In society today, the work we do and the careers we pursue are central to our identity as individuals. When you are introduced to someone at a cocktail reception and they ask, “So what do you do?” it is assumed that they want to know about your work, not your family life or your hobbies.

But it is only in the past 200 years that this view of work as a key component of self-identity has become the norm. In the nineteenth century and earlier, people worked as a means of surviving, often in tedious activities such as farming or manufacturing. It was the privilege of the wealthy few to not have a job and to have time for enjoyable leisure activities.

Gradually, as society became wealthier and as technology allowed many basic jobs to be automated, the number of different jobs and careers multiplied. Today, work is at the center of our self-identity, and this means we put a great deal of effort into making sure we are doing worthwhile work. In Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs, the top of the hierarchy is self-actualization, and for people in developed countries with stable jobs, this notion that we should be seeking self-actualizing, or intrinsically motivating, work is a powerful driver.

In this chapter, we therefore examine a range of tools and techniques that you can use to help make your current work more enjoyable and to help you shape your future work and long-term career in a self-actualizing way.

First, we discuss the identity transition process (#20) to help you shift your career – especially if you are midcareer – in a direction that gives you greater satisfaction. We then describe three tools to help you assess and shape your choice of work, whatever stage you're at in your career: Finding a role that provides meaning and pleasure and plays to your strengths (#21), crafting an existing job so that it better suits your strengths and aspirations (#22), and understanding and enhancing the attributes that allow you to thrive at work (#23).

We then discuss the broader issues of work–life balance (#24), and we finish by looking at the major “career derailers” that often prevent people from realizing their ambitions (#25).

Although we fully endorse the idea that everyone should seek to get the most out of their work, one downside to this link between work and self-identity is that we often set unreasonably high expectations for ourselves. Some people seem to have a “calling” in life – a career that perfectly fits their skills and motivations – but that is quite rare. For most people, the challenge of finding interesting and enjoyable work is a never-ending pursuit. This underlines the importance of the techniques described here to help you periodically revisit the nature of the work you are doing and the future career choices you should be making.

20. Find a Career That Suits Who You Are (Ibarra's Identify Transition Process)

Although a few people are lucky enough to have a clear calling, the majority of us don't know what direction to head in as we enter the world of work. And once we have made our initial choices, we find it hard to step back or to reevaluate our options. The net result is that many people end up in careers that don't suit who they are. This leads them to perform in a mediocre way and leaves them feeling unfulfilled by their work.

If you have yet to start work, it's important to take career advice and use appropriate psychometric tests to identify the types of job you naturally gravitate to. And if you're early in your career, it's often easy to reflect on what interests you and follow well-established development paths that move you to the next natural career stage.

The problem is that people often reach a stage where they've been successful, where they've built strong skills, qualifications, and experience in a particular field, and where they have good salaries that reflect this. However, they feel like “birds in a gilded cage” – trapped in a good situation but not feeling fulfilled. It can be tempting to jump into an entirely different career, but we may find that this new career suits us no better than the one we've left behind.

This is where Herminia Ibarra's identity transition process is useful. She argues that our working identities are not fixed – they are made up of the many possible things that we could do, the many different people we could know and interact with, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. So, if we end up at a point where we are not satisfied with our career direction, we should take our time to try out – on a small scale – new types of work and new networks of people until we find what really suits who we are. Only then should we transition to that career.

To use the identity transition process (Figure 4.1), start off by asking, “Who might I become?” and from this, brainstorm interesting possibilities.

Choose the most exciting of these options, and then set up “crafting experiments” where you try out new types of work and new roles on a small scale to see whether they suit you. Identify people who are the gatekeepers to this type of work, find role models who do it well, and identify the professional and peer networks that support it. Talk to these people to understand the day-to-day reality of the work and the qualifications and skills you need to succeed in it. Finally, with this new knowledge, think about the stories you tell yourself about yourself, and reflect on whether these have changed.

Take your time trying out these new types of work, and “linger between these identities.” Try the new identities on, experience their upsides and downsides, and feel which of them suit you best.

Then reflect on what this tells you about yourself. Based on what you've learned, this may be the time to restart the cycle and think about and explore other possibilities.

Only when you find a career that suits you should you give up your current role and move into it.

21. Find a Role That Provides Meaning and Pleasure and Fully Uses Your Strengths (The MPS Process)

Once you're in the right type of career, you need to find a specific role that builds on your talents and stretches you – in a good way. One useful way of doing this is to use the MPS process, developed by Harvard professor Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar. MPS stands for three important questions: (1) What gives me meaning? (2) What gives me pleasure? and (3) What uses my strengths?

To explore meaning, you can start by exploring your workplace values – the ways of working that you think are important for doing a good job (use the URL below to find out more about this). Ask yourself what roles and activities best fit with these values. Then, reflect on things that you have done that gave you the greatest sense of meaning. List these, and identify common factors.

Exploring pleasure is easy. Simply list the things you enjoy – hobbies, interests, and anything that brings you joy and contentment, and again, identify common factors. We looked at strengths as part of the personal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis (#2).

