When pressed, we can come up with a hundred and one reasons why we stay in a lousy job. “The economy is bad. There aren’t any jobs available. I’m not cut out for anything else.” For me, though, the worst excuse, by far is “Well, someone has to do the job.” To this I reply, “someone may have to do the job, but it doesn’t have to be you.”
Let me be very clear that I am not talking about all the unpleasant, but extremely necessary work out there like garbage collection, sewer maintenance or animal control. Even in these unpleasant activities, workers can find high levels of job satisfaction along with equally high salaries. This is exactly how it should be with all unpleasant, but high necessity jobs.
The jobs I am talking about are the one’s with the abusive boss — the one’s with low salaries and no raises – the one’s that make your life worse, instead of better. These jobs suck the life out of you and, in some cases, everyone you work with. They deaden you to your own skills and capabilities. They use you up, discard the husk and replace you with yet another cog in the machine.
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
…and I learned that from an art teacher I had at Walt Disney Imagineering. We were lucky enough – even though I was in IT — we got to go to art coaching nights if we wanted and I took great advantage of that. I’m an amateur watercolor painter mainly because I got to work with my art coach, Ron and one of the first things Rosa said — we’d be working away and doing little stuff in the coaching session — and he’d say, yeah, that’s finished. Sign it. Because when you sign it you take ownership. You become proud of that and you will do better work after that point because you have taken control and pride in that work and I say, and I know it sounds a little weird in the career world “Sign the darn thing!” Make sure your name is on there somewhere and you can get away from anybody thinks you’re just being boastful or whatever by saying “If you have any questions. Contact me.” You’re doing it in a helpful way that says “Hey. I’m here to help.” It also gets your name in front of their face — also very helpful, but you can couch it a little bit in that.
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
…and I learned that from an art teacher I had at Walt Disney Imagineering. We were lucky enough – even though I was in IT — we got to go to art coaching nights if we wanted and I took great advantage of that. I’m an amateur watercolor painter mainly because I got to work with my art coach, Ron and one of the first things Rosa said — we’d be working away and doing little stuff in the coaching session — and he’d say, yeah, that’s finished. Sign it. Because when you sign it you take ownership. You become proud of that and you will do better work after that point because you have taken control and pride in that work and I say, and I know it sounds a little weird in the career world “Sign the darn thing!” Make sure your name is on there somewhere and you can get away from anybody thinks you’re just being boastful or whatever by saying “If you have any questions. Contact me.” You’re doing it in a helpful way that says “Hey. I’m here to help.” It also gets your name in front of their face — also very helpful, but you can couch it a little bit in that.
News arrived recently that a friend had been laid off, downsized, right-sized, fired from the company where he had worked for 22 years. Another friend was laid off after 18 years with the same company. These weren’t static drones doing the same job in the same cubicle year after year. They both held many roles in their companies. They both climbed the career ladder. They both had excellent reviews. They both were gone when business climates, business needs and the world changed.
How many times do we need to hear this story before we begin to understand that there are no certainties in employment or in our career. There are many things outside our control. Businesses go bankrupt. Markets disappear. The entire economy is disrupted. No matter how well we do our work, if the business crashes beneath us, we will fall, too. This is why it is so important to control whatever we can in our own life and careers. It also means divorcing our careers and our self-worth from our companies.
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
Another important concept of all these things is to be proud of your work. I sort of took this to heart in the corporate world where reports would get made. Reports would get sent up the chain and questions would get asked. Your boss would come back to you with the questions and your answers would get filtered back up through the chain of command. I made a point — after about my second year at Disney — that if I did anything — if I did a report if I did a spreadsheet — if I did help with a project. You know what I did? I signed them. There’d be somewhere in that program, that spreadsheet, that document that said — “By the way, if you have any questions, talk to Dog. He’s the one that did it.” Because otherwise, you are an anonymous cog in a corporation. You don’t exist. Some cobbler’s elves down in the basement put together that report. You’re not doing it to be boastful. You’re not doing it to show off. You’re simply — like any artist — signing your work.
