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ОглавлениеKen Sasaki was serious when he told me he wanted his life at work to be better. He was only thirty-seven and had what many would call success. Most people would think Ken had it made. We were sitting on thousand-dollar chairs around a huge mahogany table in the executive boardroom on the thirty-ninth floor of a new skyscraper. But Ken, the president of a large insurance company, wasn’t happy.
He had an idea of what he wanted work to be, but this certainly wasn’t it. Being a senior officer of this big international company looked good, but the way he saw it, work was one set of problems after another. It was late-night conference calls, inquiries from governmental regulating agencies, conferences with analysts to explain why profitability was up or down, streams of emails from headquarters all marked urgent. Some days things did slow down, but on those days he was bored and didn’t know what to do with his time.
He told me he disliked the people he worked with too, even though he had hired most of them. He described many of them as too conservative or incompetent. In his opinion, his boss was the worst of all. Ken called him a “control freak,” and even though his boss was in Singapore, Ken considered him a micromanager. Ken sat across from me, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Work’s got to be better than this.” It was as if there were a dark cloud hanging over him preventing him from seeing clearly. I knew exactly what Ken was talking about. I had been very much like him.
Do you know anyone in this situation? I’ll bet you do.
A Common Problem
There was a time when I would have been shocked by what Ken said, but not anymore. I meet people like him every day: bankers, lawyers, doctors, professors, entrepreneurs. They all have professional, respected jobs with good incomes—jobs that people around the world aspire to. But in their cases, the work isn’t working out the way they want. They’re too busy, they’re hassled, they don’t like their bosses, they’re not challenged enough, there’s too much pressure, they’re not learning enough.
Put simply, work isn’t working and they are not having the kind of lives they want. As you can imagine, they had all worked extremely hard, done well in college, and achieved a lot in their professional lives. Yet they could not escape a reckoning with their own sense of disillusionment.
Most were worried about what else they could do or what new actions they could take. In many cases, these successful professionals spoke in terms of confinement and fear. They say they “keep busy in order not to think,” “can’t sleep,” “can’t escape from worrying”; they “want to do something else”; or they love their job, it’s their boss they hate. Others say they like the work, but it’s the clients/the vendors/the employees who are driving them crazy.
I do not tell them to change jobs. That’s not the answer. What I see over and over is that when these people change their jobs, within a year they’re having the same kinds of problems in the new job as they had in the old one. Unless a person deals with the hard questions of who they are and who they want to be, the complaints start all over again. If you change your job without changing yourself, the result will be greater anxiety, unhappiness, and the same problems you tried to escape from.
I don’t tell them to take a vacation either. That’s the ultimate short-term response. I have clients who leave every weekend for time in the countryside or a long holiday at an expensive resort. “Work is hell,” they tell me, “so I need to escape.” As pleasurable as these places are, their trips are not so much for enjoyment as they are for forgetting the week. Why not develop a more satisfying way of working?
I also don’t tell them, “Do what you have to do and the hell with your family.” We all need people to support us, and we have to consider the impact of our decisions on our loved ones. Nor do I say, “Your boss is a jerk.” We have to learn how to work with many different kinds of people. Part of our job is handling the boss, the clients, and the people with whom we work.
What I do tell them is that work can be a whole lot better. The first message I delivered to Ken (and hundreds like him I meet as an executive coach and conference speaker) was a tough one: The underlying problem lies within you. It starts with you, not anyone else.
It’s not an easy notion for many people to accept. Can you? Let’s find out.
I ask people the same questions I have asked myself. I ask them about the kind of life they want at work. I ask them to imagine what that would look and feel like to them. I ask them if they want to be having the same conversation with me a year from now. I ask them if they can let go of some of their ideas about what work has to be. I ask them what action they could take to break down some of the barriers to the kind of life they want at work. I listen to the answers without comment and then I ask even more questions.
Initially, it feels like I am not understanding the pain they feel. But eventually I see a different look on people’s faces. And it’s a look of understanding: Understanding the necessity of letting go of a strongly held belief about how they have to work. It may be letting go of an idea of what it means to be a leader, recognizing there are other ways to communicate with our bosses, or recognizing what is missing from work. Eventually, I see a look on their faces that shows they understand they are the ones who have to take action. Eventually, people recognize they have to shift their perceptions and actions and do something.
