Professional Satisfaction Part 1

Jan 12, 2017

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have passion in your job?

It’s such a shame that so many Canadians don’t. In fact, in a Conference Board of Canada 2016 report, it’s a longitudinal study that’s followed Canadians over the last ten years, unfortunately, what they found is that engagement levels are still low. In fact, it’s remained relatively unchanged for five years.

What do studies like these measure?

Some of the following are considered in this and other studies:

• Confidence in senior leadership; their vision, and communication
• Relationships with managers and coworkers
• How interesting and how challenging our work is
• Our personal and professional growth
• How much we feel recognized
• Our autonomy

This is where opportunity comes in!  Don’t we all want to be, and deserve to be, passionate about our jobs? Don’t we all want to be engaged, and to be able to contribute value to our workplace? It seems that we all want that, and yet so many Canadians are frustrated that they can’t or don’t have it. This is where we leave the opportunity open for people – amazing talent – to walk out the door. We all have a choice. Every single day when we leave work, we all essentially have the choice of whether we continue to show up the next day. If you’re in human resources, if you’re leading a company, if you’re a manager, or especially if you own a company, this should be something that keeps you up at night. If your people are not engaged, are they going to come back to you? Or, are they already creating plans to find their next opportunity – one where they feel more valued and engaged, something that fits across all those dimensions of engagement I mentioned earlier.

In this three-part VLOG, I am going to share with you the three core areas that we can focus on to increase engagement. These core areas can apply to any industry, and do you know why? They all come down to a very simple concept, and one that is measured very closely in the study I mentioned, recognition. Recognition happens at three levels, and in this VLOG we’re going to talk about recognition of self. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll dive into recognition at a team level, and then at an organizational level.

I also want you to be able to access this resource here (The FROG Intention), that I have made available because it will help you dig even deeper into this very first concept of self-recognition.

Why do we start with self-recognition?

Self-recognition is often misunderstood and completely ignored in the workplace. Are your people confident that they have talents, skills, and passions that are valued? Do their peers want them to be able to use them? Are they seeking them out and asking them to utilize their talents and skills? Do folks have the confidence to be able to speak up and have to voice to say, for example, “Sharing my skills on that project is something I want to be able to contribute”?

In some of my other VLOGS, I talk about the negativity that happens in the workplace. This is often a sound indication that people don’t feel recognized, and may not even recognize their own talent anymore. If you have a workplace or a team where there is a toxic culture, there’s a very good chance that people are not feeling very good about themselves.

There is real business evidence that if we don’t have workplaces that promote appreciation of our top talent, that talent will leave. So I share with you, as I say, a link to some strategies – a repertoire of tools that you can use to focus in on your teams, to really bring out and bolster that self-recognition. It comes from a book that myself and my co-author put together called, “The FROG Effect Workbook”. You’ve probably noticed my FROGs™ earlier, peppered throughout these blog posts; FROG stands for, “Forever Recognize Others’ Greatness™”. If you’ll forgive my spelling error, I also like to use the anagram FROOG – for “Forever Recognize Our Own Greatness”. That is the foundation of the house of successful recognition. It is from that foundation that we can build high engagement cultures. Recognizing our own greatness is virtually free, it doesn’t take a lot of time, and it is one of the most important investments that you can make in yourself and your organization’s talent. It will keep you competitive because we are in a talent shortage that shows no signs of easing until 2030. So please tune in for the next two VLOGS to learn about two more core tenets of recognition that can help your talent stay engaged and passionate. I am eager to share with you the next pieces in this equation that equals stronger, healthier, and more engaged work environments. Feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you don’t miss out on a single VLOG!

In the meantime, my name is Sarah McVanel. Be well and be great!