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
Another important concept of all these things is to be proud of your work. I sort of took this to heart in the corporate world where reports would get made. Reports would get sent up the chain and questions would get asked. Your boss would come back to you with the questions and your answers would get filtered back up through the chain of command. I made a point — after about my second year at Disney — that if I did anything — if I did a report if I did a spreadsheet — if I did help with a project. You know what I did? I signed them. There’d be somewhere in that program, that spreadsheet, that document that said — “By the way, if you have any questions, talk to Dog. He’s the one that did it.” Because otherwise, you are an anonymous cog in a corporation. You don’t exist. Some cobbler’s elves down in the basement put together that report. You’re not doing it to be boastful. You’re not doing it to show off. You’re simply — like any artist — signing your work.
Do you have what it takes to truly be the person you can, and want, to be? Everyday I am faced with people who have decided to be less than everything they could be. They have decided that short cuts, scams and outright crimes are the easiest ways to accomplish what few goals they have. In some cases, they lack any goals at all beyond servicing greed or a bad habit that must be fed. They have given up any chance at a better life and settled for one filled only with empty rewards. Rewards that will leave them feeling empty, no matter how attractive they might seem. You can’t achieve your own, best, life by constantly chasing the easy answers down one dead end after another. It will always remain beyond your reach, even if it is still within your sight. It will taunt you with its closeness but always be beyond your grasp.
What does this poorly led life look like? You probably see examples of it every day — People and businesses who would rather scam people into signing up for a service they neither want, nor need, instead of building a product that people actually want to purchase – people who write articles and create videos that only seek to tear people down instead of building them up – people taking advantage of loopholes, shortcuts and unknowledgeable people to line their pocketbooks.
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
…and I have people find talks years later. They’ll write me very, very heartfelt notes and say “Oh my gosh! I just stumbled across this now. This is great and exactly what I needed to hear.” I say, “Ok.” That reinforces the reason I do these things and also enforces the reason I tell people things because I have seen it work in people’s favor. Because, again, you want to be first in people’s minds when they have a need. Regardless of what that need may be. It can be any specialty, as I said. You can be a plumber, a cook, a chef, whatever. It does not matter. If someone wants to learn how to cook coq au vin. Ok. You go to Google or YouTube and type coq au vin — coq au vin recipe and you’ll find just as many videos that people making coq au vin as you will find recipes listing it out in text. It can be very very useful to you.
Douglas E. Welch (http://douglasewelch.com) presents to the class Career Development – Theories and Techniques at Pepperdine Graduate School of Education & Psychology taught by fellow CareerCamp Co-Chair, Danielle Gruen
The two biggest challenges are deciding what you want to do as a career and then building the career you deserve once you decide.
I discuss the Career Compass method of discovering your career wants, needs and desires and then using various social media tools to show people “What you do and how well you do it”
Transcript:
…and I have people find talks years later. They’ll write me very, very heartfelt notes and say “Oh my gosh! I just stumbled across this now. This is great and exactly what I needed to hear.” I say, “Ok.” That reinforces the reason I do these things and also enforces the reason I tell people things because I have seen it work in people’s favor. Because, again, you want to be first in people’s minds when they have a need. Regardless of what that need may be. It can be any specialty, as I said. You can be a plumber, a cook, a chef, whatever. It does not matter. If someone wants to learn how to cook coq au vin. Ok. You go to Google or YouTube and type coq au vin — coq au vin recipe and you’ll find just as many videos that people making coq au vin as you will find recipes listing it out in text. It can be very very useful to you.
There is an old cliche quote that says, “Behind every great man is a woman” with a host of addendum on the end to fit the specific situation. While I don’t dispute this, except to say that it also works the other way, there are times in our lives and career when we must be self-sustaining. There are times when the support of a spouse simply isn’t available for a host of reasons. It is in these times that we can all “fall down” and find our careers mired in the mud only because we simply don’t have enough individual energy to move us forward. Sometimes, we all need a cheerleader on the sidelines. Without them, something can seem dramatically absent from our lives and our work.
I am mainly talking about spouses, of all sorts, in this column, as this is my own experience. Close friends and family can also be “sustainers” in your career and their absence can be just as damaging. “Sustainers” help us through the rough spots in our careers by providing advice, support, wisdom and, most importantly, their energy. We all have an ebb and flow to our personal and work energy and sustainers help us get through the low spots without foundering on the rocks of sleep and self-doubt.
![Social Media Increases Your Discoverability from Using the Career Compass To Find Your Career [Video] (0:48)](http://welchwrite.com/career/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/compass-2016-41-discover.jpeg)
