Career Development: What’s Next 4 You? Featuring Frank O’Halloran & Judith Asher
Frank O'Halloran & Judith Asher are executive coaches and trainers with over 25 years of experience in leadership and communication.
Their podcast ‘What's Next 4 You, launching in early 2024, is a testament to their dedication to helping people perform at their best and to helping younger professionals discover their talents and calling.
Judith and Frank point out that the traditional educational system often neglects essential life skills, such as communication and relationship building, maintaining a positive mindset, cultivating gratitude, and embracing challenges with optimism.
For Judith and Frank, developing good habits that boost productivity, seeking help, learning from mentors, and embracing continuous feedback are essential for constant growth and success.
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TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Matini: I want to ask you how, when, the two of you met?
Frank O'Halloran: Judith, how did we meet? I think it was with our babies.
Judith Asher: Yeah. We met as parents, not as professionals.
Stephen Matini: And when did you start working together as professionals instead?
Frank O'Halloran: Judith's husband, George runs a University of Human Rights on the Lido and he asked if I would come and give three lectures on communicating to the master degree students. I did and Judith came along and listened to each one of the three lectures.
My client needed me to bring another trainer with me for one of the sessions that I was doing for them in a little town near Barcelona. Judith and I were taking our babies in their carriages over a bridge and she just happened to say, “Hey, how's work going?” And I said, I'm a little upset because I can't find someone to bring with me to do this training in Barcelona.
And I looked at her and I said, but you could come and do it with me. We have 30 days. You just have to do exactly what I say. And of course, Judith was a natural at this, so she did really well on her first time out. Then the rest is history. We've been working together ever since and now the babies are 20 years old.
Stephen Matini: Oh wow. So it's been a while now.
Frank O'Halloran: A long time, like 19 years we've been working together.
Stephen Matini: Oh wow. That's a long time. So, and now your last project together, it's the podcast. When is it gonna come out?
Judith Asher: The plan is to have it launched sometime in the early autumn. We are working actively on setting up a bank of interviews, getting things all lined up. So we've started actually producing it, but we're not going to have it go live for another couple of months.
Stephen Matini: So the name is “What's next for you?” Was it hard to find this name?
Judith Asher: Oh yeah. It's hard to find a good name. For us, we were first inclined to go for something that involved the word career, you know, like looking for a new career, how to find your best career. That was a big part of the idea. But then after talking to some various friends and thinking it over between the two of us, we realized that actually people don't have careers like they used to.
And just the idea of a career is this notion of like the “posto fisso,” as we would say in Italy, you know, that you find one thing and that's the thing you do and you're gonna do it forever. Just find that one job you can do and repeat for 50 years.
But now it's not about that. It's actually more what's next for you. Like what are you doing now and what could it be? And you have to be adaptable. And it clicked that it made more sense really for the point we wanted to make.
Stephen Matini: Of all possible topics that you could focus on, why did you choose as your target 18, 33-35 years old, young professionals?
Frank O'Halloran: In our training business. Judith and I work doing soft skills training, mostly communication with corporations that you would know the name of if we mentioned them. And lately we've been working with a lot of young individuals, all right, people in university and people starting their career.
And they get very attached to Judith and I and they ask us very basic questions about, you know, how do I know what careers are out there? How do I know what to say if I go to a networking event, how can I ask somebody to help me out or how do I find a mentor? And if I find one, what do I say to the mentor?
We kept getting all of these questions and to be honest, even our first idea was we should write a book for young people. Then we thought maybe a podcast would be better for them than a book. That's how we switched over to doing a podcast.
Stephen Matini: When both of you were younger, when you were in that situation of not knowing exactly where to go, did you have anyone that somehow was able, was important, someone to look up to that guided you?
Judith Asher: You know, I'll answer for myself that like you Stephen. No, not really. I would've loved it. And you don't know what you don't know, right? So I didn't know that I should even seek that out. The idea of finding a mentor or talking to people, asking what they do, speaking to my friend, you know, my friends' parents or my parents' friends, you know, like sort of just using my own little network.
