We often hear people complain about ‘that Monday morning feeling’ when the sound of the alarm bell going off just makes you want to slide back under the duvet and go back to sleep. But work, maybe more than love, does seem to make the world go round. Even if you don’t need to work for money, the instinct to focus on purposeful activity is still very strong. What’s true for you right now? Do you work to live or live to work? Does your current work need to change to reflect your attitudes in life, or does your attitude to work need a bit of fine-tuning?
When people ask ‘What do you do?’ your answer is probably to give your job title, or to talk about the company you work at or own. How much of your identity is attached to your paid work (or lack of it)? Imagine for a moment that you’re actually forbidden from working for pay at all. Think about what your response would be when asked ‘What do you do?’ How comfortable would you feel answering that question? The degree of discomfort you feel may indicate the strength of your reliance on the work you do for pay as a strong validation of your success and self-worth. Nothing’s wrong with that; recognising the other ways in which you use your talents to work is a great way of enhancing your overall skill set and becoming happier with the idea of work.
Consider the three main work roles that you probably play:
Pay: Work that you get paid for – your job or business.
People: Work that you do for the people in your life and world – parenting, caring, voluntary work.
Passion: Work that is linked to your interests and passions – activity in a hobby, learning a new skill, being a member of a club.
These three areas may well overlap for you, or you may see them as sitting in three different compartments of your life. The balance between these three aspects of work is rarely an equal split in terms of time. Most people spend more of their time in paid work, at least for certain periods of their life. But think about the times you don’t have paid work – periods of unemployment, maternity or paternity leave, sabbaticals, and retirement. What will define your idea of work then?
Perhaps you don’t feel that you’ve identified ‘passion’ work yet. If you spend a lot of time and energy on building your career then you may have to put ‘passion’ work at the bottom of your pile of priorities.
The following activity can help you to see the links and differences in your attitudes to different work areas. Think of the roles that you carry out in the work areas of pay, people, and passion and answer the questions in Table 1-1, which uses Stuart, who runs his own business, as an example. In this example we focus on one role within each work area but of course you may have more than one (such as being a parent and also caring for elderly relatives in the ‘people’ work area). Choose the roles that are most significant for you.
Your answers to the questions in Table 1-1 highlight the relative importance you place on each area of work, the time you allocate to these areas, and how they feed your most important values. Stuart’s completed table shows clearly that the time he allocates to the most pressing one – paid work – drains the value he gets out of the other two. By recognising that, he can see ways to manage his paid work time a little better and focus on the other two areas, which in turn help to re-energise him for his paid work.
Adjusting the balance on your work areas helps you to identify ways to ensure that you get what you need from all aspects of the work that you do. The rest of this chapter focuses on improving what most people classify as work: your paid job.
Even if work is just something you do to pay the bills, you probably spend a fair amount of time doing it so considering how work fits into your life and preferences as a whole makes sense. To what extent does your job match your natural abilities, fit with your beliefs about your world, and support the values that you hold most dear? Why should what you do best in terms of skills determine the most natural choice of work for you? Would you get even more personal satisfaction in an environment where you were developing skills that are currently less strong for you? For the work that you choose to do most of the time – whether that be paid or unpaid – this section helps you to find your unique balance between being comfortable using your best skills and stretching yourself to your natural potential.
Think for a moment about how you ended up in the role you currently hold, or the jobs you have formerly performed. What made you choose the work you currently do? Did happy or not-so-happy accidents result in your career choices? Were you influenced by a parent or an older adult? Did you get swept along by an interview process and suddenly find yourself accepting an offer? Would you choose your job again knowing what you now know?
You may find that you get so caught up in the detail of your work, for good or ill, that before you know it another year has passed and you wonder what’s changed for the better. You can adapt to almost anything and you may find yourself settling for a role that you’ve long outgrown, or that imposes unhealthy pressure on you, simply because you haven’t taken the time to ask yourself some searching questions on a regular basis. A high proportion of workplace stress is caused by the accumulation of lots of small irritations piled on top of each other and left to go unchecked. If you’re ambitious and want to progress your career, you need to carefully assess where you are and where you’re heading.
