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Stop Struggling to Feel Fulfilled, Successful & Satisfied at Work, Part One

Written by: Susan Ireland

Article Overview: According to a recent Harris Poll, 50% of people do not feel satisfied with the work they accomplish at the end of any given week. If you're in this category, read the article to discover 3 powerful steps that could change your views on workplace fullfillment and satisfaction forever.

Stop Struggling to Feel Fulfilled, Successful & Satisfied at Work, Part One

In the process of adding an additional suite of tools to my coaching and consulting practice, I discovered a newly-published talent study and book authored by Jay Niblick, CEO of consulting firm Innermetrix International. The book "What's Your Genius?" led me to another piece Jay authored, called the Attribute Index Talent Profile (over 300,000 copies sold). The discoveries were amazing and I want to share one of them with you today. First a little background . . . Recent Harris Poll: "Only half of people are satisfied at work."

Jay spent seven years studying nearly 200,000 super-successful people across 23 countries and discovered several radically different views that most of them have on success, and he also found that they consistently break with conventional wisdom to reach their full potential. In addition, he cited a recent Harris poll* of 23,000 people that revealed only half were satisfied with the work they had accomplished by the end of the week. Half! So what's the difference between the half who are satisfied and the half who are not, and is there any correlation to the super successful?

Discovery #1. What you've been taught about how to succeed is the exact opposite of what the super successful do. For example, when a person accepts a new role/job, they typically take 3 universal steps:

• Step 1 - They get to know the role better and figure out what it really takes to be successful in it.
• Step 2 - Inevitably, they identify gaps between what the job requires and what they can provide (talent, knowledge, skills, etc.).
• Step 3 - They attempt to close the gaps between what is needed and what they possess. This is where major differences lie between the super successful and the rest.

Less successful people assume they can develop the skills and knowledge they need to fill the role, AND the natural thinking talents necessary.They're right about the skills and knowledge, but they mistakenly believe that with enough hard work and intelligence they can develop EVERYTHING they need to close the gap. That means talents too, so they set out to fix their natural talents in order to succeed in the job. Super successful people do the exact opposite. If you want to follow their lead, and thus increase your feeling of fulfillment, success, and job satisfaction, do these 3 things:

First, appreciate the difference between talents and skills and don't spend time trying to develop new talents. This is not to say you should not focus on improving yourself. If you need to acquire new knowledge or skills, go for it; but don't bother trying to change or develop new talents. It doesn't work.

Second, don't assume that the "role" is set in concrete; focus on adjusting the role, not yourself. In doing so, you ensure that your success depends on your natural talents, not your non-talents.

Third, refuse to buy-in to myths about strengths and weaknesses. Understand you don't possess strengths and weaknesses, you create them. Strengths and weaknesses don't exist naturally, only talents and non-talents. The super-successful allow their success to depend on their natural talents, thereby creating strengths -and they don't have roles where success is dependent on their non-talents. Bottom line: Remove your dependency on your non-talents. As one of the greatest business leaders of all time, Peter Drucker, once said to his leadership team, "Your job is to make the strengths of your people effective and their weaknesses irrelevant."

Finally, if you need help examining your natural talents, or using them to your best advantage, I highly recommend you get a copy of What's Your Genius? by Jay Niblick. Also consider spending 15 minutes taking an on-line Attribute Index Talent Profile. It could change your life.

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Article Tags: fullfillment, harris poll, satisfaction



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