Everyone wishes they could land their dream job. Not everyone is lucky enough to get there, however. Sometimes we have to work at non-dream jobs. That doesn’t mean it has to be a bad experience! In this episode, Tracey Jones is asked a pivotal question by the host of the Get Yourself the Job podcast, Jennifer Hill: “How do you survive your non-dream job?” We get solid advice from Tracey on dealing with micromanaging bosses and challenging colleagues. Tune in and get more tips on surviving a job that is far from ideal.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Surviving Your Non-Dream Job With Jennifer Hill Of The Get Yourself The Job Podcast
I'm excited to have Tracey Jones with us. She is a career and workplace advisor and the author of the career advice book, A Message to Millennials: What Your Parents Didn't Tell You and Your Employer Needs You to Know released in April 2017. She is the President of Tremendous Leadership, a professional development firm that advises Fortune 500s, government agencies and universities on issues of leadership, ethics and employee engagement.
Her clients include Liberty Mutual, the American Automobile Association, the Defense Logistics Agency, United Way, the McCann School of Business and many others. A former Air Force major and Gulf War Veteran, she spent ten years in the corporate boardrooms of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, where she had a top security clearance, Northrop Grumman, a global defense firm and Applied Materials of Fortune 500. She is a graduate of the New Mexico Military Institute, the Air Force Academy and holds an MBA in Global Management.
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Thank you so much for joining us, Tracey, and for your service as well.
Thank you, Jennifer. It's a pleasure to be with you.
It's so wonderful to have you on, especially to discuss such a great subject, which is how do you survive your non-ideal job, which we have all had one of those at some point or another in our careers.
I probably have several PhDs in surviving my non-dream job. I know a lot about it.
We have all been there, done that. It might be your current job or maybe you have already survived it. How did you go from having that in the Air Force and serving our country to becoming focused on leadership, and more importantly, happiness and success? How did that evolution come about?
I enjoy gaining as many new experiences in life as I can. My father always taught me that we are born with an empty key ring at our side. The more experiences that we have in life, the more success we are going to have because life constantly changes every day. Even if I found my dream job, chances are a couple of months from now, something would slightly shift and I would need to take corrective action as we used to say in the military.
I grew up with a healthy attitude toward embracing new things, taking risks and failure. I always heard that the best and quickest way to success is to cram 50 years of failure into 15. I didn't try to fail but I sure tried to push myself out of my comfort zone. I had the opportunity to work in so many different industries with many different people. In each one of those, I thought, "This is my dream job," and then a couple of years down the road, I'm like, "Maybe not." It's the process of growth and personal development. The older you get, the more you get comfortable in your own skin. You start to realize your values become entrenched, bolder and courageous about following them. That's how I grew up.
You became an adult. There's no more Peter Pan where we get to jump from one job to another.
There was a time where life was a lot of fun and then it was time to get serious. The more you grow as a follower, you then start to determine what kind of a leader you are going to be and learn what kind of a leader you function under best. As you grow and mature in that, you gain wisdom and start to be able to make some better career choices about knowing what you want. I hear young people and I said it when I was in my twenties too, "I have all the answers." The problem is, you don't know all the questions that life is going to bring your way. We only know what we know. As long as we are open, teachable and adaptive when we get the wind knocked out of our sails, you are going to do fine wherever you wind up.
That's the keyword that you honed in on, which is being adaptable, whether you are starting in the workplace or you are 40 or 30 years in, our ability to adapt to people, circumstances and situations, both positive and negative, directly correlates to our success or failure in life.
I'm working on my Doctorate in Leadership. Our Leadership and Management class was on crucible crises that form you as a leader. I can always tell a leader because when I look at them, I can see the wisdom and empathy in their eyes and know that they have been through it. When you hit these downturns, betrayals and surprises, what they do is they lay before you the ability to regenerate, recharge, redeem yourself and find something adaptive in that challenge. This is then going to transform you into something greater than what you were before. I wish character-building didn't hurt so much but it does. Finding that dream job and ascending the leadership ladder is tough and lonely but it's worth every step.
Non-Dream Job: The older you get, the more your values become entrenched and you become bolder and more courageous about following them.
