time to hire an executive coach and how do I choose the right one for my needs?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: I'm going to break that into two answers. First, I'll start with how do you pick one? And then I'll hit on when to get one. How to pick one? First, you got to identify three things. What are your goals? Like what specifically are you trying to do? Second, what kind of certifications or background does your coach need to have? And then the third would be have they done, do they have a proven track record of either having done that themselves or, or helping other people do it? So those are the three things as to when most people start engaging with coaching around mid career and it could be like truly you're hitting your mid career or kind of like true center or even like mid late career. Those are times when people start engaging with coaching because they're trying to do their big push into their next thing or they're trying to maximize their, their impact in their role, set themselves up for other places. That's not to say that early career coaching doesn't exist, but that's a space where you'd be doing more group professional development or mentorship. So let me hit on the the other parts and explain it a little bit more.
So what do you want to do? Like why do you want to have a coach? You know, one of the toughest things that can happen for a coach is when people engage with you and they don't know what they want and they kind of want you to figure that out for them. I'd really encourage people, like if you want a coach, it should be really for a purpose. Like I am trying to go for my next role or hey, I just got in a new role and I want to maximize or hey, I've gotten some tough feedback. I'm having a lot of difficulties with it and I want to address that feedback or I want to really stretch myself for this next thing. Know what you want to do. It's going to be a huge thing that's going to help with the process, but it also makes sure that the investment is worth it. The second thing, making sure that people have the right background and what I mean by that is either they're international coaching Federation certified coach or like some kind of like body that is, that has like, like real effective certification or they have a background that really makes them able to do that. So as an example, I'm not an ICF certified coach, but I have a background in counseling psychology and I have a long, long history of working with individuals and groups as they like, kind of address areas of growth. So I can very comfortably go in that space. But what I would suggest is have someone who has some kind of background that tells you that they can work with you one on one or with groups in a way that really is going to be beneficial. And this is important because I say there's kind of like, you know, there's a lot of like well intentioned people out there who are, who are kind of putting on that hat and calling themselves a coach right now. And that's fine, like I' pro people trying new things. But when you're dealing with people's careers and their dreams and their hopes and especially their livelihood, sometimes people's desire to be a coach might not match with their ability to deliver value. So it is important to find someone who's really got some level of background in it. And that third thing is like the person that you've coached with, like, I mean, do they have any kind of success rate working with other people? Like, can they point you to former clients? Can they tell you with what levels of people they've worked with, or have they done that themselves from a career path perspective? So when you're working with someone, like they should have some level of either I've helped other people do this or they themselves have done it. These things matter because coaching is a huge investment that organizations make in people. And it's a big chunk of time, you know, typically like six months to a year, and you're doing a lot of hopefully like quite deep work. And in that space you just want to make sure that A, you're doing it at the right time and then B, you're finding the right person to partner with because it really does matter.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: As a sober professional, I often find myself in work networking settings where drinking is the norm. I worry about how my choice not to drink might impact relationships or opportunities. How can I navigate these situations with confidence and ensure I'm still fostering strong professional connections?
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Don't draw attention to it. So the conversation around alcohol in the workplace has shifted significantly and there's still space to go. What I have found though, is that most people won't even give it a second thought as long as we don't make a big deal out of it, so we don't draw attention to it. And it's like, oh, you know, no wine for me or no beer for me. I'm not drinking, or I don't drink. Just order a sparkling water. If someone asks, just have whatever explanation you want to have, make it short, and then move the conversation forward. So my for myself, when people ask if I'd like something to drink, if I want to have like wine or beer or whatever, I just say, no, no, I'm just going to have sparkling water. And on the rare occasion people say, oh, don't you drink? And I'm like, oh, no, I haven't drank for 30 years. I'll just keep the conversation going from there. Sometimes people want to delve into it, and if they want to delve into it, I will get into it to the level that I choose based on the situation, the scenario. Otherwise I just move forward. The less we make it a big deal, the less it is a big deal, especially in today's workplace.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: I've heard that alcohol can disrupt sleep. I feel like it helps me unwind at the end of the day, but I wake up in the middle of the night and struggle to fall back to sleep. What's the real impact of alcohol on sleep quality? And what are some tips for improving sleep without relying on it?