Just the idea that I even had a network that wasn't the era we lived in. Just kind of feel your way forward. I did an internship when I was in graduate school and the head of the NGO I was working with, she ended up being my mentor, but I was so clueless at the time that I don't think I really even realized she was my mentor. But that's what she was doing and she helped me set me up for what was my first career, which was in the area of public health, which I worked in for many, many years.
Frank O'Halloran: I am a little fortunate because I had lots of people helping me out. I think maybe I just came across as so clueless that all these people I came in contact with said, Frank, let me give you some advice here. Or Frank, did you think about this or did you think about that?
I have been blessed my whole life with people helping me, pointing me in a direction, encouraging me, supporting me. I saved my whole life. It really started when I went to university.
I just, professors and other people I had to work during universities. It was easy. I went to school in Manhattan, in New York City, I worked uptown in an office and I must say everybody just took me under their wing. I wish that kind of thing for everyone.
Stephen Matini: For someone who's clueless, what would you say that could be the first step to take?
Frank O'Halloran: Because I was totally clueless. I grew up in a very poor, in a very poor neighborhood, in a very provincial town. So I was really clueless when I got to New York. And I think for me the thing that helped me the be the most was just to be positive. I would always ask people about what they did and show like a real positive energy towards finding out more.
Stephen Matini: Judy, how would you answer the same question that I asked, you know, to Frank?
Judith Asher: If I go back to that internship, which for me was a turning point in my life, I grew up in Montreal. I did some graduate work in Toronto and then I did an internship in New York City again. And when I got there, this was done unconsciously. I mean, I wasn't planning on doing this. This wasn't a strategy.
We had the first meeting at this NGO for women's reproductive health and rights, which was what was my interest area and what I was studying at the time. And I was in this NGO that I thought was really doing amazing work in the world. I was just so happy to be there. And at the first meeting when they had like the Monday meeting and they introduced the new intern, I said, Hey everyone, you know, I'm Judith. I just want everyone to know I don't know anybody in New York.
Judith Asher: I have no friends, I have no social life, which means I'm pretty well free all the time.
So what I wanted to say was, I'm available to help anybody who needs help with anything. Like here are the few things I'm good at. Like I'm good at editing, I can speak French and English, I can help to pour coffee. I'm, it's no problem.
I'm happy to be the person to show up on a weekend when there's a press conference. You know, get the coffee, get the sandwiches, put the chairs out and like anything really. And then after that I went and I reminded people, oh by the way, do you need help? Or I'd hear someone complaining of being overworked. And I just always continued to say that. And what happened in the end was this was the start of my whole career. I got to know everybody there.
Judith Asher: I got to know what they did. I found it really fun. I got to do a lot of things that were sort of interesting and fun that I otherwise wouldn't have done.
And then eventually the UN called one day and ask the CEO of this organization, listen, we need somebody to come to London, like ASAP, we're shorthanded for a global conference and we just need someone who's flexible, who's willing to do anything. And that's what happened.
I flew to London and that was the start of my international public health career, you know, so really it did come from that giving out of the energy. And also, and this is something Frank likes to talk about and I think he's really right about this, it was also a focus not only on, oh I'm here and I'd like to learn this and I'd like to do that and this is what I wanna suck from all of you.
You know, Frank often talks about like don't only put out in the world what you wanna get from others but what you can give. And even though I sort of had nothing to give cuz I was just very young without any experience, that energy of here, I'm willing to give anything I possibly can. It did come back to give me some good karma.
Stephen Matini: Do you think you can teach energy to people?
Judith Asher: I mean I think you can teach mindset. I think you can give a lot of guidance on what's a good mindset and what's a bad mindset. So if your mindset is everything sucks, there's no opportunities. I'm from a generation that lost two years in Covid and I'm just doomed. If you have that kind of mindset, you give off that energy.
Frank O'Halloran: Yeah, I think you can teach it. And in fact, in all of our classes that we design, we start with the mindset, all right, what's your mindset for negotiating or selling or presenting to people? And I think you can give examples to people of what would be a negative vibration or a positive vibration in certain interactions.
