Moment 68 - Do This If You Don’t Like Your Job: Marcus Buckingham

00:02you um you talked about i think i don't know if this was before we start recording but this the the curse of you know i remember a conversation i had with a with a young lady who was a lawyer and um she was clearly dissatisfied in her job and it transpired that the reason she was a lawyer is because that's what she had been good at in terms of a levels then um university and also her mom and dad had said like that's a good job and she would she was almost on the verge of a midlife crisis when she spoke to me because she had she was so good at this thing that it kind of dragged her off into the future and she she was now that that was her identity so many people listening to this now will resonate with that in various ways they would have become a banker because their parents were bankers and they were really good at maths what have you found out about those people their satisfaction and really what they should be doing i guess is there something else they should be doing instead is should we be dragged by our our competence in something Well, no, as we talked about before, competence can be a devilish curse because you can get the A's and hate the work.

01:08You can get high performance, but actually hate the activities. For anyone, if they want a really great career, the why is important. To think about, do you really believe in the purpose of what you're doing? That's important, no question. The who is important, no question. If you hate the people you're working with, that's always a bit of a problem. but the what trumps the who and the why in the end like what are you actually filling your days with so if your friend is a lawyer it's like which like give me a day talk to me about a day what's the day look like what are you doing at 10 o'clock on a monday morning what are you doing at 3 p.m on a thursday afternoon that's the what what are the actual activities themselves so if anyone what always trumps the who and the why which is why we've got nurses and teachers who are so disengaged they believe in the why they really love the people on their shift but the day-to-day reality of what they're doing doesn't fit them. No one's paying attention to it. There's no manager helping them. There's no teams, all the stuff we talked about before that goes, is anyone paying attention to what I have to do every day and whether or not it fits me, which bits do, which

02:08bits don't, how do I lean into one another? What does collaborate? All that stuff is missing. So the why is there, the who is there, the what is wrong. So if I say lawyer, that could be an entirely different experience for, you know, everybody that's a lawyer. So one lawyer could be doing a completely different thing, different working hours, work from home, work in a great team with, you know, weekly check-ins. And another lawyer, although it's the same job title, could be in an awful corporate office, two hour commute every day on their own in a tiny cubicle.

02:38Yes. So to anyone watching or listening, the first thing to do is assess like where are you at, which really means how much love do you have in a week? Do you have a lot? Do you have a loveless job? How would you do that? Well, the simplest way to do it is just take a blank pad around with you for a week, draw a line down the middle of it, put loved it at the top of one column and loathed it at the top of the other. And this is easy to do. Most people have never done this. And all you're going to do is you're going to imagine that your day is made up of many, many different threads.

03:13There's a fabric of a workday, which is a bit like a tapestry on a wall. When you're far away, it looks like just a picture. But when you get close, there's many, many, many thousands of threads. Well, the same is true of any day. You've got a thousand different activities, moments, situations, context, like just stuff just hits you. Like, and it's little baby, five minutes, two minutes, seven minutes, five minutes, two minutes, seven minutes. But these are threads.

03:31Some of them are white, some of them are black, some of them are gray, some are green. They lift you up a little, they're down a little, but some of them are red. So in the book here, I talk about red threads, activities that when you're doing them, all that stuff we talked about before, the flow, the energy, the instinct of volunteering, the I'm in my essence, the feeling of innate mastery, those moments. They could be like two minutes here, seven minutes here, 10 minutes, but they're red threads. And your life is sort of putting on a show for you every day going, what about this thread? What about that thread? What about this thread? What about that thread?

04:00And the most successful people in any job, of course, they identify their red threads really well. And then they weave them into contribution. Now we can talk more about how they do that, but it starts by going, take a black pad around with you. Think about the clues to your red threads. what are you instinctively volunteer for while you're doing something does time fly by when you're done with it do you feel sort of in a sense of mastery a sense of being up not down and then take it around with you for a week and anytime you find anything that fits those criteria scribble it down and anytime you find the inverse before you're doing something you try to procrastinate or hand it off to the new guy because it'll be developmental you know or you're doing it and the time drags on like a snail and it's like you thought you'd be doing it for an hour but you look up, it's five minutes.

04:46And we've all got stuff like that. It's like, ah. And time and love have a weird relationship. You know, it's like when you're with someone that you love, that whole day goes by in 15 minutes. And yet before you're with them, like time just stretches out and you're with them and whoa. Same is true with an activity that you love. If you don't love it, you keep trying to do this. And then when you're doing it, it's like, how's it this long? Scribble it down in the loader.

05:10And so get to the end of one week, just one regular week and see what's in the love. column and what's in the loved it column. If there's nothing in the loved it column, well, then you have to stop and do it again next week and pay attention. And if you get no red threads two weeks in a row, and this is really easy to do. No one's ever told people to do it, but it's really easy to do. You're two weeks in a row of no red threads. Then you've got a loveless job. And the bad trade for anybody is somebody going, well, my job doesn't have to love me back. I'm making the money. I'll just stick it out. I'll pay my dues or I'll earn the money for three, four, five years. Then I'll, you know, that five years, then I'll, as though you emerge the same person after five years of loveless work. You don't. You are psychologically damaged. You're a different person. After five years of loveless work, you're damaged. And the people weirdly who feel it the most are the people you're supposedly supporting at home.

