Whitney Allen

I attribute my success to being willing to put myself in uncomfortable situations for growth and not being afraid to challenge my professional identity. I felt attached to a certain professional identity, and I wouldn't grow unless I challenged that or stopped identifying with it. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be - if I knew how difficult it would be on the other side of this change, I might not have done it at this point. But I'm the kind of person who tends to cheerfully embrace my inadequacies. I've been lucky because when I was in the industry, I never did anything for money - I only took projects that were interesting to me, that I felt I could learn from, that I could grow and develop personally and professionally in. It's been nice to always trust that if you want to do something for your own personal development, that's gonna be a good thing.

I think a lot of people feel pressured to stick with one thing or they're afraid of leaving a particular career. The best advice I can share is to trust that if you want to do something for your own personal development, that's gonna be a good thing. Follow your heart sounds really trite, but it's true. I've been lucky because I never did anything for money - I only took projects that were interesting to me, that I felt I could learn from and grow in personally and professionally. That's still kind of my approach - I do work for money like everyone else, but it's been nice to always trust your own instincts about what will help you develop.

My advice would be to try a bunch of different modalities and see what works. There's a lot of different approaches - PET was the first parent effectiveness program, and now there's over 50,000 of them, so there's lots of advisors and influencers and things like that. Let your own life lead you to new skills and new tools, and then feel confident in your ability to combine those. It's okay to experiment. Don't be afraid to try different things and trust your own path.

The biggest challenge is that the training is challenging itself. I'm the kind of person who tends to cheerfully embrace my inadequacies, so when I took PET in my 20s, I was happy to encounter this lack of skill even though I was an English major and had all these jobs but no one ever told me how to communicate. But I think for a lot of people who have lived their whole lives and been a manager for 20 years or a parent for 15 years or a teacher for a long time, when they take the course it can be unnerving because they are learning and practicing new skills and it can be uncomfortable. There is a certain amount of time and effort involved - we do 3 hours a week for 8 weeks. So there has to be something special in someone that makes them want to do that, because many people are accustomed to looking for quick fixes. That's a bit challenging, but it's so worth it and so rewarding to learn from people every time I do it.

Listening and observation are the most important values to me. The Gordon Model really centers on first developing a foundation and learning how to listen, and that really changed my life. It opened a lot of doors for me and changed the conversation I was having in my life. I learned how to really listen in a way that lets the other person know that you've taken them in, that you've heard what they're really trying to communicate to you. I even trained to be a somatic therapist, which involves learning how to listen with my hands and getting deeper into bodywork, but all of that extra personal development was really paved by PET and learning how to listen. That foundation of truly listening has transformed everything.