Mis-Fit: Why We Aren’t Thriving at Work and What to Do About It | Moe Carrick | TEDxSanJuanIsland

[Music] [Applause] so I'm curious how many people out there have ever felt that pit of dread and anxiety in your stomach on Sunday night when you're getting ready to go back to work on Monday show of hands and has anyone here ever had a job that you actually hated show of hands I can relate I remember a job that I had where the cubicle where I worked in the office building looked out over a marina I was a training specialist for a large cellular company on the shores of Lake Washington and on sunny days people would often wander about the docks on a break or on a day off I would sometimes pull myself away from my work and watch them I made up stories about them in my head I imagined where they lived I know it's kind of odd their families and most of all their work situation I would project onto their happy faces the kinds of work that happy people did I imagine them with bosses that they respected colleagues whom they trusted and doing work that mattered eventually I'd have to pull my eyes away from the bucolic scene in front of me back to my work and I would often notice the big white wall clock above and I would watch the minute hand slowly tick forward towards quitting time I was very unhappy at that job and the contrast between what I imagined the people at the marina's lives to be and what my life had actually become was stark and vast I was very unhappy at that job I think my work was probably shoddy and I spent a lot of time in hiding that I'd be caught out as a slacker that job might have been perfect for someone else but it was making me miserable I was completely and totally misfit I'm an organizational development consultant which means that I study people in systems mostly work and I've often asked myself the question what would be possible if everyone and I do mean everyone in every job around the globe actually loved their work the answer to that question with any luck at all might permanently alter the relationship between employer and employee in the past 30 years i have heard story after story of Job misery people like misha who said it hurt to start a job with such hope and optimism only to find myself feeling undermined unsupported and feeling corrected at every turn or misha or hang excuse me who said hating your job sucks and it consumes you when we're simply getting by at work our goodness and our gifts stay completely hidden work matters to us in so many ways beyond our paycheck it impacts our identity our physical and emotional well-being our family relationships even our ability to interact with our community in a healthy way and it's not just individuals who suffer when we're misfit under motivated unconnected and unengaged employees cost companies globally billions of dollars in accidents errors rework and lost productivity our global economy demands that organizations grow and sustain themselves over time and those that don't will fail the companies in every sector that make it need people who come to work there every day alive nonetheless despite our collective knowing that we as human being simply do better when we're happy and thriving at work workers today are really not feeling it for example a recent towers perrin study of 35,000 employees showed that just a mere seventeen percent felt actively engaged in their jobs and gallops most recent data revealed that ninety percent of people they survey that's nine out of ten people said they were either disengaged or actively disengaged with their work and Millennials were the least engaged of all the energy projects recent quality of life survey revealed that fifty percent of the people they spoke with felt emotionally depleted physically drained mentally distracted and lacking in meaning and purpose we can do better and it's time in the 1700s Scotsman Adam Smith considered by many to be the founder of modern industrial economics professor most of us as people were motivated mostly out of self-interest but I disagree i think as human beings there's so much more that motivates us than our pay of course we need to be compensated but i like the way Barry Schwartz said it in his book why we work most of all we want work that's meaningful that makes a difference to other people and in Noble's us yet at least in some small way it's important to remember that most of the time we don't receive any painting for how to find a great work fit I mean we're taught how to write a resume or how to do networking but oftentimes I don't know about you but when I received a job offer I just breathed a sigh of relief at being wanted quickly check the offer and set a start date even though often when we take a job we think of it as lasting a lifetime that's not really how it works the needs we have for work fit change significantly over the course of our lives what matters in our 20s is vastly different than what matters to us in our work in our 50s what have we started thinking about our work experience as more of a dynamic journey to multiple destinations rather than a mecca that we visit only once in fact most of our children and our grandchildren aren't going to have one or two cornerstone careers we know this they're going to have 12 or 15 or more job opportunities the imperative for being able to assess work fit a place that brings out our absolute best has never been higher but happiness at work is not the magical result of getting lucky although that's often how it feels when we find a job we love our research has shown two key elements to finding work fit and the first one is you self-awareness the second ingredient to work fit is your ability to assess a workplace as being one that's right for you it seems straightforward right these two things self-awareness and the ability to assess an organization from the outside is what adds up to a great work Finn so let's start by looking at you self-awareness this is often easier it sounds easier than it actually is too deeply know ourselves we have to examine our strengths and our brutal weaknesses we have to look at our motivations and our fears it takes vulnerability it takes courage and it takes time I remember a blinding news flash moment in my own life of self-awareness I was in university I was studying to be a journalist I wanted nothing more than to work for a daily periodical and I got a job for the school newspaper and I with my steno pad in hand I started scooping stories I wrote well and the feedback I got was very positive the problem I had was the whole deadline thing because I'm kind of hardwired to