I know it is easy to get locked into seeing your situation as fixed, final, set in stone. Pema Chodron, the author and American Buddhist nun, tells this story of how hard it is to give up our views even in the face of compelling evidence: “A man’s only son was reported dead in battle,” she wrote. “The father locked himself in his house for three weeks, refusing all support and kindness. In the fourth week, the son returned home. Seeing that he was not dead, the people of the village were moved to tears. Overjoyed, they accompanied the young man to his father’s house and knocked on the door. ‘Father,’ called the son, ‘I have returned.’ But the old man refused to answer. ‘Your son is here, he was not killed,’ called the people. But the old man would not come to the door. ‘Go away and leave me to grieve!’ he screamed. ‘I know my son is gone forever and you cannot deceive me with your lies.’”1
So it is with all of us. We are certain we must continue our way of seeing and doing things, our truth. We too often think that our way of working and living is the only way. It’s not. Breaking away will take some courage, some risk, and some tough work.
It Starts with You
I used to wonder why many people do not have the kind of life they want at work. They’re smart. They have a solid skill set, a good education, money, graduate degrees. In fact, it looks like they are in the best situation possible. Shouldn’t work be better? Shouldn’t life be better? After all, work is such a big part of life.
But often these individuals think of their career first and postpone the long process of learning who they are. They have things backward. The first step for you to gain satisfaction in your career is to know yourself and know what you want.
I always ask new clients, “What do you want?” You’d be surprised at the long silences that typically follow that question. You’d think I was asking them to solve a complex math problem without a calculator, because the most frequent answer I get is, “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want.”
In some cases, a client will say, “I know what I want, but I don’t think I can ever have it,” “My wife wouldn’t let me do that,” or, “I’ll become homeless if I take that kind of job.” It’s a big question.
How about you? What do you want? What kind of life at work would you like to have?
When you answer, don’t think about obstacles. It’s time to think about what you really want. And it’s never too late. “When is the best time to plant a tree?” an old Chinese proverb begins. “Twenty years ago and today.” The same is true for you and your work.
In graduate school, I learned about a concept called “locus of control.” Developed by psychologist Julian Rotter, locus of control means how you perceive the source of control within your own life. People with high locus of control believe they have high control of their lives. People with low locus of control believe that other forces and people control their lives.2
Locus of control refers to your beliefs and perceptions rather than what is really happening. If you believe that your promotion is based on external factors like luck or favoritism by your boss, this would show low locus of control. If you believe your promotion is based on your own effort and your relationships with others, this would show high locus of control. This is not an absolute measure. Think of it more as a scale where most of us would fall somewhere between the two extremes.
In my work, I have seen many people increase their locus of control and take greater charge of their own lives. It’s possible to change your beliefs and widen your perceptions. One key is to detach from your current beliefs by living more in the moment. That’s why I tell people to ask themselves, “What do I want to create today?” every day when they head to work.
I suggest they give some thought to what they want work to look like, what they want work to feel like. For example, if they’ve been having arguments with their boss, what different kind of relationship could they create. What could they change to make things better? One client of mine who loves to ski decided she would like to create a situation at work that looked like skiing. She would encounter “moguls” at work, but she would know how to handle them or maneuver around them, just like she did on the slopes.
Creating something today might also mean a single-minded focus on completing a report, preparing a PowerPoint presentation, or preparing a marketing plan. It could be beginning a friendship with a new coworker or building a stronger relationship with the boss. It might mean taking a step toward creating a better atmosphere at work by bringing pastries to the morning meeting or leaving your office door open as an invitation for others to come in and chat.
I suggest people answer the question for that day, right then, and think about what could happen now—not yesterday, not next week, but now. Try asking yourself what you would like to create today. You’ll be surprised at the result, as long as you let yourself be open to the answer. Don’t let yourself be trapped into obsessing about the boss or yesterday’s awful client meetings or worrying about what you will do after retirement. Instead, ask yourself what you want to create today, right now, at this moment.
