Work Reimagined

Uncover Your Calling

Richard J. Leider, David Shapiro

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781626565609
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

DISCOVER WHAT YOU'RE HERE TO DO It's the end of work as we know it. Career paths look nothing like they did in the days before phones got smart. We work more hours at more jobs for more years than ever before. So it's vital that we know how to find work that allows us to remain true to who we are in the deepest sense, work that connects us to something larger than ourselves—in short, our “calling.” We all have one, and bestselling authors Richard Leider and David Shapiro can help you uncover yours.Through a unique Calling Card exercise that features a guided exploration of fifty-two “natural preferences” (such as Advancing Ideas, Doing the Numbers, Building Relationships, and Performing Events), Leider and Shapiro give us a new way to uncover our gifts, passions, and values and find work that expresses them. Along the way, they mix in dozens of inspiring true stories about people who have found, or are in the process of finding, their own callings.Uncovering your calling enables you to experience fulfillment in all aspects and phases of your life. And here's the even better news: you'll never have to work again. When you choose to do what you are called to do, you're always doing what you want to do. Work Reimagined offers an enlightening, effective, and entertaining approach to discovering what you were born to do, no matter your age or stage of life.

CHAPTER 1

Reimagining Work—What Do You Do?

The First Question

How soon after you first meet someone do you ask the question? How quickly do others ask you when you first meet: What do you do?

It may be the most common question we ask of others and which others ask of us.

It is certainly one of the most important questions we can ask of ourselves: What do I do? What do I really do? What is my real work?

Recently, Richard was on a plane trip where he sat next to a businessperson who annoyed passengers as they settled in by talking loudly enough on his mobile phone for everyone to hear. As soon as the plane hit cruising altitude, he asked Richard the standard question: “What do you do?”

Hoping to keep the conversation relatively short, Richard answered quickly, “I’m an author,” and turned his attention to his laptop by way of illustration.

“I knew it!” exclaimed the man, “I knew you were somebody! Someday I’d like to write a book myself! That is what I’d like to do!”

At a fundamental level, we all need to feel like “somebody,” to do something that gives our life meaning and purpose, some reason to get up in the morning. Work is central to our well-being; what we spend our time doing each day ultimately determines how fulfilled we are. It is not surprising, therefore, that the quest to find fulfilling work is one of the dominant aspirations of people everywhere, at all ages and phases of life.

Nearly all of us spend the majority of our waking lives doing something that we consider “work.” Even those who are unemployed, retired, or between jobs have some form of occupation that engages them, be it looking for a job, doing volunteer service, or simply taking care of things around the house.

When people first meet, they almost inevitably ask each other, “What do you do?” If we can answer that question with something we find fulfilling, we are likely to be fulfilled in other areas of our lives, as well. The inevitable question that then arises is, How can we find work that we find fulfilling? The answer to that lies in uncovering our calling. And when we are able to do that, we come to better understand not only what we are meant to do, but even more fundamentally, we develop a better sense of who we really are.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

When we were kids, we imagined what work would be like when we grew up. When parents and teachers asked us what we wanted to be, we usually had a ready answer. “A doctor. A firefighter. An explorer.” We envisioned a life of excitement and challenge on the job—a life in which we would employ our best-loved talents on projects we were passionate about.

For many of us, though, it has not exactly worked out that way. We find ourselves in working situations that are far from what we envisioned as children. Our jobs are just jobs. They pay the bills, but they do not provide us with the whistle in our work. Even worse, we have forgotten what we wanted to be when we grew up.

So maybe it is time to ask ourselves again:

What do I want to be when I grow up?

With that in mind, perhaps it is time to take a lesson from a group of sixth-graders Dave worked with in a Seattle middle school. To a student, they all had very strong feelings about what the future ought to hold for them—and even stronger feelings about what it ought not. Each of them had already answered the question we are still asking:

What do I want to be when I grow up?

Dave tells about an incident that made this abundantly clear to him, in a way that helped him realize what his own answer finally was.

We are playing a game called “Hand Dealt,” which explores the question, “Is life fair?” by providing each player with a predetermined “life.” Students are each dealt three cards: one determines a fictional relationship they are in, one establishes a fictional job or jobs, and the third tells them where they live. There is a wide range of relationships, occupations, and accommodations, from the quite affluent to the extremely poor. Thus, one player may end up having been dealt a “life” made up of two parents, one of whom is a chemical engineer making $80,000 a year, the other of whom is a banker earning $125,000 annually, two kids, living in a four-bedroom house, while another player is dealt a “life” as an unemployed single parent of four children living in a one-bedroom apartment. Not surprisingly, the kids who get the “good” lives tend to respond to the question of life’s fairness in the affirmative, while those who are dealt less desirable lives usually respond that life is horribly unjust. This gives us the opportunity to wonder aloud about the relationship between monetary success and happiness, and ultimately, about just what it means for life to be fair or unfair.