It's so important and it doesn't matter where you are at in your career. We were doing a show about how all people, whatever level you are at in your career, there's an opportunity, a desire for leaders in the world and your professional organizations. What differentiates a leader from a follower is the person who is willing to take risks, own up to their mistakes and be accountable.
Albert EN Gray has a great little booklet called The New Common Denominator of Success. His main point is that the only difference between success and failure is that success has made a habit out of doing the things that a failure doesn't want to do. That's it. It's not your IQ, gifting and last name, although those things can sure make it easier. It's tough for success to get up every day and deal with the mundane, drudgery and haters.
Some people sometimes think that all successful people have this magical life they float through with fairies and unicorns. I'm like, "We still have to work with people like you." We seek to find what psychologists call extroversion. It's an adaptive capacity whereby you can take a negative event and turn it into something positive. It can be learned and developed.
Some of us like my father who was a big motivator come quite naturally. Some of us have a more half-glass full outlook but even if you are one of those that has a glass-half-empty, you still can cultivate those talents. The root of it lies in an attitude of gratitude. If you even look at the difficult things as a path to growth, you are on your way to an incredible life. That's going to not only develop you but also serve as a testament to the other people around you because you are going to be able to model this kind of behavior that a lot of other people need to see. You are going to be able to absorb chaos and give others hope, which is the defining role in any job, non-dream job or dream job.
Although I do agree with you 100%, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate with you for a moment and pretend that I'm a jobseeker out there. My boss stormed into my office, yelled at me and said, "Jennifer, you screwed up this project. Our client is pissed. We could lose the client over this. What do you have to say for yourself?" How could somebody bring gratitude or deal with that even if it's not their ideal situation?
I have dealt with that and part of that is going to be self-awareness. I worked in the military, where if you did screw something up, people could die. When I’ve got yelled at, it's usually because there was something critical that got missed. With that being said, I'm never a fan of yelling in the workplace. If you are getting to the segment of your boss is a bully, then we venture into that realm. I have left several bosses. I'm not going to say I left jobs because I don't think people leave jobs. They leave bad bosses.
If your boss comes in and reams you or lights you up one downside than the other if you look at this and say, "There's nothing about what he said to me where I'm responsible for and this guy, gal or somebody you don't trust or they are hostile," it's probably time that you need to start to sharpen up your resume and start looking for something else. As much as you want to sit there and have a positive attitude, there are toxic environments. I have left several of them. I'm so glad you brought that up for our readers. Just because you’ve got it all together, you also want to find a leader, environment and culture that encourages that, and that I hope everybody always tries and hopes for.
A couple of things that have been addressed in shows is there was one notoriously challenging attorney who nobody could work at one of our clients for many years. Luckily, after chatting with her and her team, we were able to find her somebody but this attorney had a habit of sending 2:00 AM emails, lacing into the employee and CC-ing HR, the executive director and everybody. You could imagine it created poor morale. When she was about to lose her most recent assistant, the attorney found out that she was going to lose her right-hand person. She said, "I will do whatever I can to keep you. What am I doing wrong?"
On the flip side, she would do nice things for employees like good bonuses, flowers and champagne on birthdays. The person was straight with her and called her on being a bully. She said, "This is not acceptable. You go on a rampage at 2:00 AM and CC-ing X, Y and Z person is not something that creates a healthy work environment." As soon as she had that conversation, the attorney didn't want to lose her. She didn't realize that it was a potential issue, whether that was unacceptable and it became a better work environment, which was surprising.
I'm so glad you said that because I have gotten asked to do many talks on how to deal with a bully boss. The first thing I say is, "You have to sit down with them and let them know that this is unacceptable." They were like, "What?" I went, "Yes, because otherwise, either you are going to be talking to them across the table with a lawyer or HR. Try and solve it at the bottom level." I always assume that the other person is unaware. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't but you should give them a chance.
A Message to Millennials: What Your Parents Didn't Tell You and Your Employer Needs You to Know
When I was a new officer, I came in there and tried to act all officer-y. I was trying hard but I was irritating the heck out of everybody. One of my enlisted guys finally said to me, "LT, settle down. We all know you know what's going wrong but please." I was so thankful that they came to me and didn't go to my commanding officer. When you do that to somebody, 1 of 2 things is going to happen. One, they are going to go, "Thank you. I'm going to make a change," or number two, they are going to say, "Now you are on my radar and I'm out to get you." In that case, then you are sure this is a bully boss and you need to use the chain. If it doesn't stop, you definitely need to leave that organization.
