Are you in the right role? Another way women can look at job satisfaction

I shared recently that I’ve been reading a heap of personal finance books lately. Most of them have been written by women and some even written specifically for women. I’ve been loving the learnings and while I wish I’d found them earlier in my life, we can only look forward. As a result, I’ve been running a series of workshops on Negotiation Tactics that Work for Women and Money Mindset. If you’d like me to run either of these workshops with your women in leadership cohort message me and let’s talk.

Last week I wrote about Conscious Career Planning inspired by Ramit Sethi’s principle of living a rich life. I gave you five steps to consider when starting to create your rich career, or the career you truly love.

This week let’s explore a concept I learned from Tiffany The Budgetnista Aliche in her book Get Good with Money: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole who talks about the difference between wants, needs, likes and loves and how this might apply to our career.

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” – Buddha

NEED IT, LIKE IT, WANT IT, LOVE IT AS APPLIED TO JOB SATISFACTION

Below I’ve adapted Tiffany’s methodology (remember, she’s a finance guru) to help you reflect on your career journey and job satisfaction and what you might want, need, like or love in your next role. What do we mean by needing it, liking it, wanting it and loving it? Read on.

Needing it – when it’s essential for you and a must have. Maybe it’s important to you that in this next level career move you have a salary of $250K+ (or equivalent). In fact, it’s critical to your household health and happiness and you’ll accept nothing less. Maybe it’s important right now for you to be working in an inclusive culture, or with a short commute time, or leading a team of a specific size, or reporting to the CEO, or having a seat at the table, or for a company that encourages hybrid arrangements and offers flexibility with no questions asked because you have kids you need to care for. Work out what you need right now and make a plan to absolutely get those things in your role.
Liking it – will likely bring you short-term joy – possibly even less than a year before you outgrow it or get bored. Maybe it’s a particular responsibility that doesn’t light your fire, but you don’t mind doing. Maybe in terms of rem and recognition, it’s a car park, or funding for a conference, or the opportunity to get involved in the awards committee or the company charity fundraiser this year. Liking a role when it comes to the whole job though is only fine if it’s a springboard opportunity and you’re not expecting to stay long. Merely liking your role is soul destroying over the long term, and you’ll end up feeling like a lesser version of yourself along the way.
Wanting it – Classify something as a want if it represent instant gratification where even a few weeks later you’ll likely be dissatisfied. Perfect for a limited project that might get you some exposure somewhere else in the business or help you build a new skill, but not for a forever gig.
Loving it is when your role, or something in your role, brings you lasting joy. You get huge satisfaction out of doing this type of work, so much so that you don’t even notice when things aren’t going to plan because you love it so much. My husband teaches a martial art every week at a university. He has done this for the last 18 years. It’s on a Thursday evening and he has to commute on public transport to get there. It undermines our holidays, long weekend plans and …. he even does it for free, because he gets so much satisfaction out of it. Now that’s love. What have you got in your role that you love?

IN SUMMARY

Some of my readers feel stuck in a role that’s going nowhere. Right now with news headlines spruiking doom, gloom and financial ruin, this can make you less likely to pursue stretch opportunities or less likely to take risks, or even resign if you’re in the wrong role. Which in turn leads us to becoming a smaller version of ourselves and not operating at our best both at home and at the office.

Needing it, liking it, wanting it and loving it is not the only answer, but when we’re creating a conscious career plan, and planning for long term job satisfaction, then it could be important to you to make sure you know where you stand. Even if you don’t love your entire role, make sure there is enough in your role that you do love, to ensure you thrive, not just survive.

Imagine what could happen if you actually tried!

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