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Drinking alcohol less than three hours before your sleep impacts the architecture of your sleep and it should be avoided. Don't drink alcohol any less than three hours before you sleep because if you do, it's going to screw up that sleep cycle. So to get into it, the architecture of sleep is you have four sleep cycles. You have three cycles of non rapid eye movement sleep, so we'll call it NREM sleep, and then one section of rapid eye movement and all of it is super useful. But essentially the n REM sleep is about physical recuperation. And because we're animals, like any other animal on this planet, when we rest, our bodies are saying, okay, the most important thing is get all of that physical recuperation up front. The second part, REM sleep, is more memory processing and emotional labor processing. And so what I'd call like mental health and memory hygiene, that happens in the second part of the night, but some of it does happen in the beginning, but just a little bit. And as the night goes longer, there's less physical recuperation and more mental health recuperation.
So when you drink alcohol and it's less than three hours before you go to sleep, what it does is it takes you instantly or near instantly into N3. So that would be NREM stage three sleep, which is a very deep sleep. So you always go N1, N2, N3 and then REM sleep and then you start the cycle again. But when you drink alcohol before sleep, it makes your N1 and your N2 cycle super short. Like very, very short. And in the beginning of night, those are actually quite long before you get to N3. But what it does is it makes those compresses that makes them short and you go straight into N3. And so when you're in N3, you have like a deep sleep, but your body is processing the alcohol. So you go into a deep sleep, but after about an hour or so, and it's about an hour per drink for your liver to process alcohol. Once that happens, you bounce back to N1 and N2 sleep and those cycles become longer again and it causes people to have disturbed sleep. So you go straight into a deep sleep and then you bounce back to having longer N1 and N2 sleep. So it causes people to like toss and turn. You get caught in that cycle and because you're having a disturbed sleep, you're not getting your physical recuperation. So your body keeps fighting for you to get the right amount of physical recuperation, which then lowers the window of the mental recuperation. So that's going to impact your long term memory processing, processing both good and bad, of events of the day, all of your emotional labor, it really, really screws up your sleep to drink at all within three hours between before sleep. And what I encourage you is like if you're someone who's relying on alcohol to help you unwind in that time, you've got to really work on your sleep hygiene. So let's go to the second part of the question. How do we do that? It's the same way as getting into any kind of like diet, exercise, like restructuring anything for health benefits. You got to get into it and you got to suffer for the through the first two weeks. So how do you do that?
The key to having really, really good sleep, the easiest but also kind of like most annoying part is do nothing in your bedroom that isn't sleep related or having to do with like your personal life. So for example, don't be reading in bed, don't be watching videos in bed. Like don't engage with your phone in bed or your iPad, don't watch TV, anything like that. Your bedroom is only for, and your entire bedroom, it is only for sleeping and then like the personal side side of life and that's it. You've got to turn that place into something that you psychologically connect with that side of things. The second thing that you need to do is be going to bed at around the same time every night and getting up around ish the same time every every morning. You want to keep like a very, very, very standard amount or a very very standard time that you get or you go to sleep and then you get up. It helps your body get prepare itself for sleep. In the lead up to sleep within the last hour, try not to engage with screens that are too big. So essentially if you have a big tv, then try to watch things on a smaller tablet or a smaller thing in the last hour before you go to sleep. And if you can, try not to engage with screens at all before that last hour when you get into bed. This is the difficult part if you're already someone who struggles with sleep. So the types of disturbed sleep people can have is they have difficulty falling asleep or they have disturbed sleep or they're getting like, they keep waking up over and over throughout the night or they wake up early. In all three cases, do not get out of bed. Like get out of the bed to go to the bathroom or something, but stay in bed otherwise for the entire time. Because the minute that you get out of bed and you start doing something else, especially something that is intended to soothe any sense of anxiousness, like starting to like pound out emails late at night or you know, like distract yourself with a movie. As soon as you do that, whatever's keeping you from falling asleep is like, got you. And it's just going to make that problem worse and worse and worse. It's kind of like if you're trying to like get off sugar and not eat too much sugar, it's, it's essentially like eating a chocolate bar and your body's like, hell yeah, give me more sugar. If you get up in the middle of the night and start doing emails, forget about it. You are really like front loading yourself for the next night. You got to keep this pattern for about two weeks and then your body will just get used to it and sink into it. The other piece though is if you're