There are a couple of them aside from the bullying boss or the person who yells and screams. Another common complaint I get from people in a non-dream job environment that they are trying to get through or survive is the micromanager. What would you suggest to somebody who has their boss, officer or whoever it might be sitting over, looking over their shoulder and nitpicking their every move? How do you gratefully handle that?
There are a couple of tests online. I talked about this in the book. Robert Kelley wrote a book called Power of Followership, The. There's a free online test that you can take. It's a free PDF. It takes about five minutes and identifies what kind of a follower you are. There are five different categories of a follower, all the way from passive, which means, "Tell me what to do and micromanage me because unless you are watching me, I'm not going to get it done." On the other side of the spectrum is what's called an exemplary follower. This is somebody that wants to co-lead. They are hard-chargers and critical thinkers. They are not going to tolerate nonsense and want to keep pushing up the organizational level of accountability and performance.
It sounds like what this individual is, is somebody independent, autonomous and exemplary. Therefore, the worst thing that their leader or boss can do is micromanage them. I have been in that where if you have a boss that tends to micromanage, they need to go be put over people that need to be micromanaged.
Sometimes it's as easy as sitting down with the boss and saying, "Let's take this test." They only know what they are. Therefore, they think that they have to manage everybody. What they need to do is look at each individual separately and say, "This person I’ve got to watch. This person sometimes. This person got it. If I don't get off their back, I'm going to demotivate and probably lose them."
I would say to them, "Take a look at this test." I wish I would have taken this test years ago because I thought I was the problem child and here it was. I just needed to be working for people that were going to let me do my thing. They weren't wrong and I wasn't right. We were unequally yoked in a professional sense. You need to let them know.
The next thing is the individual needs to look at themselves and say, "Am I doing everything I can to my boss to let them know what's going on?" Some bosses like to be copied on everything. Your boss isn't a mind reader. I tell a lot of people, "I will let people do whatever they want. As the boss, you still have to keep me in the loop as to what's getting done." I sometimes have people who get exasperated and say, "Yes, I took care of it." I pat them on the back and say, "If you don't tell me that, how do I know?"
It's a two-way street but you are going to know pretty quick if you sit down with your boss and say, "Do you not trust me? Is there something I'm not doing? How can I make you feel more at ease so I can focus on getting stuff done? I'm not sure what's going on here but I’ve got your back and I want to perform for you. What can we do to up that?"
They are either going to go, "I'm sorry. I didn't know," or they are going to go, "Too bad. I'm threatened by you. I'm scared you are going to eclipse me. I'm going to do everything I can to make your life miserable." That's the whole thing. Is your boss doing it because they don't know any better or are they trying to do it to intimidate you? You never know until you have those conversations.
Everything exists in a conversation. You have given some good advice if we are in one of those typical, your boss is bullying, harassing you or you have somebody who is micromanaging you but then we get into the other side of the equation, which is your colleagues. What if you have a colleague that ruffles your feathers and drives you mad? How can you deal with that gratefully?
First of all, is it somebody you have to interact with?
Yes.
Non-Dream Job: We are born with an empty key ring at our side and the more experiences that we have in life, the more success we're going to have because life changes constantly every day.
George MacDonald has a great quote and he says, "It's better to be trusted than to be loved." I don't have to like you but I have to be able when I go to, “You are going to do what I say and you are not going to be an idiot about it or try and play stump the dummy or these games.” Personalities, we are all coded in certain ways. I'm more task-focused. When I have to work with somebody that's highly relational and all they do is talk, that drives me crazy. I'm sure I drive them crazy when I'm saying, "Can you get to the point?"
Here's the other thing. Why are they ruffling your feathers? Is it because they are lazy, toxic, gossipy or don't do what they are supposed to do? That affects your productivity. If it's something that affects your productivity, I would go to the first and say, "We don't have to like each other but we do have to get the job done." If it's just a personality quirk and there are plenty of them, I would try and tune them out. Remember, not everybody can be as perfect as we are. Try and maybe limit your interaction with them if at all possible.
It all comes down in all of these situations to communication and accountability, where you are communicating with the other person what's missing or what would make a difference combined with self-awareness and then being accountable for the things you can be accountable for when it comes to interacting with these people.
