Waldron Career Conversation with Kathryn Haydon '99: Speaker, Author, and Founder of Sparktivity
Kathryn Haydon graduated from Weinberg College in 1999 with a major in Spanish. After a long career in the education space, Kathryn is now an author and speaker who helps people develop creative thinking and problem-solving skills. We talk about how she picked her major, some of the surprising ways her major helped propel her career, and how we can still be creative during a very stressful time. Learn more at Weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron or email us at waldron@northwestern.edu.
Cassie Petoskey (00:00):
Welcome to the Weinberg and the World Podcast where we bring you stories of interdisciplinary thinking for today's complex world. This episode is an alumni career chat brought to you by the Waldron Student-Alumni Connections Program. Today we're speaking with Kathryn Haydon who graduated from the Weinberg College in 1999 with a major in Spanish. After a long career in the education space, Kathryn is now an author and speaker who helps people develop creative thinking and problem solving skills. And thanks so much for being here with us today, Kathryn.
Kathryn Haydon (00:28):
Thank you for having me. It's always a treat to talk with you, Cassie.
Cassie Petoskey (00:32):
Awesome. And we're so excited to hear a little bit more about what it is you're doing today, but we always love to start out by hearing more about your Northwestern journey. So can you tell us a little bit more about your experience while on campus and walk us through how you selected some of your courses and what were some of the most impactful experiences you had?
Kathryn Haydon (00:54):
I was so excited when I first got to Northwestern. I'm just thinking about myself looking at that course catalog. I think it actually was a catalog at that time when I was there. I'm sure it's all online now, but I was so excited to try different things and take different classes and I think I just started taking courses that that were required and over time you'd hear about a good class or an interesting class or I started to formulate my interests a little bit more by seeing what was available. But I really loved it when I started to take Spanish classes and I had this particular professor named Humberto Robles, and he was a professor of Latin American literature. So once you get past the sort of 100s class, the big courses, I don't remember having those in Spanish. I may have had a test where I could go straight into the literature courses, but I had this professor and we were reading very obscure Latin American poetry and writing that... not as much obscure but just they're deep and packed with interesting illusions and similarly and metaphor and double meanings.
(02:21):
And I was reminded about how this professor taught, Professor Robles, because I actually had the opportunity to visit him last year when I was in Florida. I visited with he and his wife in Miami and he was doing great and they had my family to his home... to their home, and I remember I was asking him something about his own experience, his own personal experience, and he kept pushing questions back at me and I thought, "This is why I loved his class," cause he would never answer a straight question, he would just give us more questions and force us to dig deeper and to come up with our own responses. And I just enjoyed courses like that so much and he was really one of my favorite professors.
Cassie Petoskey (03:08):
And so I'm guessing that played into your decision in ending up to major in Spanish. Did you declare right after you had this course? What went into your decision making for declaring Spanish?
Kathryn Haydon (03:24):
I don't remember a clear decision making path, but I do remember that I tried a lot of different things. I was in Weinberg, I graduated from Weinberg, but I was in the school of speech for a little bit. I transferred in at one point and I took some really interesting classes in the school of speech, and ultimately I decided I like the double layer of Spanish, it has an extra challenge to it. So not only was I learning the language, but I was reading the literature and learning the history and of a lot of different countries. We did the Golden Age of Spain, so it was a completely different type of literature than Latin American literature through the ages. So it had a lot of variety and interest to me. So I think that's why I settled on it in the end, it was that multilayer approach that I liked and I felt was challenging, and I had really great interesting teachers.
Cassie Petoskey (04:22):
Yeah, that's really fun. And how did Spanish, declaring Spanish as your major, impact your career path?
Kathryn Haydon (04:31):
It was interesting because it didn't impact my career path at first. At first I thought that, "Well, maybe I'll do something with international banking," and I had minored in economics, so I was thinking of this business and maybe I could speak Spanish in business. And then the first jobs that I had were varied in sales and then I was in banking, but it wasn't international and I really wasn't using my major at all. But at one point, I made a pivot in my career and it is the pivot that led me to where I am today. And the door that opened for me was because I spoke Spanish and it was a school that wanted me to design a Spanish curriculum and they had a problem with a very boring and dull Spanish curriculum and they hired me to create this new curriculum and I ended up...
