Do you actually know what is your dream job?

Welcome back to some very recent reflections on work and dream jobs. Those of you that know me are aware that I had many jobs in great companies and there's not a single one that I regret or think it was a mistake to take this step at that moment in my career. I lately had two reflections though on the concept of satisfaction in a job, one sparked on a time out in the mountains with my family and one because of a message I got from a long time mentee.

As so many things in life this is a story about Happiness!

But it all begins with knowing what you want in life and what gives you satisfaction. I vivedly remember my first job in Jaguar and Land Rover and while I was office based and met on a daily basis our MD and other senior people the best job for me seemed still the job of the Regional Sales Managers. After all they got a new shiny car every 3 month because of the high mileage they were driving, they got to stay in nice hotels roaming around their region and working my first job in Sales ops they just called us to do real boring part of allocating the orders. All of that with the combination of 4 days on the road and one day home office - in the early 2000s this was a privileged role. As time passed by and knowing today what a difficult job it is when you have to push production targets onto dealers and making them take cars they don't necessarily want I am sure it would not be for me, let alone that it quickly becomes repetitive as you have a limited regional scope that changes very little over time.

Moving on I got my first people responsibility when I started my job in Europcar and, oh boy did I get it. I was given the honor to built up a little team and use some of the resources of my then boss. Little did I know about how self motivation and skills are something that does not necessarily come naturally, nor that the words of a person could make my apprentice at the time end up in tears in my office complaining about a usually very professional colleague.

So what's the long and short of the above - make sure if you want to be happy that you do what makes you happy and it is a journey to find out what really makes you happy, as sometimes you do not know and just time and experience will tell you.

I for myself can tell that I found my passion in 3 things really:

1. Vision and Strategy and driving things from an idea to realization with a great team
2. Working with people on developing their skills and becoming better at what they do
3. Working internationally and with different challenges every day

Realizing this took me some time but it got reconfirmed to me lately as I reflected on my current job and the liberty and possibility given with it. When I compare my current role with roles before where I was in great organizations, I realize that the autonomy and freedom to drive a team with less interference from adjacent leaders to the business makes for speed, agility and mental health. This is only possible if you recruit the right team and skill set but it surely is something that for my personal happiness made a huge difference. Why am I sharing this, because it is a learning that I only was able to take now that I turn 45 later this year and have collected various experiences - there is no shame in taking a turn in your career if you are not happy with the role.

There are ways to speed up the process and one of them is to go into a Mentoring relationship, the crucial and important step here is to make sure in this relationship you set goals, agree absolute transparency and once you have achieved it you move on. This does not mean you stop talking to your Mentor but it means for you that you believe you have now reached a point where you feel that you have the autonomy to move on your own - the reason I am mentioning this is, if you remember the call of one of my mentees.

In this very case it was an interesting journey where my Mentee had decided to not involve me too detailed on the last career move which ultimately turned out to be a mistake and now that my mentee had realized, decided to involve me on the next decision again to avoid another mistake. This event then sparked a review and realization that I wanted to share here. If you come to the point of taking a decision on a new role or if you should make a move what should you consider:

1. What is it that I want to do, and how does this role fulfill this?
2. Does the job offer the right level of authority and liberty and has the company the culture I am looking for?
3. Share your thoughts with an external source and let them vet your thinking
4. Ask all the questions during the interview and remember this is your home for the next years, if they can not or do not answer in a way that you like - it is not.
5. Be mindful that it can go wrong - and if so prepare to move on if you realize you can not change it - it's not a problem it happens many times.

Now this is just a view points of probably an endless list of variables that you may have given your specific situation.

The truth is this comes down to one essential topic that is reflected in the image above. Time out and reflection are some of the most important things we can do to enrich our work life and make sure wheather it is a business decision or a job decision we take the right decision. So make sure the often mentioned work life balance is not just something you say you do, but it is actually something you do. I hope you enjoyed this short excursion and look forward to comments and thoughts.