How is Your Job Satisfaction?
Over half of Americans are unhappy with their jobs.

Perhaps more revealing is that only 26% of us are engaged in our work – actively working to build the success of our organizations.

Fully 55% of us are not engaged, just showing up and doing what’s required. And 19% are actively disengaged, fighting or sabotaging everything that comes along.

Where do you fit?

If you’re in the “engaged” category, you’re blessed, because research shows that you are much more likely (92%) to feel satisfaction in your personal life as well. Solomon, in Ecclesiastes 5, says that being happy in your work is a gift of God.

The same research shows that if you’re unhappy in your job, disengaged or actively disengaged, that you’re much less likely to feel satisfaction in your personal life.

Unhappiness and dissatisfaction at work carry over to our personal and family lives. We bring it home, and it can infect everything else.

Unhappiness with your work by itself calls for action. Unhappiness at work that is affecting other parts of your life calls for urgent action.

You need to begin taking steps now if you find yourself in the “unhappy with your job” category, especially if you also find that you’re not extremely satisfied with your personal life. It’s highly unlikely that something out of the blue is going to change all that. You are in charge of your happiness, and things will only get better when you take positive steps.

Life coaching is an effective tool for helping individuals take action to improve their job satisfaction and their overall life satisfaction.

If you’re a business leader, life coaching for your team can provide a high return on investment through increased productivity and engagement. The cost of job dissatisfaction and disengagement in the workplace is high.

Call or email me to set up a time to talk about whether life coaching would be a good option for you, your team, or someone you are thinking of referring.

Email me for a simple free personal life satisfaction self-assessment.

Youth Soccer and Leadership – Putting People Where They Can Contribute
An important principle I discovered early on as a recreational youth soccer coach was “Discover what each player can do to contribute to the team, put him in that position, and give him the help he needs to succeed.”

The beauty (and challenge) of recreational youth soccer is that every player is assigned to a team and every player gets to play. They’re not all pre-selected to fill specific roles based on skills, past performance, training camps attended, etc. Recreational youth soccer is about kids having fun, learning some fundamental skills, being part of a team, and enjoying treats at the end of the game.

For the coach, the big thing is to figure out how each child can succeed and have a positive experience. Looking back, my greatest satisfaction over 8 years as a youth soccer coach comes from knowing that I was always able to find a way for each child to contribute to the team, even if I had to come up with some unorthodox ways of accomplishing it.

I think we often lose sight of this important principle in our businesses, our non-profit organizations, and even our churches.

We seem to have a lot of faith in designing organizations, writing job descriptions, and fitting people into the organizations and job descriptions as our road to success. It’s called scientific management.

Yet rarely, if ever, do we find that engineering people results in them being able to succeed and contribute and produce the success we expect and need. What we fail to realize in these efforts is that people are unique and not interchangeable like engine parts. When we design and assemble an organization, we find that the individuals are constantly changing and growing, so our organizational machine doesn’t work the way we predicted.

When we keep doing the same things -- constantly reengineering, reorganizing, and downsizing – and getting the same results, maybe we need to change what we’re doing.

Could it be as simple as just discovering what each individual can do to contribute to the team, putting them in that position, and giving them the help they need to succeed? Even if you have to rewrite job descriptions and modify processes and procedures to make it work?

The Gallup Organization has done some interesting research focused on discovering individuals’ strengths and managing organizations to utilize these. Several popular books have come from this research, as well as an organizational consulting business. You can learn more at www.gmj.gallop.com.

I’d love to visit with you about improving your leadership effectiveness and the performance of your organization through understanding and utilizing its peoples’ unique talents and skills.

Strategy – Keep It Simple
Individually, and as organizations, we seem to have a knack for making strategies complex. Often the result is that they are hard to understand and difficult or impossible to execute.

Strategies should be simple, easily understood, and actionable. One way to accomplish that is to make strategies principle-based.

In a recent speech, Karen Hughes related that President George W. Bush has four clearly articulated principles, and that from those four principles, the staff and administration know exactly how he would wish for them to respond to any issue. These principles form the basis for decisions, policies, and actions.

What are those handful of principles that provide clear, actionable guidance for you as an individual? For your family? For your business? For your ministry?

Are they written down? Are they clearly communicated and understood by everyone who needs to know them?

While nearly all of us have these principles, rarely are they articulated, even to ourselves. So we spend a lot of time anguishing over decisions, or guessing what others want or how they will respond rather than taking action.

Take the time this week to draft the four principles that will provide the strategic guidance for you, your family, and your organization.

Retirement – An Escape from Job Dissatisfaction?
With job dissatisfaction at over 50%, we frequently hear individuals say something such as, “I’m so ready to retire so I don’t have to put up with this any more!”

Increasingly, people are looking to retirement as an escape from jobs that are stressful, frustrating, and unenjoyable.

Is retirement the answer? Or will you just be moving from one frustrating, stressful situation into another?

Retirement, even when planned and prepared for, is a major life transition. Unplanned, and without solid preparation, retirement can bring on many problems, often including depression. You may be escaping one difficult situation only to find yourself in one that is more difficult.

Before you take the leap into retirement, I encourage you to first take some time to assess your readiness for retirement and to develop a plan for “What’s next?” The Retirement Success Profile helps you understand how prepared you are to live successfully in retirement, and suggests options for retirement based on where you stand relative to 15 retirement success factors.


About Mapmaker Coaching
Mapmaker Coaching is a resource for the crossroads of your life.

What I do is help people take action to achieve their dreams.

These dreams usually involve their careers, their businesses, their ministries, or their retirements.

I help people achieve their dreams through coaching, a series of weekly conversations in which we together develop plans, review progress, and chart next steps. It's effective, it's enjoyable, and it's affordable.

I offer a free session so that you can learn more about coaching and how it can help you achieve your dream.


Personal Notes
Our daughter Sara’s visit to Uganda is going great. She’s enjoying her work in the hospital clinics and with the hospice group, and has been able to visit a village church service, as well as enjoy the people in Mbarara.

Son John reports that he is doing well, and is scheduled to return from service in Kuwait and Iraq in early November.

Jim