Guest post by
Ed Muzio
Author of Make Work Great: Supercharge Your Team,
Reinvent the Culture, and Gain Influence -- One Person at a Time
Are
you having a bad week at work, or maybe a series of bad weeks? Do you
hopelessly suspect that things will never get better? Have you sadly
concluded that the pay you receive is not in exchange for your output,
but rather for your willingness to tolerate misery?
If so, I
know you don't want to hear about how the emotional state of a single
person can influence a whole group. If I tell you to buck up, think
positively, and set a better example for those around you, you'll stop
reading immediately. You'll probably also come up with a few choice
nicknames for me that I wouldn't want my mother to hear.
So I'm
not going there. Forget it. You don't have to buck up, think positively,
or set a better example. Instead, I just want you to have three simple
conversations next week. I don't even care who you talk to, as long as
you discuss these three topics.
1. "What I am trying to
accomplish is . . . "A huge amount of workplace
dissatisfaction -- not to mention lost productivity -- comes from a lack
of clear purpose. If you don't know what you're supposed to be doing,
you are destined to be frustrated by feelings of uselessness.
Pick
a purpose! If you're not sure, take your best guess, and then tell
someone what you think you're trying to produce. Don't discuss the steps
you're taking, like email or meetings, just talk about the output
itself. Summarize all of your most important output in about 90 seconds.
Much more, and you risk losing your listener's interest. Much less, and
you risk sounding cliché.
Depending upon your listener, you
might choose to state it with all the certainty of your most important
mission in life, or you might choose to state it tentatively, as if
you'd be happy for someone to correct you (I suggest the latter approach
when speaking with your manager). Either way, you'll be reminding
yourself, and your listener, about why you're bothering to show up.
2.
"What I'm doing matters because . . . "If you don't want to
feel like a hamster on an exercise wheel, you need to attach the work
you do to a real benefit. This can be a benefit to the company, a
benefit to society, or a benefit to you personally. All three would be
ideal, but you should find at least one.
Tell someone the why
behind your work. Maybe your tireless processing of expense forms allows
other salespeople to travel overseas, find buyers for company products,
and enhance the bottom line. Maybe your quality inspections or document
audits lead to babies being safely strapped in their car seats as per
manufacturer recommendations. Or, maybe your work as a nurse gets you
the experience you need to finally become an ultrasound technician.
Reach
if necessary. Take pains to find at least one reason your work is worth
doing, even if you're not particularly enjoying it at the moment. On
the other hand, don't brag. You're not trying to show off, or show
anybody up. You're simply discussing the ways in which your work matters
to you, your company, and your society at large.
3. "I can
tell I'm making progress when . . . "What you're doing, and
why, are not quite enough. You also need to experience yourself making
headway toward your goals. Otherwise, your days will blend together in
an endless wave of to-do lists worries, and discussions, and you'll
cease to have the experience that your presence in the workplace
matters.
Seeing your own progress is not the same as
demonstrating progress to others. Your manager may require a status
update at the end of the month, but you need to experience your progress
every day, even every hour. Otherwise you will vacillate between a
detached disinterest in your goal, when it is far off in the future, and
full-scale panic about that goal when the future arrives faster than
anticipated.
Seek simple cues, like the accumulation of completed
forms in your out box, a column of check marks on your to-do list, or
the number of telephone calls you processed this hour. Celebrate when
you're ahead, but don't be afraid to learn that you're behind. When you
have this kind of insight, you will be the first one to see problems
coming. So, you can get to work fixing roadblocks -- looking for more
resources, perhaps, or finding the training you need -- long before you
ever miss a commitment to anyone else.
Better Working through
ConversationThese three topics are the practical, positive,
systemic aspects of your work: what you're doing, why it matters, and
how you know you are progressing. They reinforce the fact that you bring
value to, and find value in, your workplace. They focus your creative
energy on value, output, and mutual benefit.
Conversing about
them encourages both you and your listener to think more clearly in
these terms, and distracts you from less productive avenues of
discussion. It's difficult to complain about an uncaring manager when
you're defining the output you need to produce; it's hard to grouse
about impossible customers while recounting the broader good generated
by your work.
To be sure, in having these conversations you're
likely to uncover some real issues: the fact that you don't exactly
know your purpose, for example, or the fact that you're not sure whether
you're making progress. They may seem frightening on the surface, but
once defined, such questions can be investigated. And the answers you
find will invariably lead to feelings of regained control rather than
hopelessness. All you have to do is to start the process, to be the one
to start the conversation.
Remember how I said I wasn't going to
tell you to set a better example for those around you? I lied.