But that is not all. It also gives us a chance to explore what it feels like to be dealt a life we did not choose. This, more than anything else, is what energizes our discussion. The kids are adamant about the injustice of having to live with choices they did not make.

“I wouldn’t mind being a janitor,” says a boy I’ll call Carlos, whose bleached-blond surfer look belies an unusual level of thoughtfulness for an eleven-year-old, “if being a janitor is what I wanted to be. But since it isn’t my choice, I don’t think it’s fair.”

But the cards were passed out fairly, weren’t they? Didn’t everyone have an equal opportunity to be whatever they ended up being?

“That is not the point,” says Miranda, a rather small girl with a rather large personality. “What makes it fair or not is that it’s your own life and that nobody’s forced you into it.”

“Yeah. Some people are actually happy being, I dunno, schoolteachers. But that for me would be like worse than prison.” This comment from Will, one of the class’s several class clowns elicits a humorous grimace from his teacher and chuckles from his classmates.

“Could you imagine coming to school for the rest of your life?” shouts curly-haired Maya with a theatrical shiver. “What a disaster!”

Amidst the general assent of her fellow students, I wonder out loud what kinds of things these eleven- and twelve-year-olds could imagine doing for the rest of their lives. I am taken aback at the assurance with which they respond.

“When I grow up, I’m going to be a movie director,” says Erin, a seemingly shy girl who spends much of her time drawing. “I’m going to start by doing commercials and then videos and then feature films.”

Ryan, who collared me the moment I entered the classroom to show me his daily journal, in which he is recording tidbits for the autobiography he is working on, pipes up that he’s going to be a writer. “Maybe I can write your movie scripts,” he says to Erin.

Other students have similarly well-formed notions of what they love doing. I am enjoying immensely talking to them about what they plan to do, how they plan to do it, and what are the philosophical implications of their choices—and their freedom to make those choices. I wonder how they manage to have such optimism and clarity about their lives at this point. I also wonder how—at this age—they seem to know themselves so well. When did they have the discovery that so often eludes adults: the discovery of what they want to be when they grow up?

Suddenly, I come to understand that I am having that same discovery myself. As I stand in a classroom, doing philosophy with children, I realize that finally, after years of searching, I am at last doing what I most love to be doing. All the other jobs I have ever had—from busboy to videodisc designer to corporate training consultant—have been merely steps upon the way to where I am now. I feel completely connected to the process of inquiry we are conducting; I am immersed in the subject matter and delighted by my young colleagues and their inquiring minds. Time flies by. What I notice is how authentic it feels for me to be helping these students to better understand the questions and answers we are exploring, and in the process, to better understand themselves. It occurs to me that in all the other jobs I have ever had, this is the common theme that has given me satisfaction. At some level, “creating dialogue” is what has consistently been key.

And I realize that after many years, I’ve finally become what I always wanted to be when I grew up. It has taken me half a century to find the answer to the question that my young friends in this classroom have found for themselves in just over a decade: What do you want to be when you grow up?

The Roots of Calling

At a fairly young age—by fifth or sixth grade, certainly—many of us have some sense of what we love to do—and what we do not. Of course, we cannot put a job title on it at that point; loving to draw does not translate into being an art director for an eleven-year-old. Nor is finding math class fun a sign that a youngster should think about becoming an accountant. Moreover, given that well over half of the jobs kids will grow up and go into have not even been invented yet, it is obvious that we cannot expect too much specificity in career choice at such a young age.

Still, the essential roots are already there. Our gifts, though nascent, have already begun to take shape. Deep within, a part of us knows that we are here on this planet for a reason. A sense of destiny, unformed as it is, lies just beneath the surface of our awareness. And even as children, we naturally incline toward the experiences that allow us to express this.

Somewhere along the line, though, we get sidetracked. We silence that voice within that speaks to us about what really matters. We make choices—or have them made for us—that are driven by practical concerns. We set aside “childish” dreams in the interest of making a living or satisfying someone else’s dream. We seem to forget what we knew as boys and girls—what we most love to do.

But that wisdom never really goes away. It can be revived. We can open ourselves to that innate reimagining that guided us when we were young: the inner urge to give our gifts away.

The roots of calling in our lives go back very deeply—perhaps to even before we were born. Calling is an expression of our essence; it is our embedded destiny. The seed of this destiny lies within us, and seeks, one way or another, to fulfill itself in the world. So the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we are doing all we can to bring the fruits of our calling to bear.

Seeds of Destiny

One unmistakable conclusion that Richard has drawn from a lifetime of coaching individuals about life and career design is this: we all possess seeds of destiny. Each of us has within us innate natural gifts—unique potential for creative expression. From birth we have what we need to become all we can be. The challenge, of course, is to figure out how to make a living with our uniqueness, how to connect who we are with what we do.

