Advice to My Younger Me - Career Lessons from 100 Successful Women

Chapter 2

Do Your Right Work

A number of years ago, I received the prestigious Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the American Bar Association. Along with the award came the opportunity (or, some would no doubt say, the curse) of giving a speech to a room filled with hundreds of people. On the morning of the award, my younger son, Billy, asked me if I was nervous. I replied truthfully that I wasn’t. He found that surprising, since he, along with many other people, would have found speaking in front of a large audience anxiety-producing. But speaking in front of groups is my Right Work. I am energized when I do it and consistently get positive feedback about my presentations. Silly as it may seem, I didn’t always realize that other people didn’t find public speaking as much fun as I do.

What Is “Right Work”?

Each of us has what I call your Right Work. Some people call it your strengths, your gifts, your talents, your unique abilities, or your superpowers—or simply what you are really good at. It’s work that draws on your innate abilities. It’s work that seems relatively easy for you to do and that’s deeply satisfying when you do it. It’s what you are doing when you produce your best results or have the most significant impact. It’s those activities for which you have superior skills and that you love doing. It’s the work that lights you up.

Your Right Work might be sensing what others are feeling, which enables you to reach consensus among diverse stakeholders. It might be persuading others to agree to your proposal because you communicate clearly and concisely. Your Right Work might be helping a team that is drowning in data see the big picture. It could be being able to walk into a room full of strangers and start a conversation with anyone there.

Your Right Work is not a specific job category like being an emergency room doctor, a marketing executive, or a purchasing manager. It is the talents you bring to your job. You can do your Right Work in many different types of jobs. For example, if your Right Work is being a dynamic team leader, you could be a manager at a pharmaceutical company, the director of a political campaign, or an officer in the military. If your Right Work is being an empathetic listener, you could be a primary care physician, a high school counselor, or a journalist. If your Right Work is being a stellar networker, you could be a venture capitalist, a real estate agent, or a fundraiser for a non-profit.

Taking the time to discover your Right Work is critical because your greatest opportunity for career success comes when you focus on and leverage your strengths. The Gallup organization has found that doing what you excel at makes you six times as likely to be engaged at work and more than three times as likely to be happy with your life.6

Anne Elkin, Vice-President for Human Resources at Qualcomm, says:

When you are working in a place where you are leveraging your strengths versus trying to improve your weaknesses, you’re much more successful. It’s kind of like going with the tide. If you’re working with your strengths, you are riding the tide, rather trying to force your way through it.

It also makes sense to focus on our strengths, since the truth is, we aren’t very good at overcoming our weaknesses (despite the emphasis that is often placed on improving our weaknesses in performance reviews). Trying to “fix” our shortcomings—like not being detailed-oriented, not being good with numbers, or not thinking outside the box—is not likely to be very successful.

Elkin had me do an exercise to illustrate just how time-consuming and frustrating it can be to overcome our weaknesses. She had me sign my name ten times with my dominant hand (I’m right-handed). Then, she had me sign my name ten times with my non-dominant hand. Since I’m not ambidextrous, I found that signing with my right hand was easy, quick, and legible, while signing with my left hand was time-consuming, frustrating, and far less legible. My first try at the left-handed signature was basically scribble. By the tenth time, I’d managed to produce something legible—but just barely.

As this exercise shows, we can get better at things that are not our natural strengths, but it takes a lot of time and effort, and in the end, we don’t get all that much better. We can move our performance from awful to mediocre, but we rarely get to great.

Whatever your strengths are, they can be the building blocks for a successful career, so it’s important you identify your special talents and learn to leverage them.

Identify Your Right Work

Over the years, I’ve found that many people struggle to identify their Right Work. Often, they are oblivious to their strengths because they come so easily to them. We sometimes think that for something to be valuable, it has to be difficult. If dealing with demanding customers or being a great team contributor is your strength, you just assume everybody can do it.

But that’s not true. Just because it is easy for you doesn’t mean that it’s not uniquely valuable. Some people lose their cool when dealing with a difficult customer, needlessly escalating the situation. Some people are horrible team members, preferring to work alone. Some people instinctively make crisp presentations, while others struggle to get to the main point.

Jenny Blake, a change strategy consultant and author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One, gave this example of being oblivious to her own gifts:

I have an immaculately color-coded bookshelf that I’ve worked on for three years. When people come over, they notice it. I realized only slowly, and with lots of feedback from others, that creating order out of chaos was a strength of mine. When I shared what I considered to be this amazing insight with a friend, she said, “Oh, that’s so obvious. Look at your bookshelf. That says it all.”

Blake’s gift of making order out of chaos is not limited to having a color-coded bookshelf. It’s something she does in her job helping people navigate career change. For many people, deciding how to look for a new job is fraught with uncertainty and anxiety. But to Blake, it is a clearly defined, step-by-step, replicable process. She spells the process out clearly in her book, and she uses it to coach those in transition.

While it can be challenging to identify your Right Work, there are several strategies you can use.

Reflect on Your Work Experiences

Discovering your Right Work can be as simple (or as hard) as being curious and reflecting on your work and life experiences. Recall when you were most engaged in a task at work and notice when you do your best work. Pay attention to when you are bored, struggle, or produce sub-optimal results. Hone in on the things that come naturally to you but are challenging for others. Keep a running list of things that are so innate that, metaphorically, you feel like you could do them with your eyes closed.

My Right Work includes:

• Asking thought-provoking questions and really listening to the answers

• Researching and synthesizing information

• Communicating in a way that people find actionable

• Building strong one-on-one relationships

• Helping successful people become more successful

I came up with this list by reflecting on the common elements in jobs I enjoyed and at which I excelled.

To identify your Right Work, it can be helpful to start by focusing on a typical workweek at your current job. Reflect on questions like these:

• What parts of your job come easily to you?

◦ Developing a budget?

◦ Learning a new software program?

◦ Engaging with customers?

• Which aspects of your work energize you?

◦ Leading a team?

◦ Negotiating with vendors?

◦ Synthesizing complicated information?

• What parts of a project are you excited to volunteer for?

◦ Developing the timeline?

◦ Serving on a committee?

◦ Writing the report?

• When are you “in the zone”?

◦ Researching?

◦ Brainstorming?

◦ Presenting?

• What is it that you bring to a project that has the most significant impact on its success?

◦ Conflict management?

◦ Project planning?

◦ Creative ideas?

Molly Beck, Founder and CEO of Messy.fm, a company that provides podcasting resources for organizations, and author of Reach Out: The Simple Strategy You Need to Expand Your Network and Increase Your Influence, suggests another, simple approach to discovering your Right Work. Think about your current and previous jobs. Write down what you loved and what you hated about each one. What are the common themes that emerge? Since we tend to like things we are good at and dislike things that we don’t do so well, this can be a helpful way to articulate your strengths.

Think about What You Did as a Child

It can be helpful to look back at the things you were good at and enjoyed doing when you were a kid. How did you spend your free time? What do you remember being praised for? Your Right Work is often hard-wired from when you were young.

I recently came across a photograph that illustrates just how hard-wired my presentation skills are. In the picture, I am about four years...