Resignation Letter Philippines: Sample, Notice Period, and What HR Does With It

The short answer: under the Labor Code, an employee resigning without just cause must give at least 30 days’ written notice. Your resignation letter does not need to explain why you are leaving. Three sentences is enough, and three sentences is usually better than thirty.

The 30-day notice period

Thirty days is the legal minimum for resignation without just cause. Your employer may agree to waive or shorten it — many do — but that is their call, not yours by default. Leaving earlier without consent can expose you to liability for damages, and more practically, it can complicate your clearance and final pay.

You may resign without the 30-day notice for just causes, which include serious insult by the employer, inhuman treatment, commission of a crime against you or your family, and similar grounds.

A resignation letter that works

Keep it short. It becomes part of your 201 file and it will be read by people who do not know you.

Dear [Manager’s name], I am writing to formally tender my resignation from my position as [job title], effective [date — at least 30 days from today]. Thank you for the opportunity and support during my time with [company]. I am committed to a complete and orderly turnover before my last day, and I am happy to document my responsibilities and assist with transition. Sincerely, [Your name]

That is it. No reason. No grievances. No paragraph about how you have grown.

What HR actually does with it

I processed a lot of these. Here is what happens on the other side.

Your letter gets acknowledged and filed. Your manager is asked whether to counter-offer, and that decision is usually made in under a day. Your clearance is routed to IT, Finance and Admin. Your final pay is computed — remaining salary, pro-rated 13th month, unused leave conversion if convertible under your policy, less any accountabilities.

Nobody reads your reasons closely. What people remember is the turnover: whether you documented anything, whether you disappeared for the last two weeks, whether the person inheriting your work could actually do it.

That is what gets said about you when someone calls for a reference two years from now.

What to say in the exit interview

You are not obligated to be fully candid, and the honest answer is that exit interview feedback rarely changes anything for the person giving it. Be professional, be specific about process rather than people, and do not burn a bridge to make a point.

Before you send it

One question I would ask every client sitting on a letter: if this job got meaningfully better in three specific ways, would you stay?

If yes, you have a conversation to have first, not a letter to send. If no, then you already know, and the notice period is just logistics.

Thinking about your next move rather than just your exit? Book a free 20-minute fit call.

The Ber Months Are a Deadline in Disguise

The first Christmas song played in the grocery on September 1st, the way it always does.

I was in the cereal aisle. Something instrumental and tinselly came over the speakers, and I felt my whole chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with Christmas.

Because here’s what the ber months actually are, for a lot of us: the moment the year stops being open-ended.

In January the year is a field. By September it’s a corridor. And somewhere in the walk from one to the other, you notice that the thing you promised yourself you’d do this year is still sitting exactly where you left it in February.

I hear it every year, almost word for word. I said I was going to look at other roles. I said I’d finally talk to my boss about the promotion. I said this was the year I’d stop. And then September arrives with a carol in a grocery store and turns the promise into a countdown.

The panic that follows is real. But it’s aimed at the wrong thing.

Because most people respond to that tightening by trying to compress twelve months of change into four. They update the CV in a weekend. They apply to eleven roles in a night. They make a decision in a mood rather than in a direction, and then they spend January undoing it.

I’ve done this. In one of my last corporate Septembers I rewrote my entire profile in a single sitting, applied to things I didn’t want, and got two interviews I had no business taking. None of it was movement. It was noise that felt like movement, which is a much more dangerous thing, because it lets you believe you tried.

Four months is not nothing. But it is not enough time to become someone else. It is enough time to find out something true.

So here’s what I’d do with the corridor instead.

Pick one question, not one outcome. Not “I will have a new job by December” — you don’t control that. Something like: do I actually want to leave, or do I want this job to be different? Those are wildly different problems and most people never separate them.

Then spend the four months gathering evidence for it. Real conversations with people doing the thing you’re curious about. One honest conversation with your manager, before the year-end calibration, not after. Noticing which weeks drained you and which ones didn’t, and writing it down, because you will not remember in January.

By December you won’t have a new life. You’ll have something better: a decision you can actually stand behind, made from information instead of panic.

The carols aren’t a deadline. They just sound like one.

What are you letting them rush you into?

