Gene emerged as the top candidate. Yet some in the room had doubts. “I know he looks good on paper,” one explained, “but I don't think he has what it takes.” Others agreed.
I didn’t. “I understand you have concerns,” I said, “but by every standard he’s the best candidate. You can’t bypass him based on feelings you can’t quantify. How would you feel if that happened to you?” The dissenters grumbled but grudgingly agreed.
In the weeks to come, I had to step in a few more times. Several operators on his team felt he wasn’t learning quickly enough and wanted him demoted. So I watched. Gene was slow, but once he knew how to do something, he really knew how. My experience in assessing employees -- experience shop floor employees didn’t yet have -- told me all Gene needed was a little patience and a little time.
And I made sure he got it.
But I didn’t do the same for Joe.
●●●
I reached for my wallet as Joe told me his story. He had worked a bunch of jobs but none that lasted. He had injured his knee but didn’t have health insurance so it never healed properly. He talked about opportunities missed and turns not taken.
Later I thought about the role I had played in his life. Maybe if I had tried harder, or better trusted my judgment, things would have turned out differently. He may never have been an outstanding employee, but in time he might have turned out okay.
Working for what was at the time a leading employer in the area, holding a solid job with good benefits and plenty of overtime available... who knows what Joe’s life might have been?
Would he have someday been like Gene, who turned out to be an outstanding operator and then went on to become a machinist with an incredible eye for detail and precision? Probably not. After all, Joe had under-performed in an unskilled position where effort was 90% of the success equation.
But who knows?
●●●
Hiring, firing, disciplining, promoting... each is an everyday task for a leader. You need to make difficult and agonizing decisions about employees. You have to think, decide, act, and then put that decision behind you and move on.
That’s the job.
Yet doing that job can dramatically change the life of other people. No matter how hard you try to get every decision that changes another person’s life right, sometimes you won’t. Those decisions -- and those regrets -- you soon realize you will live with forever.
Those decisions -- and those regrets -- you soon realize will also change your life. Hats off to all the people who try desperately to get every “people decision” right... and then pay the unseen price of wondering if they got one wrong.
Even though running a plant was a goal I chased for years and finally achieved, in time I realized that my career course – my YouMap – was no longer satisfying or fulfilling. Sure, it paid well. And the title on my business card was impressive.
But that job stopped working for me… and I finally found the courage to make a change.
Was it easy? Oh, hell no.
But it was worth it.
As it will be for you.
- Jeff Haden, author of The Motivation Myth, Inc. magazine contributing editor, LinkedIn Influencer and Ghostwriter.
Norfolk, Virginia, June 2018
Introduction
On Friday, February 15, 2018, I wrote the following post on the professional social media platform, LinkedIn.
Lena detested her job. And her manager was trying hard to get rid of her. She had a breakdown and was hospitalized for several days due to anxiety and stress.
Why didn’t she quit? She felt like such an utter failure; her confidence was tanked. She couldn’t think clearly about what she could do next. She couldn’t present well in an interview in her state of fear and anxiety. She was also a single income household.
I spoke with Lena days after she left the psychiatric ward. I reviewed her StrengthsFinder results and shared what her top talents were and asked if she was able to use them in her job.
Nope. Never. Lena was in a terrible role misfit.
While discussing her true talents, Lena cried and said, “I have hope for the first time in months.”
If you’re struggling in your job, please know you have valuable strengths. Your talent is masked when you work against your natural gifting and operate from your weaknesses. You are NOT a failure in a poor job fit any more than you’d be a failure if your shoes didn’t fit. You’d just get new shoes!
Don’t believe the lies you tell yourself. Take time to figure out your unique brilliance. You were created for a purpose. Start with StrengthsFinder. Download and read your “Strengths Insight Guide.” Discover who you really are.
