If you can’t be in the job you love; love the one you’re in so the song goes. Or something like that. I met a waitress in Belfast last week whose attitude to her work blew me away because she really wasn’t in the job she’d love but you’d never have known it. I was dining alone on an overnight stop for the second part of a behaviour change programme I’m delivering in a bank and watched her wait tables as though there was nowhere else she’d rather be.

In this month’s Flourishing Female column (which first appeared in September’s Flourishing Female newsletter) I’m serving up some food for thought on how you can make more of a job that isn’t your ideal. Whether you’re an aspiring barrister currently working as a City barrista or a frustrated full time finance controller in a flat structured organisation (or somewhere in between) here are five ideas to help right now:

More Job Love Tip #1
BELIEVE THERE’S A BENEFIT

When I took a place on the marketing stream of a bank’s grad scheme I (naively) thought I’d be writing copy and designing adverts at the City HQ. Instead I started off miserable and startled in a business banking branch and couldn’t wait to get out. Ten years on and that stint has proved invaluable to me every time I coach or facilitate groups of customer facing staff. It’s given me credibility and insight and quite possibility the edge over other coaches who could have been asked to do the work I’m currently doing with the Belfast bank staff. What future uses might there be for the things you’re doing now? Can you see - or how can you make - a link between elements of your current role and where you want to go?

More Job Love Tip #2
CONNECT WITH PEOPLE YOU MEET

I was being flippant with the barrista come barrister scenario since most of my readers are a fair way into their careers, but if you were that woman imagine all the city types you’d be talking to every day that could be a link into chambers. Thinking about Jo, the Irish waitress, I was ready to offer her a job on the strength of meeting her over the course of starter, main and pud. She impressed me. Who do you come into contact whose network you could tap into? Who could you ask to shadow in the next few months? (yes, shadowing is something you can do as a 30 or 40-something). Who’s in the office next door to you? Who’s that person sitting on the plane next to you - introduce yourself. I bang on all the time about the importance of listening but in this case, letting people know what you do and what you’d like to do next helps people pull pieces together and perhaps slot you into something that wouldn’t ordinarily have been advertised.

More Job Love Tip #3
EXPLORE WHAT’S AROUND YOU

Many women I’ve coached are open minded about what their next role is. If this is you or you don’t really know what you want - but know it’s not what you have right now -exploring what’s around you is a great place to start. Is there a sideways move you could make? Perhaps you’ve been in a meeting with someone who seems to have an interesting job - have a coffee with them, find out what they do. Is there something not being done by your team that you’re interested in and could be weaved into your work to stretch you? This might be something linked to outwitting the competition; something to make a system or process slicker or an activity that improves your colleagues’ work experience.

More Job Love Tip #4
TACKLE THE LITTLE IRRITANTS

Add up every small annoyance in a job (which may very well be short people although that wasn’t what I had in mind) and it can bring you to the point of feeling you have no other option but to cast it aside and start again elsewhere. But imagine the most no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase person you know looking at your job from their perspective. What wouldn’t they tolerate? What would they do about it? If you can change the small irritants: for example a quiet office where people keep themselves to themselves; a culture of presenteeism; no working from home; flabby meetings that perpetually start late and run over and so on, you may just find more job love.

More Job Love Tip #5
MAKE DOWNWARD COMPARISONS

If all else fails think about all the worse jobs you could be doing for less satisfaction, more clock watching and reduced pay and pension.You’ve probably got it pretty good right?

LET’S MAKE IT PERSONAL

There are of course other approaches to getting more job love and increasing performance. This being a newsletter and not a 1:1 coaching meeting I’m limited in my ability to talk directly to you. If you’d like to have time with me to work out how you can manifest your desire to be in another role/organisation/field I would be pleased to hear from you. Many people I work with have coaching fees paid for by their organisation and I’ve been told I’m a great value proposition.

And what of Jo (the Belfast waitress)? I told her what a great job she was doing and tactfully asked about how she’d come to be working here and where she might go in the future. She told me she’d been in marketing, had taken a gap year to travel and when she’d returned there wasn’t a marketing job in sight. ”It’s a tough market just now and I could do this job without a smile and all the chat but it’s better for me and my customers if I do.” What a great woman. I tipped generously, told her boss he had an asset he should do something more with and left wistfully thinking about her just deserts.

This month’s Flourishing Female column was inspired by Jo and “Up is not the only way” by Beverly Kaye and Caela Farren, 1996.

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