By Jantina Wijtsma
I was coaching Bert, a manager who worked for a non-profit organization. Bert had a whole list of questions for me:
At the moment there is a lot of attention for job crafting. In the survey ‘Purpose and meaning in the workplace’ (by Dik, Byrne, Steger 2013) jobcrafting is defined as ‘the process of employees redefining and re-imagining their jobs designs in meaningful ways.’
That sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Nowadays a lot employees decide to keepworking for their current company. Finding a new job is often hard and might feel as taking risks in terms of the loss of financial security. So, perhaps you’d better decide to stay for a while and make your own adaptations to the job you already have.
What do you need for that, Meta Program-wise?
First, you need the belief that you can have influence on the way your job is being done. So, if you don’t have this belief yet or you lost it somewhere, find a career coach who can help you to put on internal reference and self control. You have more impact on your work environment and your employer than you think, really!
Then, analyze what element of job crafting you are going to work on. According to the theories, there are 3 ways to do this:
So, a lot of options for the people who like to have several possibilities! When you prefer the metaprogram procedures, you can choose either one of the opportunities and make your own strategy.
Changing tasks
Look at the things you actually do in your day. Just put on use and write down everything you do. After that, analyse what the essence is of all those tasks, and how they fit in the structure of the company. For example: which tasks are for clients, for collegues, for your own talentmanagement?
Put on your options glasses and look for tasks you can add. Perhaps put on the metaprogram external reference and ask collegues to think it over with you.
You can also emphasize tasks. What is your core business? And how can you make this more visible and get more attention for it? How does it feel when your customers are going to ask for you because you are the expert in it? Having the latest information about the product, knowing specific details, and so on?
Changing relationships
When you use people, external reference, and kinestetic senses you might become astonished what you can reach. What is your goal in relationship to your customers, colleagues, managers? And what would you like to avoid? Do you want to be known as friendly and helpful, of more result driven and focused on doing business? Do you like working alone, or in a team, or in proximity, depending on the task?
You might as well consider building new relationships. Go out networking, put on your external reference and activities and give it a go! Use LinkedIn to register your new contacts and to keep in touch with them on line.
Or perhaps it is possible to reframe a certain relationship and look at the roles you have. In a meeting you can ask to be the chairman, so to be able to develop internal reference and towards. As well as procedures and perhaps past, present ànd future, depending on the subjects of the meeting.
Changing perceptions
In NLP this is a huge one. Because you can always change the way you look at your job, how you feel about it, and what you are saying to yourself on your way home. Remember the cleaning man of the space shuttle who said to himself while cleaning the environment at NASA: “I’m helping to get that man on the moon!” Wow, this has lots to do with your past, present and future ideas of how you want to do your job. What is the pattern you work in? Where are you standing nowadays in the team, and where do you want to be in the next year? Put on change as a Meta Program, structure to look for the patterns and decide (selfcontrol) to expand the way you look at your job. What other options are possible? Are there general things you overlook? Are their details to discover you never thought about?
Enough ideas to get you craft your job! As the survey mentioned before says: ‘In a world where meaningfulness may be in short supply, job crafting can be an important process through which employees cultivate meaningfulness and, in so doing, create valuable outcomes for themselves and their organizations.’
Good luck!
By Jantine Wijtsma
Julia was a financial administrative assistant, who wasn’t able to deal with stress at work. In her team, one manager came after the other, and the team was not really efficient any more. There was a lot of miscommunication. According to Julia, she was the only one who still cared about the clients.Continue reading
It was a wonderful combination: working with a management team that was specialized in Graves’ theory. They asked me to accompany them in answering their question: How to put more effective marketing efforts in motion for the company, with the help of MindSonar? It was a typical win-win opportunity: the three of them experts in management drives, and me combining those with meta programs.
At first, we had a funny mistake about the colours. There are so many instruments in the HR-world that work with colours. The colours of the measured metaprograms in MindSonar do not correspond with the Graves’ colours in the report. The team thought it had to match and looked for the connection. I didn’t catch that immediately so for a few minutes we had a funny dialogue, misunderstanding each other in our different colour perspectives.
