Feeling Boxed In With Your Present Job Or Position?

I can't tell you how many professionals I meet each week who openly share with me how unhappy they are with their career or their present place of employment.  It actually makes me sad, because life is short and we spend most of it at work, so we should enjoy what we are doing.  After all, there are only 168 hours in a week, of which the average American consume 112 of working and sleeping, leaving us with only 56 to enjoy.

I wake up each morning and know that the tasks I have in store for me are personally fulfilling.  Be it a speaking engagement, an employee mentoring session, an apartment association board meeting, a corporate financial meeting, conference planning, writing curriculum, completing expense reports, meeting with vendors, etc., I look forward to the days challenges.  Of course there are duties that are less pleasant, such as counseling or terminating an employee, but I still find reward in knowing that I am doing it correctly, professionally and with the best interest of both the employee and company in mind.

As professionals express their career woes to me, it often becomes apparent that in fact it is not their career or job duties they are are unhappy with, but instead a working relationship with a specific supervisor or colleague.  Being 49 years old (turning 50 this December - EEK!), I have had my fair share of experience with colleagues/supervisors and can certainly relate to the positive/negative dynamics they can bring to the work place.  However, over the years I have realized that I am 50+% of that dynamic and need to be able to recognize when I am being positive and when I am being a stubborn bitch, when I am being sensible or when I am merely wanting to win the fight.

One of my bosses post college was Cruella DeVille.  For some reason, her position as an Elementary School Principal gave her the right to treat adult professionals as children.  She would make teachers sit in the center of staff meetings on a kindergarten chair encircled by their colleagues, should they come 1 minute late or ill prepared without pen and paper.  While her expectations of timeliness and preparedness were admirable, she never recognized that embarrassing the employees that she personally hired and interviewed only caused the rest of the staff to question her hiring ability and lose respect for their fellow colleague.  NOTE TO PROFESSIONAL SELF:  don't publicly embarrass colleagues or employees.

One of my bosses was a certified martyr.  She worked harder and longer hours than anyone else in the company and made sure you were aware of her extreme sacrifice for success.  Oddly enough, I only found that my phone calls and emails were returned Monday through Thursday between the hours of 10:00 and 4:00 pm.  Additionally, in reviewing weekly corporate rankings, I consistently found our district to be in the bottom five.  For such a hard working woman, her efforts were certainly proving to be fruitless.  NOTE TO PROFESSIONAL SELF:  don't verbally express your work ethic, let it be noticed by your actions.

One of my bosses was justifiably paranoid.  An extremely talented woman who had proven herself year after year of having the "Midas Touch".  She had built a dedicated team of long-term talent that consistently exceeded expectations, unfortunately, her supervisor was a male chauvinist determined to build a boys club.  Each day was an emotional nightmare that she was unable to hide from her in-tune team.  NOTE TO PROFESSIONAL SELF:  know when to hold them and know when to fold them - and don't let "golden handcuffs" blur your judgment.

One of my bosses started out awesome, but ended up a Diva.  This guy had the ability to look at you with the sweetest of sweet smiles and make you feel like you were the best employee he ever could hope for.  I was blinded by his acknowledgment of my talent, and never realized how hard I was working to meet his unreasonable expectations.  Nor did I realize, that most of his demands were to further his career, completely unaware or uninterested of his employees' career goals.  NOTE TO PROFESSIONAL SELF:  know your employees, recognize their talents and sincerely work hard to promote them, because their promotion is a reflection on you.

From these four examples it is evident how a supervisor can definitely impact the positive or negative work experience.  Equally, so can you.  It is easy to get caught up in negative energy and focus on the bad and ignore the good.  It is easy to talk about the accounting department who consistently loses invoices, or the human resource department who slowly responds to termination requests, or the information technology department who can't seem to fix anything, or our maintenance teams who move to slow or our leasing teams who couldn't rent a life preserver to a drowning man.

But the fact of the matter is, you continue to choose to work with/for these incompetent idiots.  That means, you are either too lazy to pull your resume together, too frightened to leave, too insecure about your ability to achieve elsewhere, just love complaining or have built a mountain out of a mole hill.

I know this, because I was all of these things approximately three years ago.  It was actually my limo driver that slapped me into reality.  Having come in on a delayed flight out of Washington D.C., originally to arrive at 10:00 pm, instead arriving at 2:00 a.m., I got in the car and started bitching.  I complained about the company, my supervisor, my colleagues, the employees, etc., wrapping it up with, I am going to resign and move to Florida.  He responded with a deafening, "Whatever, you have been saying that for over ten years now".  And he was correct!  I had built a box with walls of excuses and sealed it with a lid of negative attitude.  It was not the company or the people around me preventing me from happiness, it was me.

The next morning the sun rose, I updated my resume and six weeks later moved to Florida.  But this time with a new philosophy, "I control my career happiness", even in a bad economy. And now, I LOVE MY LIFE in Florida as much as I originally loved my life in Chicago.

So, remember, life is short, stop bitching and get happy ... even if it means you have to move on!  You built the box you function within, you can modify it, move it or even tear it apart at any time.