Career Shift at 35 or 40 in the Philippines: What It Actually Takes

The short answer: yes, it is possible, and no, you probably will not keep your current salary in year one. Most successful mid-career shifts in the Philippines involve a lateral move into an adjacent function rather than a clean jump into an unrelated field — and a runway of three to six months.

I did this myself, from a senior HR career into building a coaching practice, during a pandemic, as a solo parent. So this is not theoretical for me.

The honest cost

Salary. Expect a dip if you are moving to a genuinely new function. The people who avoid it are usually moving adjacent — HR to L&D, finance to FP&A, ops to product — where their existing experience still prices.

Time. Three to six months of runway is the number I would want you to have before you leap. Not because the search takes that long, but because negotiating from desperation is how people end up somewhere worse.

Identity. This is the cost nobody budgets for. You will go from being the person who knows things to the person asking questions, and that is harder at 40 than at 25.

What actually works

Move adjacent, not across. The market pays for transferable experience. Find the role where 60 percent of what you already do still counts.

Build proof before you need it. A side project, a certification, one piece of real work in the new field. At mid-career you are not hired on potential — you are hired on evidence.

Use the network you already have. Most mid-career moves in the Philippines happen through people, not job boards. Your 20 years is a network, whether or not it feels like one.

Fix your LinkedIn before you talk to anyone. Recruiters here search it constantly. If it still describes the job you are leaving, it is working against you.

What does not work

Quitting first and figuring it out after. Applying to fifty roles in a weekend because you are panicking. Waiting for certainty — it does not arrive.

The question to sit with

Not should I leave, but: do I want to leave, or do I want this job to be different?

Those are two entirely different problems and most people never separate them. One needs a job search. The other needs one uncomfortable conversation with your manager.

Is 35 or 40 too late?

No. But there is less time than you would assume you could waste, and more than you fear.

If you keep arriving at the same crossroads and turning back, that is the room I am useful in. Book a free 20-minute fit call.

How to Answer “Tell Me About Yourself” (Without Reciting Your Resume)

The short answer: answer in about 90 seconds, in three parts — where you are now, one thing you have done that is relevant to this role, and why you are in this room. Do not walk through your CV chronologically. The interviewer already has it.

Why the question exists

It is not small talk and it is not a memory test. The interviewer is checking three things: can you organise a thought, do you understand what this role needs, and are you going to be exhausting to work with. You will be judged on structure more than content.

The 90-second structure

Present, about 20 seconds. Your current role and scope. “I am a senior analyst at [company], leading reporting for the retail segment — about 40 stakeholders across three markets.”

Relevant proof, about 40 seconds. One thing you did that maps to this job. Not your greatest hit — the most relevant one. “The piece I am proudest of is rebuilding our monthly reporting cycle. It used to take nine days and it now takes three, which meant the commercial team could actually act on the numbers inside the same month.”

Why here, about 30 seconds. Why this role, this company, now. “I have gone as far as I can go on reporting alone, and what I want next is closer to the decision — which is what drew me to this role.”

What to cut

Your birthplace, your degree, your first job in 2011. “I am a hard-working team player who is passionate about excellence.” Anything negative about your current employer. The full chronology.

The Filipino-specific trap

Many of us are taught that talking about achievement is arrogance, so we soften everything into “we” and “I was fortunate to be part of.” Interviewers hear that as: you did not do it.

Say what you did. “I rebuilt the reporting cycle” is not boastful. It is the information they asked for. You can credit your team in the next sentence.

Practise it out loud, once

Not memorised — memorised sounds memorised. Say it aloud three times so the shape is familiar and the words are still yours.

If you are changing fields

Lead with the bridge, not the gap. “I have spent six years in operations, and the part I kept gravitating to was the people problems” beats “I know my background is not a traditional fit.”

The things you keep gravitating toward are not hobbies. They are signals.

Want to run your answer past someone who has sat on the hiring side? Book a free 20-minute fit call.

Do You Actually Need a Coach? An Honest Answer, Five Years In

I wrote a post about this back in 2021, a few months into coaching. I’ve been thinking lately that I owe it a rewrite.

Not because I was wrong. Because I was careful in the way people are careful when they’re new and slightly afraid of sounding like a salesperson.

So, five years in, more plainly.

