InFocus featuring Michelle Chase

From the 22 News Plus Studio, this is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Barry. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of In Focus. I'm your host, Patrick Barry. If you're watching the show, you've probably had a career, or maybe you're still working, or you're retired or whatnot, but having a career and having a good career, something you enjoy, something that's fulfilling, and again, something you enjoy going to every day is so, so important. I'm excited today to be joined across the desk by Michelle Chase. She is a strategic transition coach and founder of Empower Shift Coaching, and we are here today to talk about her, her career, her life, and how the job you take may not be the job you expect, right? Absolutely. Perfect. Michelle, before we get into it, let's talk a little bit about your career, what you've done in your career, maybe even go back further to being a little girl and thinking about, all right, this is what I want to do in life, and is that what you're doing today? I know for me, not even close. Not even close. As a little girl, I wanted to be the president of a bank. Really? Yes. My dad was the president of a bank, and naturally, I thought, well, I could be a president of a bank, too, and not only just the president of a bank, a woman president of a bank, so that's what I wanted to do. And what do you do now? Now I coach women into helping them slow down, reflect, pause, ask themselves some questions about what they really want to do. So why, so did you spend any time in the banking world? I did, over 15 years in banking. So, okay, so why the shift? Was banking not what you thought it would be? Were there things throughout those 15 years which gave you pause to say, this really isn't what I thought my life would be like? I think while I was in banking, I don't think I really knew that. I think it was just, this is what I'm supposed to do, this is what I believe I'm supposed to do. You saw your dad with a great career. Yeah, this is what I think I'm supposed to do. It makes sense, I'm good at it, and so this is where my career path is supposed to take me, but I wasn't really always happy. I never felt fulfilled. I never felt that feeling of, when you wake up in the morning and you're excited to go to work, I didn't have that feeling. So do you find a lot of people have that same feeling? Like for me, doing this is fun. I really, I enjoy coming to work every day, I do. This is, I think I've got the best job in the world, right? But do you find a lot of people, I mean, I have some friends who are like, it's a job, it pays the bills. It's not fulfilling by any stretch of the imagination. It's just, it's a means to an end. Absolutely, I mean, I run into women all the time when I'm networking, they're not happy. It is just a job, or their boss isn't really a great leader, or they're unhappy with what's happening, and I heard that so often, and I experienced it myself, that I said, something has to change. I have to be able to help these women. I have to be able to use my experience, and why do we have to suffer? Why do we have to go to work every day thinking, ugh, I'm just, this is what I have to do? Right, you know, and it's funny you say that because, you know, and social media makes it far more accessible, or I don't know the word I'm looking for, but you see it on Sundays. Like, oh, I can't, I don't, I can't believe the work week starts tomorrow. You know, I can't believe I gotta go back to this, whatever his job is, and I'm like, I can't wait to go to work tomorrow. I can't wait to see who I'm talking to tomorrow, right? But there are so many people who just can't stand what they do, and my feeling is, because they don't, they haven't found the right thing to do. Do you agree? Yeah, it's the scary Sundays, they call it, right? It's the scary Sundays. They've decided to settle, perhaps, or maybe they've just, they feel embarrassed to wanna say that they're unhappy, or they're just like, this is just how work is. Everybody's unhappy, so I am, too. So, I find that some people just aren't challenged at work. Sure. But there's a difference between challenging work, hard work, versus, like, a toxic environment. Sure. So, I mean, there's, this is difficult. You know, maybe, if you're an accountant during tax season, this is tough work, but it's fulfilling, versus you're in an environment where coworkers, management, outside sources make it harder than it should be. So, hard work would be, I'm really tired. Right. I've been so busy. These projects are really complicated. I don't have the resources I need. That might be difficult, that may be hard. Toxic is when you start to feel it in your body, your nervous system. You're tired, you're short-tempered, you're not who you kind of used to be. So, you start to feel it internally, you just don't have words to explain what's happening. So, those scary Sundays that we talked about could be, you know, I don't know what I'm in for this week. I don't know what's, you know, what's gonna blow up, you know, who's gonna lose their mind and start screaming and yelling, you know. That