[0:00]

So, for me, one of the things that doesn’t bring me accomplishment at work is answering emails. That could take up so much of my time. But at the end of day, if I take 2-3 hours answering emails, I don’t really feel like I’ve accomplished much. I’ve answered a few people’s questions, but I just don’t feel like I moved the needle that day. And so, for me, I have to have a job that’s more than just answering emails because that’s not good enough.

[Intro]

Hello, and welcome to The Career Shake Up Podcast. I’m your host, Kristin Szalajko. I’m a certified professional career coach who specializes in career exploration. I believe everyone deserves a meaningful career they love. I know it can be hard to find that career and that’s why I’m here. I’ve developed an easy formula to help you identify by the right career path for you. Let’s shake up the way you view your career. I’m going to challenge you to look at careers in a brand-new way. Whether you’re stuck in a job you don’t like or just starting out on your path, my goal is to empower you to take control of your career.

[01:03]

Hi, welcome back. Alright, I hope you’re having a good week – so far. Today, we are going to jump into engagement. It’s the first of the six key elements. I introduced these back in episode three. If you haven’t listened to that, go ahead, and take a quick listen. It’ll just kind of explain to you what these elements are, what I’m talking about, and why I’m talking about these. It’s really critical to understand how they all work together. So, if you haven’t already, again, just go back. It’s episode three.

Today we’re going to talk about engagement. It’s the first of the key elements and it’s kind of the most obvious, but in a way it’s a lot more…I don’t want to say complex, but there’s a lot more to it than just simple interest in a topic.

When I say you need to find a job that’s engaging, the first thing that comes to people’s minds is typically like, oh, I have to like that topic. Well, yes, you do. I want you to like that. But having an interest in a topic is not good enough. Right? It’s a starting point, but it’s not an ending point.

So, take for example, you’re really into video games. That’s awesome. That’s a good starting point. But you could get a job in a video game industry. But if you have the wrong job, video game industry isn’t enough to hold your interest. So, for example, you could have a job in the video game industry as a graphic designer or as an IT repair person. Sorry, I don’t know the title for that. You could also be a marketing manager. You could be an accountant. So, there’s lots of different jobs you can have within the video game industry. But that doesn’t mean that each one of those would be a great fit for you. Just because the topic is video games. Video game industry isn’t enough to hold your interest. It’s not enough to keep you happy. There’s more to it, right?

Like, let’s say you’re really into computers. You’re considering IT, but you don’t necessarily like people. So, the fact that you have an interest in IT doesn’t exactly mean you should probably go into the customer service side of it. I’ll give you an example.

My laptop recently broke. My three year old decided to crack the screen, which was kind of frustrating. So, you have to make an appointment at Best Buy to go in and get your computer fixed. So, I make my appointment, I go in and I’m greeted by the guy at Best Buy. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t say Hi. He just gets straight to the point. Just kind of looks at me very melancholy. “Do you have an appointment?” “What’s your name?” “What’s the problem?” You know, like, no happiness, no bitterness. You could just tell. You could see it in his face. You can tell in his voice. He hates his job. He does not want to be here.

And I’m waiting for him to type a bunch of stuff at the computer to start my order, and one of his coworkers comes by and starts talking to him and the coworkers kind of asking him about another customer, like what that customer’s issue is. And of course, they’re talking tech, so I don’t really understand what he means, but he’s explaining to his coworker what the customer’s problem is. And he shakes his head and he’s like, well, the customer thinks it’s one thing, but there’s no way it could be that thing because that just can’t happen. And he’s annoyed by the customer. Right? And I’m sure every It guy feels that way, like, did you turn it off and on again? And I’m sure they all roll their eyes at us.

