200: How to Plan Your Career, with Bonni Stachowiak

Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

Audio Question from Jignesh

Here are the resources we mentioned on how to plan your career:

• Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi*
• What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard N. Bolles*
• Carnegie Coach episode #148: How to Determine What’s Next
• Business Model You by Tim Clark, Alexander Osterwalder, and Yves Pigneur*
• Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur*
• Finding the Career That Fits You*
• The Ultimate Guide to Using Your Strengths to Get Hired*

Audio Question from Mia

“A lot of times people use humor in an attempt to try avoid having conflict or having a real conversation.” -Bonni Stachowiak

Bonni recommended an episode of the This is Your Life podcast by Michael Hyatt called 7 Actions to Take Before You Quit Your Job.

Question from Taylor

I remember listening to a podcast where you, at least I think it was your podcast, talked about self-development. Specifically you discussed using a task manager to help you achieve your self-development goals. I can not remember which episode this was. It would be really helpful if you could direct me to the right one; I would really like to send it to my father.

Dave recommended these apps/services:

• OmniFocus*
• Todoist

Question from Jeffrey

I’ve really admired the ability to use humor to defuse tense situations whether in the board room or one-on-one. It often lowers the volume of a confrontation and allows a moment for those involved to reset. How mad can you be when you are laughing? But it is also risky to use humor since the joke could fall flat, or even worse you might offend your counterparts. Do you have any resources on how I can improve my utilization of humor in these situations?

Question from Ravi

Hi Dave, I have been listening to your podcast for past 5 months. Have learned a lot. Thanks for great advice all around. I am facing one problem that I am really struggling with and will welcome your advice. I seem to have hit a ceiling in my career. By measure of my education and experiences should have been in a Senior Management position. I look around and all my friends and peers at one time (and those even behind me) have been steadily climbing the ladder and I am frustratingly stuck at the same place! I have all received good to excellent feedback, have been commended for my attitude and thinking, done more than my peers but am still stuck! Any advice what I can do? Happy to share more information about my background if it will help.

• Bonni recommended Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus*

Question from Rijul

I was wondering if you could share a bit more about your own professional history in how you got into this career path. I am interested in exploring this area and would like to know what kind of jobs and/or educational background someone in this line of work has to become successful.

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