You can assess whether your skills and natural preferences are best suited to what you currently do by putting yourself in the role of someone who is evaluating the requirements, ups and downs, and perks and potholes of your job. See how you measure up against this evaluation. Don’t think about your official job specification – often the things that aren’t written down cause the most frustration or offer the most joy. Try the following activity and feel free to add other questions to tailor it to the context of your own work.
What is your main purpose for doing the work you do?
What do you spend 80 per cent of your time doing at work?
Which of your best skills do you use at work?
Which of your skills do you never or rarely get the opportunity to use at work?
What proportion of your time do you spend
• Feeling stressed?
• Feeling bored?
• Feeling stimulated?
• Enjoying your work?
To what extent do you feel in control at work?
How often do you stretch your capabilities?
How often do you coast along at work?
How would you describe your working environment on a scale of 1 (= your worst nightmare) to 10 (= your idea of heaven)?
Finish the following statement: ‘I choose the work I currently do because . . .’
Choose the statement that best describes how you feel about your work:
• ‘I’m living my work dream – I don’t even think of it as “work”.’
• ‘I feel challenged, stimulated, and valued most of the time, and this carries me through the difficult bits.’
• ‘Some days are better than others and on the whole, I can take it or leave it. Work is not a priority area for me.’
• ‘I often get frustrated, anxious, or bored at work and this affects my enjoyment of the good bits.’
• ‘I have to drag myself in every day; I’m ready to quit.’
As a result of this activity, what have you discovered about your work that needs to change? Perhaps you found that you spend 80 per cent of your time doing tasks that bore you or use skills that you least enjoy? Or you may have discovered that you feel bored half the time and stimulated the other half, and that overall the stimulation outweighs the boredom. Or perhaps you’ve identified that your attitude to your work is in the middle ground – ‘take it or leave it’ – and that this means you can put up with day to day irritations because work is a low priority for you. Look for common themes and links in your answers to the activity. Is your main purpose the same as the reason you choose the work you do?
When Stuart completed this evaluation he described the main purpose of doing his work as providing financial stability for his family in a way that meant he was fully in control. The reason Stuart chose to do his work (running his own business) was because he naturally enjoyed being an entrepreneur. Stuart’s work purpose therefore linked to his values, and his choice of work had come about because of his knowledge of his best skills.
From the previous activity, you can identify the main areas that need change. Work often needs adjustment as a result of undesirable impact in the following areas:
Beliefs. Your beliefs about your work may be holding you back. Perhaps you think that you’re ‘entitled’ to be stimulated by what you do and need to re-think that belief so you can be more proactive about finding ways to increase stimulation for yourself.
Motivation. Your motivation may need re-adjusting by making a change in the way you approach work.
Freedom. You may feel the need for more freedom and autonomy in your work.
Support. You may require more support and recognition from those around you.
Pressure. Your work may overload you and cause you unhelpful stress.
Responsibility. You may feel disconnected from your work and want to take more responsibility in order for you to become more engaged in what you do.
Environment. You may be unfulfilled with your current environment – from a simple issue of ‘same desk, same four walls’ to having really outgrown your current job and company.