But, if you don’t like working with customers, if you don’t like working with people who don’t understand IT, being at a customer service desk doesn’t make sense, right? So, there’s more to this interest. Obviously, this guy is super smart and understands computers. You could tell by the way he was talking, but that interest wasn’t enough to make his current job good enough. So hopefully that makes sense, right? 1

[05:07]

So, interest is kind of the first step, though. You obviously have to be interested in the topic. You just need to know  can this job keep my attention? Am I going to be bored in the first five minutes? Then you probably don’t have enough interest in this job, right? You just need to be able to keep your attention.

Another part to engagement…So, there’s actually quite a few mini elements, if you will, in engagement. So, the next one is accomplishment. You want to have this pride and this ability to complete something. Now, everyone’s level of accomplishment and what they need will vary. So, you need to just kind of ask yourself, what is it I’m really looking for? But let’s take you exactly if you’re a factory worker and you’re working on the line, right, you’re an auto manufacturer, you’re helping build cars, and now it’s probably all computerized and done by machine, but back in the day, you stood in the factory line, you screwed in one particular screw and then it went on. And then you screwed in one particular screw and then it went on, right? And you don’t really feel at the end of the day like you accomplished much in the grand… You know, you did contribute to the overall goal of building a car, but you don’t really see much of your accomplishment in that factory line work.

Maybe you’re okay with that, but maybe you want more control over the type of completion you have. And so, do you want to feel like you’re completing something every day? Do you want to feel like every few weeks you’ve completed a project? Every quarter? Once a year you work on this really huge project that took forever, but at the end of the year, you did it. You accomplished something. Again, there’s no right or wrong for what your accomplishment looks like, how much you need, so long as you find something that makes you feel like you have a sense of accomplishment you’re comfortable with.

So, for me, one of the things that doesn’t bring me accomplishment at work is answering emails. That could take up so much of my time. But at the end of the day, if I take 2-3 hours answering emails, I don’t really feel like I’ve accomplished much. I’ve answered a few people’s questions, but I just don’t feel like I moved the needle that day. And so, for me, I have to have a job that’s more than just answering emails, because that’s not good enough. So, consider that.

[07:29]

The next one is control over your work. How much, say do you have in what you do? And how much say do you want to have in what you do?  One way to think of that is management. Do you have micromanagement? Some bosses just give you step by step every single thing you have to do. And quite frankly, some people like that. I’ve worked with people that I think need to be and/or want to be micromanaged. They want to just show up and have someone tell them exactly what to do. Again, no right or wrong. If that’s what you want, that’s awesome. But if that’s not what you want, and you want to be in a place where you have the ability to make choices, you have the ability to problem solve.

Customer service is a really great example there, right. That could go two ways. You could work for a telemarketer who has a script you have to follow, or those are really large conglomerates. I’m thinking like – your cable company, when you call in, they seem to have this script that they follow. So you’re telling them what’s wrong and they’re just asking you this, like, pre-rehearsed questions to get the answer, and it’s really frustrating. Or you have customer service..some companies, their customer service is unbelievable. It’s so good! When you call in with a question, that person has a freedom to ask you the details, to find out what you need and to, you know, adjust and adapt to that customer. And so how much control of your work do you need? Right?

In my day job, I don’t have to report to someone really much at all because I work remote. I’m in Utah, my company is actually in Florida, and so I check in with my boss once a week we have a call just to kind to see how things are going, if I need anything, if maybe I’m slow and I could help pick up and help other departments, that sort of thing. But other than that, for the most part, I just do my job. Nobody checks in, I don’t have to get approvals. I have control and full ability to do my job in the way I see it. I can do it in the order I want, I can do it how I want, I can work on the project I want at the time I want. I have a lot of control over what I’m doing, which is part of the reason it’s so engaging.

[09:40]

So again, remember, engagement is not just interest, but there’s all these other elements to engagement. Another part of engagement is “can it hold your attention?.” Again, not every job is perfect, right? And not all tasks within that job you may love. But if the main majority of your job can hold your attention, then it’s probably pretty engaging. If you find yourself being distracted a lot and then it’s probably not an engaging job, right?

