Job Descriptions Limit Employee Potential

“A skilled worker, regardless of the job description, remains a treasure.” Madeleine M. Kunin

Your job description doesn’t have the capacity to define what you can do. It only tells you what someone wants you to do. What is a job description? It is simply a set of tasks someone designed in order to achieve a set organizational goal. It brings order to work. It’s a system that ensures that results can be predictably obtained.

The most frustrating part of work is when you have to do the same thing day in and day out without fail. This is why after spending two to three decades at work, most employees only have experience doing the same thing. They spent all those times doing the same thing.

In most cases, they think that they are more valuable to the organization because they have spent more years at work. They are surprised when their employers ask them to leave. They feel they have been loyal and faithful to the company all those years.

What most employers don’t understand is that once an employee gets conditioned to executing the job description, it's hard for them to want anything else. Our brains always seek the path of less resistance. So, when employers elevate job descriptions as the only way to engage employees, they create the path for employees not to bring their best to the workplace.

Here are some of the principles behind job descriptions:

Job description doesn’t require you to think

Job description doesn’t take your potential into consideration

Job description doesn’t care about how you feel

Job description is someone’s idea of what you should do

Job description is someone’s way to keep you compliant with your employer

Job description is a way to keep you dependent

Job description allows you to meet the minimum expectations for your job

Job description makes you powerless to determine your career trajectory

Job description places your value and worth on a position

Job description is to maintain the status quo

Job descriptions are the ways you meet the expectation of your job, not your employer

Job description builds transactional relationships with employer

When people get to the job description, they hardly outgrow their position or role even when they are promoted to a higher position. You may have experienced people who have gotten too managerial or leadership roles but it seems like the role is way bigger than theirs. They are the creation of job descriptions.

Bypassing Job Description

In all the places I have worked, I have always gone beyond the job description. I refuse to be limited by what someone thinks. I always bring my more to work. I don’t rely on the job description as a way to meet the expectation of my employer. I ensure that I go beyond that.

You can break the mold your employer is trying to confine you into through the job description. Employees should never be dependent on their employers when it comes to their careers. Remember, your loyalty should be to your ability to create value not to your employer to give you a job.

When you focus on executing job descriptions, you hardly build a transformational relationship with your employer. It's transactional. This means your value to your employer is very much dependent on your ability to do what you are told to do not doing what you can do.

The true measure of engagement is not meeting expectations but going beyond the job descriptions. If employees only work to meet the expectations of the job, they are not engaged. They meet the expectations of the job so as to keep their jobs and continually earn their salary. However, if they go beyond the job description and create value for the employer, then they are fully engaged. Here they exceed the expectations and wow their employer.

Employees who are engaged have transformational relationships with everyone in the workplace. They don’t do it to keep their job. They don’t believe in job security. They see themselves as CEOs of their service companies and do it to stay in control of their economic security. They depend on their ability to create value and to make more contributions than they receive in payment.

How To Bypass Job Description

1. What do you want? You have to define and be clear about what you want from work. You should have a vision of yourself. In the Value Giver Coach, employees who go through our program become crystal clear about what they want in 3, 5, 7, 10, and 15 years at work. Many employees only want a job that will give them a good salary. You must want something beyond the paycheck. You must want a life and not just to make a living. You have to live in abundance, not scarcity. Focusing on your wants expands your capacity or mindset.

2. What does your employer want? The next thing to know is exactly what your employer really wants. He needs you and employed you. The need is the job description. You need to move from what your employee needs to what he really wants. Wants is aspirational. You have to ask and observe to know. You have to connect the dots. You will only have what you want if you can help your employer have what they want. Focusing on what your employer want expand your capability.

3. How can you help your employer get what he wants? It's not enough to know what your employer wants. It's not for public debate on who knows your employer best. It's for you to find how to make it happen. You will need to develop your ability to ensure your employer gets what he wants. This may involve you investing in yourself to acquire the capability necessary. You don’t wait for your employer. Your employer is your client and you are to exceed his or her expectations and create an amazing experience too. Here is how we break it down:

Your Why: To Grow To Be All Your Can Be and Be fulfilled

Your What: To be a hero to your employer

Your How: To develop your unique capability and collaborate with others

We are organizing a Game-Changing Value Creator Coaching program. You can be part and should be part. It is for you. If you want to attain freedom and find fulfillment at work, then become a value creator.

Be part of the Game-Changer Value Creation Coaching program. You will go through the mindset required to create and the tools you need to always create value in the workplace. Are you ready for a fundamental change- a breakthrough in the way you approach your work? If you are, then you are ready for the Value Giver Coach Program. Please call +2348101671745.

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