CONCLUSION
You Did and You Will
What matters isn’t that we attain perfection, but that again and again with humility and faith, we reach.
Cheryl Strayed
Heart racing, I walked into the conference room with what felt like a too-big smile on my face. It had only been four weeks since I’d graduated from college and started my career at a Fortune 100 company in an intensive leadership development program. Now here I was at 23 years old about to have lunch with the CEO and his entire leadership team. I could not believe that I was going to meet and spend time with the leaders I aspired to be.
As I surveyed the room, I glanced at the woman seated at the end of the long conference table. Her face was drawn and tight, and there were dark circles under her eyes that her makeup could not conceal. She had the gray pallor of someone who had been sick for a long time. Her shoulders were hunched up almost touching her ears. However, it was her eyes that were the most disturbing. It was as if someone had turned off the lights to her soul.
I quickly looked away and sat in my seat. The CEO welcomed us and introduced each person on his executive team. When he got to the woman at the end of the table, he said, “This is my chief human resources officer.” I was stunned and confused. The woman with the pinched face and sad eyes was responsible for all 27,000 of us?
She stood up and talked about her “people” strategy, employee engagement, and how to develop the next generation of leaders: me and my colleagues in this room. With each word she spoke, she seemed more and more unhappy, even miserable, as though the life had been sucked out of her—burned out, overwhelmed, demotivated, and unfulfilled.
Is this what success looks like?
Not anymore.
And never again because you are different now.
You have turned your job into your dream job.
When you turned to page 1 in this book, you probably could not even imagine the scope of the possibilities that existed for you. Was it possible to no longer dread Monday mornings or count down the days to the weekend? Could you be fulfilled, content, gratified, and engaged at work? Could you make a living and a life? Was it even conceivable to have a dream job?
What you know now is yes! Maybe even a “Hell yes!”
Because you are the catalyst that changed your professional life.
The give-and-take of the employer-employee social contract, is the new dynamic of your relationship with your employer. The skills, experiences, and abilities that you contribute are vital and meaningful to your employer. They are the engine that fuels your organization’s growth. When you join a company, you do not abdicate your personal power. Neither your boss nor your company has all the power in the relationship. You have an equal and powerful voice. You chose to follow the path to own, love, and make your job work for you.
OWN IT
Your bold, courageous decision to walk through Door Number Four, the door of possibility and choice, began your transformational journey. Your first stop—to own it. To know that you are capable, competent, significant, and a valued team member and that you make a difference in your company. You embraced a growth mindset, asked for feedback, and used the SEE feedback model—specific, example, explain—to create more opportunities for positive, successful work experiences. The brain’s “negativity bias” did not stop you. Simple, yet powerful, tools enabled you to liberate yourself from the “Work sucks” refrain. And you recognized and asked for the acknowledgment and praise you need to receive for your efforts.
You embraced your strengths as your professional gold in the employer-employee social contract because they enable you to have more control and choice over what you work on and how you work. You aligned your strengths to your company’s goals so you could shape your work in a way that met both your professional and personal needs and ambitions. You identified what you wanted from the relationship with your employer and asked for it.
You owned it!
LOVE IT
It was now time to rekindle the passion and joy in your work. This required that you acquire new capabilities and knowledge and find ways to advance in your career. So you assessed your current skills and expertise to create your Abilities Opportunity Map—your personalized professional development plan. You chose to invest in yourself. An investment that has paid off—in increased confidence, additional opportunities for a promotion or a raise, enhanced value to your team and company, and more time and energy for the people, hobbies, and projects that interest you.
Your focus then shifted to your teammates, boss, and colleagues because positive relationships in the workplace are essential for your contentment and professional success. The Platinum Rule is now the compass you use anytime you connect and collaborate with others so you can foster mutual respect and understanding. SCARF threats no longer undermine your interactions with other people in your company, and you recognize when you have climbed up the Ladder of Inference. You experience more positive social interactions and build stronger relationships because you do not get stuck on the Ladder of Inference unable to climb down.
You now love it!
MAKE IT WORK
The final stop on your transformational journey to turn any job into your dream job was to make your job work for you. This is where you went deeper to find your meaning in your work. You recognized that the value and importance of your work is defined by you. It is personal. Meaning is what you bring to the table. It is uniquely yours. No one can define it for you. You embraced your power to design your work to be more significant, purposeful, and valuable to you. You made behavioral changes to your tasks or to your professional relationships, or you made proactive psychological changes to your perceptions of your job. And you if you hit a roadblock when you attempted to redesign your work, you took another approach or had another conversation with your manager. At no point did you give up on your dream.
You made it work!
At every step along the journey, you have realized that small, incremental shifts are powerful and life changing. I am certain that you have the skills, tools, and drive to take any job and own it, love it, and make it work for you. The fact that you have achieved all of this makes you a champion in my mind. You have the courage to face your fears, the detractors, and the corporate politics that come your way. You have the persistence to do the hard work. You have unshakable commitment to your goals and dreams.
There are infinite strategies, tools, and approaches to address the Sunday night scaries, Monday morning blues, and how work sucks—the rest is up to you. As long as you know the steps along the journey to find your professional bliss, I know you will find your way. I know that any job can be your dream job.
I hope that the knowledge you have gained in this book becomes your most reliable map to unleash your professional goals and dreams and that it serves you for the rest of your career.
I am proud of you. I am honored and humbled that you allowed me to be a part of your journey. Thank you.