After solving our confusion, we spent the evening looking at their team profile. This was very interesting, because most significant in their score together was:
This was fascinating because the firm has existsted for more than 20 years. One might think that without much “concept”, “vision” and “information”, a company doesn’t live that long! But their power was mostly in doing a lot of projects and things, and feeling what was going well and what was less successful.
During the evening I asked many questions to activate concept, visual and information as metaprograms. For example:
And so on. This was very funny, because as almost always, MindSonar proves itself in the now. The answers were all no……..
We later discussed the individual profiles and analysed who was the best in which metaprogram, and how he could contribute to the goal. And so MindSonar gave them a lot of input for different marketing actions in the future.
And so I had a nice evening with my beloved instrument!
In some time periods it’s easy to find a new job, in other periods it can be very hard. In those hard times, your job marketing skills are extremely important. Job marketing is the way to conquer the work barrier, so to say. Because when you are one of 200 job seekers in your region, looking for something new, finding a job is a day job in itself.
How can meta programs help?
First, it’s important to have a focus on which job you prefer. So, your meta program ‘towards’ has to be highly developed. It has been scientifically proven that it is better to apply for specific jobs. So don’t say “I’m available for anything”. That way you are not recognizable for recruiters and they will skip your LinkedIn profile or resume. So your ‘options’ meta program has to be somewhat lower here.
Then, discover whether you are ready to go networking. Is your internal control no longer influenced by grief or mourning from your last job? Is your ‘now’ and ‘future’ switched on instead of ‘past’? That’s really important, because you like to give your network relations the impression of someone who is ready for new work activities. Optimistic and open minded. So, ‘internal locus of control’, ‘towards’ and ‘matching’ are useful.
Next, it’s highly recommended to have a plan for your networking activities. So put on your ‘procedure’, ‘activitities’ and ‘people’ and ‘information’ meta programmes, because you need them all! Depending on what you discover during your search, work with a procedure, a plan.
Next, via Linked In it’s possible to find people who do the work you prefer to do, and to see who can introduce you to this employee. In a network date you need the thinking styles “external reference” to be able to really stand in the shoes of the other, and find out what is important for you to develop.
So your meta program “development” is also of great importance. So you can find out what is the gap between the job you want and your competencies. In that case it can be useful to put on “past” as a meta program, because you learned a lot already. When you walk through your work-past with a career coach, you’ll find out that you can do a lot more than you thought.
When you were asked to apply for a job because someone in your network is giving you a hint, your meta programs are helpful as well. Analyze the job very specifically. Which thinking styles do you need the most? What do you read in the text of the profile? Are the tasks specifically defined or just global mentioned? Is the company emphasizing future aspects of the firm, or mentioning where it stands nowadays, or where it comes from? Does it say more about the colleagues, of about the tasks and activities, or are there given lots of information?
So, analyzing the text is very important, because now you can put on the ‘external reference’ meta program again to write your letter in exactly the same style. So that the recruiter matches (perhaps unconsciously) your skills with the job.
When you are invited for an interview, you can use all meta programs. Depending on the recruiters you’re speaking with and which meta program you discover during the interview. Do they ask how you see your first day at work? Or how you are able to harmonize with other team members? Or what your feelings are about the company’s last moves on the market? Match their representation systems!
Are there questions about the essence of the vision of the firm, or about how one part of the process fits in another part, or how you want to put the vision into activities?
Yes, it does sound like you have to be more than an expert in analyzing all those meta programs simultaneously in your search for a job! But don’t panic. When in doubt, ask for a MindSonar expert to help you get the on line measurement and get coached in how to put the most efficient styles on. Start by just putting effort in using a few important, significant thinking styles and you will succeed, sooner or later.
Guaranteed!
This post was written by Jantine Wijtsma, a long time MindSonar professional from the Netherlands. Jantine works mainly in career counseling and we hope that she will continue for many posts to tell us how she is using MindSonar in her daily practice.
I do a lot of career coaching for people who have had to call in sick, because they are in an early stage of burnout. Most of the time they have not actually burned out yet, but the condition does relate to them not knowing why their job doesn’t make them feel healthy any more. They don’t feel good, they lack energy, have vague muscle complaints or headaches, things like that.Continue reading
