Do you like your job? Or do you work simply for the money?
Patty Azzarello — career mentor extraordinaire — has a great post this week on the issue of liking your job. Does it really matter whether you like your job? And more importantly, if not, what can you do about it?
As usual, her advice is on target. If you don’t like your job, you need to “tune it” over time:
Imagine two different project managers in this same situation, with two different sets of gifts and dislikes. (Notice how the content of the business and the technology itself, don’t factor into either the problem or the solution.)
Person #1: You have a gift for analysis, and are a good writer. You do not like giving presentations or arguing with people. You hate your job because you have to deal with annoying people all the time.
Person #2: You have a gift for empathy and engaging and motivating people. You are not very detail oriented, and do not care to publish documents. You hate your job because you are stuck dealing with detailed project plans, and technology issues.
Tune your job to suit your strengths, and minimize your dislikes.
Person #1: Think about negotiating with your manager over time to take on a broader role to support all the project managers by improving the overall process, creating templates and workflows, managing data, etc. Build on your analysis and writing strengths, spend less time fighting dragons, and add real value to the business by creating infrastructure, process, and efficiencies.
Person #2: Ask for new projects that span organizations, need publicity, and have within them, more technical people and support you can rely on. Build on your people strengths, spend less time in the weeds, and help the business achieve significant outcomes on the biggest, messiest programs, that require lot’s of hand-holding and finesse with people.
People who like their jobs work harder so it benefits the organization as well!
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