The Sweet Spot
How to Know When You’ve Outgrown Your Job
The highest level of engagement you are ever going to feel at your job is that period of time when you are learning and growing, when you are discovering new aspects of the work, being challenged in new ways and overcoming challenges to solidify understanding. That is where we want all employees to be all the time. Any employee who is not being challenged, who is not learning and growing, will quickly become bored and either become disengaged or, if he or she is a superstar, look to leave the company.
In a global study of 23,000 employees in 45 countries across industries, the IBM Smarter Workforce Institute and Globoforce’s WorkHuman Research Institute found five facets to employee engagement:
- Belonging — feeling part of a team, group or organization.
- Purpose — understanding why one’s work matters.
- Achievement — a sense of accomplishment in the work that is done.
- Happiness — the pleasant feeling arising in and around work.
- Vigor — the presence of energy, enthusiasm and excitement at work.
It does not take a behavioral scientist to know that when we are challenged, when we are learning, when we are growing we feel a sense of purpose, we feel a sense of achievement, we feel a sense of happiness. That’s three of the five! And I would assert that in many cases, if an individual is feeling all of that, unless she is an anomaly in the company, there are likely others feeling the same way. Which would seem to suggest a sense of vigor and possibly a sense of shared purpose. ie Belonging.
So why does this matter?
For the individual professional it matters deeply because work is where we spend a large portion of our waking lives. If work is not a positive experience, we feel stuck. We feel like we are treading water. A job becomes simply a means to get money so that we can “live” outside of work.
For the team and organizational leader, it matters because we want our great people to stay and get even better. And we want our teams of great people to become more than the sum of their parts (which only increases as a team spends more time and has more experiences and overcomes more challenges together).
The Sweet Spot Concept
There are three stages to the relationship between a professional and her job:
- The Discovery Period
- The Sweet Spot
- The Mastery/Teacher Period
The Discovery Period lasts from the moment a person gets a new job, either a new job within the company or a new job in a new company, right up until she has figured out the job. The Discovery Period has the steepest learning curve. The employee is learning something new every day on every level from technical discoveries like “How do I use that tool we use around here?” to process discoveries: “Oh… That’s a much better way to do it.” to outcome discoveries: “That is not what I expected would happen. Let me try that again.” The Discovery Period is chock full of learning opportunities and, therefore, growth. The employee is a fish who has just stumbled upon The Great Barrier Reef teeming with life and color and beauty.
As she gets to the end of the Discovery Period, she begins to enter the Sweet Spot. At this point, she knows how to do every aspect of her job. She may not be great at every aspect of her job. But she knows how to do it. And she is practicing, refining her approach, accomplishing her goals, establishing herself in the role. This is an exciting period, but it can also be a dangerous period. The learning curve is still heading north, but it is far less steep than it was during the Discovery Period. And her appetite for learning and growing has not diminished. If anything, she is more ravenous than ever as she has just spent the last six months feasting on new experiences. She is looking for something to replace all of those new discoveries.
This is an exciting period, but it can also be a dangerous period.
There is a misconception in management that the Discovery Period is where management is needed most. After all, the new hire is just learning the job and needs guidance and direction and a helping hand. While that is true, it is a mistake to let go at the Sweet Spot.
The management approach changes. It does not go away.
An employee’s demeanor must be monitored very carefully at this Sweet Spot stage. There is a fine line between job satisfaction and boredom. She is doing her job. Is she engaged? Is she being challenged? Is she growing?
If she is beginning to become disconnected from the job, there are two tactics that you can take. The first is to offer her a new job. Get her back in that Discovery Stage. Put her back into The Great Barrier Reef environment. Let her feast anew.
The second is to offer her a chance to teach. She is beginning to master the role. She has learned how to do it and, every day, is discovering new ways to do it better. Let her share that with someone. Let her guide someone who is in the Discovery Stage. Better yet, let her also create a Learning Resource that is “An Insider’s Guide to the Discovery Stage”. What you have now done is created a whole new meta-Discovery Stage for her. She is now not only doing her work but watching herself do her work in service of sharing what she knows. And she is feeding hungry colleagues in the process. This is the Mastery/Teacher Period.
The point of all of this is that, as a team or organizational leader, it is critical that you know where your people are on this continuum. If you are aware of where your people stand at any given moment, you will know how to support them, engage them, utilize them. If you are not, they will become disengaged or even leave. Motivated people who are looking for purpose will leave. Unmotivated people who are looking for “an easy gig” will stay but become disengaged. Both of these situations are a problem.
And as an individual professional, you need to know where you are on this continuum at any given moment so that you can ask for the support you need, the raise your deserve, the move to a new role, the responsibility of mentorship.
Here’s your challenge: Think about yourself first. Where are you on this continuum? Are you in the Discovery Period? The Sweet Spot? The Mastery/Teacher Period? How engaged are you? Is there a relationship between your engagement and where you are on the continuum? If you’re a team or organizational leader, take a look at your people. Do you have a good sense of where each of them are on the continuum? Do you have a good sense of their level of engagement? If you don’t, ask them. See if it doesn’t change the way people in your organization see leadership.
I’d love to hear about what you learn. We at CultivateMe are fascinated with the way people work now, the way people wish they could work in the future and how we can build the bridge to the new world where learning and work are two parts of the same whole. Send me an email at doug@cultivateme.xyz.
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