How To Deal with Job Dissatisfaction

Brooke Campanelli: How many times have you heard somebody say, “I hate my job.” How often have you said it yourself? Well coming to the rescue is Patrick Lencioni; a business expert with advise from his new book, “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.” So tell us a little bit about your fascination with work. Patrick Lencioni: When I first learn that my dad had to spend more than 8 hours a day in his job, it kind of freaked me out. It just seemed like a long time and then when I learn a lot of people didn’t like their job, I though that was just strange. Even as a kid I thought, that’s something I hope it doesn’t happen to me someday. And so as I got jobs in high school and college and then took my first real job if you will after I graduated, I found that much of work was kind of miserable and it didn’t feel like that was right. Brooke Campanelli: What are the three signs of a miserable job? Patrick Lencioni: Well in short, they are anonymity. When someone feels like their manager doesn’t know who they are or isn’t interested in who they are as a person. Irrelevance. When a person doesn’t understand how their job makes a difference in someone’s life. And immeasurement which is a word we invented which just means, when a person can not assess for themselves or measure the contribution that they are making. Brooke Campanelli: If so many people hate their jobs, why do they keep doing them? Patrick Lencioni: Well, I think there are a couple of reasons; there are economic reasons. They keep doing it because of those. But I think the other think is we kind of come to accept that this is just how jobs are supposed to be. Like well, I remember my dad used to say to me, “if it were fun, they wouldn’t call it a job.” And I’ve always said, “No that’s not right.” But most of us actually come to accept that. Brooke Campanelli: Tell us what a leadership fable is? Patrick Lencioni: I like to write the stories because I think it grabs people and I write short stories, I mean, my books are not terribly long. I always think that someone should be able to read them from Chicago to San Francisco in an airplane. I do that so people can get hooked by the story and get to know the characters and find themselves interested in the story and before they know what’s happening, they are learning something as opposed to a book that say, “here I’m teaching you something,” that people feel like they are being lectured to. In the back of the book then after the fiction, I explain the model and some people like to go straight to that because that’s what they want to learn but I find the vast majority of readers really want to understand the theory as it plays out in real life. Brooke Campanelli: Give us some reasons why business owners or managers should work to maximize their employee’s job satisfaction. Patrick Lencioni: It’s going to make the human beings that work their and managers and employees alike feel better about their world and they are going to treat their co workers and their families and their friends better. I think there is a social phenomenon here too. When an employee goes home from work and feels like they are known and the work, they do matter to someone and they have a sense of how they are doing, they are different people and when a manager knows that they are helping an employee do that, they feel a greater sense of what they are doing because every manager wants to do a better job but when managers and employees alike are feeling miserable in their work; the costs to the company, to those people individually, into society at large are great. Brooke Campanelli: What do you hope that readers will learn from the three signs of a miserable job? Patrick Lencioni: I think what I hope the most is that people with have hope. Hope that work in itself should not be miserable and that a work experience can make them better people and contribute to who they are and make them better parents and friends, and neighbors, and strangers to people on a bus. And is they can realize that whether they are manager or an employee that they can do things in life that make a difference to others. Brooke Campanelli: Thanks for joining us today Patrick. Patrick Lencioni: Sure.