When You Hate Your Job
- By Marcus Buckingham
- Published 08/14/2008
- Careers
- Unrated
Marcus Buckingham
In a world where efficiency and competency rule the workplace, where do personal strengths fit in?
It's a complex question, one that intrigued Cambridge-educated Marcus Buckingham so greatly, he set out to answer it by challenging years of social theory and utilizing his nearly two decades of research experience as a Sr. Researcher at The Gallup Organization to break through the preconceptions about achievement and get to the core of what drives success.
The result of his persistence, and arguably the definitive answer to the strengths question, can be found in Buckingham’s trio of best-selling books, First, Break All the Rules (coauthored with Curt Coffman, Simon & Schuster, 1999); Now, Discover Your Strengths (coauthored with Donald O. Clifton, The Free Press, 2001); and The One Thing You Need to Know (The Free Press, 2005), in which the author gives important insights to maximizing strengths, understanding the crucial differences between leadership and management, and fulfilling the quest for long-lasting personal success.
http://www.marcusbuckingham.com/index.php
A recent Oprah Winfrey show revealed that 84% of employees are unhappy at work. Career expert Marcus Buckingham shares how you can learn to love your job.
“What if you could wake up every day excited to go to work?” Oprah asked on a recent show. “Don’t waste another second of your life in a job you hate.”
Career Advice on the Oprah Winfrey Show
Oprah revealed that 84% of workers in the US are unhappy with their jobs. According to CareerBuilder.com, four out of five people aren’t excited to go to work, and many even hate their jobs.
If you hate your job, you take that negativity, frustration, and bitterness home with you – and you hurt the people you love. Hating your job is not only stressful, it’s physically and emotionally unhealthy.
Who Is Marcus Buckingham?
A career expert who works with Fortune 500 companies to make work better, Marcus Buckingham has a radical – yet simple – approach to jobs.
Buckingham focuses on people’s strengths, talents, and uniqueness.
“Our mission at The Marcus Buckingham Company is simple and critical: to help individuals express the best of themselves and make their greatest contribution possible- at work, at home and in life,” reads the company overview on the Marcus Buckingham website.
Several women appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show to explain why they hate their jobs. To summarize: they did participate in Buckingham's strengths coaching sessions, put his career advice to work, and no longer hate their jobs.
Buckingham’s Simple Secret to Loving Your Job
Focusing on your strengths is about contributing more to your company and figuring out a better choice for your career. Building on your professional strengths makes you a better, happier, more fulfilled employee.
How do you figure out what your strengths are? Focus on what makes you strong, special and unique. If you want to know what your strength is, pay attention to how you feel when you do an activity. If you feel invigorated, energized, and focused when you crunch numbers data or woo new clients, then those are your professional strengths.
Buckingham and Oprah both believe that we all have professional and personal callings. Our personalities and talents should drive our careers and jobs – or we’ll lose ourselves. Our real role on earth is to find out why we’re here.
Playing to Your Strengths at Work
You grow the most in the area where you already show natural talent or passion. Don’t ignore your weaknesses, but build on your strengths.
You don’t need to throw your career away when you hate your job. To learn to love your job, make a list of what you love doing. Make your own job description, contact people who are doing what you’d love to do – lawyers, teachers, writers – and figure out how to get there from where you are. You can change your attitude at work, or you can change your career.
“This moment is happening in your life so you can step up to it,” says Oprah. “It’s happening so you can deal with it.”
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