Judith Asher: I'll add just a little comment about all our young clients, the ones in college, the ones in their first stages of their careers, the ones in their twenties. Often when we talk about mindset, people will say after like why didn't nobody ever point this out to me? I have been thinking wrong. Like nobody taught me this. Why are they trying to teach me algebra? This is much more important.
Stephen Matini: People in the future who are going to listen to what's next for you, your podcast, we would you like them to take away?
Frank O'Halloran: We'd like them to take away a few things is one, don't despair. Things work out. And you can control that, to a certain extent by what you do, what you say. And we'd like them to walk away with their mind a little bit expanded about what's out there, what possibilities exist, and real practical examples of how people did it.
Stephen Matini: You think it's harder now for younger professionals to find their way in the world compared to the way it was before, particularly now after Covid?
Judith Asher: I mean a couple of things to say on that. One is, you know, yes, because Covid did put a kind of cork in people's development. So for two years a lot of people who were at the prime of their young lives missed out on some very important experiences. And I don't mean just like the problem with homeschooling and remote learning, I mean those kinds of relational experiences interacting with adults, with professors or you know, in internships or volunteer activities, interacting with peers.
Just so that lack of emotional development has probably set people back in terms of emotional intelligence as well. So that's something to be compensated for. I think young people would do very well to not feel stressed about checking every box as they move forward. You know, I've gotta get to university, I've gotta do this, I've gotta do that. But actually to take a little more time for the kind of thing you talked about, Stephen, figuring out what brings you joy, figuring out where you show up at your best.
Judith Asher: So I think that's one point.
And the second point, and then Frank, you can add, it's kind of counterintuitive in a way. You'd think wow, you know, the world is open to me, there's a globalized workforce I can find work anywhere that's amazing. I can work in any time zone, I can go live where I want with remote work.
But as most of us know who are a little older, you know, that much choice is not necessarily a blessing, right? This is for many people, even more complicated because on the one hand I can start thinking people from all over the world can apply for every job on top of it. So there's global competition, they have other skillsets, maybe it's overwhelming the number of possibilities someone can be anything and do anything. It can be even harder than a much more simpler time where you just needed to figure out the thing that could help you make the money you wanted to make to do the things you wanted to do.
Frank O'Halloran: You know, it's like going into a store to buy a bag of potato chips and there's 50 different flavors. , you just sit there for an hour trying to figure out which one you want. That's true. Judith what you said.
I also think that Covid produced the kind of work from home environment that most companies find themselves in. I was just in this big office building in Boston and there was no one there. A friend of mine's son lives alone and in apartment in Brooklyn, he wanted to go back to the office like he wanted to work with his colleagues. So now he goes into the office and nobody's there.
Stephen Matini: The thing is the gap between what colleges teach and what people actually need in order to have a career, it seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of what else can be done in order to make the transition more seamless?
Frank O'Halloran: Stephen, I think there's a lot of things that could be done. I think some universities are really trying to do those things and put people out in work, experience programs, things like that. They set people up for internships.
The thing is that if for, for a university to do that, they have to put a lot of effort into it. It's a big job to do it well. And I know here in Venice where we live, the kids who study “Economia e Commercio” (business), they have to spend, I think it's three or four months or 150 hours working in a company.
So the school will get them an internship doing that. But if they don't take charge of it, the university gets them a job like carrying suitcases in a hotel. They have the program, they have the idea, but they don't put the effort into it. I think more effort could, could be done like that.
And also with companies could benefit more from the internships if they put more effort into really providing the interns with good work experience.
Judith Asher: You know, I, I'll add one thing in. I think those are all important ideas. I'm married to a university professor so I'm keenly aware of some of these things.
I think one of the things that could be done in a positive way is for professors or anyone teaching to take a little bit of time, it probably doesn't require that much time. I mean, I'm thinking about this as I'm saying it, but if there could be some conversation about how what we have learned in this class are transferable skills, what could you do?