We always hear, "You can either fight or flight. I can either go with this person or ignore them." The other thing is we can adapt. The more I learn about myself, the more I realized, "I'm this way but there are fifteen other different ways people are looking at this." I have become much more open and considering, "Maybe somebody doesn't want to get right to the point like me but could I adapt a little bit more on my relational side, knowing that this is what they like, try, be a good coworker and move a little bit?" I have become much smarter in understanding how other people think and how I can better get on their good side because when we do that, then we can become much more collaborative together.
If you approach somebody, whether it's a colleague, superior or somebody you are overseeing from an adversarial standpoint, the moment you take that stance or perspective, you are automatically setting yourself up for a negative situation. If you see the person as a partner, allow yourself to look for the good in them or find something that you could relate to them about, then it opens up a whole new span and expansive communication that wasn't available before when you were coming from a different perspective.
They say, "The thing that you dislike most in others is in you." I'm still not sure but I’ve got to give the wise sages the benefit of the doubt and let them know. I have always believed that 99% of our problems, misunderstanding, the spirit of enmity, hostility and frustration could be alleviated, if not circumvented or healed altogether if we just went to one another at the first opportunity and said, "Did you mean to do that because that was uncool? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come across like this." We have lost that art, especially with technology. Trust me. I love technology. We used to laugh at stuff across the virtual screen with no accountability or sense of self-awareness of what we are doing to other people. Until we are all robots, we are still going to need to deal with each other.
I had a client who had approached me to do work with her. She was extremely rude, angry and not pleasant at all to deal with when we gave somebody an offer through her. Lo and behold, two months later, she called me back. They still hadn't filled the position. She said to me, "Jennifer, I would like to retain you and work with you again."
I had to be very direct with her. I said, "I appreciate that. I'm flattered that you want to work with us and the people I work with. It's a collaborative thing and symbiotic. There's mutual respect and I didn't have that experience with you last time. With that said, I don't think I'm going to be the best resource for you if we can't co-create that going forward." I fell off my chair. This person who had been extremely adversarial in the past apologized. She took full accountability and said, "I'm so sorry. I had no idea it occurred for you that way." We had the most beautiful conversation around it, which was a miracle.
We don't know what's going through that person's head if they’ve got the news that their kid got kicked out of school or if their dog died the day before. We assume, take offense and not just be honest with people but the minute somebody says they are sorry like that, that is a huge character gold star because we all make mistakes. Even you and I, I'm sure some people would look at us and say, "I had a different experience with her." If you can come back and say you are sorry, typically, that is a turning point that then takes that relationship to a whole new level, as you have said in your story. Thank you so much for telling me that. That's very encouraging.
It's great because I want everybody out there who is reading to know I practice what I preach, whether I'm interviewing you, which is amazing because I learn something new every time I interview somebody. I always ask myself in my day-to-day life when I'm confronted with a person, circumstance or situation, "How can I apply what I have learned?" If we get curious and ask ourselves those questions before we engage with other people, it opens up more freedom for different ways to express ourselves.
I heard somebody say to me, "Hurt people." We need to be the ones that are healthy and take the high road. You can never respond to disrespect with disrespect. That only makes things worse and somebody will say, "They deserve it." Be the first one to extend and be honest. If they want to continue down that path, be my guest. I have had that happen plenty of times, too. That way, you have at least been a professional, kind and decent human being. That goes a long way.
Non-Dream Job: The only difference between a success and a failure is that a success has made a habit out of doing the things that a failure doesn't want to do.
We have been talking a lot about external circumstances, other people, circumstances and adversaries, perhaps in the workplace. What if it's just you? What if you are sitting there at your job and you are in a rut? How do you handle it if you are the problem at your job?
My father used to tell me, "Tracey, if you want a better job, do a better job and you will have a better job." If your intrinsic motivation is low, I will do everything I could. I would get online, take some webinars and personality profiling tests. I would drill down and get to the root source of why you are unhappy or not feeling the motivational mojo. Until you pinpoint the root cause is of the rut, it may not be your job. It may be a coworker, something going on in your personal life or, "I found out that I was near the point of exhaustion because my adrenal gland was shot." It could be a physical thing going on. Make sure, do some homework and find out, "What's going on?"