Using Table 1-2 as your example, write down the commitment in each area that moves you closer to your ideal work. Here’s what Stuart had to say about his paid work of running his own business:
| Change my beliefs | ‘The business will not collapse if I delegate more, in fact | |
| it will benefit from fresh energies directed at some areas.’ | ||
| Focus on my motivation | ‘I’m looking forward to harnessing the creative energy I | |
| get from my art to see how I can solve business prob | ||
| lems more effectively.’ | ||
| Enjoy more freedom | ‘Setting a goal of getting home on time more often will | |
| stop me feeling chained to the business.’ | ||
| Get more support | ‘My office manager (Jo) is ready for development and | |
| is really committed to the business – she will thrive on | ||
| being asked to support me more and take on new | ||
| responsibilities.’ | ||
| Generate less pressure | ‘Spending time with my children will help me de-stress.’ | |
| Take more responsibility | ‘I want to be more self-responsible about my time. I’m | |
| shocked to see how much time I coast along thinking | ||
| I’m working hard. Staying late has become a habit.’ | ||
| Change my environment | ‘Don’t feel the need for a change here, although Jo has | |
| some ideas to move the team around to stimulate new | ||
| work relationships. I’ll keep an open mind!’ |
If evaluating your job has made you realise that your current work isn’t meeting your needs, you may now be formulating a plan to make radical changes. You may decide that although you want to change certain aspects of your current role, it basically meets a lot of your requirements for a satisfactory work situation. On the other hand, you may feel ready to take a deep breath and search elsewhere for a new position (see the section ‘Finding Your Dream Work’). But you probably have to serve notice, meet obligations, and hand over projects before you can cross the next threshold. Even if your change is relatively organic – such as acquiring or developing a new skill so that you can progress to the next level in your current organisation – a shortfall remains between your ambitions and where you are now.
You need to work out how to focus your attention on the here and now at work while setting your sights on your next goal. And in the process of ‘making the best’ of your current situation you may also discover some new wisdom to inform your next step. You may realise that you can make changes in your current job that improve your situation.
During coaching she worked through the steps she needed to take to resolve her stalemate. She realised that deciding exactly on her next career move was not the most urgent priority. She faced the fact that some of her own beliefs about herself were contributing to the poor relationship she had with her boss. Unless she found more assertive ways of behaving, she would find herself in a similar position in any new role she undertook.
Senti set herself two main goals – to identify and begin to take action to secure the job of her dreams, and to address her relationship with her boss. The second goal was hard work because part of her had already written off her current position and was focused on the future. She worked hard on her self-esteem and confidence, which allowed her to stop taking her boss’s style personally. In turn, this helped her boss to see Senti’s talents clearly at last. Three months later, he offered Senti a promotion to manage a new project.
After some thought Senti accepted the new role. It would enhance her skills considerably and was in an exciting area of the business that interested her. Her biggest surprise was that she found that her new role took her pretty close to the dream job she’d begun to identify for herself. Using coaching, Senti’s new-found self-confidence gave her the courage to identify business needs that she was uniquely fitted to address.
Like Senti, you may discover through coaching that the external factor that you think is the problem with your current work role – the pay; the way you’re managed; the pressures of deadlines – may be secondary to the internal factors that you can control by applying and developing your natural skills. Here are some suggestions that can help you to improve your enjoyment of work:
Practise assertive communication. If you feel frustrated at work, your needs are not being met. Be clear with yourself about what you need from your role – is variety more important to you than a fixed routine? You may find ways of creating a more varied structure to what you do but you may need the okay from your boss to make changes. State what will work best for you clearly and directly as early as possible rather than fuming quietly over a situation. This helps you avoid any tense confrontations further down the line when the boredom has really got to you.
Remember what motivates you. When you’re clear on your values, you can link all that you do to these motivating forces. If elements of your job feel stressful at times and you wonder why you stick with it, think about what your job gives you that helps you live your values. Perhaps your salary supports the lifestyle you want, or the recognition you receive for meeting deadlines feeds your sense of accomplishment and self-belief. Keeping a focus on the end result helps you put your job into a whole-life perspective.
Catch yourself ‘being in the moment’. A sign that you’re performing well is when you get absorbed in what you’re doing and lose track of time. With a little practice, you can place yourself ‘in the moment’ even when you’re bored or frustrated. Simply focus on what you are doing as if your life depended on it, or as if it were the most fascinating thing you’ve ever encountered, or try to recall the feeling you had when you completed this task for the very first time. This trick won’t always turn a boring task into the highlight of your day, but making the effort to switch your mental state is often enough to jolt you out of negativity and help you deal effectively with the routine so you can move on to more interesting tasks.
