The UK's top careers coaches want to solve your job worries
ALSO: The George Costanza 'look annoyed' solution updated
Panic attacks, insomnia and heart attacks: this FT article about burnout in ‘billable hours’ professions is especially rich. One firm reported that workers were ending their days at 11.28pm on average, noting they’d had to bring in an addiction expert and psychologist to help their employees.
Further reading from the archive: Alexandra Michel’s paper into the consequences of overwork in a similar industry is harrowing reading (come for the six-figure salary, take time to enjoy the addiction, cancer and anxiety disorders). You’ll also remember that overwork has been shown to age your body on fast forward.
How did (Seinfeld character) George Costanza pretend he was working? He looked annoyed. The Economist has suggested that performance at work is now more about dropping emojis in the Slack, comments in the document and applause in the Zoom chat. (All of Seinfeld is currently on Netflix btw)
In a survey “80% of respondents described themselves as ‘hardworking’. No other trait drew such a strong positive response, not even ‘sympathetic’ or ‘accepting of others’. Why are we obsessed with showing we work hard?
A couple of years ago I did a podcast about how Satya Nadella had transformed the culture of Microsoft, this extract of a new book goes deep on the same themes - relevant for anyone interested in culture change
Stanford Professor Nick Bloom was in the news for predicting that the majority of those who used to work in offices will go hybrid in 2022 (half of the workforce, he adds, have jobs that don’t permit remote working). He also added that we tend to mirror what our bosses do, if our bosses work from the office we want to be around them:
To push this further Professor Raj Choudhury from Harvard Business School believes that 2022 is going to be determined by the open-mindedness of firms to embrace an inevitable conclusion. You either sign-up to the revolution surrounding us, or your employees will make their own decisions, he believes:
The big trend of 2022? The rising importance of good managers. “Managers have always been important, but their roles are becoming even more mission-critical. In hybrid environments, managers are the connectors between cultural values and employee experience”.
Will you change your job this year? As we start a new year considerations about the jobs we do have never been more prominent. One headline this year has already suggested that up to three-quarters of us might be considering changing jobs. Intriguingly money doesn’t appear to be in the top five reasons to make a change.
I wanted to understand what was going on here, and what any of should be doing about it. Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis are the UK’s most respected careers coaches. Their first book The Squiggly Career is a modern day bestseller, and its non-linear title has become adopted into the lexicon of how we talk about a renegotiated relationship with our careers. Their TED Talk has received millions of views. They have a new book out, You Coach You, which offers practical coaching for anyone curious about changing their career. Some of their suggestions – like job scanning – will help you reorientate what you want from your job – and how you can achieve it.
Whether you’re thinking about changing work – or just have friends who are considering it – this is a great episode to help us reflect on what we want from our jobs. Buy can also You Coach You now.
This article about how the world is getting angrier has applications both for dealing with customers (and, I suspect, colleagues)
I enjoyed this Twitter thread about how Red Bull is simply a marketing organisation (it outsources all production, which I guess a lot of other firms do too - Apple, Nike - but it is interesting to see their financial focus on marketing being so high)
If you need cheering up please go and read the replies to this tweet (and the Quote Tweets for completists):
The BBC show about cartoonist Quentin Blake was a total delight and everyone who had a childhood should watch it