having a disturbed sleep in the middle of the night and you're waking up or maybe you can't go to sleep or you're waking up and can't fall back asleep and you're having these repetitive thoughts that are causing you to be unable to sleep. It's what I Refer to as closed circuit thinking. So closed circuit thinking is the type of thought that your mind produces to encourage you to get out of bed or to be awake. And it's usually something that's like based in like pretty significant. Anxiety causes you to have anxiety and you can't stop thinking about it because you're trying to think your way out of it. But it's a closed circuit so you keep going. The only way to do that is to break the circuit. So typically what people do is get out of bed and start doing emails or read a book or look at Netflix or whatever it is instead. I encourage you to have an earpod or some kind of headphone near bed, put it in and put on something like an audiobook or a YouTube video, but just without the screen on anything that has like audio. And put it at a volume that you can't think over it. Now I don't want you to like blow out your eardrum, but put it at a loud enough volume so you can't think over over that whatever's playing. And it also should be something that you find relatively relaxing. So like it shouldn't be. I wouldn't like listen to a book on psychology because I'd be like super interested in it. I'd be paying attention to it. But I also, I don't want to put on something that's like dead boring and I don't want to listen to it. So for me I usually put on like something about like sci fi movies or music or something like that where like like a conversation about music, something I find interesting. But it's not going to be riveting loud enough so I can't think over it. And that will break the circuit and it will allow you to go back into sleep. All of this stuff does take ish around two weeks. But if your sleep is really disturbed and if you've been relying on alcohol for it, it could take as much as six weeks and you have to commit to it. Sleep hygiene is the number one most important thing for proper functioning. I don't even mean high functioning, I mean proper functioning. And if you don't have proper sleep and you're not Getting ish between 77 to 9 hours, not only is your physical health going to be impacted, it's a major, major impactor for mental health. And it's actually like a front line of strong mental health is having strong sleep hygiene.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: I see a lot of professionals using their social media to grow their personal brand. As I build my career, I'm unsure How much of my personal life to share online? What are the best practices for maintaining a strong professional presence on social media without feeling overly curated?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: So the way that I'd relate this is whether or not it's something that you think is actually important to put out there, and if you think it's important, you can put it out there in whatever way you believe it's appropriate.
I'm going to give you an example. I grew up playing in, in bands ever since I was a kid. And when I was young, it was just about like, you know, putting out songs, putting out demos, putting out records, touring and all that kind of stuff. And as I've gotten older and I've become a lot more focused on, on my family and my career, I'm way more thoughtful about whether or not I'm going to put out a new record or go on a tour or play a show. And it's not because I don't love, like, the idea of, like, putting together a record or playing a show or being with my friends on tour, like, yeah, all that stuff's cool. But what I'm always thinking of is what's it going to be? The impact on my family time and my career. And so when it comes to putting out a record, I always think, does this actually matter? And if it, when I say that, like, does it matter even to me? Like, is it something important for me to do? Like, do I have a set of lyrics that I think are actually important for me? And I'm not even saying important for the world. Like, it's actually important for me to put these words together and put them out in front of the world. And if the answer is like a strong yes, then yeah, you know, like, I'll sit down with my friends and I'll write a song and we'll go to the trouble of writing a record and, you know, we'll go play shows around it and all that kind of stuff. But what I'm finding increasingly as I get older and I do write lyrics and I do think about, like, what do I want to put out there in the world? I always think, like, has someone already said it? Has somebody said it better? Does my voice actually really matter here? And it's not that the answer is no. It just really makes me, like, view more and more and more, like, what's the point of putting something out there? Is it just about me because I want to do it? And that's not a bad reason at all. It's a totally fine reason. But is it just about Me, and it matters to me to put this out, or does it actually, is it important for other people to hear? And it is kind of a balancing act of reflecting, like, your value system. Like, what do you think? Like, do you, you know, like, does your voice resonate? Does that. Do you have something to say? It's for every person to make their own decision. I know when you're, like, thinking about this stuff, you may, like, be like, I don't know. That seems like a lot to consider. I just want to put out something on LinkedIn, then put it out. It's fine. It's no big deal. But if you're thinking about something of, like, real quality, my suggestion to start with is, does this actually really matter to me, or do I just kind of have an itch to put something out?
