What's Best Next

You are here: Home / 2011 / Archives for June 2011

Archives for June 2011

Does It Really Matter if You Love Your Job?

by

A lot of people say it doesn’t matter much if you love your job. If you do, that’s great — it’s a bonus. But the main purpose of a job is to put food on the table, and actually liking what you do is secondary.

This is actually bad advice. There are lots of reasons, but let me mention just one: if you don’t love your job, you risk being a poor steward.

I’m not talking here about people who have no choice in the matter. In the NT exhortations on work, slaves are the best example here. A slave had little or no control over his work, and Paul said “don’t worry about it — you are serving the Lord in what you do, and he values it and will reward you” (see 1 Corinthians 7:21; Colossians 3:23-24).

But we aren’t slaves, and we do have a choice in our work. This increases our responsibility to choose wisely. And it that choice in what we do for our work is a stewardship.

And here’s how that relates to why you should do your best to seek out a job you love (or, sometimes better, turn your job in to something you love most of the time): you will be more effective in your job if you love it.

We can, of course, work hard in jobs that we don’t love. But the extra effort, the mastery that takes us above and beyond and makes us maximally effective, is fueled by enthusiasm. To the extent that you lack this enthusiasm for the activities of your work, you will be less effective. You will not be able to stretch and push yourself and grow in your knowledge and skill as highly as you could otherwise.

Which means you will not be contributing as much as you could. Which is another way of saying: you won’t be making the difference you could and serving others to the extent that, perhaps, is truly needed. You will be leaving things on the table — things that could have benefited others, and wouldn’t have necessarily required much more from you because, after all, you have to work anyway.

I don’t necessarily want to say here that it is wrong to settle for a job you don’t love. But I do want point out that finding a job you love is not ultimately a matter of serving yourself. It’s a matter of serving others, because you will be more effective for the sake of others if, most of the time, your job is something you love.

Processing Your Work is Part of Your Work

by

Very well said by David Allen in his latest newsletter:

Processing your inbox is your work. It’s not something extra you have to do, or some distraction that doesn’t belong in your life…unless of course you feel the same way about your physical mailbox. Like it or not, dealing with all your email is as much a part of your work (and required to do your job as well as you can) as keeping lists, clearing your head, or doing regular reviews. Yet consistently, we come across a resistance people have to driving their inboxes down to zero on a regular basis—as if that’s a luxury reserved for those who don’t get much input or don’t have anything better to do. It’s a critical component for keeping you in a clear, current and creative space to work and play at your best.

Five Ways to Neutralize Your Weaknesses

by

Since we are to focus on our strengths, not weaknesses, what should we do about our weaknesses?

The answer is to neutralize them. Marcus Buckingham gives five ways to do this in his helpful resource kit The Truth About You. The resource kit covers a whole lot more than this, but here’s a quick summary of the five ways Buckingham gives to neutralize your weaknesses.

1. Just stop doing it

Some things that we think we need to be doing might not be necessary at all. Originally they may have been, but circumstances and needs have changed — and our thinking just hasn’t caught up yet.

So for some things, ask “do I need to be doing this at all?” And if in doubt, maybe stop doing it for a while and see what happens.

2. Partner up

As Buckingham puts it, “seek out someone who is strengthened by the very thing that weakens you.”

The power of partnering should not be under estimated. In one of his other books, Buckingham points to Bill Gates as  example and points out that “Bill Gates’s true genius, the genius that differentiates him from the masses, lies in his ability to find just the right partner at just the right time.”

In response to those who would say “of course he can find the right partners; he’s Bill Gates,” Buckingham responds: “The causal arrow actually goes the other way. He is ‘Bill Gates’ in part because he had a genius for finding the right partners.” “Whatever your assessment of Gates, when faced with a role that repeatedly calls upon your weaknesses, you would do well to remember that effective partnering is the quiet secret of the successful.”

3. Sharpen your strengths to make your weaknesses irrelevant

This means becoming so effective in your areas of strength that your weaknesses are overwhelmed; they become a non-issue.

He gives Tom Brady as an example here. He writes:

Brady holds the ball very tightly, which makes his passes exceptionally accurate, but it also prevents him from throwing the ball as far as other quarterbacks like John Elway, Brett Favre, or Brady’s predecessor at New England, Drew Bledsoe. Rather than try to transform him into someone he wasn’t, his coaches built their game plan around a series of short passing plays that would demand, and capitalize on, Brady’s awesome accuracy. When he took over from Bledsoe as the Patriots starting quarterback, Brady threw a record 162 passes in a row without an interception.

4. Look at your weakness through one of your strengths

This means finding a way to use your strengths to do the activity that weakens you.

Buckingham gives Rudy Giuliani as one example here. As an attorney, Giuliani was very effective at arguing his cases in court. But when he became mayor of New York, he struggled giving speeches to a roomful of people behind a lectern.

He worked at it and hired a speech coach, but still struggled. Then his coach said to him: “You love arguing. So turn every speech into an argument. Come out from behind the lectern, leave your notes behind, take questions from the crowd, and then walk around where everyone can see you and make your case.”

As Buckingham points out, this worked perfectly and has been Giuliani’s style ever since. “He comes across as comfortable, powerful, authoritative; exactly what a leader should be. He took his weakness — public speaking. He looked at it from the perspective of his strength — arguing. And he neutralized it.”

Buckingham adds:

“And oh, by the way, he has also gradually become better and better at doing regular public speaking. You’ll find this too. You’ll find that when you fall back on one of your strengths, it has a side effect of helping you with your weakness.

5. Suck it up and do it

Sometimes, obviously, this is just what you have to do.

But don’t go here too fast. That’s the mistake most people make — and thus they short circuit better approaches that will make them more effective for everyone.

So treat this as a last resort, and seek to minimize the time you have to spend here so that most of your time can be spent on your strengths.