If the question Do you know what you want? is too tough to answer or appears too abstract, the question Do you know what you want to create today? will help you see what work could be. It’s a small step, one that will help you figure out the answer to the bigger question of what you want.
Don’t critique what you want or say it’s impossible. Don’t wait until you finish this book. Just say what you want. Write it down. Now.
Have you forgotten what you want? Many people have, or they’ve decided they can’t obtain what they want, so they hide their real thoughts, feelings, and desires. Some are so busy just working away that they don’t even think about what they want. Others fear that if they say what they want, they may set themselves up for disappointment if they cannot achieve it.
I’m always skeptical when I hear people say, “I don’t know what I want.” It comes out too easily. Often the person really does know what they want. Or at least they know what they once wanted.
It’s easier not to acknowledge what you want, because with acknowledgment comes the responsibility of taking some action to achieve the goal. So, instead of declaring what they want, many people ignore and suppress what they want and simply say, “I don’t know.”
How about you? Do you find you’re not being honest with yourself in this way? Are you really someone who “doesn’t know”?
If the answer to what you want doesn’t come to you right away, it can come to you over time. When working with my clients, I ask questions such as these to get closer to the answer:
• What’s missing from the work you currently do?
• What do you like to do?
• What do you dislike doing?
• How would you like to work with your boss?
• Are there some images that come to mind when you think about the way you would like to work?
I don’t ask clients to think about a specific job they want, but to think about what they would like from work and at work. Skill development? Joy? Fun? Respect? Independence? Accomplishment? Challenge? Who are the people you want to work with?
The answers eventually do come: “I want to work with my hands,” “I’d like to help people,” “I’d like to be more independent,” “I’d like to have a more flexible schedule,” “I want to handle my boss better,” “I’d like to be more confident,” “I want to use what I learned in business school.”
I tell people to do some research, just like they once did in school or in other jobs. But this time the subject of their research is themselves.
To get what you want, you do not necessarily have to change jobs. You may be able to stay in the same job or with the same company by shifting your perspective or by transferring to another department. You may have to learn new skills for handling people, solving problems, or doing different tasks, but don’t jump in right away with a to-do list. It’s too early for that.
Does this idea of giving some serious thought to what you want speak to you? Have you been avoiding thoughts about what you really want? Is your first reaction, “I’m too busy to think about all this”?
Yet what could be more important?
It may seem that learning more about yourself is going backward rather than forward. But by learning about yourself, you are gaining insights that will give you the energy to have the kind of life at work you truly want.
You might wonder why you have to do this or why you can’t just take a test that will tell you everything you need to know about yourself. Indeed, there are tests that will give you insight into yourself, but it’s more important to develop the skills for observing yourself. Why let a test dictate the way you will live your life? Now is the time to develop self-observation skills you can use throughout your life.
I hear people say, “If only I had another boss, this job would be perfect.” Yet once they get a new boss, things may be good for a while, but then I hear the same complaint: “My new boss is ruining my life at work.” It’s the same with money. “If only my salary were higher, I’d be happy.” But then after a raise or two, their spending has increased beyond their new salary and they’re wishing for even more money.
Having the kind of life you want at work has to do with only one person: you. Not your boss, not your spouse, not your family. Know about yourself and what you want first, and then it will be easier to deal effectively with your boss, spouse, and everyone else.
What to Do
Have you ever kept a daily journal or notebook? I have for more than thirty years, and it’s been a helpful tool for learning. Dedicate a notebook or computer file to yourself. Write down what you’re thinking about work and answer these questions, most of which I listed a few paragraphs ago:
• What’s missing from the work you currently do?
• What do you like to do?
• What do you dislike doing?
• How would you like to work with your boss?
• Are there some images that come to mind when you think about the way you would like to work?
• Can you draw or describe these images?
• What do you want most of all?
When people ask me how they can become more successful at what they do, I always suggest they begin with self-knowledge. Here are several strategies I suggest that you too can use to learn about yourself.
1. Listen carefully to what people tell you.
“You are so creative,” “You’re so outgoing,” “You look so happy,” “You are really good with people; you’d make a great salesman.” What do people say directly to you? These people are serious. You do not have to agree with what they say about you. But they are giving you valuable information. Appreciate it. When you get unsolicited comments, people are seeing something in you—something you may not even see yourself. It’s not easy to change the way we see ourselves, but others can see something in us we do not even realize is there. Use your notebook or a computer file to write down what people are telling you.
