Do You Really Love What You Do?
June 2020
Are you one of the lucky ones who awaken each day, enthused to be alive, excited and eager to jump into whatever it is your work situation has in store? Or do you dread the thought of spending yet another day in a role that saps every ounce of your strength just to get through it?
Did you accept the role you currently have primarily for the money and prestige that came along with the title? Or do you love your position so much that you would gladly do it for free, and in fact, you’d be willing to pay for the pleasure?
Are you following your dream? Or are you reluctantly following a dream someone else had for you?
Face it, if you don’t love what you do, yours will never be a WOW factor workplace.
When I interviewed Lieutenant General Kathy Gainey (US Army, retired) for my upcoming book, Women on Top: What’s Keeping You From Executive Leadership?, she offered the following advice based on her 35 years’ experience in military leadership, “Think of what makes you have fun. If you follow your dreams and you have fun at what you are doing, you are going to be good at it. If you’re good at it, you’re going to get promoted.”
General Gainey continued, “Follow something that is important to you and that you like. You may be good at it, but not like it. It may be important to your family, or to other people, but again, if you’re not having fun … you’ve got to like it and you’ve got to be good at it.”
Study after study shows the happiest people at work are those who love what they do. Is that you?
For most of my career I have been blessed to love what I was doing. On the rare occasions when I somehow landed in a role that did not inspire me to be at my best, it was usually because I wasn’t working in my personal sweet spot, taking advantage of my natural strengths and passions. It was then that I learned the hard way: never settle for less than what brings you joy.
When you can leverage your natural strengths and passions, you can do what you do best. You’ll enjoy every day, where work isn’t work. It’s fun and inspiring. Others will find you are fun and inspiring to be around. You’ll lift everyone’s spirits … and you’ll find they, too, will be more fun to be around.
When you love what you do, as the classic children’s song, Row, Row, Row Your Boat, says, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
But how do you get there?
The answer is …drum roll, please…. simply leverage your natural strengths and talents, doing something that’s important to you.
While I’ve loved most every day of my career in Corporate America, one of the most fulfilling aspects has always pertained to inspiring others to step into their best visions of their best selves. When I eventually became an entrepreneur, my business focused on accelerating advancement for women to senior leadership, particularly those whose (primarily male) bosses believed had a special spark, but for whatever reason, were not living up to expectations.
Invariably, when I would ask these male executives to pinpoint the issues we should be aware of as we mentored their program nominees, the answer was usually something akin to, “I can’t really put my finger on it. Just fix her.”
With such nebulous instructions, we knew we had our work cut out for us, but we usually made the crucial discovery pretty quickly. More often than not, these high potential women simply did not enjoy their jobs. Their roles were not a good fit with their natural talents and passions.
Fortunately, Gallup Consulting was one of our corporate sponsors. We had every member of our peer mentoring program take Gallup’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment (refer to my June 2019 blog, “What are your Strengths?”. This amazing tool enabled our program members to gain a better understanding of themselves, their natural talents, and their natural leadership style. Armed with this knowledge, we enabled them to create new ways, or new roles, that leveraged their strengths and maximized their impact as executives. The results were nothing short of amazing.
Over the course of a year in our program, these high-potential women went from feeling like failures to shining bright like super-stars. Some were promoted multiple times within just a short period. Many are still with the same firms, years later, in even more senior roles.
It’s interesting for me to now look back over my own career. Reviewing the descriptions of my own top five Clifton StrengthsFinder “themes of talent” (mine are Strategic, Achiever, Maximizer, Learner, and Futuristic) it’s easy for me to see why I loved certain jobs more than others. It’s clear to see why I so love what I do today as an author, keynote speaker, and symposium producer who focuses on helping leaders be the best they can be in Best Place to Work organizations:
Driven by my Strategic strength, my mind naturally ventures beyond the commonplace, the familiar or obvious. I love to entertain novel ideas about the best ways to reach goals and solve problems in innovative ways.
Due to my Achiever strength, I relish imparting knowledge to others. As their description says, you spend a lot of time preparing appropriate stories, vivid examples, graphic illustrations, or useful materials to enliven training sessions. New assignments and challenges energize my life.
Thanks to my Maximizer strength, I exude natural confidence. It allows me to remain calm and composed in trying situations. This is why I know, intuitively, that life is more fulfilling for people who choose tasks and assignments that closely match their talents.
My Learner strength makes me naturally curious. I “long to gather certain types of information about specific individuals.” The more facts I gather, the easier it is for me to understand someone’s strengths, limitations, interests, likes, dislikes and goals.
My Futuristic strength enables me to be a visionary leader. I can easily envision images of the coming months, years, or decades. It’s why I thoroughly enjoy being in the company of “possibility thinkers”.
Yep, all that is definitely me. It defines me better than I could have described myself.
Looking back, I now see that I’ve unwittingly been driven by my natural strengths all along: why virtually every department or division I ever led was one I created and why I was ultimately drawn to entrepreneurship, to a role focused on the possibility of shaping a better tomorrow.
My natural strengths, talents and passions are why I’ve always loved my jobs and why I’ve been successful.
I really love doing what I do. Doing what I love is never work, it’s a joy that fulfills me.
Now, what about you? Do you really love what you do?
If not, let’s talk.
Maybe together we can get you headed down a path to where life is but a dream.
Get started by signing up for my next **FREE** Mentoring Moments Monday
Then perhaps you, too, can find out how fulfilling life can be when you really love what you do.