So, for the most part, I really like my job. But the one thing I hate doing that I have to do, it’s just an essential part to my job is writing letters. I constantly have to write letters to tenants, and I hate letter writing, to be honest. It’s just not something I love. I even have a form letter. It’s really not complicated, it doesn’t take me that much time, but I will put it off until I absolutely have to do it. So, if I get it in at the beginning of the day, I’m like, I’m not going to do it until the end of the day. Or I’ll write one paragraph and then stop working on it and go do something else. And then come back to it and do like two sentences and come back to it. Which is obviously not efficient, but I just hate it. So, because it’s only a small part of my job, I can handle it, right? But if my entire job was nothing but letter writing and it can’t hold my attention, then obviously it’s not right job for me. 1

So, I kind of mentioned this before, and I talked about control but – freedom. How much freedom do you have to decide on what you work on? Look, some people honestly would panic and maybe stress a little if they showed up to work and the boss is like, yes, have a bunch of issues. Could you just pick one and fix it? Like, that would just send them into an anxious tizzy. And again, that’s okay, right? We’re all different. But if that’s you, then recognize that and recognize you want a little more structure at work.

Maybe you need some clarity. That’s probably another key to engagement, is do you have a clear task with a defined start and end point? Do you know exactly what it is that’s expected of you? Do you know when that task has started and when that task has ended? That can really bring a lot of happiness into your engagement, right? Just knowing I have a purpose. I have a clear goal and a clear objective.

[11:53]

Another part of engagement, and this one to me is big, is variety. You want a job that’s going to challenge and stimulate you and this varies person to person, right? But do you want every single day to look different? Do you want every quarter to look different? Do you just want each project to be different? Maybe think of marketing. If you’re working in a marketing firm you’ve got a bunch of different clients and so you’re jumping from one project to the next, one topic to the next, which may be to you is enough variety. Or maybe you are working in-house and so the topic never changes but you have the ability to create different campaigns and so that’s how you’re getting your variety. It’s not in the different clients but we ran this campaign for three months and now we’re going to run another campaign and that’s enough variety for you. But your day-to-day tends to look the same.

So how much variety do you need? Ask yourself that.

And the last part of what engagement is just sort of losing track of time. Like I said, I hate letter writing. That certainly does not hold my attention and I can’t lose track of time but there are those tasks that I could do for a really long time that hold my attention. I review legal documents. It’s part of my job and so I actually could sit down and review an entire legal document for a long time. When I get a new bankruptcy in…I deal with really complex – well, not all of them, but a lot of them are complex chapter eleven cases, if you know what that means. And so, there’s a lot of documents I’m talking, you know, 40 to 80 documents when a lawsuit, or bankruptcy is very first filed. So, documents are really lengthy, like 40 to 80 pages. Not all of them, but some, right? So, it’s a lot of reading and a lot of fact checking and that sort of thing. Honestly, I like it. It’s a task I can do for quite a long time without getting distracted. I really get into this flow and I’m focusing on what I’m doing and I enjoy it.

Think about video games. You could spend an hour playing a video game and the hour flies by. Or you could spend an hour making phone calls. And if you’re like me, you hate phone calls, and that hour feels like eternity. I get social anxiety, and so the idea of making a phone call kind of stresses me out. And so that would be torture.

So those are the things that engagement are: interest, accomplishment, control over your work, it holds your attention, gives you freedom, clarity, variety, and losing track of time.

[14:25]

Okay, so let’s talk about what engagement is not. Engagement is not perfection. This is what I mean by that. If you sometimes you think, oh, I love this job. I’m so into it, and every part of this job is so awesome. And just like I just talked about with being a paralegal, I really do enjoy being a paralegal, but there are parts of my job that I don’t love. But every job is like that. Every job is like that. There’s just some certain tasks you’re not going to love. But life doesn’t need to be perfect roses all the time, right? Neither does your job.