Last week when I was introduced at a party, the host told one of the guests I was someone who knew beauty. I had never thought about myself that way even though I do own an art gallery. It was nice to hear this comment, and it made me think about myself in a different way. No doubt people say things about you that you may not have ever considered. Listen to them—and learn.
Some people have difficulty accepting compliments. If you’re like that, you may be tempted to discount or dismiss the nice comments or disagree with them by saying, “That’s not really true,” or, “You are too kind.” But resist doing so. Let it in. Just say, “Thank you.”
Ditto for criticism. If people tell you, “You are defensive,” “You have a short fuse,” or, “You don’t listen,” accept it and thank them for the feedback. You can also ask for more information—“Why do you think I’m defensive?”—or ask for simple examples. You don’t have to agree or disagree with them. Just be thankful you can get such feedback.
2. Go somewhere new, meet and see different people, do things you’ve never done before.
It’s so easy to come up with the same programmed reactions and answers when you go to the same gym, the same restaurants, the same coffee shops. You’re a creature of habit, like all of us.
Taking a job in Japan was an important step for me. Many of the clients I have worked with in Tokyo have told me the same thing. You go to a new place and meet new people and you feel less constrained. The responses and comments from people in your new place will be unencumbered and fresh. They will see you differently than your usual pals, and you’ll uncover parts of yourself you may have kept hidden or didn’t even know about.
Go to a culture that is very different, even for a visit, and you can see a lifestyle that may encourage you to look inside yourself. In Southern California I had what looked like a great life: a house by the beach, a good consulting practice, a BMW, a university position, some good friends. And I ran and swam almost every day.
I had the outside indicators of success, but inside there was something else going on. I spent a lot of time thinking about only one topic: status. I wanted more of it—to buy a bigger house, to drive a newer BMW, to open a bigger office. I focused on what other people thought rather than what I really wanted. The obsession with status was really a way of avoiding the truth. Like Ken at the beginning of this chapter, I didn’t know what I really wanted.
I took a one-month break to try to figure things out. It wasn’t a vacation, but a trip to learn more about myself and what I wanted. I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I spent time relaxing on the beach, exploring the sights, and watching the people. They looked happy, happier than the strivers I was hanging around with in Southern California. They didn’t have much money, but they got enjoyment from walking along the ocean and being with their families and friends. I came back with a different perspective on how much money I needed to be happy. This was a trip with a purpose: to find out more about myself.
Next time you take a trip, travel for insight. Travel for self-discovery.
You also can learn about yourself by trying new things in your daily routine. This includes food. I call this eating your way out of your comfort zone. Try new foods and go to new restaurants. You may find that you like what you never thought you could possibly like. You’ll meet new people and be encouraged to travel and learn more about other cultures. Learning about another way of life could push you to question assumptions about your career.
Try different sports, learn to dance, or read a book that typically wouldn’t interest you. As I tried more new things, I discovered the enjoyment of riding on roller coasters and realized I wanted more excitement in my life. Now I even like the thrill of sitting up front in a roller coaster.
3. Pay attention to any physical reactions you have to people and to work.
Your body gives you information you can’t ignore. You get a hangover or a headache if you drink too much. You get an upset stomach when you are under stress. People often say their “stomach is in knots” when they’re feeling nervous.
Notice what happens to your body when you’re faced with certain types of tasks or dealing with certain people. Pay attention to these reactions.
Your body sends you strong, important messages. They all mean something. Does the thought of meeting new people make you sweat? Does looking at a pile of invoices make you shake? Do you feel like you’ve just been run over by a truck when you get off the phone with a certain person? Do you have a big smile on your face when you see certain colleagues? Do you get pumped up with adrenaline when you visit a factory to talk with young engineers?
When I asked one client, Stephen Chen, whether his body was giving him any messages, he told me he noticed it was becoming difficult to wake up in the morning to go to work. It wasn’t because he was tired. He just didn’t want to go in. He’d eventually get himself to the train station, but at least once a week he’d fall asleep on the train and pass the station where he was supposed to get off for his office. His body was sending him a message about his work.
