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Assessment | |
The game of work todays is littered with obstacles and traps, ready to throw you off course. How you respond to change says a lot about your potential to win or lose. Ho
do you respond to change? To find out, take our assessment:
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Recommended Reading and Resources | |
by Amy V. Fetzer and Shari Aaron
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| About Us |
MeaningfulCareers.Com was created by Mark Guterman and Dan King, two guys with a shared commitment to the power of meaningful work. We believe that every person can have a meaningful career, guided by his or her own alignment of purpose, intention and competence. People who have meaningful careers do better, feel better, and add lasting value through their work.
Mark Guterman is the Chief Meaning Officer at MeaningfulCareers
and President of G&G Associates, a San Francisco based consulting firm that teaches people how to thrive in the changing workplace. Mark also teaches in the JFK University Master's program in Career Development, and trains and consults for organizations in career management, values-based development, and work/life balance.
Dan King is the lead Career Passion Architect (CPA) at MeaninfulCareers as well as Principal and Founder of Career Planning and Management, Inc., a Boston-based coaching and training firm that supports both individuals and organizations in bridging worklife goals and workplace objectives. Dan is a Career Management Fellow (CMF) and a Master Career Counselor (MCC).
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| Greetings!
Here it is: The October issue of Meaningful Careers News.
Symbolically and spiritually, October brings thoughts of dying and darkness. The trees and the gardens die. The days get shorter, the nights longer. Thoughts turn to tricks and treats. It's a time of "Change, "when a lot of shift happens.
What if you were forced to choose between changing or dying? Which would you choose? What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think, feel, and act? If you didn't, your time would end soon--a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change mattered most?"
Writer Alan Deutschman posed this question in Change or Die, which began as a sensational cover story for Fast Company a few years ago. He concluded that although we all have the ability to change our behavior, we rarely ever do. In fact, the odds are nine to one that, when faced with the dire need to change, we won't.
So we've dedicated this issue to the hard work of "Embracing Change." Our Feature Article offers suggestions for making needed changes in your career. We've added a "Career Readiness Assessment" to help you evaluate your personal orientation to change. And we've lined up some great teleclasses to encourage you explore your dreams and escape your nightmares. Take a look.
We hope you enjoy this issue and that you'll join us join us for one of our teleclasses, to begin a coaching process, or to share your own ideas for embracing change.
Thanks for being a member of our community.
Dan and Mark
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Staying on Top of Your Game
by Dan King
The game is tied. It's the ninth inning; the bases are loaded with two outs. You step up to the plate to the thunderous cheers of the crowd, an explosion of adrenaline pumping through your veins. The pitcher stares intensely, winds up, throws, and in a bolt of passion, you smash one to center field which arcs in for a hit, driving the winning run over the plate. The crowd goes wild. You just won the game.
The phone rings. Startled, you grasp the receiver and it's your boss. You're late for the important 2:00 meeting -- the latest Re-Org plan -- and you haven't even had time to grab lunch yet. Frantically, you gather up your files and your blackberry and race off to the meeting ....
.... but for faint moment, you can still hear the roar of the crowd. The passion returns. You won the game.
Winning is about passion. And present day work has become less about "winning" and more about "not losing". Many workers invest their time and energy to just "staying in the game." Forget about passion.
You may not think of your work today as a game, but it is. Games have rules -- and so it is with your work. Our workplace has become a playing field of moves and maneuvers, roles and positions all wrapped in sports lingo touting teamwork, coaches, and goals. The role you play has certain rules attached, with specific objectives, and measures of whether you're succeeding or not. The object is to win, because success is about winning.
And while you've been taught that it's not whether you win or lose that matters, you probably play to win, because there are tangible rewards for winning -- recognition, raises and promotions. Isn't that what success is?
Here in the US, we've been led to believe that the more we work, the more we will succeed. Producing and consuming more have become the single-minded obsession of the American economy, while other values -- strong families and communities, good health and a clean environment, active citizenship and social justice, time for nature and the soul -- are increasingly neglected.
Successful career development is about more than just dodging layoffs and scrambling to find your next meal ticket. It's about creating a life worth living, with time for work, family and self. It's about building a career that respects your goals, your relationships, and especially your time. In the words of tennis great, Arthur Ashe, "You've got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing."
Career success and happiness doesn't come from working more, but from working less. Nobody ever died wishing they had worked more.
We work, on average, nearly nine full weeks -- 350 hours -- longer per year than our peers in Western Europe. In fact, we're working more than medieval peasants did.
If you could regain those 350 hours, you would have enough time to work out regularly, to take guitar lessons, to write your book, to get a dog, to pursue your own small business, to sell your art and to volunteer for a purpose or cause that matters to you-- and still have time left over for family and friends.
Your career success is a moving target, often dependent on achieving lofty goals set by someone else. Certainly, your employment is dependent on aiming for such targets - but you shouldn't have to sacrifice your own personal targets in the process.
Cycling champion, Lance Armstrong says, "Winning is about heart, not just legs. It's got to be in the right place." If you ignore your own personal measures of success, how will you know if you've won?
What do you want from your job above and beyond a paycheck? Interesting projects? Stimulating colleagues? Flextime? Independence and autonomy? Clarifying your work values will help you evaluate whether a job will be satisfying or draining.
What skills do you possess that you actually enjoy using? Sometimes we can get very good at doing things we never chose to do in the first place. Ability has very little to do with enjoyment. Discard the skills you don't enjoy and fill your bag with new, more satisfying ones.
With whom do you want to spend your time? It's not enough to say you enjoy working with people (what else are you going to work with?), but rather the ways you enjoy working with people: managing them, helping them, teaching them, writing about them or merely going to lunch with them.
In what kinds of organizational environments are you most comfortable? A business environment is different from an education environment is different from a healthcare environment is different from a non-profit environment is different from a government environment, and so on. Investigate the differences.
What would you most want to wake up to each day? Draw a picture of the ideal job: the role, the responsibilities, the tasks, the people, the environment. If you know what you want to find, you'll increase your likelihood of finding it. Define your version of "the good job."
To stay on top of your game, heed the wisdom of Yogi Berra: "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there."
You tell 'em, Yogi!
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