Remember that the only things that are ever fully in your control are your own thoughts, behaviour, and actions. No matter how little you deserve it, you sometimes fall foul of the bad mood of a colleague or boss. You can allow this to throw you off course or you can put yourself in their shoes and decide on a course of action that accommodates the unfavourable circumstance and still gets you where you need to be. Sometimes that means tackling the behaviour and sometimes it means giving the other person space to work through their bad mood without you taking it personally. Focus on what you can control – your own mood and behaviour – and you’re more likely to help the other person get back on track too.
Take a rain check with yourself every couple of hours. If you know you tend to prefer the company of others rather than working alone, how can you inject some human interaction into your task to help you regain energy to continue? Think about the different ways you can carry out simple or routine tasks that increase your enjoyment. If you have a mailing to pack up for the post can you get some other people involved to make it more fun? Or would you prefer to sit by a window with a nice view and let the routine task act like a calming meditation? These little choices can make a huge difference to how you feel about what you do and help to put you more in control of your work.
You may love your work but find that the people around you drain your energy and lower your mood, your confidence, or your conviction in what you do. You can protect yourself from the most damaging effects of negativity by understanding that people often exhibit bad behaviour when they feel trapped, and sense that they lack power and choice.
Boredom and disengagement can lead to apathy, which can put a damper on the enthusiasm and proactivity of entire teams. When you succumb to apathy you get hijacked by lethargy, cynicism, and a feeling of pointlessness, and it’s easy to pick this mood up from other people and join in. Coach yourself to avoid this mood by asking yourself, ‘What am I feeling frustrated about? What is causing me to feel trapped and out of control? What can I do to positively support the team or proactively challenge this problem?’
A quite different form of negative behaviour results from the temptation to indulge in gossip and hearsay. Damaging gossip can stem from fear and self-protection, directing the attention away from the gossiper. And the effects are often very negative – encouraging back-biting between departments, and destroying trust. All of this can be quite exciting – for a while – until the negative energy means that the biter ends up getting bitten. Coach yourself to steer away from indulging in gossip by asking yourself, ‘How can I direct my energies to fuel a more productive fire?’ Before you pass on information about a co-colleague to a third party, ask yourself three questions: ‘Is what I’m about to say true? Is it positive and constructive? Is it useful and relevant to the person I’m talking to?’
This section looks at the options you have when you know that progressing your career means leaving for pastures new. Finding your dream work starts with knowing what you really love to do in a work context. The following activity helps you to identify what you relish doing at work.
Find a quiet spot and sit comfortably, taking a few moments to breathe deeply and relax. Close your eyes and ask yourself the following question:
If a miracle happened and when I open my eyes I have the perfect work for me, what would that look like? What would I do for the next 24 hours?
Think about exactly what would happen, planning out each hour of the day exactly to your taste and preferences. You can include scenarios that may seem impossible and beyond your current grasp. The end result of your visualisation is not to create an accurate blueprint, but to give you clues to the key elements of your perfect work day.
What has your miracle created for you? Is it an extension of your current work, maybe just a few steps away from where you already are? Or is your dream work something so wildly different from your current job that you can’t see how you can ever make it happen? You already have all the resources you need to get your dream job, no matter how many challenges stand in your way. Of course, the further away your dream job is from your current skill set and reach, the stronger your passion must be for pursuing it so that you can maintain the momentum when the going gets tough.
For the last 30 years, Richard Nelson Bolles has published an annually updated manual for job hunters and career changers called What Colour is Your Parachute? The manual contains some great exercises to identify specific skills and give you ideas on how and where you might apply them (although the manual is more specific to the United States job market). Take a look at the companion Web site www.jobhuntersbible.com which has additional guidance on how to search the Internet for job-hunting resources.
What did you discover about your dream job from the activity in the preceding section? To what extent is that role in your reach right now? Your strategy for exploring the job market differs depending on how many steps you need to take to get to your ultimate destination. Your goal may be:
Wanting change for its own sake. You probably like elements of your current job a lot, as well as being frustrated over others. Essentially though, your main motivation for moving is to re-enthuse yourself in a fresh environment. Positive change for its own sake is really your key driver. You can make this change in your work fairly easily and quickly because you don’t need to change many factors to re-enthuse yourself. Start by looking around at other departments within your company to get a fresh perspective. A secondment (temporarily transferring to another position) may be just the trick to satisfy your need for a change or springboard you to a new role.
