Do You Love What You're Doing?

If you love what you're doing, do you know why? It's probably because of; the people you work with, you're working on something bigger than yourself, you're learning something you want to learn, or a combination of all three.

Think about that and then evaluate the tactical skills you bring to the work environment by rating your demonstration of the skills listed below. Is your use of each skill: rare, seldom, frequent or consistent?

1. Planning / Scheduling / Budgeting - Setting goals and targets, preparing and justifying budgets, forecasting trends and activity levels.


2. Organizing - Organizing your own time and commitments, laying out of workflow and equipment, coordinating multiple diverse activities, coordinating resources.


3. Leading / Staffing - Resolving work plans of direct reports, maximizing their commitments, training and coaching, initiating changes and improvements effectively, delegating responsibility and authority.


4. Controlling - Setting performance standards, setting up strategic control points and requesting feedback on results, defining and enforcing policy and practice, controlling costs.


5. Problem Analysis and Decision Making - Diagnosing problems, stimulating new ideas, obtaining and verifying information, identifying alternatives and trade-offs, taking appropriate risks, making decisions with little guidance.


6. Communicating - Making presentations, leading meetings, contributing effectively to discussions, preparing written reports, keeping groups informed, providing feedback, probing and questioning techniques, reading skills


7. Relating to Others - Dealing with management, cooperating with other groups, being persuasive under opposition, sensitive to needs of others.


8. Functional and Administrative Know How - Know-How related to your job, understanding of programs and groups impacting your work, knowledge of your field.

Examine your work skills and assess your present and potential strengths and weaknesses.

• What specific aspects of your job do you like?


• In which three areas do you think you need to acquire additional skills?

Self analysis helps you identify your attitudes and the effect on your goal setting and performance. How you think and feel about people and things, greatly influences how you act. This is called your attitude. An analysis of your attitude helps you determine what you like and dislike and helps you understand why. Your attitude is influenced by your personal satisfaction.