Page 113 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

STEP 4: IDENTIFY YOUR NATURAL TALENTS AND ABILITIES 101

two cogent sentences together. That was why she hired me; she
thought she needed to find a different career. It didn’t take long to
figure out that all she needed was a bit of peace and quiet to allow
her to write. She couldn’t get that at the office, so I suggested she
try working from home or grab her laptop and try working at a
coffee shop. This move did the trick, and soon she was back in
top form and back in her bosses’ good graces. She had thought she
was being a wimp and didn’t realize that the work environment
can make a huge difference in your performance, depending on
your personal style.
Another client, a senior executive at a major U.S. bank, men-
tioned that she was worried about her new assistant. Ever since
joining the company, her assistant just wasn’t happy. I asked if
I could give the assistant a few private coaching calls, and sure
enough, we soon discovered that the assistant had been used to
working in an office surrounded by a lot of other administrative
assistants and executives. In the new office, she was on a sepa-
rate floor all by herself. She was lonely and miserable, and it was a
mental feat to get anything done. To make matters worse, with her
boss now traveling more often, she didn’t even have the person to
whom she reported for company. Her friends and family told her
that she should be happy to have some peace and quiet and gave
her suggestions such as taking in a radio to keep her company, but
these well-meaning comments didn’t actually help. It reached the
point that she had to take antidepressants to keep herself going.
Good grief! I told her to make a strong request to move her desk to
the floor with all the other people, and that was it. She is an extro-
vert and simply needs to be surrounded by people to keep from
falling into a depression.
This is serious stuff. You can’t adapt as much as you think
you can without serious consequences to your performance,
your health, and your happiness. This is why knowing what your
personal style is can help you determine the best working envi-
ronment. Having a document in black and white on an objective
computerized report makes it easier for you to make the case with
a boss or supervisor.