(05:30):
And I thought I was just making the curriculum and then they said, "No, we want to hire you now to teach this curriculum." And so then I became a Spanish teacher, something that I never set out to do nor thought I could. And I don't even know that my Spanish was even that good at that point, but it was good enough, I had lived in Spain, and so I beefed up on that. I didn't know language, I knew all these obscure literature terms, but I didn't know everyday language that grade schoolers would speak. So it gave me the opportunity to even learn more. And that was the first path, sort of pathway, into more what I'm doing today and kind of led me on that path. So it was interesting because at first it didn't seem like my major would have anything to do with what I did and then I used it.
(06:20):
Over the years I've had interesting opportunities. My first book had to do with Spanish speaking students and when I lived in California I had the opportunity to work a lot with school districts and students that were primarily Spanish speakers. So that played into it. Then I wrote my second book and we have a Spanish translation of that, so that was interesting. And so I've had these little bits with my major over time, but it hasn't actually been the focus of what I did, what I've done. Although the greater depth behind that has informed a lot of what I've done. As I said, Professor Robles was amazing, the way I learned to think in those Spanish courses and the way I learned to read into literature and understand metaphor and all of that, that has definitely informed what I've done over the years.
Cassie Petoskey (07:18):
Talking about what you are doing now, the Waldron Student Alumni Connections program is all about exploring different career options. So I'd love to hear more about what you're doing today in 60 seconds or less.
Kathryn Haydon (07:33):
Okay, so I've done a lot of things over the years and just recently I was able to find the exact words I think, and they'll always evolve, it always evolves, to describe it, what I'm doing, and really I am fighting against wasted potential. It started with wasted potential at school and in education and in learning, and then it moved to wasted talents at work, that feeling of being underutilized. So I use the science of creativity to help individuals and teams think and contribute at the highest levels. Sometimes that has to do with thriving on change and responding to change to make themselves irreplaceable now in the age of artificial intelligence. But all of what I'm doing always goes back to someone's possibility. How can we maximize the contribution that you can bring, that your team can bring, by applying these processes and these strategies from the science of creativity? And to that end, I speak, I write, I coach and work with individuals and I train teams in corporations.
Cassie Petoskey (08:47):
Seems like you do a ton of different things. The variety in your work seems like it keeps things interesting for you. And I'm curious, you mentioned a little bit about how some of your courses in Weinberg helped you learn how to think. How do you see your arts and science background from undergrad playing out in your day to day work?
Kathryn Haydon (09:13):
Well that variety is just it, right? I was in a great variety of courses. I loved to explore. I didn't want to pigeonhole myself into one path because I didn't know what my path would be and based on my job, there is no path for that. I've kind of charted my own path and my own course over time. And I'm glad that I didn't pick something that would say, "This is where you're going to go. This has a course lined out for you and this is what you're going to follow in order to get to where you're going."
(09:57):
I didn't know where I wanted to go, but I did know that I wanted to use my interest, strengths and talents and I knew I had them, I maybe wasn't as clear on what they were exactly at the time and how they could help, but I knew I had this possibility that I could offer. And I think that having a college experience where I could try many different courses and see that I could take statistics and I could take the analysis and performance of literature and enjoy those classes in different ways, it prepared me to be able to be flexible and to be able to be willing to take on a lot of different variety in work.
Cassie Petoskey (10:42):
Yeah, absolutely. And I love hearing you talk about not wanting to pigeonhole yourself and having these different options, which really brings me to the current state of the world that we're living in right now, and picking a career path is always a stressful thing, and right now we're in a very uncertain time with the global health crisis. And I'm curious with your personal experience and also your expertise in creativity, if you can share some tips on how students can still be creative and explore different career options during these uncertain times?
Kathryn Haydon (11:26):
Yes, that's a great question. And I know it must be disconcerting to be a senior, especially at this time. And your world's been upended and you had this plan, maybe in going to interviews and job fairs and different things, and that's all changed. I've been talking to a lot of people in the corporate world and economists and different people and there is a consensus that things have changed, they will change, but there's a lot of possibility and opportunity within that change. Some people are saying that some sort of old models have been forced to break down almost prematurely, or not prematurely, maybe they should have broken down already, and they are providing the opportunity for something new to come up in its place.
(12:23):
So I think that... I'm advising people now a lot about how to turn problems into possibilities because even during a time of crisis, especially during a time of crisis, we need to be thinking at our highest levels, and the highest level of thinking is creative thinking. And if we're able to keep ourselves thinking creatively, we will not get stuck. And those who continue to think at their highest levels will be able to come out of any set of changes ahead and moving forward. So one of the things I've been talking about is exactly how to do that, how to turn a problem into a possibility, and it's easy to start with because you start with your problem and just say, "Okay, what's the problem? Okay, the problem is," I don't know, "there's no more job fair where I can go and talk to people about different careers."