06:08You think the people around the dinner table don't know that you come back every day on your loved it, loathed it list, although they wouldn't say it this way, there's nothing on the loved it column. They know, they can feel it. People often worry about, don't bring your personal stuff to work. It's way more powerful the other way. People bring their work, their emptiness, their alienation at work back home. So if you two weeks in a row, nothing, then you have to stop and you have to, in a sense, apply the loved it, loathed it to the rest of your life.

06:36Just take that around and see whether you can find any red threads anywhere in your hobbies, as a mother, as a father, as a friend, in your community, in your faith, I don't know, write one love note to yourself, which is simply, I love it when, and then finish the sentence. And the thing after the word when has to be a verb that you're doing, not I love it when people praise me or something. I love it when I what? Just write one sentence. It's amazing, Steve, how many people, adults can't be articulate about describing something that they love? I know it sounds really weird, but you ask people, we've done this so many times, you ask people, you know, tell me what you love or tell me what your strengths are. Oh, I love people. Which people?

07:21What are you doing with the people? Give me a verb. Any verb will do. Let's start with a verb. But we've trained people so long to be divorced from their own emotion or believing that basically their emotion could be rewired if they just work at it and show enough grit or whatever. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's real. You and your emotional reaction to things is real. So I would say to people, first of all, do that, love it, loathe it. And then try to write one, maybe even two. Love it. It's a silly word, but I love note to yourself. I love it when I do what? I love it when I do what? What many people will actually find is that if you hate lawyering, it might well be that you're the wrong kind of lawyer. It might not be that you have to ditch your degree. It might be that you can start to rewire or re-sew, reweave your job so that it has more red threads in it. So if you do that for a week and you find there are a couple of things on there, actually, there are a couple of love dits. There are a couple of specific things where I'm like, Ooh, Ooh. Well, when you have that, first of all, pay attention to it. Things that are not paid attention to, they wither. So every day, wake up. It's the advice I would give you,

08:31or you might give me. Every day, wake up and just try to, rather than what I have to get through, what's the to-do list I have to get through? Why don't you wake up every day? Yeah, you may have a to-do list, but wake up every day and go, what red threads can I weave today? Because they're going to be not 75,000, but there might be five. What are the five? Start there. And then over time, what you'll find is you can start to maybe go, well, next week, actually, I'm going to pick one day, it's going to be all red. It's going to be all red one day. Then you might go, because people start to lean into it, they might go, well, could you actually do more of that for this client and this client and this client? And you're, and then maybe you learn a competency, like somebody who's really good at creating emails that people open. You might go, Eloqua, we'll teach you Eloqua.

09:11We'll teach you that competency because you've got something that you seem to be able to write text that people actually open. That's kind of interesting. I know that's not in your job description, but, but you seem to keep doing it. And so we'll teach you now a new competency, a new software program. And lo and behold, you start doing that over time and you get to the place where the most successful people get to, where we look at the most successful people and we go, how'd they find that job? Seems to fit them so perfectly. How'd they find that job?

09:41And of course they know they didn't find it. That's totally the wrong verb. They made it. they took their red to use that metaphor that they took their red threads seriously and then they and they didn't imagine someone could read their mind and tell them what their red threads are because you only you know what these things little moments situations context are that really lift you up but then they took them seriously and and wove them ever more deeply into the fabric of what they do now sometimes that might mean stop being a lawyer you know what you've worked you tried this now for six months and there's nothing there for you. Okay. Well then that's really tricky. Now you have to change your entire focus and hopefully your loves will be your guide.

10:23But we actually know over here, I don't know the number for the UK, but 73% of Americans say that they have the freedom to maneuver their job to fit themselves better. That's a lot of people. And yet only 18% of us do. Because if you ask people, do you have a chance to use your strengths every day that number is 18 so you got 73 80 in psychology we call that an attitude behavior consistency problem i know i can do it i don't so that's people are watching like i'm in the wrong job maybe maybe you're one of the 27 you're in the wrong job all right before you get there though try to i pick out your red threads anywhere and no one can do it but you that's the thing that it's like you want to go, hey, nine-year-old, let's start you on this life skill early.

11:09Because even at nine, you know better than all your teachers do about this part anyway, about the red threads part. And that way, when you wake up, you know, your mom's going, be a dentist, be a dentist, be a dentist. And you're like, mom, there's a whole language actually here that talks about dentistry and whether I love it or not. And I'll keep walking on down that path, but I'm actually supposed to look really carefully about which bits of any job really lift me up and give me a sense of mastery.

11:35Kids have more of a language, as I say in the book, they have more of a language about geometry than they do about this thing I was just talking about. So your parents are so powerful and they're so scared and they want you to not be a layabout and they want you to be able to get a job and they're so scared for you. But what they've not done, and even the best teachers are sort of scared for you. Come on, Stephen. And no one really goes, wait a minute, how do you make sense of your own emotion in your own life?

12:04What do you lean into? What do you not lean into? What are the words for that? Is there any detail around that? Or what do you like about people? What do you like doing with the people? You imagine how early you could start with that. And that wouldn't mean that it's Pollyanna. Like we're still going to put people in the wrong jobs. I built a company that was focused entirely on people's strengths. And I still put people in the wrong job because people are super complicated.

12:23But at least we'd have a framework and a set of shared understandings about what we were even trying to do. I don't know. I think there's, for all of us, there's stuff we can do. You don't have to change the company. You don't have to change all the HR policies. You could, any one of us could start right now to do what the most successful people do in terms of weaving red threads into their work.