12/19/2024
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I think everyone is entitled to a good ole fashioned clichĂŠ post on LinkedIn/Facebook so I'll go ahead and use mine on this topic...
People always ask the question "What is your dream job?" which would naturally imply time spent visualizing our most ideal and fulfilling form of an occupation. But are people really spending time envisioning what it is they would love to do?
If you've heard the story of Helene Hadsell (A.K.A. the Contest Queen) you'd know she won over 5,000 contests throughout her life. What did she correlate the wins to? Norman Vincent Peale's book "The Power of Positive Thinking". She mentioned that book prompted her to imagine not only winning a contest, but the contest host announcing her name and the feeling that came with the win and enjoying the prize she could claim after.
I get it, you're probably thinking "JT we've all been sold the 5 step, *secret sauce to success* scheme through either a book, subscription, or podcast" the point of which was to "shift your perspective". But I think there's a bit more to be looked from an I/O perspective.
If we look at topics such as employee satisfaction, motivation, leadership and development, there is one variable that is present throughout each that can yield different outcomes and that is - personality! Leaders who survey their employees are better equipped to facilitate working relationships that yield higher levels of fulfillment, engagement, performance, etc. They reduce turnover and resentment against the org and just over all seem to provide more net positive. But if the expectation is on leadership to survey their teams on interests and perspectives... when is the last time those employees looked deep within and surveyed themselves to ask the questions:
"What am I truly trying to accomplish with my career?"
"What do I hope to get out of it?"
"What brings me the most fulfillment?
My wife Abbey Loper-Frazier is a certified career coach and talks about the SMART method of setting goals with her network quite often. I think a similar approach, when thinking about career outlook, can be helpful. Especially when it comes to the first letter in that acronym - Specificity.
I'll challenge my network to spend some time first, looking at where you are in your career and checking your satisfaction level. If everything checks out, great! If not, take a moment to open up your imagination to the type of work culture you'd most align with, the differences you could see yourself making in a particular industry, the tasks you love completing or would like to be able to complete, and areas in which you'd most like to develop. If details are an important aspect of job descriptions and job analysis, why shouldn't they be important when establishing your carer objective? Begin the journey by envisioning that dream job (IN DETAIL), then start taking steps towards it.