Well, most of us know it’s common knowledge that perfectionism is not healthy. Striving to be good is healthy; but perfectionism is actually just a flaw that gets in the way of everything. It stops us from doing most things because we think if it’s not perfect, I’m not going to do it. Right? So, it’s not really like, sometimes we use perfectionism as, like a bragging point. Like, I’m a perfectionist. I would argue that’s not a good thing to be. It really gets in the way. Right? Striving to do good work and to move forward, that is a good thing. But so, I don’t want you to think that every job needs to be completely perfect because I don’t want you to stop yourself and get in your own way and say, like, well, I can’t take that job because not every part of it is perfect.

Look, there’s no job on this planet that’s going to be 100% perfect. That’s how life is, right? You can have a great life. Sometimes you just got to fill up the gas tank and pay your bills, which are not exciting, but they’re just not things you can avoid. And that’s how our job is also. Another part of engagement. And what it’s not is easy. Things that are easy tend to become boring and there’s no growth. And when we’re not growing, we’re getting stagnant and life becomes stale. Right? And so part of engagement sometimes is doing challenging, hard things. And so that’s good. If you’re being challenged and you’re stretching and you’re growing, you’re doing things that aren’t always easy, that is good, and you’re going to find yourself being more satisfied in that. Right? Which means it’s not going to be happy all the time, not enjoyable all the time, but still something that you love.

And the last thing that well, I don’t know if I should say that this is not an engagement, but it’s not necessary is passion. Passion is like the buzzword of our decade. Everybody – find your passion, find your passion. Work in your passion. Find your passion and you’ll never work a day in your life. Like, I could go on and on, right? If you work in something that you’re passionate about, that’s obviously great and awesome, and it’s possible, but it’s not necessary. And I think it can be misleading because a lot of us feel like, well, if I don’t have any passions, I can’t go do anything. I’ll never be happy. It’s just not true.

The other part about passion is that it’s developed, it’s not found. You try something once, you’re not like hit over the head with a rock that says passion on the rock, and your like “Oh, this is it, this is my passion!” Passions are developed. They grow over time. And so, it’s silly to think I can only do something if I’m madly passionate about it right now. If all the keys to engagement are there, it’s very likely that passion will grow over time, because all those elements are being met. So that’s what you really need, right?

[17:46]

Some passion should just stay as our hobbies. They just don’t make great careers, or once we do them, we will no longer be passionate about them. And it’s now just a job, and we wish we would have kept it as a hobby.

And we change over time, right? Our passions are going to change over time. So, committing to a career only because you’re passionate about it doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll be passionate about it forever and that it will always be the right fit. Sometimes you have more than one passion. How do you decide? Sometimes you have none at all. So you feel like you’re stuck? Honestly, I wouldn’t say that law is my passion. I don’t read law articles all the time. I’m not always soaking up law or bankruptcy. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t like my job. Like, I would fully call my job happy, and I would say that my job is great, but it doesn’t mean it’s my passion. Right? And so you can find a good job where you’re happy without it becoming your passion.

So that’s all I have for you. So, if you want to check out the show notes, I’ve created a PDF that you can find in there. It lists all the key elements and it has questions for each of the key elements that you can ask yourself to help you identify what these key elements look like for you. So, the first one is engagement, which we talked about today. And in future coming episodes, we’re going to talk about the rest of the key elements. There are six of them. Today we covered engagement. So next time we’re actually going to cover skill.

So, if you hop on there, you can sign up for that PDF. It will be emailed to you and then you can kind of work through it as you go along with these podcasts. So that’s www.kristinszalajko.com/episode5. I know my last name is tricky. Like I always say, just look wherever you’re listening to this podcast, go ahead and just look at the description and you’ll see my last name.

That’s it for this week, so we will see you next week and we’ll jump into the next key element.

[Outro]

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you’ve found value as you listened. If there’s anyone you feel can use this episode, please go ahead and share it with them. Also, you’re likely listening to this on the go. When you find a quiet moment. Could you be so kind as to leave me a review that will help others find me as well? Be sure to come back next week for a next episode. Same time, same place. Have a great week.