Most people don’t need a coach. I still believe that. There are people who are clear about what they want, moving toward it at a pace they’ve made peace with, supported by people who tell them the truth. If that’s you, keep your money.

There are also people who need something that isn’t coaching, and I’d rather say so than take the booking.

If what’s happening is grief, trauma, or a depression that’s been sitting on your chest for months, you need a therapist, and coaching will feel like being asked to plan a trip while the house is on fire. If what you need is someone who has done your exact job and can tell you how it’s done, that’s mentoring, and it’s often free — you just have to ask someone braver than you feel. If you need a diagnosis and a recommended fix, that’s consulting. I do none of those three.

What I actually do is narrower than people expect. I ask questions until you hear yourself say the thing you already knew.

That sounds small. It is not small. Most of the people I work with are not confused about the facts of their situation. They are extremely well-informed about their own lives. What they’ve lost is the ability to hear themselves think over the noise of everyone’s expectations, including the ones they inherited and never agreed to.

So the honest test isn’t am I struggling. Plenty of struggle doesn’t need a coach.

The test is closer to this: do you keep arriving at the same intersection and turning back? Have you had the same conversation with your friends four times and gotten sympathy instead of movement? Do you know what you want but can’t say it out loud without immediately explaining why it’s not practical?

That last one, especially. That’s the room I’m useful in.

And here’s the part I’d have been too shy to write in 2021. Coaching works when you bring something to it. The transformations I’ve watched didn’t happen because I said something brilliant. They happened because someone showed up willing to be uncomfortable for an hour, on purpose, repeatedly, and then went and did something about it during the week.

If you’re looking for someone to hand you the answer, save your money for something else. I don’t have it. You do, and I’ll be irritating about it until you say it.

Not everyone needs a coach.

But if you’ve read this far, you probably already know which one you are.

The Boundary I Coach But Don’t Keep

I told a client last week to stop answering messages after 8pm.

She laughed. Said she’d try. We spent a good ten minutes on what it would actually cost her — the itch of a notification left sitting there, the fear that someone would quietly decide she wasn’t committed enough.

Then I closed my laptop, picked up my phone, and answered messages until eleven.

I want to be honest about that, because I think the gap between what I coach and what I do is where most of the useful truth lives.

Here’s what I’ve learned from being on both sides of it: a boundary is almost never a scheduling problem. We treat it like one. We buy the planner. We block the calendar. We download the app that greys out the screen at ten, and then we override it, because the app was never the thing standing in our way.

The thing standing in our way is that a boundary requires you to let someone be disappointed in you.

That’s it. That’s the whole cost. Not the hour you reclaim — the reputation you risk. The client who might think you’re less available than the coach down the road. The friend who waits a day for a reply. The version of yourself who has always been the one who answers, and who isn’t sure she’s still valuable if she stops.

My body figured this out before I did.

It started small. A jaw I was clenching in my sleep. A shoulder that stopped rotating properly. A twitch under my left eye that showed up during a busy season and then simply moved in, like it had signed a lease. I ignored all of it, because none of it was dramatic enough to count as a reason to stop.

The body doesn’t argue with you. It just keeps sending the bill, and it adds interest.

So I’ve been practising. Badly, and in small ways, because I don’t trust the version of this that arrives as a grand announcement.

My phone charges in the kitchen now. Not every night. Most nights. One evening a week belongs to my son, and nobody has to be told why I’m not available, because I’ve stopped explaining myself as a form of apology. And I’ve been saying “I’ll get back to you tomorrow” without softening it into a paragraph.

Some people have been mildly disappointed. Nobody has left. The world I was protecting by being endlessly reachable turned out to be less fragile than I thought.

I’m not writing this from the far side of it. I’m writing it from the middle, where it still feels wrong at least twice a week.

But I’ve stopped thinking of the boundary as a rule I keep. It’s a promise I keep re-making, most mornings, usually after I’ve already broken it.

What is your body trying to send you the bill for?

When Your LinkedIn Says One Thing and Your Gut Says Another

I have a client who spent three years building a career she’s very good at.

Her LinkedIn is immaculate. Consistent titles. Steady promotions. A narrative arc that makes sense to anyone who reads it from top to bottom. She looks — on paper — like someone who has it together.