be a procrastinator and I have a serious case of foam Oh most of the time so a great story idea for me on friday by monday often was boring my editor was always riding me about deadlines despite how painful it was to let go of a dream i had for a number of years of working for a daily paper i had to admit that a deadline sensitive career where deadlines ruled was probably not going to be the best place for me that critical moment really helped me make some better decisions at a young age it was a self-awareness moment remember that when we're misfit at work it's not that we're broken although it often feels that way what's often happening is simply that the alchemy between us or you and your workplace is misfit remember that just because a job works really well at Google or Apple for someone doesn't mean that you're going to find a great fit there so let's look at Part two of finding a great work fit the ability to assess a workplace from the outside our research has identified six elements that matter to most of us when it comes to work fit we'll look at them one at a time these elements aren't presenting any particular order and even in the course of my life the elements have shifted very much in terms of priority you'll probably recognize that depending on what age group you represent the first element we've discovered is the element of work fit that's that we call meaning meaning has to do with the extent to which you feel that what you do matters to someone or something job fit is the extent to which your skills and experience are well matched to the job responsibilities that you have and to your background culture fit happens when our values and beliefs really sync up with the professed and practice values and beliefs of the organization where we work the fourth is relationship fit which is when we actually like and respect the people that we work for and with lifestyle fit is that magical thing that happens when the way we dream of our life being actually is supported by the policies and practices of our employer and finally financial fit is when we feel were paid fairly and we can make ends meet when I graduated from college the two things we talked about the two elements we talked about the most were job fit and financial fit if you could find a job that paid that was a good thing but in the past 30 or more years the currencies have really shifted with culture meaning relationship and lifestyle elevating in importance let's look a couple of examples of how these elements might interplay during a different stage of life early in my career I worked for Christine she was well renowned in our field and I respected her greatly at first our relationship was a match made in heaven I was eager to please and she liked the output but over time cracks appeared in our relationship her perfectionism created a culture of fear even newbie mistakes that I made she was harshly critical of it was just a matter of time before I noticed I was scanning the want ads on Sundays that's how we did it back then to find a different job in that situation that job meant my financial means in my early 20s it had a lot of meaning for me I was a drug and alcohol counselor and that mattered and the lifestyle it the stage of life I was in the problem was my relationship with Christine which became broken and fragmented that ultimately meant I had to leave look at one more example in mid-career I worked for an organization that profess to have very strong family values but when I came back from my first the birth of my first child the long work hours in flexibility around start and end times and a virtual desert of storytelling about parents that had succeeded there left me feeling very self-conscious and misfit my son's first illness illness required heartbreaking compromises to the kind of mother that I wanted to be I had felt very fit there before I was apparent and completely misfit culturally after that job was perfectly suited to my experience in my education I loved and respected my boss and my colleagues and the financial fit was very high but ultimately the culture of that organization did not match the kinds of needs that I had and what mattered to me at that stage of my life as a young mother think about your assessment of an organization from the outside as like a detective exercise it's a sleuth like effort to figure out can my gifts actually show up here pay attention to how they do things at that organization talk to everyone you can notice how they do things and if you think against those six elements your best would be activated their pay attention as if your life depended on it because after all the quality of your life actually does I continue to be amazed at how many people when I tell them what I'm working on with work fit are eager to tell me their story often of misfit but sometimes a fit I love hearing the success stories take John for example John was a professional athlete and he also worked in high tech in California imagine his delight when he was able to negotiate with his a way to flex his schedule so that he could train in the mornings and work in his field in the afternoons and evenings still supporting his family or take Joann as an example after 25 years in the field of accounting working for big firm she was laid off due to downsizing it was a devastating blow it precipitated a couple of months of painful self-reflection but ultimately Joann was able to find a job for a local nonprofit still in financial services but they had a mission that she could really get behind she did have to take a small cut in pay but it was the perfect career capping move for her here's the thing organizations are what they are and they're going to do what they do in fact most of them organically evolved over time what makes one company versus another a great place for you to work is all about the extent to which they facilitate you bringing your absolute best every day now imagine instead of hustling to prove to an employer that we're worthy that we elevate the importance of work fit so that we can thrive rather than just survive I'd invite you to think about then what would actually be possible if every worker from frontline to mid management to senior executive actually woke up every day loving their work as Khalil Gibran once said work is love made visible let's get to work you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 3,079

Rating: 4.7931032 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Business, Culture, Happiness, Psychology, Work

Id: aCZd3TFsnnc

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 06 2017