When I clicked the Post button to submit this piece, I had no inkling it was about to go viral. A few days after submission, the post had well over one million views, 9,000 likes, and almost 1,000 comments. What was remarkable wasn’t the statistics on the post; it was the stories and comments people shared. Here are just a handful of examples:
“Thank you for sharing this, reading the comments I realize that there are so many Lenas out there. I was Lena, once, too. The road to discovering your strengths and values is often very lonely and difficult, but oh what joy when you can finally shake off all that negativity and ignorance to uncover your true worth!! A blessing in disguise!” – Adriana
“Such a great article. When your confidence and self-esteem are at rock bottom it can be almost impossible to focus on the positives. You can bounce back from an experience like this. Just keep believing in yourself and BELIEVE others when they say positive things about you. That’s what will start to reshape you as your confidence builds. You may even find that the negative experience will make you stronger for the future. Good luck to all the ‘Lenas’ out there.” – Lynne
“Thank you for sharing this. Like others who commented here, I have been in similar situations primarily due to organization restructures. It’s emotional enough to go through a re-org, but it’s even harder when you’re placed in a role where your skills are not a match. Figure out your unique brilliance—love this!” – Chris
“Thank you, Kristin! This is a lot of help. As someone who has historically been in a misfit role and later laid off from a different role... It is so easy to convince yourself that you are not of value. We all have value. It is simply a matter of finding the right role.” – Bethany
Do you love Mondays?
As a career consultant, I meet a lot of people who don’t love Mondays. They are the motivation behind writing this book. Everywhere I go I hear some variation of Lena’s story. I want to equip as many people as possible to avoid or escape misery in their careers because life is too short to dread Mondays!
YouMap®: Find Yourself. Blaze Your Path. Show the World! is the result of working with hundreds of people over the past six years to help them figure out what wasn’t working in their careers. After listening to clients from across the globe and within many industries explain their dissatisfaction and work frustrations, I’ve identified four main pillars of career satisfaction.
These experiences led to the creation of the YouMap® career profile—a personalized plan to chart a better career course and make healthier and more satisfying career decisions based on your unique design.
This book seeks to accomplish three things:
Find Yourself – Uncover what do you do best and need most. It’s all about your secret sauce. What makes you unique like no one else? You are gifted distinctly, and I want to help you know clearly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the value you are positioned to bring.
Blaze Your Path – Identify feasible, desirable career options. Whether you
work for yourself or someone else, what are feasible and desirable options that fit you best? How do you take your newly discovered self-awareness and give it legs? I’ll show you how to discover a path you can confidently pursue to bring you the fulfillment you deserve.
Show the World! – Create your brand and clearly convey it to others. You can be the very best at what you do, but if you don’t know how to tell your story, or you don’t intentionally position yourself and your brand, others won’t see it. This book will help you communicate your brilliance to others in a variety of ways: cover letters, your resume and LinkedIn profile, job interviews, exploratory conversations, networking, and on the job—to help you make the next move in your career with increased confidence and clarity.
Throughout the book, I will share case studies and stories of actual clients, a series of aha moments along their journeys of self-discovery, and how they leveraged these epiphanies to change their direction and take control of their lives.
The late American author and motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, said,
“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”
If you’re tired of being a piece in someone else’s puzzle, having other people make the decisions about what role you get plugged into, or what you should be working on, this book is for you.
If you feel you’re drifting in your career, on autopilot with no one at the wheel, this book is for you.
If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired in your career, this book is for you.
If you feel completely lost in the woods without a map or compass, this book is for you.
If you decide to follow through to the end of this journey with me, be prepared to experience transformation, because that is the aim of this book—to help you transform your life. A big promise? You bet. And I’m prepared to deliver the inspiration, information, and application to help you make it happen.
Are you ready?
Find Yourself
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates, Greek Philosopher
From a young age, I had exposure to resources and tools that helped me figure out who I am and what I do best. I have been “DiSC’d” and “StrengthsFindered,” “Myers-Brigged,” and “Big Fived,” just to name a few assessments. I became very aware of my personality, the way I tend to relate to people, my natural needs and motivations, and my strengths and challenges. Having a mother who was—and still is—a Master Board Certified Coach gave me a huge professional advantage. I gained not only insights but the language to explain these insights to others.
I believe both my awareness and ability to communicate who I was and what I did best was probably the number one contributing factor to pursuing roles I could excel in, as well as receiving offers in the thirteen jobs I interviewed for in my career. That awareness gave me great confidence going into interviews. I knew how to connect who I was and what I did best to what the role required. I also knew what roles to stay far away from.
I didn’t realize until I hit my thirties how many people struggle to really know themselves, let alone articulate it clearly and confidently to other people. I would have been no different, quite frankly. The coaching I received from my mom was an extraordinary gift. Not only did I understand myself and what worked best for me, I had clarity on what I needed to avoid: the hallmarks of a poor career fit.