And then she gets on a call with me and says: “I don’t know why I feel so empty.”

I know that feeling. I’ve lived in it.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from working too hard but from working in the wrong direction. You’ve invested so much — years, identity, reputation — that leaving feels impossible. So you stay. And you optimize. And you get better at something that doesn’t fill you up anymore, if it ever did.

The LinkedIn profile becomes its own kind of trap.

I’m not saying your career history doesn’t matter. It does. But there’s a difference between a track record and a life sentence. Between “this is what I’ve built” and “this is all I’m allowed to be.”

Your gut usually knows before your brain catches up. It speaks in small, inconvenient ways: the Sunday dread that starts on Saturday afternoon, the way your energy flatlines in a role that looks great from the outside, the moment you find yourself genuinely excited about something and then immediately think “but that’s not practical.”

That inconvenience is information.

I left a stable, senior HR career during a pandemic to build something of my own. Not because I had it all figured out. Not because the timing was right. Because the gap between who I was on my profile and who I actually was had become too wide to ignore.

It wasn’t a clean break. It was messy and terrifying, and I second-guessed it constantly.

But here’s what I know now: your gut doesn’t give up on you. It keeps raising its hand, quietly, until you’re ready to listen.

Are you listening?

Raising a Son Who Watches Me Work

My son doesn’t ask about my work very often.

He doesn’t sit across from me at dinner and demand explanations. He doesn’t ask why I’m on my laptop early mornings or late nights, why we only see each other on weekends. He just watches. Quietly. The way kids do when they’re taking notes they don’t know they’re taking.

That’s what I think about.

I think about what he is learning, through proximity, about what work is. What ambition looks like. What a woman does when the world demands more than is fair. Whether you can build something of your own and still be present. Whether strength and softness can live in the same person.

I don’t have a clean answer for any of it. I’m making this up as I go, like most parents are.

But I’ve made some intentional choices along the way.

I let him see me work hard — and I let him see me stop. I talk about what I do in terms he can understand: I help people figure out what they want to do with their lives. Sometimes I tell him when I had a great call, when someone had a breakthrough. I want him to know that work can mean something beyond just paying bills.

I also let him see me rest. Laugh. Be a person outside of the role. Order takeout without guilt on a Thursday night because no one wants to cook.

I don’t know what he’ll remember. I hope it’s not the missed school events. I hope it’s the conversations, the slow weekend mornings, the moments when I put the phone down and was just his mom.

But if he does remember the work — I hope what he takes from it is this: she did something that mattered to her, and she did it on her own terms.

That would be enough.

The Guilt I’m Done Apologizing For

Let me say something I’ve never actually said out loud.

I love my work. Genuinely. Not in the way you’re supposed to say you love your work — not the LinkedIn version where everything is a “passion” and a “mission” and a “privilege.” I mean I actually love it. The conversations, the breakthroughs, the moment someone finally sees themselves clearly. That part lights me up.

And I used to feel guilty about that.

Because I’m a mother. And the story we tell mothers — especially solo mothers — is that every hour you give to something outside your child is an hour you owe back in apology. That ambition is acceptable only if it’s sufficiently explained, sufficiently sacrificed for. That loving your work is fine, as long as you also look tired enough from doing it.

I’m done with that story.

My son hasn’t asked me why I work so much. He’s never sat me down and demanded an explanation. But I’ve had the conversation in my head a hundred times — the one where I have to justify the early mornings, the coaching calls, the side of me that exists outside of being his mother. I’ve pre-apologized for things he hasn’t even accused me of yet.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that’s not something he needs from me. What he needs is a mother who models what it looks like to live a life that means something. To keep going even when it’s hard. To do work that matters, and to own it without shrinking.

Being a solo parent didn’t kill my ambition. It clarified it. I’m not doing this in spite of him — I’m doing it because of him. And for me. Both are allowed. Both are true at the same time.

The guilt isn’t gone. I won’t pretend it is. It still shows up on the mornings I leave early and the evenings I’m answering messages at the dinner table. But I’ve stopped treating it as evidence that I’m doing something wrong.

It just means I care. About him, and about myself.

Women aren’t supposed to need both. But we do. And it’s about time we stopped apologizing for it.