could be a difficult Monday morning. Sure, absolutely. It's that anxious feeling when your phone buzzes and you see the name scroll across it, and you're like, oh, what do they want now? Or what unrealistic expectation do they have for me today? So, how do you identify what's challenging versus what's toxic? Sure, I mean, it's not easy, right? Because we're gonna tell ourselves, oh, this is just hard. Right. This is just part of work. All my friends go through the same thing. Work is not supposed to be easy, right? I think it's that internal feeling. It's that feeling inside, your gut's telling you something's off, something's not right. This isn't the way it's supposed to be. I'm not showing up for people the way I'm supposed to. It's a different feeling. Does it make sense to sort of take a step out of yourself and maybe have a conversation with a loved one or somebody and just say, this is what I'm facing at work. I think it's just challenging work. It's busy work, you know, but somebody else might say, oh God, you're in the worst environment possible. Right, absolutely. But I think sometimes when you're in these environments, if you're a high performing person, you're embarrassed. You might not wanna talk to a friend or a family member or they may not give you the advice that you wanna hear. Right. So I think that's where my work comes in is really being able to ask you questions that help you step back and look at it in a different way. Very good. We are up on our first commercial break and when we come back, we will talk about how Michelle is helping folks. So stay with us. We're back in just a moment. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Hello everyone and welcome back to this edition of In Focus. Michelle Chase, she is a strategic transition coach and founder of Empower Shift Coaching and she's sitting across the desk from me today. We're talking about the workplace and understanding challenging work versus toxic work and some of the things you should consider about making sure that you're in the right spot because you think about it, you start working at 20, 22 years old, you're gonna be doing it for 40 plus years and it affects your health, it affects your relationships if you're in the wrong job. But Michelle, how do you help people? You've experienced, you've had bad experiences in the workplace and you've transitioned that into empowering others to kind of take the blinders off and see what's there. Absolutely, I think through my journey, I learned a lot, right? I learned a lot of tools and resources that helped me rebuild every time I made a shift. And then I started pushing those resources out onto the internet, social media and I got a great response. People were reaching out saying, hey, I listened to what you said, I used the tools that you talked about and it's helping me. And so now I've turned those into workbooks, I've turned those into reflection questions, journals, I have a variety of tools that help people sit down and pause and kind of gain clarity. So was that sort of a light bulb moment for you? You had some challenging jobs in the past throughout your banking career to start sharing and all of a sudden, was there a certain point in time where you were sharing your social media or LinkedIn or whichever and people are saying, hey, Michelle, I took that, wow, what a life changer. Is that, was there like a moment where you said, oh my God, I've done some challenging stuff that I might be able to help people? Yes, I think it was when my book came out. You know, I wrote a book in January, I released it and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. And I said, oh wow, sharing just a little bit of my story and providing some tools has really made a tremendous impact in a very short period of time. I need to do this full time. So who do you, do you work with women because are women more susceptible or I don't know if susceptible is the right word, but the workplace for women much different than the workplace for men. So do you focus on helping women kind of see what's out there so that they're not being taken advantage of or, you know, that they're in the wrong spot? Absolutely, I mean, I haven't come across a man who I've run into in a networking that says they're unhappy. Doesn't mean they don't exist, but primarily my work is with high functioning women. So I mean, what are some of the keys? What are some of the keys you look for when you're having these conversations with women who are just, maybe they're frustrated with work? You know, it sounds sort of, I mean, I don't know if you have a psychology degree, but it sort of sounds like a little bit of mental health work too, is you kind of pull the information out of folks to better understand where they are, to better guide them. Sure, I do have a bachelor's degree in psychology, ironically, and then I went into banking, but I'm listening for the things that they're telling themselves. Are they being honest? Are they telling themselves just what they think they need to hear? So I'm really asking a lot of questions to help them uncover some clarity. Okay, now, questions that you're asking, through