(By Loyd Ford) We all pretty much get it, right? This is the 21st Century and the challenges of our parents are not our challenges. In other words, we live in the technology century now and that means that work has fundamentally changed and that change will potentially continue to speed up as we continue to work.
When you take money from an employer today, you are really signing on to help the company reach goals. These are their goals. That’s your job. The benefit might seem to be the pay only, but your work should offer you more benefit than just money. Let’s jump to the head of the class and double-down on your benefit.
- Of course, you benefit financially by taking pay for work (Congratulations – lots of people are not working in this business we love today)
- You benefit if you go ‘all in’ on learning as much as you can from the technologies, the philosophies and leadership of the company you work for today
- Seek out mentors within the company to help you become more efficient in your work and in reaching company goals
- Work to find additional ways to benefit the company in their goals to drive your own personal value to the company
- Mentor others in your company who want to seek a path to be more successful with the company
- Try to look beyond your time with your present company like you would while driving defensively (I know it’s shocking – you are not always going to work for your current employer)
- If you don’t like the direction of the company, company leadership or what you are being asked to do, you should begin to try to find other work (it’s unlikely you will be successful working for a company you hate, a boss you cannot stand or doing work you truly dislike)
These might seem like small attitude guidelines, but there is an obligation to yourself and an obligation to the people we work for to be engaged and to try to make our work meaningful. Meaningful work helps you feel your value and it’s exciting to accomplish goals. That is one of the reasons it is so important for managers to clearly communicate goals and reward employees for reaching or exceeding goals in front of others.
You might also think that recommending employees immediately start looking for work elsewhere is a negative. It isn’t. No company should want you to work somewhere you hate and you should respect yourself enough to move away from things that you feel are not as healthy for you.
Don’t forget this work is about you. Some people live to work and some work to live. Our business makes it easy to live to work. What you do at work should not be your only value. In fact, it isn’t. People are much more valuable than just work. Work is part of your value and that means it is important that you try to do the work that fills you up with pride. It’s also important you want to be working for people you respect.
No matter who you are working for today, these ideas work the same way. The attitude you bring to work and how you see working for your current company, your current boss and doing your current work informs how well you will do. Having the right attitudes can elevate the meaning of the work itself, can help you embrace the power of what you can accomplish.
Ultimately, you want your work to be about more than money. Broadcasting is a profession we can all be proud of because it takes talent, great attitude and the nimble ability to change and move with the industry. Your goal should never be to take money from anyone.
The real goal is no matter how much you are paid, the people you work with and for recognize your value is more than they are paying and you want to be in the right place so those people care about rewarding you because of that value.
Loyd Ford consults radio stations, coaches personalities, and provides behavioral and strategic programming to radio with RPC. If you’re on the Clubhouse app, you can join Loyd’s radio pro encouragement group “The Encouragers.” Reach him anytime. 864.448.4169 or [email protected].
