It’s a snowy Friday, December 19 here in the Chicago-area and I’m late with my post.  The schools are closed, our high-school senior is thrilled that he is getting a one-day jump on the Christmas vacation, and our college sophomore is home for the next month.  And I watched Oprah this morning.

There, I said it.  Let the record reflect that I’ve never actually sat down to watch her show until this morning, and I have several great excuses.  First, it is my wife’s birthday, and instead of disappearing into my office for the next 8 hours, I vowed to spend most of the day with her. (I feel guilty typing this!)  Second, snow days always feel like found time where you can relax just a bit, and it felt like a guilty pleasure to sit down with a cup of coffee and watch a morning show.  Last and not least, Oprah had a fascinating show this morning, featuring Marcus Buckingham of First Break All of the Rules, Now Discover Your Strengths and his 2007 book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work fame.

The focus of the show included a series of career interventions with professional women who were absolutely miserable in their jobs. Buckingham offered counseling to the women to help them find and begin leveraging their strengths.  The outcome as you might expect was that they all made adjustments in their jobs, attitudes and habits and reported a remarkable transformation in their jobs and level of satisfaction.

One of the more startling observations came from Oprah citing a survey that indicated that 84% of respondents hate their jobs. That’s a lot of career hating going on at one time!  (Note: there is a ton of information about the episode at Oprah’s site, as well as the opportunity to take an on-line course from Buckingham for free.)

The airing of the Buckingham episode was serendipitous following my last two career/resume blog posts on marketing yourself (Part I and Part II).  I continue to receive e-mail or phone calls from professionals in all walks of life struggling with what to do next in their careers.

One of the more interesting discussion threads of discussion that was prompted by the “What’s Your Professional Value Proposition?” theme in the posts, has come from individuals struggling to describe who/what they are professionally. It seems that as we gain experience and develop a portfolio of successes, it becomes harder for us to state who and what we are and how we add value.

I’ve spent my career in sales and marketing, but absolutely feel like my proposition is more around developing great teams, developing and executing on winning strategies and helping develop leaders than it is about the selling or marketing functions.  Creating and managing world-class sales and marketing teams is easy.  Developing people…now that’s hard and rewarding work and that’s what I’m all about. Of course, unenlightened employers may not care about the leadership development and want to focus solely on my ability to drive results.  It gets interesting when you sit down and try and describe your own personal value proposition.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

OK, it’s time to go shovel the driveway, and rumor has it that there’s a Monopoly game breaking out this afternoon.  My parting observation is that it is absolutely essential for us to explore and develop our skills and talents in our professional lives. Life is precious and preciously short, and it’s a good idea to quit wasting time and start sorting out how to leverage our strengths and talents in our work.  Those strengths and talents define who we are as individuals.  Perhaps Buckingham has some good tools to help the 84% of us that hate our jobs.  I love what I’m doing, but if it makes sense for you, take a peek at his books or his free couse at Oprah’s site. It might be a great way to spend a snow day.