4. Notice the people you attract.
Your friends and colleagues are often your mirror. You can see yourself in them. Are they active, energetic, happy, party animals, homebodies, movie lovers, creative, negative, boring?
What can you say about your friends? Take a look at them. Do you see yourself in them?
When I was teaching, my classes were always active, and by the end of the first month of the semester, the students would know almost everyone else in the class. At the end of each class session, they’d hang around to talk with me or make plans with each other to get something to eat, have a drink, or work on a project. It was interesting to see how the various informal groups formed. The more active students found each other; the ones who wanted to be entrepreneurs would also find one another. Even the ones who were falling behind and didn’t know what was going on would band together.
Who are your friends at work? What do these choices say about you? Are your friends seen by others the way you would like to be seen? Is it time for some new friends, some different colleagues?
5. Meditate—it’s the gateway to self-knowledge.
Meditation is not something only for people who chant and wear white robes. Meditation can help you learn about yourself. Meditation also reduces your stress levels, clears your mind, and lowers your heart rate.
You may want to learn a particular method of meditation, such as transcendental meditation or a type of meditation based on Buddhist or Indian principles. I’ve been meditating for more than thirty years. I need it to thrive. My style of meditation is my own, combined with visualization of what I want my day to look like. It ties in nicely with what I want to create every day. I let go of any stress I might feel. I relax. I clear my mind of any worries I might have. I think of how I want to go through my day. I push aside some of the problems that have been on my mind. I think of who I might see during the day and how I would like to deal with them.
If you’d like to learn an easy way to start meditating, I recommend The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson. You can learn what to do in a very short time, and if you practice for ten to twenty minutes twice a day, you will relieve your tension and gain a clear focus for your day, and, as Benson says on his book’s back cover, obtain “a richer, healthier, more productive life.”3
Meditation will give you greater peacefulness and a stronger connection to yourself. You’ll be happier and more fulfilled, and you’ll enjoy improved relations with people at work. It’s no wonder there is a resurgent interest in meditation in Silicon Valley companies. Google, for example, offers meditation classes to its employees.
Often when I call a Boston-based friend of mine, I hear his voice mail announce, “I’m sorry I can’t answer the phone now. I’m meditating. Please leave your message and I will get back to you.” Meditation is clearly a priority for him.
Famed professional basketball coach Phil Jackson was also a great believer in the power of meditation. In his book Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior, Jackson talks about practicing Zen meditation, using the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind as his guide.4 Make your mind clear, Jackson recommends, drawing on the Buddha’s teaching in the Dhammapada: “Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you.”5
If your thinking has been clouded with worries, or if you have been having trouble making a decision, meditation helps you clear away the clouds hanging over you. If you easily get caught up in arguments at work, meditation will help you stay calm and think before jumping in. When you meditate, you notice the thoughts that come into your mind and you quietly let them go.
6. Find a counselor or coach.
You can certainly learn about yourself on your own, but it will help if you can find someone to talk with about your process of self-understanding and self-realization. The learning will go deeper and faster too. You might think you can simply talk with your partner or best friend, but they aren’t necessarily the best choices. They know you too well. They carry baggage about you, just as you carry baggage about them. They are likely to have a certain bias about what steps you should take. You need to choose someone who is not committed to a particular outcome, who isn’t so familiar with you.
It was once very common for people to consult with trained therapists such as psychologists, psychiatrists, and family counselors. Today it seems to be more usual for people to work with a career coach or an executive coach.
Find someone who can support you as you learn about yourself. Whether you choose a psychologist, a counselor, or a coach, make sure you feel comfortable talking with that person. Do not choose someone who will push you into taking a new position or a certain belief system before you are ready. This is the time to think in terms of opening options, not closing them.
By learning more about yourself, you will strengthen your emotional intelligence so you’ll be aware of the effects of other people on you and your effect on them. You’ll be able to better match yourself to the type of work you do and the way you’d like to work. You will gain some insight into the changes you will need to make in order to have the kind of life you want. You’ll also develop the confidence you need to make those changes.