Next, look for areas of overlap among your three lists to identify types of work that you find meaningful and enjoyable and that use your strengths. If some of these are obvious, then that's fantastic! However, if it's harder to find these things, explore areas where two of these areas overlap as well.

Finally, think about how you can move your career toward doing these types of work. We'll look how you can do this next by looking at job crafting.

22. Shape Your Role to Suit Your Strengths and Aspirations (Job Crafting)

Job crafting involves making subtle changes to the way that you do your job so that your work fits your strengths and gives you the emotional reward and human connection you want.

This sounds difficult. We have objectives we need to achieve and expectations from those around us, all of which limit our freedom to make changes. However, there are usually things you can work on to tweak or “craft” your job so that you are still delivering on all your objectives but doing so in a way that brings you greater meaning and intrinsic satisfaction. There are four main ways that Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton, who first discussed job crafting, say you can do this:

1. By subtly changing the activities you do – Your job description will list things you need to do, and you need to do these well. But there is often scope for changing how you do them. By taking initiative and applying your own personal talents to your work, you can often lift the quality and impact to a whole new level.
2. By changing the number of activities you do – You might try to increase your workload in an area you enjoy, perhaps by helping colleagues. If you're overloaded in other areas, you may be able to negotiate with your boss to do fewer of these things or get extra help.
3. By increasing human contact, or changing the people you interact with – Wrzesniewski and Dutton talk about hospital cleaners, who can either put their heads down and work without talking to anyone, or choose to be positive and helpful and fit their work around ward routines. The latter group contribute more to the successful running of a ward and get a lot more out of their jobs too.
4. By changing how you see the job – If hospital cleaners see their job as “just cleaning,” they'll be tempted to cut corners and do the minimum. If they see their work as an important part of helping patients get better, it brings real meaning to what they do, and they will approach their work in a more thorough, careful way.

These changes are all quite small, but they can make a big difference to your job satisfaction and to your success. What's more, you usually don't need permission for such changes – you just get on and make them.

23. Thrive at Work (The GREAT DREAM Model)

We've looked at how you can navigate into and craft a role that suits who you are. A final step in flourishing in the workplace is to find ways to enrich the day-to-day work you do, and this is where the GREAT DREAM model can help. Developed by Vanessa King in her book 10 Keys to Happier Living, GREAT DREAM stands for 10 key things that help people find happiness in their everyday lives, including at work:

1. Giving (G) – Whether it's complimenting a coworker who's done a good job, buying cookies for your team, or helping someone who's struggling, being kind to others can help us enjoy work too. Partly, this is practical – our relationships improve, and people respond thoughtfully to us as a consequence. However, we're also “wired” to give – being generous releases feel-good neurotransmitters into our brain, helping us feel happier and less stressed.
2. Relating (R) – We define ourselves in large part through the people we know and interact with, and strong personal relationships are crucially important for our sense of happiness and well-being at work. We look at what you can do to build great relationships at work in #63.
3. Exercising (E) – We all know that we need to exercise for health reasons. However, regular exercise helps us deal with stress better, and it promotes neuroplasticity – helping our brains stay healthy, adaptable, and sharp as we age. The link below will help you find ways to build exercise into a busy schedule.
4. Awareness (A) – In this context, awareness means mindfulness, and we'll touch on aspects of this in #50 when we look at mindful listening. Mindfulness can help you experience life more intensely at the same time that you manage stress better. Again, you can find out more about it using the link below.
5. Trying out (T) – This is about being curious and creative and trying new things. We all love to learn and grow as individuals, and we need to make sure that there are plenty of opportunities to do this in our work.
6. Direction (D) – We saw the importance of personal goals in #3. Direction comes from having clear goals, pursued in an open, optimistic frame of mind.
7. Resiliency (R) – A key part of being happy at work is resiliency (#14) – being able to “bounce back” quickly and effectively from the setbacks we inevitably encounter, rather than dwelling on them.
8. Emotions (E) – As we've already seen, emotions really matter at work. If we and people around us behave in a positive, emotionally intelligent (#53) way, we can all be so much happier, more creative, and more successful in our work.
9. Acceptance (A) – This is about being as compassionate to ourselves as we are to our closest friends. A lot of this comes down to capitalizing on our own strengths (#2) and listening to our own thoughts and challenging them when our self-judgments are harsh and unhelpful (#6).
10. Meaning (M) – We all crave some sort of meaning in our lives, a sense that our existence or our work is linked to a higher purpose (see #21). Sometimes we get this meaning through our religion or through being part of a thriving local community. But we can also get it through work. Many businesses serve an important or noble purpose in society, and if this purpose is one you can relate to, you will typically be more fulfilled and effective.

The 10 elements of GREAT DREAM matter to varying degrees to different people. So go through each of the headings. Think about how much each element matters to you, and brainstorm how you can bring more of this into your daily life. For example, if your relationship with your children gives you a lot of pleasure, put photos of them on your desk. If personal relationships are important for you, invite coworkers to lunch.

