On Second Thought, Don't Send that Pain Letter

When I started writing columns for LinkedIn a month ago, the first thing I wanted to do was to write about branding for job-seekers. I wrote this column, "Put a Human Voice in your LinkedIn headline," first. A lot of people didn't see it, because the folks at LinkedIn, not wanting LinkedIn Influencer posts to be commercials for LinkedIn, didn't promote the column widely.

That's okay. I knew that when folks started to get the Human Workplace message, eventually some of them would mosey back to the LinkedIn headline story and check it out.

Now that our columns Stop! Don't Send That Resume, When the Headhunter Calls and others are getting lots of pageviews, folks are finding their way back to the LinkedIn headline story, and I couldn't be happier. The number one message I want to get across to job-hunters, working people, leaders, students and little old ladies crossing the street is you are you, and you are perfect right now. You don't need to pretend to be someone you're not, in your life or on the job.

We all have brands, and all brands work the same way: Some people will like them. Some people will hate them. God bless them, every one.

No matter how hard you try, not everyone will like you, whether your brand is sparky, docile, rebellious, prissy or anything else. If you step outside the lines every day, there will be employers and clients and customers who love your mojo and others who are offended by your impertinence. If your brand is Teacher's Pet and you wouldn't dream of being so bold as to try a new job-search approach like the one I teach, there are employers that will love you and others that will say "No way. We need people who can cut their own path through the forest, and that person is hopelessly rule-bound."

You are going to have rabid fans, other people who say about you "Meh, I can take her or leave her" and people who want you to go away and die.

At the bottom of this page is the Reactionometer?, a device we created to show how people's reactions fan out when you speak your truth, especially if you shake up a frame in the process. Not everyone will join your fan club. You know what's marvelous about that? You can handle not having every living person in your fan club. It gives you new ideas to think about. I learn a lot from my detractors, and lots of them spin around the Reactionometer? and end up carrying our flag.

I wrote this column about Pain Letters?, the Human Workplace alternative to cover letters, a few days ago, and the Reactionometer? went crazy right away. Unshockingly, folks whose self-image is wrapped up in the status quo ("I screen resumes, and I don't appreciate people end-running me") lead the anti-Pain Letter? charge. Lots of other folks wrote to me to say "I'm on the fence. If I step outside the traditional job-search lines, could anything bad happen?"

I turn the question back on the questioner. "You tell me," I say. "What horrible thing could happen if you send a man or a woman a letter in an envelope?" "It might not work," they say. "There you go," I reply. The Black Hole's spirit-crushing machinery grinds on, but it's the devil we all know, so somehow it feels less risky to keep lobbing resumes into the abyss than to take a chance with the human alternative.

We complain about Godzilla, that edifice of rules and restrictions that slows us down at work and elsewhere in life, but we're used to policies and rules and velvet ropes everywhere we look. They make us feel secure, in a screwed-up way that I hope and assume is unique to our species. We always want to know, "What is the correct procedure?" We feel safe when we're doing what we're told to do, even if it's not in our best interest.

By far the most hallucinogenic reaction to the Pain Letter? notion I've seen yet is the objection "But if everyone starts sending Pain Letters?, then we'll just have a new Black Hole, a flurry of Pain Letters? arriving with every postal delivery."

That's a fun image -- makes me think of poor Hedwig the owl delivering all those letters to little Harry Potter in the first Harry Potter book. The image is far removed from any imaginable reality, but that's how fear-based thinking works. The Black Hole will be long gone, replaced with a simple human recruiting model (described in my next column!) long before more than one-hundredth of one percent of job-seekers step into their power and become Pain Letter? devotees. Only the early adopters and sparky people ever step into new territory, for Such is the Way of Our People.

So please, my darling, if the Pain Letter? idea makes you queasy, don't try it. Forget I ever mentioned it! Do the Black Hole thing, because the universe provides way more learning that my columns and drawings ever could. You are on your path, and I don't mean to disturb or confuse you on your way. Life is hard enough without stepping out of long-established frames every time some random opera-singing, doodling HR lady tells you to.

Here is a coaching exercise to kick off your weekend. Ask yourself, "How does it feel when I think about trying something new?" If it feels great, the next question is "What new thing can I try this weekend?" Most of us are more comfortable making changes in some areas of our life (maybe our diet, or the books we read) than in other areas. The more we can expand our response repertoire, the better. So there's your challenge: step out of one of your crustier frames, this weekend.

If your answer is "It feels scary to try new things," the next question is "Can I identify what I am afraid of, exactly?" When we feel skittish, we tend to run away from that feeling. We don't look at it. That is a shame, because we could learn a lot of about the world and ourselves if we did.

You might realize that it's scary to do things differently than your friends do. You might worry that if you send a Pain Letter? and get an interview (read a story about a Human Workplace member who did that this week here) that you might be in a higher-altitude and higher-stakes interview situation than you've been in before.

You might feel nervous reaching out to a business person you don't know and addressing him or her on an equal footing. Many of us have learned that hiring managers are on a higher plane than we are. That is weird, isn't it? A person you could easily have been in gym class with in sixth grade is suddenly on a higher plane than you because s/he's a manager in some company? How bizarre is that?

In our workshops we spend twenty minutes on the simple idea that you can begin a Pain Letter? to a hiring manager with "Dear Hermione...." It is frame-shaking right there for a lot of folks, to be so familiar in business correspondence - in other words, to be so human.

The Human Workplace is arriving by the second and it is not a moment too soon. The baked-on, encrusted set of beliefs we've sucked down and reinforced about business is falling away as working people remember that they are human first and employees second. Our jobs don't define us, our employers don't control us and our potential isn't limited by anyone other than ourselves. That is an empowering idea, to some. It's terrifying to others.

That's okay. The Reactionometer? below shows you the path to follow as you move from Fear to Trust. Lots of people are dying to help you find your voice and step out of old frames to become more than you thought you'd ever be. If not at this very moment, then when?

Listen to the podcast (the blue link just below this paragraph) to hear Liz's answers to 20 common questions about Pain Letters,? including the question "Should I double up and send a Pain Letter? to my hiring manager while throwing a resume into the Black Hole at the same time?"

LIZ RYAN ANSWERS PAIN LETTER QUESTIONS IN THIS PODCAST. LISTEN!