In case you’re wondering, you don’t have to follow all of the methods I have detailed here simultaneously. Choose the ones that are most suitable for you. You can meditate, work with a counselor, listen to your friends—there’s no set order, no prerequisites. By doing as many as you can when you can, you’ll learn about yourself more quickly and more confidently.
Having the Life You Want at Work
Let’s go back to some of the questions I raised earlier in this chapter. What does having that life at work look like for you? Is it working on your own schedule? Is it being respected by your peers? Is it having good relations with the people you work with? Is it about growing and learning? Is it about traveling? Is it about sharing what you know? Is it about making a contribution? Is it about having less stress?
Maybe visual images come to mind. Is it like surfing? Climbing a mountain? Being a warrior? Is it about wearing a suit or wearing shorts? Wingtips or flip-flops? Going to work in a limo or traveling by train?
If you could work in this new way, how would your life be better?
As a consultant, I often go to offices and watch the way people work. I observe meetings, interview people, and sometimes I just hang around in the employee lunchroom. That’s one place where I can really understand a company’s culture.
I like to watch how people come and go and walk around the office. Are people happy when they see each other? Do they complain when they talk? Do they blow off steam? Do they laugh? Do they yell at each other?
I always like to find the person in every organization who, no matter what is going on, manages to keep his or her cool and not be undone by the next turn of events. This person always interests me. This is the kind of person I wanted to be.
In your office, is there a person like this? Would you like it to be you?
In Japan, I set out to be the kind of professor who would make a difference in other people’s lives. I had a dream of what I wanted to do, and that’s what I set out to do. I remembered the best teachers I had in high school and the best professors I had at Boston University and the University of Massachusetts, and I wanted to be like those people.
I also wanted to have good relations with colleagues and peers. I wanted to avoid the kind of in-fighting that had almost sunk my career before. I remembered the charged political environment of universities where I had taught in the United States, filled with late-night hushed phone calls and secret tenure votes. When I started in Japan, I focused more on what I wanted to contribute. I didn’t set out to be popular. I wanted to be the kind of professor people would remember.
How about you in your work? Is there something unique, something valuable, you can contribute? Will people remember you? If so, how will they remember you? Think more about your eulogy than your résumé.
As the first American full-time professor at Keio University, I knew all eyes would be on me. My actions were scrutinized, but I looked at it as a great opportunity because I could influence how others saw Americans. I could break any stereotypes other faculty members might have had, and I could follow my own path.
I didn’t know any of the rules of Japanese society or Japanese universities, and I could stake out my own way of doing things. Being an outsider can be a real asset. I was inspired by the story of an outsider who made a real difference through his presence alone.
As a young consultant, I worked with the Boston Public Schools helping to integrate schools that previously had been predominantly white or black. Integration meant redrawing district lines and busing students to schools across town to achieve a more equitable balance of white and black students. There was much opposition to this desegregation that was ordered by the courts. Every day there were violent protests.
Teachers and administrators were afraid for their lives because of bomb threats and Molotov cocktails being hurled at the schools. Many employees felt the senior administrators lacked the will and ability to lead them through the crisis. And then rumors started flying that a new leader, Bob Wood, would soon be leading the Boston Public Schools.
Dr. Robert Wood had been the U.S. secretary of housing and urban development and the president of the University of Massachusetts, and now he was to be superintendent of the Boston Public Schools. The job had been previously held by political appointees, many of whom were considered incompetent and not fully committed to integration.
And then even before Bob Wood arrived, there seemed to be a transformation in the school headquarters where I was consulting. Almost to a person, the teachers, administrators, and staff, all of whom had once looked beaten-down and defeated, now stood taller and prouder, knowing they were about to have a leader who would make a difference. The staff started talking about how they wanted to make integration succeed. They showed up for work on time and stayed late. Even before he was officially sworn in, Bob Wood was an instrument of change because of his reputation, because of who he was. He was the message.
Many wondered why he would want the job, but he saw the superintendent position as an opportunity to make a real difference in the city where he lived. His ability to influence was not because of his PhD. It was not because he had taken any course on changing large-scale organizations. It was not because he was coming in with a “change program.” It was just him; he could get things moving even before his first day. He came in to do a job and that’s exactly what he would focus on. And best of all, people knew it.