On Being the Breadwinner and Falling Apart

There is a very specific kind of pressure that comes with being the person everyone is counting on.

Not the abstract, motivational kind — the real kind. The kind where if you stop, things actually stop. The bills, the groceries, the school fees, the future that you’ve promised your child through work and sacrifice and pure willpower. You are the one holding it together. So you hold it together.

And then one day — sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once — you fall apart.

I have fallen apart in bathrooms, in cars, in the middle of perfectly ordinary Tuesday afternoons. I’ve cried in ways that felt disproportionate to what triggered them, which is usually something small — a meeting that went wrong, a delayed payment, a moment of being stretched one direction too many.

The small thing is never really what you’re crying about.

There’s a lie we tell breadwinners — especially women, especially solo parents — that strength is a permanent state. That you either have it or you don’t. That asking for support means you’re losing your grip on the thing you’ve built.

I don’t believe that anymore.

Falling apart, when it happens, is not failure. It’s your body and mind doing the only honest thing left to do after a long period of carrying more than one person was designed to carry.

The capacity to hold things together is real. And it has limits. And those limits do not make you weak — they make you human.

What helped me: letting myself fall apart in small, controlled ways before the bigger one. Crying when I needed to cry. Saying “I’m not okay today” to someone who could hold it. Giving myself permission to be held up, even occasionally.

You don’t have to earn the right to fall apart. You just have to let yourself.

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me at 35

I turned 35 in the middle of what I thought was the right life.

Good job. Good performance reviews. A clear ladder in front of me. I had done everything I was supposed to do, in the order I was supposed to do it. And I felt, quietly but persistently, like I had somehow missed a turn several years back without knowing it.

Nobody tells you that you can be on track and still be lost.

Here’s what I wish someone had said to me at 35:

The discomfort you’re feeling is not ingratitude. It’s your instincts. Don’t talk yourself out of it just because your life looks fine from the outside.

Being good at your job and being fulfilled by it are different things. You can have one without the other for a long time. Not forever.

The things you keep gravitating toward in your spare time — the coaching conversations, the people problems, the “can I give you a thought on that?” — those are not hobbies. Those are signals.

You are allowed to build a career that fits who you actually are, not who you were when you started.

You will lose things in the rebuilding. Some of them will be losses you grieve. Not all of them will matter as much as you fear.

Your son is watching everything. Not to judge you — to learn what’s possible. What you model now is what he’ll believe about work, about identity, about whether a person can change course without falling apart.

The courage to change is not reckless. It’s one of the most responsible things you can do — for yourself, and for the people who are quietly watching you figure out how to live.

At 35, I had more time than I thought. And less than I assumed I could waste.

The Kind of Tired Sleep Doesn’t Fix

I slept eight hours and woke up exhausted.

Not groggy — exhausted. The kind where your eyes open and your first coherent thought is already heavy. Where the prospect of getting through the day feels like something you have to gear up for, not something you move into naturally.

I’ve been there more times than I can count. It’s not a sleep problem.

There is a kind of tired that rest doesn’t reach. It lives in the layer below the physical — in the space where your sense of meaning lives, where your identity is held, where the gap between who you are and who you have to be today quietly accumulates its interest.

Clinical burnout has a definition. But this tiredness I’m describing doesn’t always meet the clinical bar. It’s subtler. It looks fine from the outside. You function. You deliver. You smile in the meeting. And underneath all of it, there is a very quiet, very persistent ache.

I know it intimately. I lived in it for years before I learned to name it.

What helps, in my experience: not more rest — but more rightness. More moments in the day that feel like you, not performance. More choices that move toward something, rather than away from everything.

This doesn’t have to be a dramatic overhaul. It can be small: one conversation that feels real. One thing you do because you want to, not because you have to. One hour that belongs entirely to you.

The tiredness doesn’t disappear overnight. But it starts to lift when you stop treating it as something to sleep off and start treating it as something to listen to.

What is the tiredness trying to tell you?

You don’t have to fix it all at once. You just have to stop pretending it isn’t there.

Permission Slips We Never Got

Nobody ever sat me down and handed me a permission slip.

Not for changing careers. Not for wanting more than what I had. Not for being ambitious and soft at the same time. Not for crying in a bathroom at work, not for building something new when the old thing still sort of worked.