Often, we do not have to look very far to find our life’s calling. We can simply start doing whatever we are already doing—driving a taxi, being a lawyer, raising a child, waiting on tables—with greater awareness and expression of our natural gifts.

On a day-to-day basis, we always have the choice to bring more of ourselves—our gifts—to what we do. These choices are meaningful because we do them with a feeling of purpose rather than simply to earn a paycheck. They are naturally rewarding and often occur effortlessly. Such moments put a whistle in our work. They fill purposeful lives—lives that are apt to be happier than lives that lack such moments.

The way we approach our work depends on our “big picture” of life. Unfortunately, many of us lose that perspective; we get so focused on the hand we were dealt that we make decisions impulsively, losing touch with what is really important to us. Ironically, if we can find a moment or means to widen our focus to that longer view, we may discover that what we are looking for is already within sight.

Acorns and Elocution

A sense of calling lies deep within us all. Each of us is, you could say, like an acorn. Somehow, almost magically, the acorn knows how to grow up to be an oak tree. It does not matter where you plant it, whether you put it in an oak forest, an orange grove, or even a junkyard, as long it gets the necessary sunlight and water, the acorn will develop into an oak tree. The acorn’s destiny to flourish as an oak is implanted within itself. Attempting to make the acorn grow into a pine tree, for instance, will be—at best—fruitless; more likely, it will destroy the tree altogether.

The same can be said for our own destinies. Like the acorn, each of us contains within us the power to realize the fullest expression of who we are. Naturally, we need a good environment in which to grow and thrive, but assuming we can cultivate that, we can grow our roots down and reach up to become tall and mighty in our own way.

Sadly, many of us spend our lives trying to grow our acorns into pine trees—or palms or sycamores or something even more exotic and unlikely, and this stunts our growth. Yet our destiny continues to seek fulfillment in becoming an oak tree. Small wonder so many of us grow up feeling rather gnarled and twisted. Small wonder so many of us end up making work or lifestyle choices that hinder our natural growth.

One of the most common messages many young people receive is that they should rein in their natural creative capacities. How many of us have heard “You can’t sing,” You can’t draw,” or “You’re not a writer”? How many of us were told we were not good in one or all of the creative arts? And even those of us lucky enough to have had our creativity supported, were likely to have been told that we could never make a living as a singer or artist or poet. Each time these limitations were imposed upon us, most of us acted as if they were the truth. We accepted the limitations, imposed them upon ourselves, and thus, the limitations became real.

The lesson is that when we are given strong positive messages about our natural abilities, we tend to bring them forth quite successfully. Those of us fortunate enough to have had parents or mentors who encouraged our creative expression often find ourselves using those very abilities in our work lives as adults. Richard, for instance, who now makes a good deal of his living by giving speeches had programmed into him from a very young age the simple message “You can speak.” He bought it.

“When I was a preteen,” says Richard, “my father strongly encouraged me to get up early every morning and look up a new word in the dictionary. At breakfast, I would share from memory my new word with him. I always picked ones that I thought would impress him—words like ‘ameliorate’ or ‘erudition.’ He believed that to be successful in any work or in life you needed to be able to express yourself clearly and articulately. For him, having the vocabulary to say precisely what you meant with a certain poetic flourish was a vital component of success. Encouraging me to learn a ‘word a day’ was how he impressed upon me the importance of this.

“His next push was for me to take elocution lessons. I dreaded this. My friends would be playing hockey at the corner playground on Saturday mornings while I sat with Miss Loker learning how to speak. Miss Loker was a dowdy, gray-haired woman in her seventies who seemed plucked directly from the musty volumes of English literature that she carried with her for my lessons. Always perfectly put-together and freshly coifed, she showed up on Saturdays with poems to be memorized and lessons on pronunciation and inflection to be learned. I would avoid the work she gave me all week long and try to cram it all in on Friday afternoon. Consequently, I dreaded her visits and the inevitable humiliation of having to stand before her, in my own living room, reciting the week’s lesson over and over and over.

“The true terror, though, was the recital, six months out, where she brought all her students together in an auditorium to recite their selected piece. For months, I came up with every conceivable excuse to avoid this event. Unfortunately, there was no way out. I ended up on stage before scores of expectant parents, reciting my piece under the stark glow of the theater lighting. Much to my surprise, I liked it. Hearing my voice reverberate through the hall and seeing the smiles and hearing the applause of the audience gave me a thrill I never forgot.

“As a sensitive and mostly introverted thirteen-year-old, elocution lessons did not help me get picked for hockey games on Saturday afternoons or be able to talk to girls at school. But they did teach me to be comfortable speaking in front of groups. In fact, after two years of lessons, I found within me a natural enjoyment for sharing stories in front of a live audience. I discovered that I had a gift for communicating my thoughts and feelings to groups of people.

“Today I make much of my living sharing stories and lessons learned with audiences of all sizes. Speaking in public is a part of my work that I truly enjoy. It brings fort...