(13:19):
So then you turn that into a possibility question using the words, "What might be all the ways?" So what might be all the ways to talk to people about different job possibilities? What might be all the ways to connect with recruiters? What might be all the ways to make myself useful during this time? So using those words to frame a question is what I call a possibility question. And once you are able to think in that way, anytime you encounter a challenge or a feeling of being stuck, you can flip it and say, "Okay, what might be all the ways to do this, to overcome this challenge, to go forward?" And I think that is a very powerful approach. And then there's another step to that afterwards. So in the science of creativity, I talk a lot about separating your thinking and it's very important to take time to think divergently, to think up new ideas, new possibilities to dream, to even put down crazy things.
(14:30):
So in the career situation, I would take a lot of time to make sure you're stating your question in the way that you want. So it might be, "What might be all the possible ways I can serve, I can make my value known to companies?" And then come up with lots of ideas for this, even crazy ones, even things that you think aren't possible. Do that without judging those possibilities, then sit on them for a while, maybe a day, maybe a week, add to your list. Then look back at the list and start to look at your criteria and what seemed most viable or what you're most excited about pursuing, and by putting it that way, by allowing yourself to not just pick from a list and not just pick from...
(15:31):
I know that when I was in school, we always were taking this career lit, there was a career quiz or something, and it was all these jobs that you could possibly take. I don't know if they still have this and I don't know what it was called, but I remember I never liked any of the jobs on the thing, never, none of the jobs that were given to me, I couldn't pick from a list. The closest I could get was marketing or advertising, but I really still didn't like that. And I thought, "There has to be something else for me other than this list." So by doing it the way that I've shared, you can come up with your own list and see if you can chart your own course, see if you can find what you're looking for and even put out to your network, "This is what I'd really love to do, this is what I'm looking for. Does anyone have any connections?"
Cassie Petoskey (16:17):
Which seems like great advice, particularly now to think about all of the different options that could be right for you because there may be jobs a year or two or three from now that were never jobs before. There are jobs now, currently, that weren't jobs five years ago. So this new challenge that we're all facing could bring about a different path than even what we can offer and show students at the current moment. So I love that insight that you share and I know we have a lot of students who are obviously considering different paths for not only what they enjoy doing and the impact it has on their community and different things, but also the concern of making money after college. And I'm curious, how would you recommend students explore these new paths when it seems like their options for maybe making the money and doing the things they want to do and having a career that fills their passion, those options may seem more limited?
Kathryn Haydon (17:31):
Someone was... Oh, I know. I was reading a book the other day, it's a great book, I highly recommend it. It's called Pick a Fight and it's by an author David Burkus, who's a friend of mine, B-U-R-K-U-S, and I believe it was in this book that he was citing research that showed that when they surveyed people across industries in many jobs, from janitor to CEO, people who... people fell into different categories, and one of the categories was they felt their job was just a job. Just a job, they went to work every day. Another was a sort of middle feeling like their job was a career, they liked it, they saw a path forward with it. And the third was their job was a calling. So they felt so committed to this.
(18:24):
In this research, they found that across all industries and across all jobs, it was roughly a third, a third, a third of job holders falling into all those three categories. And they found that the people who found their jobs were a calling may not have started out saying, "This is my calling. I want to be a janitor, I want to be a barista." In every single job, there was the same proportion of people that felt their job was a calling. So it means that you can find your calling or what you were meant to do or something that completely fulfills you by doing something that you don't even know you like. So I wanted to put that out there because there is a lot right now about following your passion and finding your passion, but there's a lot to be said about just trying something out and seeing how that turns out and putting your best into it and seeing how it goes forward.
(19:34):
Because it's very hard to know what you're going to when you haven't even worked that much before, or again, when the world's changing so much. We don't know how things will be. You could be in a job with an incredible boss and the job description itself may not be something that you think, "Ooh, that is my end all be all," but you might have an incredible experience because your boss gives you the freedom to pursue different ventures and do different things that really utilize all of your strengths. So I loved that example of research because it showed that you don't have to know what it is you like necessarily, and even if you go into something that you think, "Oh, this is my passion," it might be your passion, but you may not like it 24/7 as a job as much as you think you do.
(20:30):
So I think the whole point in this is, I love this concept that I wrote about in my latest book, it is called Prototype Mode. So when students are going out and thinking about things, put yourself in prototype mode, put yourself in experimentation mode saying, "Okay, I'm going to go out there, I'm going to apply, I'm going to take a job that meets the criteria that I've set out. It might not be my end all be all, but maybe it pays my rent and that's what I want to do." But know that everything's an experiment and you can always look back and reflect and tweak and take a next step after this job. And I think that when I first graduated, I thought I was so fulfilled by my Northwestern experience and by all the activities I was in and the classes and I was working to my peak capacity.