Add these changes to your action program (#10.) Even small tweaks can make a huge difference to your sense of happiness and well-being.

Source: Adapted from King 2016. Reproduced with permission of Headline Publishing.

24. Find the Work–Life Balance That's Best for You (The Wheel of Life®)

In this chapter, we've looked at how you can navigate your way into a role that suits you, and we've seen how to shape it so that you can truly flourish at work. But what about life outside work? We've all heard about the spectacularly successful CEO who missed seeing his children grow up or the hard-working production manager who dropped dead after a heart attack at 48 years of age.

The wheel of life is a useful tool to help you find the right balance between your work and personal lives and was developed by Paul J. Meyer. It helps you explore what's important in your life and think about how much satisfaction you're experiencing in each area.

To draw a wheel of life (Figure 4.2), start by downloading the template or using the interactive tool you'll find at the URL below. Then take these steps:

1. Brainstorm the areas of life that are important to you. These could be the roles you want to play, such as being a good partner, parent, friend, or boss, or they could be different areas of life, such as career, self-development, or artistic expression. Identify the most important of these, and label the spokes of your wheel with them.
2. Plot points on each spoke showing where each would be in your ideal life, and join these up to show its “shape.” These should not all be at the maximum level – some things will always matter to you more than others. (In Figure 4.2, the black line shows this ideal shape for the person drawing the wheel.)
3. Plot points on each spoke for where things are now, and join these points up. This shows the shape of your current life. (This is shown by the dotted line in the example in Figure 4.2.)
4. The gaps between your “current” and “ideal” lives are where you need to take action. Where specific areas are getting less attention than you'd ideally want, plan how you'll change this. Equally, where you're putting in more effort than you want, think about how to reduce your effort in those areas. Add these points to your action program (#10).

25. Understand the Types of Behavior That Can Derail Your Career (Hogan Management Derailment)

We have discussed various ways of identifying and building on your strengths as a way of making work more fulfilling. But this approach comes with a warning: Things that appear to be strengths in the short term can become weaknesses in the long term when taken too far and can result in career derailment. This happens more often than you might think.

Career derailment has been studied for many years by psychologists and doctors Robert and Joyce Hogan. Look through the areas below for strengths that you might have; then think about and guard against the associated weaknesses – they can be career killers:

• Excitability – People strong on excitability have lots of energy and enthusiasm, but, under pressure, they can be moody, unpredictable, and easily annoyed. It can be hard to work with them because you never know what to expect.
• Skepticism – Skeptical people are often smart and politically astute, but they can look too hard for deceit or betrayal, and they can become mistrustful and argumentative when under stress. Others can find them difficult and can be afraid of retaliation if they say something “wrong.”
• Cautiousness – These people can be a “safe pair of hands,” but they can also be resistant to change and risk, and others may see them as unassertive, slow, and pessimistic. They can slow an organization down and cause it to miss opportunities.
• Reservedness – People who are reserved can often be tough and determined under pressure, but they are often poor listeners and they can become uncommunicative as stress develops. People who work with them can see them as uncaring, inconsiderate, and self-centered.
• Leisureliness – Leisurely people are easy to get along with, and they seem to work cooperatively and productively. However, they can be stubborn, they can procrastinate, and they can be resentful toward others. People who work with them may find them passive-aggressive and mean.
• Boldness – These people are full of self-confidence. However, they often focus on the positives and ignore the negatives, and they may blame others for their own failings. People who work with them can see such people as opinionated and demanding when it comes to decision making.
• Mischievousness – These people can be bright, charming risk takers, but they can be dishonest, ignore rules, exploit others, and focus on short-term gains despite long-term pain. All of this can cause huge damage.
• Colorfulness – People who score high on this dimension are entertaining, engaging, and well-liked. However, they can be easily distracted, and their work is often disorganized. All of this can make them difficult to work with.
• Imaginativeness – Imaginative people think creatively and can adopt unique perspectives on issues and problems. Some of their ideas are brilliant, but others are fanciful. Such people often lack common sense and make poor decisions.
• Diligence – Conscientiousness, reliability, and attention to detail are key characteristics of diligent people. However, they expect others to be as hardworking as they are. They often struggle with delegation, and people who work with them can feel disenchanted because their work is always being redone.
• Dutifulness – These people are considerate, easy to deal with, and great team players. However, they can also be “people pleasers” who work for approval and hold back on expressing contrary opinions. You can't depend on them for critical thinking because they may just accept and go along with bad ideas.

Hogan and Hogan have compiled a test – sometimes known as the “dark side test” – that helps you spot these problems and neutralize them before they run amok. You can find out more about this using the URL below.

Source: Adapted from Hogan, Hogan, and Kaiser 2011. Reproduced with permission of the American Psychological Association.

Other Techniques for Managing Your Career

The tools covered in this chapter and recommended in our survey are good, classic approaches to career development. It's also worth exploring the ideas of Marcus Buckingham and Marshall Goldsmith. Learn more at http://mnd.tools/c4c.