Your Job Isn’t That Secure

While having breakfast in a restaurant this morning, I listened as someone lost his job. I won’t mention the town, as that scene happens in any town. Probably not over a rooty-tooty pancake ‘n’ ham, but the instant it became clear what was happening, I understood why this was being done over breakfast: No office scene, no work disrupted, and breakfast is the cheapest meal of the day. It wouldn’t even cost the company a lot to get rid of the employee.

While I was eavesdropping on this life-shattering conversation, it became obvious that the boss had done this more than once. He kept repeating the same phrases.

“You’ll get over this, it’s not the end of your life.”
“You’ll find another job quickly.”
“You’ll look back on this and laugh.”
No one was laughing at the time, and the employee was in shock. He kept citing statistics of the fine work he had done, the deadlines he had met, the extra work he had taken on and completed successfully. It didn’t matter. Nothing he could say made a difference. The decision to have him gone was made before he arrived to meet his boss for breakfast. I wondered where he would go for the rest of the day, how he would tell his family.
Listening in, I remembered one of my clients telling me that she was indispensable. I smiled as I listened to the certainty, and two months later, I nodded my head as she cried, “They can’t do this to me. I’m the only ones who know how to run the program.” And yet, the program ran, and she was out on her ear, out of a job.

It can happen to you. Somewhere, someone reading this and smiling. Secure. You work hard. You are really indispensable. You have traded family life and balance for the job security. You gave up nights with your kids to cement security with your company.

That’s what the guy at breakfast thought. That’s what I thought right before I was laid off.
Everyone is replaceable. The company that demands your time and your life and your loyalty does not return the same. They pay you and that, in their minds, is all they owe you. America is all about money and dedication and being “passionate” about your career, but less so about the other side of the coin.

I wish our corporate culture were a bit more passionate about loyalty, and caring and being reasonable. So, while you are reading this, what would you do if your job disappeared today?
If you are a perfectionist, this is particularly for you. . .perfectionism is about control, and you are far less in control that you think.

If you don’t have a plan about what to do if you are dumped, now might be a good time to think about it. How much of a financial cushion do you have? How much would you need if it took you 3 months to find a job? What jobs other than the one you are doing now are you qualified for? What wold it take to make you competitive in your field? When was the last time you updated your resume?

Take a look at your co-workers today. One of them will be gone in three months.

–Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach. She won’t be dumped from her job because she owns the company. But she keeps changing her goals. See what she does at QuinnCreative.com Photos: pancakes: myspace.com, drawing: furiousball.com

When You Are In The Wrong Job. . .

Once upon a time I had a job that paid very well. Almost from the beginning, I began to see some problems. My boss was often vague and unclear, and I worked hard to protect the writers whom I supervised.

Then, one day, my boss vanished. He was there on Friday, gone on Monday. There was a reorganization, and a new boss appeared. During the first week, she asked me at least a dozen times if I minded that I now had a female boss younger than my oldest child. Each time I said (truthfully) that I was happy for new leadership and clear direction.

All went well for a while. When my boss encouraged me to exercise (I was an early morning gym rat at the time), I thought she was concerned about life/work balance. Turns out she thought I was fat. (I prefer to think of myself as “sturdy.”) She never said it directly to me, I overheard it in the bathroom one day, when she didn’t see me in the last stall.

When she began to set work goals I could not meet, I began to work harder and longer, but as I jumped through one hoop, it would be discounted and the next hoop held up. Some of them seemed to be on fire. My boss wanted me to push out one of my direct reports because she wasn’t bright enough (she was plenty smart) and another one because he didn’t have the right “corporate image,” which translated as “looks geeky and is overweight.”

The last year of my time in that company was torture. I began to believe that I could not do anything right. Some of the people who worked with me began to see the writing on the wall and avoided me. After years of a good relationship with one direct report, she reported me to human resources because the plant in my office had outgrown my title. (Yep, in that company you could have plants only if they were in accord with your station. Big, important plants were for corner offices only.)