We spend a lot of our lives waiting for permission we were never going to receive. From parents. From managers. From the version of ourselves we thought we were supposed to be by now.

So here. I’m writing us some.

Permission to want something different without being able to fully explain why.

Permission to be tired. Actually tired. Without qualifying it or making it a productivity problem.

Permission to leave a room, a job, a relationship, a version of yourself — without a perfect explanation or a better option already lined up.

Permission to not have it figured out at the age you thought you would.

Permission to be proud of yourself in a year that also broke you.

Permission to love your work and still be allowed to rest from it.

Permission to be a good mother and a complicated woman at the same time.

Permission to change your mind. Again.

Permission to be exactly as uncertain as you actually are, without performing confidence you don’t feel.

Permission to take up space — in conversations, in rooms, in your own life — without pre-apologizing for it.

You don’t need someone’s signature on any of this. But in case you’ve been waiting anyway: here it is.

You’re allowed.

On Starting Over Without Calling It That

I didn’t call it starting over.

That felt too dramatic. Too much like failure, or like I was making a statement. So I called it a transition. A pivot. A next chapter. All the words we use when we want to describe a significant break without admitting how significant it is.

But here is the truth: I started over. Completely. From a stable senior HR career to building a coaching practice from the ground up, during a pandemic, as a solo parent. That is starting over. You can use softer language if you need to, but let’s not pretend it wasn’t what it was.

Starting over is terrifying in a way that is hard to describe to someone who hasn’t done it. Not just the practical terror — the income uncertainty, the identity questions, the loss of the title that told people (and yourself) who you were. There is also a quieter terror: the fear that you left something real and might not find anything equally real on the other side.

I want to tell you what I found on the other side: more of myself.

Not in a vague, Instagram-caption way. Specifically: I found the parts of me that had been subordinated to the role for years. The natural curiosity. The genuine care for how people move through their lives. The desire to have conversations that matter and not just meetings that run over.

I also found: discomfort. Uncertainty. A learning curve I hadn’t expected. Moments of genuine doubt.

All of it was real. All of it was mine.

Starting over doesn’t erase what came before. Everything I built in those 20 years came with me — the knowledge, the relationships, the hard-won understanding of how organizations and people work. It just stopped owning me.

If you are standing at the edge of something that feels like starting over — the thing you’re afraid to call what it is — I want you to know: you don’t have to have it figured out to take the first step.

You just have to be willing to find out what’s on the other side.

I promise it’s worth it.

The Morning I Stopped Rushing

There’s a version of me that used to wake up already behind.

Before my feet hit the floor, my brain was already running the list. Emails to send, calls to prep for, the thing I forgot to do yesterday that would catch up with me today. I was efficient. Productive. Perpetually five minutes ahead of something falling apart.

I didn’t realize how exhausting that was until I stopped doing it.

It wasn’t a dramatic decision. There was no retreat, no burnout breakdown (well — not that morning, at least). I just woke up one day and decided not to rush. I made my protein shake. Yes, this is my peak Pilates-Tita era. I sat with it. I watched the light change in the room. I did nothing productive for twenty minutes, and the world did not end.

Here’s what I’ve noticed since I started doing this more: my mornings now feel like they belong to me. Not to my inbox. Not to my to-do list. Not to whatever crisis is waiting on the other side of my phone screen.

We talk a lot about morning routines — the 5 AM club, the journaling, the cold showers. I’m not here to sell you a routine. I’m here to tell you that the most radical thing I’ve done recently is simply… slow down. Not because I have less to do (I don’t). But because I finally accepted that arriving everywhere breathless wasn’t a badge of honor. It was just a habit. A very expensive one.

I’m a solo parent. I work full-time. I run a coaching practice on the side. There is always something that needs doing, and there will always be something that needs doing. That used to feel like a reason to rush forever.

Now it feels like a reason to protect the quiet while I can.

My son knows I work hard. He knows this is how we make things work. He’s never once asked me to stop — not directly. But I’d be lying if I said I never wonder what he holds quietly, the things kids don’t say out loud but carry anyway. The unspoken tally of days spent not seeing each other and just not being there.