Increasing your challenge. You want to get to the next level, or even the one beyond that. Promotion and a rise in salary may be key motivators for you. You’re ready to compete in the job market, demonstrate that you can stretch yourself, and prove you’re worth the increased financial investment for a new employer. You need to prepare for the healthy competition you may face – think about your CV, your interview technique, and the research into the market you need to do. When you’ve done this groundwork, change can happen quickly.
Expanding your horizons. You have your sights set on a long-term goal of broadening your skills base. Maybe you see the next few years as a platform for ultimately setting up your own business, so your next move is about gaining lots of broad experience as preparation. You may need to move a little sideways to get the long-term benefit of a different skill set. This career goal may take longer to achieve because you want to change a number of factors and need to demonstrate you can adapt to a whole new work arena.
When looking for a new job, you can go it alone by sending out speculative CVs to job adverts, posting responses on Internet job boards, or working your networks (the following section is about using your current network of people to your advantage). You can also use recruitment consultancies. You may want the strength of an expert behind you who can give you support, advice, and can market you with skill.
A high proportion of career moves, especially at a senior level, are word of mouth introductions (the ‘hidden’ job market). But you don’t have to be a serial networker to take advantage of this route. When you’re searching for your dream job, don’t hold back from telling the people around you your wish list for your next move, and ask them to consider people they know who may help you. Your acquaintances may not know a potential employer, but they may know someone in the right industry who can offer you helpful information to help you prepare. Or someone in your network may be able to practice interview techniques with you or review your CV. Ask yourself:
What do I need to close the gap between where I am now and where I want to be? Who can help me do that?
Even the most high-minded and self-aware person needs the right kind of feedback and recognition in order to feel that their work is worthwhile. But giving and receiving feedback can be tricky. Sometimes you may fear to confront a problem, or feel embarrassment at the idea of offering or receiving gushing praise. Many problems at work are caused by people hoping that the problem disappears, or that they don’t need to say ‘well done’ because you’ve obviously done a good job. However, studies show that even negative feedback, poorly delivered, is preferable to no feedback at all.
Do you look forward to getting feedback in appraisals and one-to-ones? Or do you simply find them pointless and irrelevant? Appraisals can sometimes feel too focused on looking at how you measure up to a common standard – and you are, of course, an uncommon, unique individual. While the company perspective is essential, both parties benefit when the review is really meaningful for the person being reviewed. Try to see your formal review as a free, and very powerful, coaching session and help your appraiser to tailor the session to your needs – you get a lot more out of your review and also project a proactive, professional image.
Ask yourself the following questions:
What opportunities do I have to get formal feedback at work? How can I encourage more constructive feedback opportunities?
What benefits do I currently get from formal feedback at work?
On a scale of 1–10, how much do I enjoy this kind of feedback and feel motivated by it?
How can I get increased benefits and feel even more motivated by formal reviews?
If you are nervous or apprehensive, explain so in good time so that your appraiser can come up with ways of reassuring you. This might be as simple as finding a less formal room to conduct the meeting in – facing your appraiser across a cold, forbidding boardroom table is off putting for many people.
Be clear about the focus for the feedback session well in advance and prepare any relevant documentation. If you have facts at your fingertips, you waste less time and present a good impression.
Ask for specific examples of behaviour (good and bad) and an explanation of exactly why the behaviour did/didn’t match up to expectations. Ask for suggestions for maintaining/improving your performance in the future.
If you’re self-employed, you can still benefit from setting up a feedback process through self-coaching, and listening to your customers and suppliers. Here are some annual review questions you can ask yourself:
What were my successes over the last year? What has inspired me most?
What have been my main challenges and how have I overcome them? What have been my biggest obstacles and what am I learning from these?