Last year, I met Anna—an intelligent, highly competent accounting professional and CPA. Anna contacted me because she was feeling completely stuck. She is a manager in an accounting department and had worked for her company for more years than she cared to admit. She was recently divorced and didn’t have the energy to conduct a job search, but she was tired of dealing with all the “stuff” that accompanied her responsibilities.
Anna told me in our first phone call that she was overworked and her boss was about to give her even more responsibility. She also didn’t like her schedule or working for her boss. She said they just didn’t mesh in how they manage or do things. The problem, she told me, was that she wasn’t sure what else she could do and couldn’t easily and clearly put her finger on exactly what bothered her and what to avoid in the future.
Over the years I’ve used a variety of tools and assessments with clients. After working with hundreds of people, I’ve been able refine and hone the career discovery process and determine what works well. Every person I work with has different reasons why they are unfulfilled in his or her career. Yet, I have found that dissatisfaction always boils down to one or more of the four pillars of career satisfaction I explore with clients.
During that first call, I explained the four pillars of career satisfaction to Anna, and I will reveal them to you in this chapter.
Four Pillars of Career Satisfaction
Your Work Aligns with Your Strengths
Your strengths are your natural, innate talents. Everyone is born with natural talents, but not everyone realizes the talents they have or actively works to develop them. Regardless, people perform better when something comes naturally to them, whether that’s building rapport with new customers, figuring out solutions to problems, mentoring people to reach their potential, communicating thoughts and feelings effortlessly, or learning new skills and information quickly.
The Gallup Organization reports that people who use their strengths every day in their job are up to six times more engaged at work than employees who do not use their strengths daily. They define engaged employees as spending at least 4.5 hours of their day so absorbed in their work that time passes quickly for them.
Not only are people more engaged when they use their strengths, they’re also up to three times more likely to say they have a good quality of life, according to Gallup polls. I will show you how to identify your top natural talents in the “Discover Your Strengths” section.
Your Work Aligns with Your Values
A chief source of career misery I have encountered with clients is misalignment between one’s work and values. Simply put, your values dictate what’s most important to you.
According to Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace report, “The modern workforce knows what’s important to them and isn’t going to settle. Employees are willing to look and keep looking for a company that’s mission and culture reflect and reinforce their values.”
Because each person is distinct, values vary widely. Therefore, it’s important to reflect on what’s most important to you. Listening to the advice of others can be helpful but be cautious of values-based advice. People who value security will steer you away from bold or adventurous risks. Others who value wealth and status might encourage you to pursue a career simply because of the salary potential.
Your work must align with your values, not the values of your spouse, best friend, sister, or parents. I will show you how to determine what’s most important to you in the “Discover Your Values” section of this chapter.
Your Work Aligns with Your Motivating Skills
Skills are the abilities and expertise that contribute to your capacity to perform competently in a role, and those skills are portable across many jobs. In fact, according to Korn Ferry International, 85% of skills are transferable from job to job. In my experience, many career transition clients don’t realize how many of their skills transfer to a role they haven’t held in the past. Transferable skills are not tied to a job or function and can be used across a variety of settings and industries.
According to career development expert Richard Knowdell, our interest in performing certain skills on the job can be explained by four categories:
Motivated Skills – Skills you’re good at and enjoy doing every day. For example, you mi
ght love conceptualizing, managing processes, writing, dealing with ambiguity, or working with numbers.
Burnout Skills – Skills you’re good at but do not enjoy doing. For example, you might be proficient at working with numbers but find it tedious and draining.
Developmental Skills – Skills you would like to perform more but haven’t had an opportunity to develop, such as managing others. Or perhaps you love managing your home budget but haven’t had an opportunity with budget responsibility at work.
Low Priority Skills – These are the skills that no matter how much time you invest in them, you don’t seem to significantly improve your skill level. That’s OK, because you don’t like to do them either!
I will show you how to clearly identify the skills you want to do more (and less) of in the “Discover Your Motivated Skills” section below.
Your Work Aligns with How You’re Wired
How you’re wired refers to your natural preferences relative to interests, passion, and motivation. I often say “follow your passion” is misguided, though well-meaning, career advice because as you can see, passion is only one of the four pillars of career satisfaction. Therefore, the passion approach is too narrow to discover best career fit. I will help you reveal your interests and motivations in the “Discover How You’re Wired” section.
Throughout this section, “Find Yourself,” we’ll dig deep into each of the four pillars of career satisfaction to equip you with substantial understanding and clarity on how to discover who you are and what makes you unique. Let’s get started!
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