Look forward to going to work

I was searching for a topic today’s blog and I stood there in my office looking out onto blue skies white fluffy clouds and green trees.  While thinking and thinking it struck me, and those who know me well know to be true, I love being at work not just doing my job but actually the context of my work.

Now being self-employed means that I fulfil a number of roles, from director, finance, marketing, IT, operations, maintenance and all the other services essential to building and maintaining a successful company.  Of course, I imagine like me, the activity you’re best at is the one you would like to spend most of your time doing, the one that you will raise an for invoice for afterwards, because that means you’re generally doing your core role.

You already know that we spend an awful time at work, in fact last week I was in conversation with a close contact who stated that he needed to go back to work, I was surprised because he wasn’t shift-working or working overnight and it was getting quite late.  However, he explained that his company wanted people to work upwards of 72 hours per week and while it wasn’t mandated, should downsizing come along, he “didn’t wish to be in the frame”.  The old adage of doing more for less!

While coaching, I have seen a general increase in people complaining about the level of stress and hours at work, they all seem to enjoy their core role but find the pressure to deliver day in day out excruciating.

So enjoying going to work may feel like something that just isn’t possible for you to do.  How about changing your approach to your work, developing a different outlook?  Making your team or your company environment better for having you there can make a big overall difference to you and everyone around you.  Do something that makes people smile, including yourself.  Have a look at your own role or work environment and discover and do something positive.  It could be something quick, cheap and simple.  Something that could well benefit everybody.  If you remember that work is a social interaction, so, a person’s frustration can have an effect on the whole team and so changing this aspect of the culture you may find that one by one people begin to enjoy and look forward to going to work which in turn then builds your expectations of a great day and before you know it everyone is focusing and in ‘flow’.  Imagine getting up on a morning and thinking “I can’t wait to get to work today”.  Just think about the difference that would make to your life overall.

If you’d like to know more about how to create a focused team, eg. How to implement flow theory so that everybody can work in harmony towards a single strategic outcome, then I would love to hear from you to see how we will make this happen.