I don’t have a clean answer for that. What I do have is this: I’m learning to be more present in the pockets of time we do have. Not perfect — present. And it starts in the morning. With coffee and crepe - our thing. With slow.

You don’t have to earn the right to not rush. You just have to decide.

Love at Work

We don't always love the work we have. Every so often though, and usually, on paydays, we are reminded of why we are grateful for the work we have. It provides for us and our loved ones. 

We are usually only seen as the work we do - accountant, analyst. We want to be appreciated for who we are as people. We want to be noticed and feel loved. 

If you're pretty sure others feel like this too, will you spread some love today and do a few random acts of kindness?  

Some things we can do today:

1. Bring all your loose change and fill the vending machines at work with a few pesos for the next person.

2. If it looks like there will be rain today, bring an umbrella. Help a stranger with no umbrella to cross the street.

3. Give sincere compliments to people at work.

4. Look people in the eye when you greet them "Good morning" today.

5. Hug yourself at the end of the day and say, "I love you."

Let love spread today. This way, people get noticed. Our workplaces will, over time, be full of kindness and people who care about each other. 

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About Jeng

Jeng Macalagay is a Career Coach who has 19 years of work experience in various industries. Over 10 years of which were in Human Resources where she led the people strategies on Talent Management, Performance Management, and Leadership Development.

Book My Free Coaching Session with Jeng.

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The Pause

I've not posted anything in the past two months. I told my brand consultant in November, "I'm sorry I've not posted anything this week." She said, "It's your website. No sorry required." It was like a deep breath that relaxes your shoulders down. It felt like I had to get a permission slip to pause when the choice was entirely mine.

It was starting to become a chore. I've not made writing part of my daily mindfulness rituals. Systems are not in place to help me enjoy this on good days and power through on not-so-good ones.

Meanwhile, I have been pretty great at living in the analog world. I've taken better care of myself. I get at least eight hours of sleep every day, except last NY eve. I've been walking for a full hour in the mornings. I found some low-impact zero equipment workouts that I enjoyed. I tracked what I ate. All these things gave me more energy to be fully present with each person I spent these days with. Even when confined within the four corners of Zoom, I've been able to fill the virtual space with the energy to build beautiful connections.

Everything seems to be working just fine for me then, right? So why am I writing again now? I am a minimalist. This extends to my consumption, and now creation, of information. During this digital pause, I reflected on why I started doing this. Is that still meaningful to me? I realized it still is a crucial part of the inner work that needs to be done in my journey of becoming the future me.

No bullet points to share. Just a call to some much-deserved rest. Whatever that means for you. Give yourself a break. Strike a PAUSE.

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About Jeng

Jeng Macalagay is a Career Coach who has 19 years of work experience in various industries. Over 10 years of which were in Human Resources where she led the people strategies on Talent Management, Performance Management, and Leadership Development.

Book My Free Coaching Session with Jeng.

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Do I really need a Coach?

Not everyone needs a Coach. I know a lot of successful, fulfilled, and happy people who just have it all going for them right now. They have balance. They are crystal clear about their goals and purpose in life. Just like in that Lego movie, "Everything is awesome!"

Here are a few signs you DON’T need a Coach right now: 

1. You do not foresee any major challenges coming up in the future.

2. You have a clear and perfectly curated path ahead of you.

3. You are surrounded by your favorite team of champions who can tell you about your blindspots.

On the other hand, you may need a Coach when:

1. You are stuck in a rut. Dark clouds seem to be everywhere, every day.

2. You can't seem to find time to define your purpose and goals in life. You are always caught in the whirlwind of endless daily tasks.

3. You seek more balance in your life.

4. You can't remember the last time you accomplished something significant or felt truly alive.

5. You are ready to set some bold goals and kick ass in 2022!

If you believe you need something to be radically different in the coming days, having a Coach can help you get there faster. Ruminating about all the things that aren't going well now does nothing but keep you stressed. 

Einstein said, "The classic definition of crazy is to continue to do things the same way and expect different results." 

Once you decide you need a Coach, finding the right one is the next important step. We’ll cover that soon! 

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About Jeng

Jeng Macalagay is a Career Coach who has 18 years of work experience in various industries. Over 10 years of which were in Human Resources where she led the people strategies on Talent Management, Performance Management, and Leadership Development.

