How much of the whole of you goes into your work? Do you get to use your greatest talents and strengths with any regularity? What about those things that are a natural part of your DNA that long to be expressed? What are these parts for you? Is it the helper? The speaker? Leader? Organizer? Do you have opportunities to express these things on your job?
If you’re leaning towards the low end in your responses to these questions, then chances are it may be time do some shape shifting with your current position.
Luckily the work that I’m inviting you to consider actually has a name and it’s a practice that’s gaining visibility as a viable option for both companies and individuals because it’s something that actually benefits both.
It’s called job crafting and it’s the process of reshaping the components of a job to better suit your talents, interests and needs. And there is mounting evidence to show that doing so can make individuals more satisfied and resilient in their work.
A Closer Look at Job Crafting
Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, has frequently highlighted the value of job crafting for both the individual and the organization. Her work around job crafting was sparked when she and two colleagues, Gelaye Debebe and Jane Dutton, studied a group of maintenance workers at a hospital in order to understand the nature and meaning of their work.
They discovered that the maintenance workers fell into two groups. There were those who engaged in their tasks exactly as outlined in their job and were largely unfulfilled. And there was a second group that found much more meaning and satisfaction in their work, although their stated roles were identical to the first.
The researchers ultimately came to realize that that the primary difference between the two groups was that the second group of happier, engaged employees had re-crafted their positions by doing things that were not expressed parts of their roles.
For example, they talked about doing things like making note of which patients were visibly upset or who did not have visitors on a given day, so they could circle back at the end of their shift and check in on them or offer them a shoulder to cry on.
They also talked about doing things like walking the elderly visitors to their cars so they wouldn’t get lost in the hospital.
And there was one person, who worked on a floor with patients who were comatose who she said that she routinely switched out the paintings on the walls in the patients’ rooms. When asked why, she explained that although the patients were unconscious, she thought that changing some element of the room might spark recovery in some way.
Then they asked if that was in her job description, to which she replied, “That’s not part of my job, but that’s part of me.”
So, actually, not only were the happier employees adding elements to their work that made it personally more fulfilling, they had adopted an enhanced mindset about how they viewed their work altogether. They searched for ways to bring more of themselves into their work and subsequently, found their work more enjoyable.
If you have found your work to be lacking in providing you with the happiness and fulfillment you desire, I highly encourage you to consider joining the ranks of these individuals.
How to Craft Your Plan
Job crafting is steadily gaining more and more recognition with some companies making a deliberate attempt to incorporate the practice as a part of their culture and with many employees not waiting for permission, per se, but simply taking it upon themselves to enhance their roles, just like the maintenance workers.
Before you can successfully re-craft your position, however, you will have to have a strong sense of who you are including having knowledge of your talents, strengths, interests, etc. and this means that you’ll have to do some personal work up front.
Please don’t take this lightly. I assure you that there are probably layers of your persona that you haven’t entertained in a long while. There are usually these hidden aspects of ourselves that we suppress because we don’t see a place in our work or our lives where they can easily fit.
Dig them up!
And then, once you do, think about ways that you might be able to incorporate some of these newly discovered elements into your work. For example, if you love to organize events, maybe you could volunteer to help plan the company’s upcoming holiday party.
Do you enjoy interacting with clients and customers but have few opportunities to do so? How might you work with your manager to adjust this?
Perhaps you spend 30% of your time developing training manuals but what you would most enjoy is spending some of that time actually conducting the training and directly engaging others. Could this be an added element in your work?
As you can see, there are lots of possibilities for ways that you might reshape your position to better suit you, and beyond your personal self-assessment, another approach is to simply think about the types of tasks that energize you and conversely, those that drain you. And then determine how you might either subtly or significantly shift your duties and responsibilities to incorporate more of the things that make you come alive.
It is clearly very important to have an understanding of what types of adjustments will require that you seek guidance and support from your manager, so please plan and strategize accordingly. You may even benefit from collaborating with others on your team to get ideas and possibly even redistribute certain tasks among each other.
Maybe you’ll discover that Becky actually loves (and is gifted at) doing something that you dislike and would happily pass on for her to do. And maybe Richard would be happy to pass on one of his responsibilities that you might really enjoy.
Remember, as long as your job responsibilities are fulfilled, chances are, your manager and employer, in general, will be supportive because a happier, productive you is of great benefit to everyone.
Could you use some help in navigating these waters? Let’s chat! Schedule a complimentary Career Strategy Session today.
Monica Moody
Monica Moody
