Employment-Related Blog by Martin Elliot Jaffe, JFSA Career Counselor

2-01-10

I was recently pondering my work life in a former career counseling setting (that shall go unnamed) and found myself sleepless as I tried to answer the following existential questions:

·                 How can the phrase “deadline for turning in your counseling reports by Friday morning” be interpreted 12 ways by six people?

·                 Why does everyone see their need for space, recognition and rewards as the center of the universe and show such limited flexibility?

·                  How can someone work all day with people, talk all day, and then go out to a fund raising event or salsa dance workshop?

·                 Do they ever stop talking, or think before speaking or read/reflect?

·                 Why do they have to talk to ME?

I have found during my extensive years of career counseling that work satisfaction/dissatisfaction has a strong element of mismatched skill personality, value and reward systems among differing types of people resulting in strife, anxiety and long tortured days.

On February 8^th at Mind/Body/Soul we will take a journey to Holland, a land of flowers windmills and satisfied workers.  This will be a figurative journey using work/life assessments designed by John Holland, the leading vocational psychologist of the last century.   Holland's theory will help you to clarify your skills, work values, the meaning and purpose of  your work,  and the environment that works best for you with people of different types as you are forced to interact productively in a shared workspace.

When you come to this week’s MBS with your completed SDS (self-directed search)booklet, our tour of Holland will sail. This session will delve deeper than focus on resume, job search, networking etc.  Instead, this session will provide you with the opportunity to look inward in order to identify the unique value that you bring to the world.

This session promises to deliver a new appreciation for the wisdom of the noted philosopher, Sylvester Stone, who proclaimed in his work “Everyday People”, that the key to understanding work satisfaction is  “different strokes for different folks.”