I was especially slow on catching on. I worked harder, longer, and desperately. In the end I left because I was going to be pushed out. I took a job at less pay, in a smaller company, and eventually opened my own business doing what I know and what I love: coaching, writing, and leading workshops

Some jobs are not worth the money you get paid, even if it’s good money. There are times you have to save your own life and leave a job that is eating your soul alive.

Jennifer Alvey, a smart woman who left the practice of law when it began to suck her soul out, now helps other attorneys who are unhappy leave their work. Don’t wait until you develop ulcers or serious health problems. And if you are ready to leave the law, drop by Jennifer’s blogsite.

–Image: Shrewsbury-ma.gov

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach who helps people in transition, including from one job to the next. (c) 2008. All rights reserved.

The Many People We Can Be

“ Don’t I know you from somewhere?” the woman asked me. She was in my booth at an art show. I had recognized her when she came in, but I knew that in this different context, she would not recognize me. “I was your trainer two weeks ago, ‘Problem Solving for Leadership,’ I said.

She looked horrified. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m an artist, too,” I explained. I left out creativity coach, life coach and writer. One thing at a time.

“You can’t do that,” she said in a stern tone, “You can’t be both. What are you really?”

Who Are You Today?
It’s an interesting question. We are many people—spouses, parents, significant others, neighbors, organ donors, —but we see ourselves as one person at a time. During the day we are what we do—corporate employee—and when we leave work we become the “real” us. And if we’ve integrated what we do with who we are, we favor identifying ourselves by our work. “I’m an accountant,” or “I’m an engineer,” is something we hear more often than, “I’m intrigued by the idea that there is a great deal of similarity among the origination story of different religions.”

Learning How to Be You
Two generations ago, most schools prepared us for life—we took languages, world history, art, music, science, math and philosophy. We learned how to reason abstractly and think creatively. Now schools prepare us for a job—engineer, lawyer, journalist. We learn only those facts that can be proven to be necessary—either on the next test, or for the job.

But most of the things that have served me best in life—compassion, understanding, listening, exploring possibilities—aren’t taught in school anymore. They can’t be quantified enough to be put into a multiple-choice test. But life, it turns out, is not a multiple-choice test, it’s a series of essay exams.

Think Big: Be More
But experience can’t be summarized in a sound bite. Life doesn’t fit a three-word definition of who you are and how you fit into society.

As we speed up life, we have just enough time, it seems, to get one job done right. And our culture tells us that getting it right is very important, so we’d better not have time to learn about more possibilities. Instead, we’d better prove that we are worthy of regular title promotions and salary increases.

Think Creative, Live Creative
You can, of course, be someone else as a hobby. But hobbies need to be controlled and preferably quantifiable, like collecting something. Once you start to make money at a hobby, you better have a name for your company and be ready to fill out a form C for the IRS—and make a decision about what you really want to do.

Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, and Animal Dreams, found strong disapproval when she gave in to her need to play music and joined the Rock Bottom Remainders with Amy Tan, Dave Berry and Stephen King. Of that experience, she writes “As I get comfortable with the middle stretch of my life, though, it’s occurred to me that this is the only one I’m going to get. I’d better open the closet door and invite my other selves to the table, even if it looks undignified or flaky. . .I’m not looking for a new me, just owning up to all the old ones. . . . The Rock Bottom Remainders went on record as half-bad musicians having wholehearted lives.”

One Life, Many Lives
I’m well past the halfway part of my life, and there are still several lives, ideas, paths, to try out. I don’t want to say ‘no’ to any of them. There is a lot to do in the time I have left and a mind clear enough to do it. I want to look forward. Looking back is comforting because we are no longer there, and because we know everything we are looking at. Looking ahead is full of mystery and the unknown. But I would rather spend my time looking square-on at today’s mystery than looking back on things that can’t be changed.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach, writer and trainer in how to communicate in the corporate world. See her work at QuinnCreative.com