Today's Workday

Job Description:

* Tough, very busy job, lots of distractions.

* Expect constant change, chaos, and confusion.

* Work with short-tempered, stressed, and overwhelmed people.

Job Requirements:

* Bring high levels of energy, perserverance, strength, and resilience every day.

* Be organized, flexible, focused, and capable of multitasking.

* Maintain your enthusiasm, interest, patience, and dedication.

Today's workdays have plenty of chaos — and not the fun kind. Our different organizations have different varieties of challenge and messiness: From having 24/7 workflow when not really necessary to a lack of basic planning, coordination, and communication. Most people come to work to earn an income with the desire to be productive, engaged, and satisfied, and to go home feeling good about the day. However, that is easier said than done.

I want to tell you about the day before Thanksgiving last year. I met three strangers in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I went to visit family. I met three happylooking, engaged, working people.

At a small kitchen china housewares specialty shop, it was a cashier's first day, as she explained; she was a retired nurse starting on a new adventure. At a beauty supply chain, a young woman told me this was her first retail job and that she hoped she would be ready for Black Friday; she was upbeat. And at a large grocery store chain, the cashier volunteered this was her first day on the job after staying home as a mom and how happy she was in spite of long lines.

Wow. Here were three people happy to have their workday. Thanksgiving cooking, tourists, and holiday shoppers: These are not easy jobs. Yet, they were engaged, productive, and more than satisfied; they were glad to be working. Being optimistic, I got the feeling they would sustain it or at least try to. It was easy to talk with them, and they looked energized when I became chatty too and wished them well.

It struck me that these three people looked like they were in the honeymoon phase of their work relationship. This thought led me to compare the work relationship to personal relationships with family and friends: We hope for a honeymoon phase that will help to sustain us when the reality sets in and we really get to know each other. Some days will be better than others, change and compromise are required, and maybe this relationship is not meant to last forever!

These three people will face threats to their engagement soon enough. I am basing my concern on some current workplace research that does not look hopeful and wondering about those of us who started out loving our jobs and those of us who are in jobs that we never wanted in the first place. Simon Sinek touches on this in his book Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.

Studies show that 80 percent of Americans do not have their dream job. If we knew how to build organizations that inspire, we could live in a world in which that statistic was the reverse — a world in which over 80 percent of people loved their jobs. People who love going to work are more productive and creative. They go home happier and have happier families. They treat their colleagues, clients, and customers better.

Are you part of the 20 percent who have their dream job?

I included some generic job descriptions and requirements in each chapter since a lot is required to have good workdays and to stay engaged. An article entitled "Employees Are Responsible for Their Engagement Too" says, "Engaged employees begin the day with a sense of purpose and finish it with a sense of achievement." Would you call yourself an engaged employee with a positive start and finish to each day?

Also, aren't our leaders, managers, and supervisors supposed to be there to help engage us? The article also points out that "though managers have the biggest impact on their team members' engagement, many managers are unwilling, unable or unprepared to motivate and engage their employees." Are you one of the fortunate people with an effective leader and manager who creates a work culture that is engaging, satisfying, interesting, and oriented toward problem-solving?

The statistics that I just listed really worry me because in the Introduction I encouraged you to get your hopes up about workday opportunity. People spend a good chunk of time working, whether it is commuting to a workplace, traveling as part of our work, or working virtually from home. Each workday presents us with choices for how to spend our time, energy, ideas, and efforts, and brings us opportunities, difficulties, frustrations, inherited or self-created chaos, connections, or disconnections. Some of the choices we make will determine whether we leave work feeling good, bad, indifferent, or discontent enough to start looking for a new job. Once each workday is done, that chunk of time cannot be redone or recaptured as a "do over."

The next day will present more of the above and even more surprises and changes, and our mindset and resources will be tested again. That is the way it works. Additionally, if you are a leader who is reading this, you know that negativity can be spread just as easily as the positive spirit and results of teams making the most of their workdays.

Waiting for someone else to help us make the most of each workday is a passive approach that puts people in a dependent position. Those who work for and with a skilled leader and manager are very lucky, but a talented leader will not take the place of your own outlook, talents, and resilience. Besides, for many organizations, their own data indicates a serious need for effective leaders/managers and positive, accountable, and caring work cultures. I have worked for and with leaders who are effective, inspirational, unskilled, clueless, absent, and control freaks. I am sad to say that the effective and inspirational leaders stand out to me because I can count them on one hand.

Of course, there are many things at work that people cannot directly control. This book offers strategies and tools to help individuals make the most of their workday with the things that are in their Circle of Influence. Stephen Covey, in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, describes the Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.

The problems we face fall in one of three areas: direct control (problems involving our own behavior); indirect control (problems involving other people's behavior); or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as our past or situational realities). The proactive approach puts the first step in the solution of all three kinds of problems within our present Circle of Influence.

According to Covey, we have choices: "Whether a problem is direct, indirect, or no control, we have in our hands the first step...