those questions, can you tell if somebody's like, they're not ready for help, or they're not in the right mindset to really take a bigger picture look at their career? I mean, that's not really my focus, right? So one of the questions I've asked in my workshop that I just held was, if you were your own best friend, what advice would you give yourself? And it really, I watched people pause and really think about that and say how impactful that was, because often we won't take our own advice. But if our best friend gave us advice, we'd sit and really take it seriously. So I think it's just watching the reaction and just planting those seeds. Somebody may not come to me three, four months after I've given them the information, that's okay. Right, because it does, it takes time to take a step back and think about what you've heard, what you've seen to create an action plan. I guess that would be my next question, is really what sort of action plans, because I'm sure your advice is don't just quit. Right, yes, absolutely. I mean, not everybody has an alternative source of income. Everybody's financial situation's different. That's why I have the exit plan. So it's a workbook that we go through step-by-step to determine small steps that you can take. So maybe it's not leaving now, but maybe it's changing your behavior inside that workplace. So changing your behavior, because that could be the root part of it too, right, is if you have a negative, and I look at it having been in management before, if you've got an employee who's negative, the manager tends to treat that person a little bit differently because, oh, this person has zero positive attitudes, so you get a little bit different. So, hey, be a little bit more positive, might change things. Sure, or even, are you working 50, 60 hours a week? Why are you working 50, 60 hours a week? Is it what the role calls for, or are you doing that because you're trying to prove yourself? Do you need to prove yourself? Could you take a step back? Why are you giving so much if this isn't really where you're meant to be? You know, it's interesting. I think of today's world where it's good and bad. You have people who are in careers, or not careers, people who work for a company for 30, 40 years. My dad, he worked for the same place for 40, 50 years. I don't even remember how long. Whereas I think the younger generations are more in tune with what you're talking about. You know what? I'm not going to stay in a place that's not good. And granted, they're still young, but maybe in the course of maybe a 30-year-old, so maybe they've been working for eight to 10 years, they may have already had six jobs. Sure. Yeah, I think there's a lot more options now, right? So it's going to age me a little bit. But back in the day, you just, you had a nine to five job. Those were the options. Now there's a lot more opportunity. So I think that's getting people to say, oh, okay, I don't have to do this. There's other things I can do. Fantastic. We are up on our second commercial break. Stay with us. We're back in just a few moments. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry. Welcome back, everyone, to this conversation on In Focus. We're talking about careers, knowing a toxic environment from a challenging workplace. There's a distinct difference between the two. I'm excited today to be joined across the desk by Michelle Chase. She is the founder of Empowership Coaching. Michelle, thank you so very much for joining me. I appreciate you coming in and sharing your career because you were in an industry for many, many years and found it just not to be challenging, but more toxic. And you made the smart move of getting out, but you've taken that knowledge and you now help others. Before we went to break, you said you talk to your clients and you say, if you were your best friend, and you said that's very eye-opening. So what are the steps? So, okay, you had these conversations with people and I joked earlier about don't just quit because you got to have a strategic plan, right? So what are the steps to get out of a toxic environment and into something that is personally fulfilling and challenging in a good way? Sure, I think it's slowing down. I think a lot of the mistakes, if I look back at the things that they weren't necessarily mistakes, but it was part of my journey, it was impulsive. It was quick to get out of where I was in to get to something that I thought was better. So I think your work with me is to slow down, which is not easy, right? If you're unhappy and you're 50, 60 hours a week, slowing down ain't easy. Yeah, or you're miserable, you're unhappy. You're like, just get me out of here. So it's really like going through, okay, well, what can we change? What can we do differently? What do we have, and going through your finances, going through what things you can cut back on. So do you talk to folks about leaving, like you were in banking for years and you totally got out of it. So is that the conversation you have with people is, okay, let's use banking, for example. Okay, so you got into banking. Your father was a banker. You thought this was the