[00:16:25] Speaker A: After working from home for so long, I've gotten used to the flexibility and the quiet. Now that my company is requiring a return to office, I'm struggling to adjust. How can I make this transition smooth, stay productive and avoid burnout?
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Well, the first thing that I suggest for people is if you want to stay working from home or find a company that gives you a balance where you can kind of do both. You know, they have, they have some in office days and out office days, then you should look for that. It is, you know, just like there was a trend a few years ago for everyone to go remote. And part of it, of course, was, was Covid. There's this kind of trend to push, to push back, and there's still, like, a lot of companies that do it. So if it's something that's important to you, I really encourage people to go out and find those jobs that support that. You might have to give up other things, so you might get paid less, or you might have less benefits, or you might have, like, longer work hours. It's just about what's important for people. And of course, there are those jobs out there that allow you to keep. You know, you get paid well, you've got good benefits, your work hours are reasonable, and you can work from home. I really encourage people that if it's something that's important to you and it really matters to you, go and look for that job. Just know, really, really understand what you're willing to sacrifice there, or do a long enough and deep enough job search where you find that, that role that does actually check all the boxes for you, and they are out there. It just might take you a longer time to, to find one. And there's probably stiffer competition for it, but around the transition, it's going to be different for everyone. What I'd say is anything that you do with structure, if you keep the structure for about two to six weeks, you'll get there. So one of the biggest things that I'm finding people talking to me about is the difficulty in managing their family life or their personal life as they transition back in. Because most people now are very used to, like, I work from home, I'm able to do a lot of my life stuff at home throughout my work day. I don't have any travel time between work and then coming back to the office. So, like, all of that stuff, like our ability to really just get our life stuff done while we're at home has been folded into our workday. And including the travel time, it really just requires a lot of structure and discipline. And I have to say scheduling. So really making sure you're scheduling things that might mean that time that you've become very used to just having is a little bit more like relaxation or recreational time now is going to be filled with getting some of that life stuff done. And I'm not saying that's a bad or a good thing, just from the practicality of transitioning back in, a lot of it has to do with scheduling structure and discipline to sticking with it. If you do that within two to six weeks, again, you'll norm to what that looks like and then you can look for like, well, how do I get a little bit more time at home? Like more relaxation or recreational time? That first two to six weeks is going to suck. Of course it's going to suck because you're, you're moving from a place where you've really liked, found this new rhythm of how to think, get things done when you're working from home. And now there is that thing of going into the office and going to the office, especially from a return to work situation, it's tough, it's not easy, and I'm not saying it's a good or a bad thing, but from a practicality, space, place of view, Scheduling, structure, discipline 2 to 6 weeks.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: Iran Arslanian is the CEO of Cadence Leadership and Communication. He has over 20 years of experience as an executive coach and therapist. He's worked with leaders at every level to refine their communication, strengthen their leadership, and unlock their full potential at Cadence. Our passion is helping people become their greatest selves so they can create a lasting impact in the workplace and beyond. That's why this podcast is dedicated to tackling real challenges faced by professionals want to learn more? Visit our website for more info on coaching courses and 360 leadership assessments for individuals and teams.
