How to Help Your Team Figure Out What They Value Most in a Job
Because no job or company is perfect all the time.
Working for a failing company wears on you after a while, and I was no exception. It wasn’t exactly burnout that I was experiencing. I wasn’t plagued by exhaustion caused by excessive job-related stress. In fact, the job itself wasn’t a problem at all. I loved the work that I was doing.
But, I was tired.
Anyone who has spent time working in the retail industry the last few years can tell you that it’s been a rough ride. The industry’s evolution — or lack thereof — hasn’t kept pace with the rest of the world and most retailers are being left behind in Amazon’s dust.
As a consumer, I’m okay with that. If a different company can figure out how to do something better or faster, I’m all for it.
But as someone working on the inside of this failing industry, it was rough.
I was tired of organizing the quarterly layoffs that everyone had come to expect. I was tired of watching out-of-touch executives prioritize expense-cutting over revenue-building. And the turnover was like a wound that just would not stop bleeding.
And after a few years in the red, the only thing worse off than my company’s income statement was my attitude.
But I didn’t leave. In fact, I stayed all the way through the company’s bankruptcy filing and eventual liquidation.
Believe it or not, my tenure outlasted my piss-poor attitude. But I can’t take credit for that turnaround, because it was my boss who helped me do it.
My attitude adjustment came in the form of a coaching conversation my boss and I had during the course of our regular weekly 1:1. She acknowledged my frustration but challenged me to shift my perspective by asking me to take stock of what I valued most at work.
“Everyone cares about different things in their career,” she said.
“No job or company or team will ever be perfect enough to check 10 out of 10 boxes. But, if the position you’re in checks 3–5 of your top priorities, you’re doing pretty good.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way before.
“Do me a favor for next week, will you? Take stock of what’s important to you at work and put those things through a force-rank. Let’s see where you land.”
She asked me to consider the importance of things like:
- The type of team I got to work alongside
- The kind of leader I got to work for
- The type of work I got to do
- The opportunities I had for career growth
- How much money I made
- Company performance
- The flexibility the job afforded me
- The ability I had to make an impact
- The kinds of benefits or perks available
- The vision that senior leadership had laid out
- The overall mission of the organization
As I spent more and more time thinking about this in the days following our meeting, I started to realize that my frustrations all stemmed from things that didn’t rank very high on my priority list.
Sure, the company’s lack of profitability was tough on morale and made it harder to get a decent raise, but it didn’t outweigh the value I found in my top-ranking items of importance.
First and foremost, I worked for an exceptional boss. The fact that she even engaged in this conversation with me is evidence enough of her leadership ability. On top of that, she gave me constant opportunities to learn, grow, and stretch myself with new experiences at work.
The team I worked as a part of was second to none. As a group, we struck the perfect balance of high-achievement and true comradery. They remain some of my best friends to this day, and I would work with them again in a heartbeat.
And, despite the challenges, I loved the work I was doing. I had the ability to be creative and make an impact every single day.
I suddenly realized that I was knocking my top 3 priorities out of the park. I was doing pretty damn good.
All this to say that no one is perfect, and we’re all guilty of falling into the trap of our own negativity bias now and then. Our bad days tend to stand out far more than our good days do, don’t they?
As leaders, it’s our job to help pull our team members up and out of whatever professional rut they might find themselves in. Too often we write an employee off as a “negative Nancy” or say that they “just can’t take the pressure.”
But what might you learn if you engaged them in a meaningful conversation like the one my boss had with me?
What might change if you slowed down and took the time to understand what they cared about most at work?
What impact might that employee remember you for having made on their career?
I know the impact my boss made on mine, and it’s priceless.
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