If You've Already Accomplished These 7 Things, You're Performing Better At Your Job Than The Average Employee
Roberto Hund | Pexels You are in good company if you feel disengaged and unhappy at work. In a Gallup poll, "Sixty percent of people reported being emotionally detached at work, and 19% as being miserable. Only 33% reported feeling engaged." So many feel adrift in their lives and work. Emerging from remote work and Zoom conferencing has left many people feeling more adrift.
If you want to feel whole, alive, and engaged at work, you can take charge and navigate your career path by applying proven approaches to make your work personally fulfilling and rewarding. What does that require? Meaningful relationships with other people.
Or, to use a technical term, networking. Finding your true "tribe" — or as author C.S. Lewis called it, your "inner ring" — begins with recognizing that the conventional networking approach (which most people hate for a good reason) is the most misunderstood and misapplied technique there is.
Rather than collect names, "suck up" to potential contacts, or brush up on your 30-second elevator pitch, try these things to seek and create a ring of like-minded people to collaborate in work and life — if you do, you're likely performing better at your job than the average employee.
If you've already accomplished these 7 things, you're better at your job than the average employee:
1. You've learned to adapt quickly when things change
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Do not narrowly define yourself by job function or industry — project manager, sales manager in retail — rather inventory your skill sets, experience, and collaborations, and expand the ways you describe yourself and how you work best. Be open to project-based work rather than full-time employment. Consider different fields such as non-profit, education, and government.
2. You've built genuine relationships
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Consciously build relationships without an initial ask or self-serving motive. Rather, see others as your kin who will become colleagues and partners in achieving joy, success, and fulfillment together. Rutgers University researchers discovered something pretty cool when they studied workplace friendships: Employees who actually built genuine relationships with their coworkers performed noticeably better according to their bosses than those who kept things strictly professional.
3. You've figured out where you add the most value
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Understand who you are: the organizational culture, work structure, and roles that best suit you, and then how you can contribute to the team effort. A long-term study in the Academy of Management Journal followed employees for several years and found that people who understood their fit within the company culture stayed happier and more committed and were far less likely to have left after two years.
4. You've continuously upgraded your skills
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Many online courses certify competence in project management or a platform system such as Salesforce or Google. Look at upskilling as a continuous learning process that will qualify you for better work performance and opportunities. LinkedIn's latest research on workplace learning found that employees who feel their company supports them in learning new skills are eight times more likely to see a real future for themselves there, and 91% of learning professionals now say continuous learning matters more than ever for career success.
5. You've aligned your work with a deeper sense of purpose
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Most people seek meaning and purpose in their work to feel personally rewarded. Use the requirements of how you feel about yourself, working with the people in your collegial circle, and the social or spiritual impact on the world to make a difference you are proud of. McKinsey research found that 70% of people say their work actually defines their sense of purpose in life. When employees feel what they do matters, they're three times more engaged, 50% more productive, and way less likely to burn out than people just going through the motions.
6. You've designed your career around the life you want
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Online work enables flexibility for location, schedule, and self-motivation. Make work fit the life you want rather than contort your life to fit the work defined for you by an organization. Studies on work flexibility found that people who could work from home regularly but still came into the office sometimes reported being the happiest, with the flexibility to handle family stuff without work getting in the way, while avoiding the isolation of being fully remote.
7. You've developed a clear narrative about who you are professionally
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Traditional resumes define you by job function, organization, and timeframe worked. These are useful but need to be augmented. Suppose you can identify those projects and achievements that most fulfilled you. Then you can thread those together into a life story that shows coherence and purpose.
If you like to solve problems, be onstage performing, mentoring, teaching, resolving conflicts, or many ways to describe yourself, then others can find you as their kin. Be fearless and find your inner circle. Finally, have faith that the journey to joy, meaning, and purpose in your life is a lifelong path of sharing and collaborating with others who get who you are, who value your contribution and relationship, and with whom you feel the fulfillment of the fellowship of endeavors within your personal inner circle. One way to get started is to explore these sites: Knackapp for Substack creation; Clifton Strengths for personal assessment; and LinkedIn for job posts.
Jeff Saperstein is an ICF-certified career coach and memoirist who works with business professionals who feel stuck and want a career transition.
