Our next post in our guest blogger series comes from Lisa Rosendahl of Simply Lisa. Lisa is a human resource professional with over 18 years of experience who shares her personal and professional experiences to positively impact business results and bring out potential in others. She is also a part of the 2011 HR Florida Conference & Expo Social Technology Team. Lisa shares some thoughts on evolving in your careers.
Comfort foods. Whether it’s chicken noodle soup, rice pudding, or anything chocolate, comfort foods have the ability to right what is wrong in the world. Comfort work. Whether it’s meeting with employees, creating Excel spreadsheets or anything compensation, we each have work tasks that right what’s wrong in our world and put us right on the proverbial comfortable couch. Have you been there? Are you nice and comfy? Great. You’ll be there awhile. Doing what’s professionally comfortable for you will hold you back.
Breaking Free
In his interview in Harvard Business Review, Whole Foods Market cofounder and co-CEO John Mackey states,
“My job has evolved steadily over the years. I’ve always asked myself this question: “What is it that only I can do?” If somebody else can do it, then maybe it’s not the best job for me. That has caused me to give up many things that I really liked doing and was really good at.”
What do you really like doing? What are you good at? Take a good look. What you are seeing is your professional equivalent of Chicken Soup for the Soul.
It’s time to get off the couch, close the book and move on.
Moving on
John Mackey shared:
“It’s very good morale for me to go to the stores and just walk around meeting people. That is not something I really enjoy doing or am particularly good at. I am more of an introvert than an extrovert. But through constant practice I’ve gotten a lot better at.”
Move on to the things that only you can do. You’ll be in uncharted territory. At first, it won’t be comfortable at all and you may not even like what it is you need to do.
Do it anyway.
And do it often.
Jobs evolve and so should you.