Do you know anyone who has that kind of impact by virtue of their presence alone, by just showing up?
Seeing Bob Wood’s ability to move people because of who he was motivated me to become such a person. It was seeing what Bob Wood could do even before he started his job that propelled me to become someone who could influence others. Gandhi is often quoted as saying, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”6 I took that slogan as my own.
Who you are is more important than the degrees you have. The degrees might get you a job, but that’s not what will help you get things done. Nor will these degrees keep you engaged in the work you do. I’ve seen students and clients pay money to earn more and more certificates to add to their portfolios and résumés, but I recommend building a strong foundation of self-knowledge first before adding to your list of certificates. There is no end to the degrees or skills you can accumulate without doing what is most important: connecting to yourself.
All of that time I spent looking at the faculty catalogs I wrote about in the first chapter of this book made me realize it’s not the degrees that make the difference. It’s you. Of course, you need a specific level of education for certain jobs. You can’t be a lawyer without a law degree, and many businesses will not hire you unless you’re a college grad. But it’s you, not your degrees, that will make you effective.
There is an obsession worldwide with obtaining more certificates and degrees and adding more skills to your résumé. Go to the gates outside any university campus in Japan and you will see a small army of people handing out flyers to undergraduate students. The flyers advertise cram schools for job hunting, classes for job interviews, schools for taking the Graduate Record Exam or the GMAT, or for becoming a CPA. And there are professors and counselors who will tell the students they should take as many of those courses and classes as they can.
There is nothing wrong with having these skills and certificates, but when I’m asked if they’re a good idea and are necessary, I simply say, “Know what you want first.” That’s the place to start.
How about you?
What do you want work to be?
What do you want to create at work?
What if you looked at work in a different way?
What if you looked at work as a place where you could make the dreams of your life come true?
What if you focused on the kind of life you would like to have at work?
What if you looked at work as a blank canvas where you could paint part of your life?
Think you are too busy? What could be more important than making the changes that would make your life better?
Maybe you think it’s impossible to think about what you really want because you’ve invested so much time in the job you currently have, or because you have just started out in your career. Maybe you think it’s impossible because you worry about what others will say. Or it’s impossible because you count on that big salary and you think you will lose it if you make a change.
But it’s not impossible. You might even earn more money. You need to give some serious thought to what you want. All it will take is time and the determination to make work better using your own resources—your personality, your character, your actions.
What action can you take that will help you have the kind of life you want at work today? What can you change about the way you work?
Nelson Mandela knew that if he were to lead the people of South Africa, he could not set himself apart from others. That included the way people referred to him. When I saw him being interviewed on TV, he told the interviewer, “Call me Nelson. That’s what I prefer.” I thought, How amazing, how wonderful. The great Nelson Mandela goes by his first name.
On that day, I decided to no longer signal to students that I wanted to be called doctor or professor or mister. When classes started again, I just wrote “Bob Tobin” on the board. No titles. No degrees. I didn’t lose any stature or prestige. I signaled to my students from day one that the class and the professor would be accessible to them. It was simple.
As I was becoming the kind of professor I wanted to be, some colleagues were curious about what I was doing in class, and I extended an open invitation to them to visit. None did. One friend who taught at another university was always looking for ways to put some excitement in his teaching. His course was on trade regulations, and he would go over the intricacies of each of the laws with the students. He’d tell me how he wanted to change how he taught and he’d ask for teaching suggestions.
“Why not have students research the laws and then present them?” I asked him. “Great idea,” he said. But he worried the students might be uncomfortable and would not explain some of the laws clearly. I told him he could encourage the students, make corrections, or offer a summary.
But again he hesitated, and continued to teach in the same way. He came back the following year and told me once again that the students were so quiet and didn’t participate. I gave him a few more ideas, but eventually we stopped meeting. Although he perceived the barrier to be the students, the real barrier was him.
And the same is true for all of us. It’s not about them. It’s really about us. And taking action requires courage and confidence to do things differently. I’ll talk about both concepts in other chapters of this book.
But first, let’s talk about your dreams.