Let's just have a big open conversation, a brainstorm activity even. It could be, you know, a kind of lab outside of the normal class time, but explicitly helping people pull out what they've learned, the soft skills, the hard skills, how they could transfer it. Because I think this is what really seems to Frank and I what's missing cuz even young people who have all sorts of talents and skills and abilities, they don't know that their skills and abilities.
Judith Asher: If I was the person who was the one who on my own organized the ski trip at Christmas time, you know the “Settimana Bianca,” do I know that in the work world that's called stakeholder management, you know that I'm happen to be good at that. That I, I love pulling people together, finding a, something that everybody can agree on and executing a project that's called project management.
There are a lot of things that young people are doing both in school and in their extracurricular activities that they don't understand how they can market them, but they are marketable. So I think there's like a little wedge that needs to be placed. So people like you, Stephen, who are teaching of course, maybe the more forward thinking ones can start doing that and then that can rise from above where students say, actually this really worked in this class. Could we have that in every class?
Frank O'Halloran: Well usually what happens in academia is you ha you're being taught by academics now you, you Stephen have business experience and all of that. And then you go in and you teach part-time at a university.
But most professors studied their whole life and then they taught for the rest of their life, right? So they don't have that practical experience and I guess find it challenging or maybe it doesn't even occur to them to try to help the students close that gap.
Stephen Matini: Both of you, you had a lot of experiences with underprivileged kids and communities, throughout your life. Would you say that maybe some of those experiences have been the, the inspiration to what you're doing right now?
Judith Asher: I'll say something first on that. I'd say for myself when I was doing my graduate field work, I lived in Uganda for a year and I did field work like out in the jungle on adolescent reproductive health and rights. And that was a life-changing experience for me to see how questions that are asked everywhere around the world.
And I knew how they were asked in Canada cuz that's where I came from, how they get asked and answered in different cultures and access to information and the lack thereof changes everyone's lives. So that I think has been a big part of everything I've done in both my public health career and my coaching and training career is knowing the value of information and then also knowing the value of the information one has. I'd say that, and then Frank and I, we we take part in a charity project together.
Frank O'Halloran: Student and I and a bunch of our friends put on an English pantomime, which is a musical comedy, which is based on a fairy tale. It's always good versus evil good always wins. The audience participates. There's a sing along, it's full of local jokes. It's about the lowest form of entertainment available to the public.
We put that on every other year in Venice for the babies who have to live with their mothers in prison. Because in Italy, if your mother is a criminal and you're up to seven years old, you have to go live with her because you can't separate the baby from the mother even though the mother is in prison.
So the kids have to live in prison and we have three women on our, my island here, the Giudecca island in Venice, who help these kids to have a normal life. So they take 'em to football, they take 'em to ballet lessons, they take them to school because the government system just doesn't provide that.
Frank O'Halloran: And they get better furniture, better toys, better equipment for them in the school. And we have all of our friends working to put on this show to raise money to help these women.
Stephen Matini: What would you say that is your main drive to start this podcast? Why this podcast? Why this podcast with this soul?
Frank O'Halloran: The main reason is that Judith and I have always had a big affinity for young people. Even though we're parents, we're both very good friends with our children's friends, you know, they come to us, they call us, they ask us for help with this or they talk to us about that. So I think just naturally we have an affinity for young people.
Judith Asher: Now at this point in our careers, after having worked with business leaders and companies of all sorts around the world and really having a global viewpoint on this, we would like to spread some of the information we have, some of the knowledge we have because meeting these young people, hearing how they feel, they're kind of on the sidelines and they don't know how to step into their lives and no one around them is able to help them.
And we feel, oh, like actually we have all kinds of things we can add and we can contribute. And a podcast seemed like a good venue for that. You know, I sometimes think of it as what if I could hold a cocktail party like an “aperitivo” with all the most interesting people that we've had the occasion to meet. Cuz we've heard everybody's career stories along the way.
Judith Asher: What if I could hold that huge cocktail party and invite a whole bunch of young people to just mingle and get to know them and feel in the know that's the image of our podcast to me.
