In today’s climate of dot.com and high-tech layoffs, many people are running scared. People are afraid that the next job axe may fall on them; that the next business cutback will chop off their clients. Still other changes and readjustments in the workplace are due to more and more cross-cultural diversity across and within departments. Thus, this fast pace of change may leave you breathless and hoping for more stability, and your hopes to redesign your current job around your current skills may not work either.
For some people, such developments are demoralizing. They see the writing on the wall that looks like "Up and out!" But you don’t have to resign yourself to becoming one more statistic in the turbulent new economy. Instead, think how you can redesign yourself to create a new improved future for yourself. Like the chameleon, be ready to change your colors as the environment shifts around you.
I received several e-mails in response to my column on workplace issues from readers who were facing this adjustment to change problem. One woman—let’s call her Jackie—wrote to me telling me she started a new job about two months earlier as a counselor in a social service agency dealing primarily with Hispanic families. While she had great credentials as a counselor from previous agencies she had worked for and a certificate in her field, her problem was that she didn’t speak Spanish, and she had replaced a counselor who spoke both Spanish and English. Even her supervisor spoke the two languages. At one time, the agency had mostly English-speaking clients, but the community had changed because of increased immigration.
So why had the agency hired Jackie in the first place? The supervisor was impressed by Jackie’s past work history and hadn’t thought there would be any language barrier. After all, the new immigrants were supposed to learn English. But apparently they didn’t learn it fast enough in order to communicate with Jackie, because many were older immigrants and it took more time for them to learn a new language than it would children or teenagers. And so Jackie wrote me describing how hard it was for her to learn her new job in what was essentially a foreign culture. Because of these difficulties, she was becoming increasingly upset and emotional on the job. She felt even worse when she saw her supervisor communicating with other counselors in Spanish. Now she was concerned about an upcoming meeting with her supervisor, since she was in a six-month probation program. Did this mean the end of her job, and what should she do?
What Should Jackie Do?
Here are some possibilities. In Jackie’s place, what would you do and why? What do you think the outcomes of these different options would be?
- Ask her employer to supply a translator, since it’s not her responsibility to learn a new language; the immigrants are supposed to learn English.
- Find another job where the clients do speak English.
- Ask her supervisor to give her time off and cover the costs of any training if she needs to learn Spanish, since this is extra work, not part of her original work agreement.
- Speak to an employment attorney about preserving her rights to keep her job or gain compensation, if she is unfairly terminated because she shouldn’t be required to learn Spanish.
- Other?
Probably the first step, should she want to stay on the job, is obvious—learn Spanish to communicate better not only with the clients but also with the other staffers. She also needed to recognize that this wasn’t a job she could easily redesign, say by dividing up her tasks with others, since she had to work directly with the Spanish-speaking clients. She couldn’t effectively counsel them if she needed a translator, because this would undercut the rapport she needed to communicate with them, as well as requiring the additional expense of a translator in an agency that already had a limited budget. Thus, she needed to repackage, re-create, re-mobilize, and re-motivate herself to do the job effectively. (Yes—all the "re" words—meaning do it differently and better). Ideally, she might be able to persuade her current employee to cover the costs of the training and give her time off to attend. But realistically, in a cost-strapped social service agency, that might not be possible, and the added language ability might help her in the future in any other agency in the area given the change of demographics. So it might well be worth it to simply take some classes in the evening, and costs might be minimal through a local community college evening program. In short, she should be the one to change and adapt, given the changing conditions needed to do her job effectively.
But beyond planning such a basic personal revamping, when you redesign yourself, let others know, so they see you growing and changing and want to help. As I wrote back to Jackie in an e-mail: "Perhaps look into taking some Spanish classes or ask your supervisor about your plans to show you want to learn."
In addition, find out more specifically what you need to learn. As I continued on in my message: "Perhaps talk to your supervisor or someone else you feel is most supportive of you to find out what you need to do the job well. If you are on a probation period and you want to stay, find out what you need to do to perform the job effectively, show that you really want to do this, and seek their help to put these efforts into action. This way you show your motivation to do a good job and learn, and that might help your supervisor want to continue to support you and help you succeed."
If you are facing such a situation in which you need new skills of any sort, you must learn what additional skills you need to learn, seek help from mentors, coaches, teachers, peers, or others who might help you learn, and then start learning. The sooner you take action, the better— because this way, you don’t have to resign yourself to losing out or falling behind—or get resigned (ie: terminated or laid off by someone else). Instead, with a personal redesign, you’re back in the game, like a whole new package. Just like companies refresh their packages to reappeal to consumers when they are losing market share, refresh and repackage yourself to increase your own appeal. Find a way to redesign a NEW IMPROVED YOU!
Today’s Take-Aways:
- Once you redesign yourself, you don’t have to resign yourself.
- The change from "resign" to "redesign" is just two letters, but there’s a world of difference when you add them—like adding spice to the soup.
- Think of yourself as your own "redesign director"—you justneed to bring together the right skills and right team to make your redesign work.