(21:26):
And then I got my first jobs and I did not feel like I was working to my peak capacity no matter what I did, it seemed. And I tried different ones and different approaches, and there is a limitation sometimes just on what you can do right out of college, but you can learn things from each one. And I've looked back and at some point I said, "I can't imagine how this job is going to help me in the long run." And they all do and they might not be as comfortable when you're in them or as fulfilling, but they're stepping stones. And I just love that prototype mode and that idea that you don't have to know your passion because you can find out by trying something that seemed right to you at the time that, "Wow, I really do like this."
Cassie Petoskey (22:11):
Absolutely. I love that mindset, especially thinking about, like you were saying, the first job, the first couple of jobs right after college, because I know that is obviously a stress point when you're in college thinking about, "What am I going to do after this?" And you want to make sure that it puts you on the right path. And if you have this prototype mode mindset, whether it is your path or not, you can adjust, learn something from it and pivot. And so I think that's such a valuable thing to share, obviously with the uncertain times we're going through now, but at any point in time to take that mindset when you're taking a new job or new roles. So I love that, Kathryn, and I'd love to give you a minute or two if you have any other advice or insights that you want to... tips, you've shared some great tips with students today. Anything else you want to share before we kind of close out for the podcast?
Kathryn Haydon (23:07):
Well, one resource that I'd like to share is a book called Pivot, you mentioned pivot, but Jenny Blake is a friend of mine, I was just talking with her this morning, and she is the person that is all about pivots and her book helps you see that life is really a series of pivots. And that right now her tagline is, "The only move that matters is your next one." And it helps you get into this mind frame of how to set yourself up for a constant pivoting and really those who are constantly pivoting, and I'm not talking about you're doing one thing one day and then completely changing the other day, could be slight, but those who are flexible and agile in their thinking to be able to respond to changing circumstances will be those that create their own path and that move forward, who spot, "Wow, I think that I see a new opportunity there. I'm going to move in that direction."
(24:10):
So that's a great book, Pivot by Jenny Blake. I think I mentioned... I can mention my book, The Non-Obvious Guide to Being More Creative No Matter Where You Work. That is a handbook for a lot of these strategies, so how to ask possibility questions, how to separate your thinking, like I mentioned, how to use creative process. And you can apply all of these to your job search itself and start to think in terms of possibility and in terms of creative thinking on how you manage your job. Another tip I would give is know the power of the informational interview. And this is a huge opportunity right now. I love informational interviews and I did them a lot when I was pursuing 9:00 to 5:00 jobs.
(25:05):
And it's interesting because with an informational interview, you're not setting out to get a job. You're really genuinely interested in what someone does in their career and you're asking them questions. You just want to get a day in the life, "What's it like for you? What do you do?" That type of thing. And it's such a great peak into the day to day life of different jobs and it also starts to build your network when you're in the position of just going in and asking people questions, no strings attached, you're not trying to find a job. I've actually found jobs that way, not meaning to, and one of my jobs when I was being interviewed... when I was doing an informational interview in banking, I was in there talking to someone and they say, "Do you have some extra time?" "Well, sure."
(25:57):
Well, this was right after I got out of college and this was right during the dot com bust, and so it wasn't a great time to be looking for a job. I was informally interviewing and I got hired on the spot because they had a job open and they realized that I could be a good person for it. I did not set out to do that, but I did that because I was curious and I followed that curiosity right. Now is an amazing time to be doing informational interviews, people are so easy to schedule with, everyone's plans have been canceled in the business world. Unless you are a CEO and you're trying to manage a really hard hit industry, I would say it's a great time to talk to people about what their job looks like and just be curious about it. That's my favorite tool for job seeking.
Cassie Petoskey (26:51):
I love that. Three great resources and so many great tips for students who are facing the career exploration process right now, moving into a job search. And Kathryn, thank you so much for sharing your insights today and for being here with us.
Kathryn Haydon (27:07):
Well thanks, Cassie.
Cassie Petoskey (27:09):
For more information about Weinberg College and this podcast, please visit weinberg.northwestern.edu and search for Waldron. Also, we'd love to hear your feedback. Please email us at waldron@northwestern.edu with your thoughts on today's program. Thank you again for tuning into this episode of Weinberg in the World.