I mean, being happy should be the goal, but I don't think a lot of young people are exposed to that idea. Like, what gives me energy? What do I really love doing? What does bring me a feeling of happiness and then how can I translate that? That is not the criteria most people are thinking they're supposed to apply to themselves.
So it's good to have it. And it doesn't take that much for a young person. I mean, I was young, you know, you guys were young, it's sometimes one person and just their energy, their attitude can spark something in you that you hadn't explored before. So it doesn't take that much to truly change something for somebody.
Frank O'Halloran: Well, no, I was just saying about one of our guests who was sort of stressing out about her career. She was in university and one of her mom's friends said to her, think about something you're interested in that you think you would be happy doing for two years or a year and a half and do that. And she said that took so much weight off her shoulders, it gave her a new way to think about things. I thought that was brilliant, that advice.
Stephen Matini: Is there anything specific that you do to get over your misery? You know, that's the notion of Pity Party Over.
Frank O'Halloran: One is I just read the newspaper and I find out all the horrible things that are going on in the world and these people who are suffering so much. So I just say, all right, knock it off.
And the second thing I do, I, I'm a big meditator. I've been meditating for about 18 years now and part of my meditation has to do with gratitude. And I'll tell you, it makes a huge difference. It doesn't, if you can just list 10 things you're happy about, it changes your whole outlook.
Judith Asher: I agree a hundred percent about the gratitude part. This is a very important life skill. Again, that's not really being taught anywhere unless you happen to listen to some podcasts or seek it out.
You don't hear that that is a life skill. So I'd say gratitude is one, and for me at least, exercise is another one because we talk about that getting into a state of flow, finding yourself just completely present in the moment because anxiety and worry, this is about thinking about something you'd screwed up in the past or something that you fear in the future.
And I think that exercise is like meditation. It's another way to just get outta yourself and be in the moment and then you feel better and you benefit from all those hormones and chemicals in your body on top of it. So I'd say that's probably a big one for most people.
Stephen Matini: So we talked about different important things, for younger people. We talked about the mindset, we talked about positivity, the energy, gaining practical experience and such and such. If I had to ask you, what would you say that there are the five main competencies that now younger people should focus on?
Frank O'Halloran: I would say start with the soft skills and in particular your ability to express yourself. That is something that can serve you in so many different jobs, so many different careers.
Judith Asher: Number two I'll add on are what we would call relational skills. Again, in the soft skills, rap, rapport building, feeling comfortable communicating with other people. And back to your earlier questions, Stephen, I mean post Covid and with the smartphone taking over everyone's lives and how, I mean, young people often they've lost the art of conversation.
It's been a long time that they have been exposed to that. So really learning that it's not just the art of conversation in terms of those, those skills that Frank just mentioned, but also how to build relationships, how to show up and get people to like you and bring your best self forward.
Stephen Matini: I loved when you said gratitude and happiness, which people will not think about, but those are massive skills to have, you know, connected to so many other things and so little we talk about those, but they're imperative, they're really, really, really important.
Frank O'Halloran: Yeah. And you can be grateful for a very simple thing, you know, , it doesn't have to be that you won 18 million euros in the lottery.
The other thing that I would say is to do a little reading. One interesting thing to read about is developing good habits. A habit is not something that's tough for you to do, it's something that's easy for you to do.
So if you put in a little effort, develop good habits, be a little disciplined about it, then that can get you through a lot of difficult times because you can fall back on those good habits of, you know, getting up, being focused, answering the emails when they come, you know, whatever it is that's important for your job.
Judith Asher: Now that I'm hearing us talk about it, you know, some of these things kind of go in conjunction with the others because the most popular course at Yale University is called the Science of Happiness.
It's the most popular course in the history of the entire university. It's so popular that they've done spinoffs online. The teacher, the professor who's this incredible psychologist, she teaches this for high school students now, but there's a reason people are seeking this out if they're exposed to it.