Book My Free Coaching Session with Jeng.

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Performance Reviews: Another HR admin work we aren't so fond of

It's the year-end performance review season. I can see your thought bubble. Tambak pa ang trabaho pero required to ng HR eh. 

If that's how you feel about it, you are, of course, missing the point. I wore those shoes before too. I used to think these activities took me away from all the "real" work. 

The performance review activities are either ticked off a simple checklist or a series of battles culminating into a season finale battle at a grand arena filled with blood-thirsty spectators. Let’s change this, shall we?

As a leader, I see it as a required pause. It is time to take an inventory of your wins and learnings as individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole. Frequently zooming out helps us assess whether we need to pivot or stay on track. The whirlwind, though, usually takes over our days. It becomes hard to find time to take a step back. How about making time for it? Consider it your “me-time.” Reflect on the past ten months and celebrate what you’ve accomplished so far. You deserve this pause.

Here are a few things that make the Performance Review season a meaningful pause for me. 

1. Embrace it as an opportunity to celebrate my team and the work that we do. Make sure to include the discussion of your wins regularly during your team huddles. It makes taking an inventory easier when you have all the "wins" on your meeting minutes.

2. Identify our shortcomings, failures, and learnings. Openly discussing failures and learning from them is a great way to create a safe space for my team.

3. Recognize your bias. Everyone has some form of prejudice, whether we admit this or not. We must observe and label these. I also ask the people I trust to check for my blindspots here. Does it seem like I have a favorite team member?

Here are my top pet peeves as a Leader.

1. Copy-paste performance reviews. We know how to "find all + pronoun." and "replace all with a new pronoun." It shows how little you care about your team members. Personally, I find it quite disrespectful.

2. Fluffynator. Take out the fluff. Talk about specific accomplishments using agreed targets and key performance indicators. For example, when you say, "Jeng is a fantastic team player!". What does that mean exactly? How so?

This pause is part of "real" work. It may even be the most meaningful one you would do this year. 

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About Jeng

Jeng Macalagay is a Career Coach who has 18 years of work experience in various industries. Over 10 years of which were in Human Resources where she led the people strategies on Talent Management, Performance Management, and Leadership Development.

Book My Free Coaching Session with Jeng.

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What is Coaching?

Do I need to write another post about this? I did a Google search using the same sentence. It returned over two million results in 0.85 seconds! Talk about information overload. I am a minimalist. I will do my best to keep this as "short and sweet" as possible. 

I am a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Like my fellow Coaches, I often start with the ICF definition and quote that Coaching:

• Is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential

• As an industry focuses on the growth of the individual

In a coaching relationship, a coach assumes the role of a "thought partner" and not of an expert. 

I observed that when I talk about Coaching, many people still assume it also means Mentoring. Let's add Consulting and Therapy to the mix! What I learned from my Coach Mentors is that the main difference is in the approach. We group them into two:

• Tell: Consulting and Mentoring - Consultants and Mentors offer solutions or help others by sharing their insights based on their expertise or experience.

• Ask: Coaching and Therapy - Coaches and Therapists ask powerful questions to help people move forward. Therapists help people resolve challenges arising from the past and apply treatment so they can move forward. Coaches work on the assumption that each person is naturally creative, resources, and whole (I love this definition from the Co-Active Training Institute).

If there’s a toddler who heard the word "eating" for the first time and said, "What’s eating?". I could follow my lame approach above and say, "Eating is the act of ingesting something edible or not typically through the opening of the buccal cavity called the mouth".

It would be better to let the toddler watch someone eating and say, "Anak, that's eating.". The best approach, in my opinion, is to make them eat something. I highly suggest broccoli (Let them experience pain early on. We know resilience is an important life skill.). First-hand experience is the best way to learn something, in my opinion. This is why I offer free coaching sessions!

Like food, you will find that there is a diverse pool of Coaches. You would probably ask first whether Coaching is for you before you even look for the right Coach. I'll write my take on these in the new few weeks. 

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About Jeng

Jeng Macalagay is a Career Coach who has 18 years of work experience in various industries. Over 10 years of which were in Human Resources where she led the people strategies on Talent Management, Performance Management, and Leadership Development.

Book My Free Coaching Session with Jeng.

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