They call it a Sabbath thing. Take time to unplug and recharge. Get rid of the toxic influences in your life. Maybe it's watching nasty stuff on TV or toxic friendships that pull you down. Our bodies are a temple and we’ve got to preserve the goodness inside of them. I would do a lot of soul-searching. The other thing is when you feel like you are in a rut, think about other people in other parts of the world. Start focusing on what you do have instead of what you don't have.
I remember reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning about how he survived the Holocaust as a Jewish Psychotherapist and how he found meaning to go on in the most hellish of places. It was all about choosing the proper attitude and outlook on life. Wherever you are, you can still be of service to somebody. In your job, if you are not feeling it, look for ways. Maybe you can volunteer for other teams, take on a mentee, a protégé or get involved in volunteering. A lot of times, when we are in a rut, it's because we are too focused on ourselves and we are less focused on helping others. That would be my recommendation.
You and I have studied with the same teachers because that's what a lot of my teachers have taught me as well. It's that when we become so me-centric and in survival mode of, "I can't survive this. I'm depressed." I don't know about you but I have gone through that myself. I wish somebody would have told me when I was going through that at 13, 16 or 20, in my early twenties, to get outside of myself and give something.
Give time if you can give time. Give money if you can give money. Even give away an extra pair of clothes or something that maybe you don't wear anymore. The minute you do that, it shifts the focus out of survival and creates the opportunity for abundance, flow and things to come to you in unexpected ways.
You brought up a great point. For the readers, you are going to go through these highs and lows many times throughout your life. I'm so glad you said that. I have a lot of people who come up to seminars after me and say, "I was in it and I didn't know. I thought I was the only one." I was like, "It's part of our physical, emotional or spiritual makeup." If it happens, be aware that yourself is telling you something and don't think you are not the only one. Reach out, draw on your tribe and inner circle, share with people what's going on and let them help you.
As human beings, we are afraid to be vulnerable and expressed. In LA, there's something we started with a group of my girlfriends called the Gratitude Girls Group. I encourage you to start it in other cities too and for men as well. We started it as a group of women because sometimes women have a hard time creating honest, authentic friendships and having the opportunity to be vulnerable with one another.
What we do is share in a safe space if somebody is going through financial or marriage struggles, business obstacles or successes. Having a group of trustworthy people, men or women, does make a difference to share your feelings with. To allow other people to contribute to you is the greatest gift. We don't even realize it but it's a huge gift to be able to allow others to contribute to you.
We need each other and be attached, both from an evolutionary and a spiritual standpoint. Once we get alone one-on-one, that's when we start to die on the vine. It's tougher for us as women because we are so strong. We are used to doing it all. Allow yourself the power of others to come into your life.
You have given our readers so many wonderful tidbits. I feel like you and I could talk for hours. We will definitely have to find another time to have you join us on the show again. Please tell our readers where they can pick up your book and find out more information about you and the services that you offer.
Non-Dream Job: When you feel like you're in a rut, just think about other people in other parts of the world and start focusing on what you do have instead of what you don't have.
I would be delighted to connect with the readers and carry on the conversation. They can connect with me on our website. It's www.TremendousLeadership.com. All my books are on there. There's a Tremendous Tracey, a contact Tracey form. My email, I answer it directly. You can call me. I answer the phone. If you have any thoughts, I would love to hear any thoughts you had as a result of this. I would love to connect with you.
It has been such a pleasure to have you on the show and get to share with our readers how do we survive that non-dream job, which we all will have and have had. The great thing is it's all about perspective. You can always bring your perspective. With a great attitude, the ability to share and make a difference, you make an awful job great. Thank you so much for joining us. I invite all of our readers to read the next episode.
We have Laleh joining us and she is from a company called Belapemo. We are going to be talking about how you can authentically share in an interview, land your dream job and not give those cagey or canned answers where it comes across as completely inauthentic. Additionally, if you missed any portion of this show or our prior shows, you can always find it available for download on LA Talk Radio's website under the archive section or on iTunes under Get Yourself the Job. We also have a Facebook page on iTunes where you are welcome to leave us comments and follow us. We share articles as well on that Facebook page. Thank you so much for reading. Have a wonderful rest of your week, Tracey and everybody out there.
Thank you, Jennifer.
It's my pleasure.