way of life, but is that your passion? Is that the question you ask people? It's like, what is your passion? And then how, okay, now let's match that career with that passion. Sort of, I mean, I'm not, if you want to be a banker and you still at the end of our conversation want to be a banker, I'm okay with that. But let's find you an environment that fits with more aligned with who you are and what you're willing to do and not do. You know, it's interesting. You know, I've been in the media world for, how the hell old am I? 36 years, right? And, but I've done different things in the media world, but I like the media world. It's a fascinating business, but I can tell you I've been in some toxic environments. And switched, but capitalized on my skillset and my knowledge within the media business to stay within it. And that sounds like kind of your advice. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe it's moving to a different department. Maybe it's moving to another office. Maybe it's just staying within the industry, but working for a different company that does the same thing. And there are, I mean, unless you're in a really niche industry, there are hundreds, if not thousands of other companies out there that do the same thing. And it's just, but is networking valuable during these conversations? Because I imagine you're having a conversation with a client about an industry, a job or whatever. But if that client is networking, they might hear, oh, well, you work for ABC company. You don't, you're not having half the problems I'm having at XYZ company. Right, I think networking is important no matter where you are in your life or what you're doing. But also remember a lot of people don't want to talk about this because they're embarrassed. So they may not necessarily be complaining to people in their network. And I would actually advise them not to complain about other companies because you never know who you're talking to. That's a very good point. But it is good to be observant. Yes. And I mean, people will talk, let's face it. But again, it could be something simple as, oh my God, looking up openings at other companies. It actually brings up a very good point. Should you always be looking? For another job? Yeah. If you're unhappy. That's what I mean. Yeah, I mean, if you're not aligned, it's not fulfilling you. Listen, you're not gonna wake up every morning sunshine and rainbows unless you're doing like your life's work or your passion. But again, back to hard versus toxic. Right, and knowing the difference between the two and having a conversation with somebody can really help shine a light on the difference. Absolutely, I mean, I think we're very independent people, a lot of women are. We don't need help. I don't need anybody to help me. I can do it myself. I can handle it. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I could say the same about men, you know. But we are, we're unique individuals, the two sexes. But you're right, women think that they can manage everything themselves and do everything. And men think the same thing. I think women have higher, more stress in their lives than men do, whether it's family responsibilities, not only just kids and spouses, but you know, we're the sandwich generation. We're managing our parents' health and so forth. And a lot of times that falls on the women. So I think there's more stress in a woman's life. So the book that you wrote is, I have it here. I'm gonna hold it up. It's called Second Chances. Tell me a little bit about the book. Sure, so it's a high-level view of what's my life from when I was a little girl all the way up until my last job. I wanted this to be a story about my path. Is it a self-help book? Yes, so there's reflection questions at the end of each chapter. So it's, hey, this is what happened to me. This is what I kind of went through on my journey. Stop and pause. How is this, is this similar to what's happening to you? Does this resonate at all? Let's stop and answer these questions. And then hopefully it will help you kind of take that next step to reach out to me. Are there certain toxic things that are indicators, or can you not boil it down to like a handful of items? I mean, I think toxic is a very broad term. However, I think what impacts people individually is different as well. What people are able to tolerate, what's right, what's not right, what's wrong. But again, it comes back to that nervous system. If your gut's telling you something's off, I'm feeling different. I'm waking up and I'm sitting in my car for 30 minutes before I actually drive into the office. That's telling you something. That's a sign that it's not right. You don't want to go in there anymore. What a wonderful conversation, Michelle. I can't thank you enough for joining me today. Again, folks, the book is called Second Chances. It's right there. Reclaiming Yourself After Toxic Workplaces, Broken Systems, and Survival Mode. It's a thin book, so it's not a long read, but it could be very helpful to you. Michelle, thanks again for joining me. I appreciate it. Thank you. Good seeing you. This is 22 News In Focus with Patrick Berry.