So I think that's just the first point. And my second point was thinking about how things move together. Gratitude, relationship building, happiness. I mean if you get into the habit of telling people that you appreciate something very specific about what they did for you, be that someone in your close circle or someone in your professional circle or student circle, you will see that that boomerangs back to you, right?
Judith Asher: Cuz that helps build relationships. So just being in the right mindset and then, you know, mindset leads to gratitude, leads to learning how to express that.
And that actually you should say those things out loud because they also will help you in the end. They'll help that other person and then that makes you feel happier and then you'll see doors open for you.
So that kind of cycle, again, these are to me the most crucial life skills. I'm trying to teach these to my own children and we're trying to give this off in whatever way we can in the more formal trainings that we do.
And if you, Stephen can give this to your NYU students, again, you know, once they receive it, maybe they'll realize they should get that more as well. And there can be those ripple effects.
Frank O'Halloran: Don't be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes young people think, oh, I'm supposed to know this or I'm supposed to know how to do this. But if you go up to someone and you say, Stephen, I know you've had some experience with this, could I have a coffee with you and could you explain how I should approach this one for, you're probably gonna be very happy to have that coffee. And I think that's a big lesson for kids to learn that you can ask.
Judith Asher: That has something to do also with whatever school system they've grown up in. Cuz as the three of us know, you know, some school systems are a little more authoritarian and young people are not brought up in that system to think, hey, I can approach an adult and say, I don't know something.
Actually it's exact opposite. They think they have to know everything before they can in fact approach an adult. So there is some unlearning that has to be done for some people to be able to feel comfortable even doing that.
Cuz I think, Frank, you're totally right. You know, most people will feel perfectly happy if they're asked for advice and if they don't have time, they'll tell you that I don't have time. And then the la next skill, and the last one I'll add in is learn to not take things personally.
Judith Asher: If you can learn that most things people say to you that are hurtful actually are a them thing and not a you thing. You know, that lesson I wish I had learned a long time ago, and again, that's something I'm trying to teach my kids now because it's, it is a life skill to know that you should not take things personally and even the hate you get online and all of this really, most of it has nothing to do with you.
And if it does have something to do with you, it won't hurt you and upset you. It'll inspire you to change something. So when someone tells you something useful, it should feel bad, good or good, bad rather than just bad.
Stephen Matini: Your podcast, it sounds like a place where people are going to hear a lot of things, they're not conventional. Both of you have had this big career with leaders, you know, training leaders, coaching leaders and such and such. If I had to ask you what is it one thing that you have heard more frequently from leaders, one observation that you have made working alongside so many leaders, what comes to mind?
Frank O'Halloran: For me working with them and one thing that's always impressed me is that when I show up, they want to learn something. Now I can't tell them how to run their companies, but I can help them with different areas of running the company. They have to take care of the whole thing. But when they're very interested and want to learn and realize there are things that they don't know and could learn from me, that I think is a great characteristic.
Judith Asher: I'm gonna add something completely different. I agree Frank with what you say. One thing I hear leaders say is that there is a generation gap between the, like speaking of young people, that there are always going to be generation gaps, but there truly is a generation gap with the post Covid, post smartphone online reality.
That is something that needs to be addressed, not from the top down, but in all directions. So young people themselves have to enter and get into the workforce ready to dialogue with the leaders, to find how can companies be most successful? How can we all be successful in a way that manages that generation gap?
Stephen Matini: My last question to you is for anyone who's gonna listen to this episode, is anything specific that you would like people to take away from our conversation? Something that you think it is important other than listening to your fabulous, “What's next for you” podcast?
Frank O'Halloran: You have the ability to do this and it's not as difficult as you think.
Judith Asher: It's exactly that. And do things, be productive. Do the things you love and don't worry what it's gonna add up to. If you are active with the things that activate you, that is where it will lead you to what you want.
Stephen Matini: No, I'm, I'm really excited about your podcast because it comes from seasoned professionals and a lot of the fact that you're taking really different types of routes. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Frank O'Halloran: Thank you Stephen.
Judith Asher: Thank you Stephen.
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