What do my customers think about me, my business, and my products/services? (Ask them!)
How do my suppliers and partners feel about our working relationship? (Ask them!)
What skills have I developed and what have I learnt about myself?
What new personal goals can I set for the coming year?
What support do I need?
How can I measure my success?
What is your personal wish list for an effective feedback session? What action can you now take?
Getting recognition at work is all about helping others to see what your unique contribution is. You may feel that selling yourself and your skills is egotistical, especially if you tend to be naturally modest about your achievements. Perhaps you tend to hide your ‘light’ and find that over time you begin to feel a little resentful that people don’t always notice or appreciate your good work. Or you may take the opposite view and grab the limelight as often as you can, only to find that those around you push you back down into place. Getting the balance right is tricky. You may feel that you have to adopt a different work persona and play office politics in order to be successful, but the truth is that most people hate spin, and the last place they want to have to deal with it is at work.
In what ways do you put up a façade at work? Do you sometimes present a show of blustery confidence when you’re really quaking in your boots? At times this is helpful, but at other times it may prevent you from getting the support you need. If you manage staff, do you think you always need to know the answer to every problem? What impact does this have for you and the team, on those occasions when you don’t know the best solution? How can you present an authentic you at work and maintain the respect of others?
Think of yourself as a business. What are your unique selling points? Yes, you have skills, but how do you package and present these skills to the world in a way that is unique to you? Getting used to thinking about how you project your personal brand can help you to develop versatility. After all, you are uniquely your brand and you can also change that brand as you wish, according to the ‘market’ you’re in. So you may choose to display your more extrovert image in a meeting or you may let people see your reflective, thoughtful side, depending upon your audience and what’s required.
What are the trends you see developing in your work choices? You may feel you have to run to keep up with the pace of change, but if you regularly coach yourself through your work choices you can set your own pace, and establish your own standards of excellence.
Generally, you feel a sense of making progress when you’re living your values at work and being your authentic self. And while all jobs have an element of routine in them, you usually feel more inspired if you’re able to find new things to learn about yourself and your skills through work.
What were my ‘wins’ today? This could be successfully negotiating with a supplier, or achieving a deadline.
What have I learnt today? Maybe you added to your skills, picked up some new knowledge, or discovered a way not to do something!
What can I change as a result of today? Perhaps you want to revisit your time management strategy as result of experiencing a bit too much stress meeting that deadline, or you decide that you’re going to step into future negotiations more readily to take your confidence to another level.
Write down your answers so that you can reflect back on them and witness the cumulative power of these small daily successes, learning points, and significant steps that you’ve integrated into your working life.
When you think about the work you plan for the future, how prepared are you for it? Do you have a dream to be your own boss, or to create a working life that is independent of your source of wealth – by investing in property for example – so that you have more freedom to choose your work on its own merits? You can think about your future work in the context of a SWOT analysis – considering your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – as follows:
What are my strengths at work?
What weaknesses am I aware of and how am I working on them?
What opportunities do I have at work that match my whole-life goals?
What threats at work may hold me back from meeting my whole life goals?
Coach yourself for your future work by working through the following coaching questions:
Powerful opening question: What attitudes do I want to develop about work to fulfil my potential throughout my career?
Personal style: What kind of work am I naturally drawn to? What do I thrive on? What demotivates me? What kind of environments suit me best? Where do I feel most at home when I am working?
Beliefs: What negative beliefs do I have about work that prevent me from preparing for future challenges?
Motivation: What image of myself at work is most appealing as my future vision? What would I reach for if I knew that I couldn’t fail?
What’s working: What am I doing now to prepare myself for my future working life? How can I develop these behaviours and habits? What’s getting in the way of fulfilling my potential? What trends do I see developing now that either propel me forward or hold me back?
Exploring options: What options do I have to expand my working range? What is the easiest route? What is the most challenging route? What more information do I need before I decided on my options?
Taking action: What’s my first step? How much time can I allocate to planning my approach? How do I know when I am making progress? What can I do to celebrate?
