Performance Enhancers
Posted by
Tim Eckstrom on Saturday, January 19, 2008 at 3:10 PM
Categories:
Performance
I love the latest Southwest Airlines series of commercials where the young executive has been doing a great job, gets a big promotion, but now is accused of using 'performance enhancers' to get to the place where he is outdoing his peers. In one scene he stomps out of his office and away from reporters as the accusations fly. Turns out that he has just been traveling via Southwest, thus saving him all kinds of time and money and bringing profits to the company.
Just in case you have been living in a cave for the past several years, Southwest is making fun of Major League Baseball and its steroids woes. The recent Mitchell report named more than 80 big leaguers as having 'used' in the past several years. While none of them has yet been convicted in a court of law, it is clear that these individuals felt that they had to cheat in order to do their job to the level that they desired. As a lifelong baseball fan the whole issue has saddened me (although it didn't come as a surprise). Hopefully the resulting proceedings will make a serious contribution to cleaning up all sports; not only at that level, but starting with our youth.
The subject did get me wondering a little about those in the workplace and what kind of 'performance enhancers' they may need in order to do their jobs well. We are all motivated differently. For some of us it may be the paycheck...the bigger the check (or at least the potential of a bigger check), the more determined to do a good job we are. For others it may be the social interaction that they get to be a part of. Still others love the intellectual challenge that each day brings or the chance to be able to impact other people in a positive way. A big part of job satisfaction is determined by how well our job fits with our inner motivators.
Do you love your job? If I asked you to rate your personal job satisfaction on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being, 'Every morning I can hardly wait for the alarm to ring so I can jump out of bed and get going!' and 1 being 'What job?' what number would you give yourself. If you gave yourself a 7-10 you are truly rare. Most people I talk with are in the 1-6 range.
If that is you, this new year may be just the time to commit to understanding more clearly what your inner motivations are and make plans to get more closely aligned with them. You will be more happy...and won't need any 'artificial enhancers' to set your world on fire.
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