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| Image credited to www.carsontate.com |
Most people don’t love their jobs. In fact, many studies show that only about 1
in 5 people really enjoy their jobs, about 1 in 5 actively dislike their jobs,
and the rest are fairly neutral on the topic.
Since most of us spend more time working than
doing anything else except sleeping, this seems unfortunate. Unless you’re the
kind of person who derives more satisfaction from complaining about something
than you would from enjoying that thing (I know there are some people like
that), it seems as though it would be
better to like work more.
Lots of how-to-enjoy-your-work-more articles
focus on finding a different career, one that ignites and/or fulfills your
passions. But what if you’re in a job
that – for whatever reason – you can’t or don’t want to change? Maybe you’ve spent years building a skill or
expertise, and in order to change jobs, you’d have to start at a much lower
level in another field. Perhaps your
current job provides something that you do like – a short commute, good benefits
– that you’re not willing to give up. Or
it could be that, in this strange economy, you simply think the smartest move
is to stay put.
It’s easy to assume that you can’t change the
way you feel about your job. We say to ourselves, ‘it is what it is.’ But there are actually a number of things you
can do to enjoy your job more, starting today:
Stop hanging with the haters. In every organization, there will always be
some people who take great delight in trashing everything. Ultimate cynics,
they’ll regale you with stories of how the boss is an idiot, the company is out
to get you, the rest of the employees are chumps, and the work is ridiculous
and meaningless. While there’s a certain mean-spirited, self-righteous
satisfaction in taking the everyone’s-a-loser-but-us approach, in the long run it
will just make you more unhappy. Hearing
only the negatives about your workplace makes it hard to see the positives that
may exist, and it ultimately will make you feel worse about yourself (if this
place and these people are so awful, why am I still here?). Spending time with
colleagues who have a more balanced view can dramatically shift your emotional
response to your job.
Ask for more of what you like. Think about whether there are some parts of
your job that you like more than others.
It may be that your employer would be open to your doing more of those
things. One woman I know, an executive assistant for many years, realized that
the part of her job she really liked was coordinating events. She noticed that
her company often engaged an outside resource to manage larger events, and
asked her boss if she could take on some of that work. Her boss agreed. Now, six years later, her entire job consists
of coordinating events for her boss’ part of the business – and she reports
that she’s ‘having a great time at work, most days.’
Talk to yourself differently. I often write about the power of self-talk;
it’s especially important when it comes to enjoying (or not enjoying) your
job. A few years ago I was coaching a
very senior client who was unhappy because he’d recently found out that he
wasn’t being considered as a candidate for the top job in his company. The CEO, my client was told, had decided to
groom a younger executive for the job.
For about six months, my client’s basic self-talk message was “Why
should I stay here? – I’ll never get a bigger job, and I’ll end my career never
having run anything.” We talked about whether he should start a job search, but
he wasn’t ready to do that – a lot of factors both personal and professional
tied him to his current job. Then he
started to question his own self-talk: Do I really need to be the CEO to be
happy? What’s wrong with my current job? He shifted his self-talk message to:
“I have a big, complex, interesting job, and I can have a huge positive impact
on the organization and on the people who work for me.” Not only is he enjoying
his job – he’s built a kick-ass team, and they’re getting great results.
Learn something. Often, not being happy at
work just comes down to being bored. If
you can do your job with one hand and half your brain – no wonder you’re not
happy. Most people are happiest when
they’re at an optimum level of engagement: neither under-challenged nor
over-challenged. If your learning curve has flattened out at work, think about
what you might learn that would make your job more interesting and make you
more useful to the organization: learning new skills or acquiring new knowledge
can increase both job security and job satisfaction.
Work harder. This may seem entirely counterintuitive, but
it’s part of what I said earlier about the ‘right’ degree of challenge. You may
feel like you’re being clever to get away with clocking in at 9, leaving on the
dot of 5 and taking a long lunch – but over time, only doing what’s needed and
not a bit more is likely to backfire. In Dan Pink’s excellent book, Drive, he
notes that ‘purpose’ and ‘mastery’ are two of the things we humans find most
motivating: finding meaning in what we do, and getting really good at it. By just skating through work, you’re
depriving yourself of both. Instead,
think about where you could lean into your job to find more purpose, or to get
more expert. Do you enjoy helping younger
colleagues grow? Spend more time coaching people who report to you. Are you fascinated by the impact social media
could have on your business? Talk to the
folks in your business who are exploring that and figure out how to apply it to
your work.
Change Your Boss. Whether people enjoy their jobs is highly correlated with how they’re managed is. A poor manager – disengaged, critical, self-serving, and untrustworthy – can put a real damper on anyone’s work satisfaction. In mid-size or larger companies, you can look for a job working for another manager – especially if your job skills are easily transferable to another part of the business. Even If this isn’t possible, you can sometimes change your existing boss. Most people, when they have a less-than-great boss, just throw up their hands and assume they have to live with it. But fairly often, a bad boss is not a bad person – he or she is just bad at managing others. If you get clear about the one or two things you’d most like him or her to do differently, and ask for those changes in a respectful and hopeful way, you might be surprised at the positive response you get.
Often just making the effort to find more
satisfaction at work can have a positive impact. Realizing that your experience is more within
your control than you thought can be a very positive thing – and could be the
start of a long-term shift toward more happiness at work. Just think: you could make it so that Monday
morning is something you look forward to…
This article was written by Erika Andersen
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