Finding Joy in Your Work

What do you love doing so much that you would practice until your fingers bled while loving every minute of it?

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Consider this the ideal state of your life when you are doing what you love doing most of the time.  

Quote: I got my first real six-string. Bought it at the five-and-dime. Played it 'til my fingers bled. Was the summer of '69. Bryan Adams.

Do you think this is realistic to achieve with your career?   With the careers of your team members?

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right.”

Henry Ford

There are people in all sorts of jobs that are absolutely joyful in their work.  There are people in those same jobs that are absolutely miserable and everywhere in-between.  

Don’t confuse joyfulness with happiness at work.  Happiness is momentary and usually based upon external factors like the cool videos we all see about tech companies.  Joy is internal and long-lasting.  

As a leader you will get the most out of your team in terms of both retention and what Mark Breslin calls “Discretionary Effort” if you can improve engagement to this level.  

  • Peak:  Developing deep competencies. People tend to love doing things they are very good at.
  • Triggers:  Great advice about how to improve employee engagement by asking the right types of questions and forming the right daily habits.

As a leader your team will never be more engaged or love their work more than you do.  

How would you answer these 6 critical questions?




Responsibility, Results, and Compensation
If you want to grow your career, always seek additional responsibility while pushing your limits in every way to produce business results. The compensation will always follow.
Alignment from Strategy to Execution
Misalignment between how projects are estimated and how they are built creates subpar outcomes at best and sometimes results in catastrophic failure. Alignment is not a task to be completed. It is an ongoing process starting at the top.
Leaders Developing Others
Having clear goals is critical but leadership is 99.99% about the journey and developing the team of people you take the journey with.