Many wondered why he would want the job, but he saw the superintendent position as an opportunity to make a real difference in the city where he lived. His ability to influence was not because of his PhD. It was not because he had taken any course on changing large-scale organizations. It was not because he was coming in with a “change program.” It was just him; he could get things moving even before his first day. He came in to do a job and that’s exactly what he would focus on. And best of all, people knew it.
Do you know anyone who has that kind of impact by virtue of their presence alone, by just showing up?
Seeing Bob Wood’s ability to move people because of who he was motivated me to become such a person. It was seeing what Bob Wood could do even before he started his job that propelled me to become someone who could influence others. Gandhi is often quoted as saying, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”6 I took that slogan as my own.
Who you are is more important than the degrees you have. The degrees might get you a job, but that’s not what will help you get things done. Nor will these degrees keep you engaged in the work you do. I’ve seen students and clients pay money to earn more and more certificates to add to their portfolios and résumés, but I recommend building a strong foundation of self-knowledge first before adding to your list of certificates. There is no end to the degrees or skills you can accumulate without doing what is most important: connecting to yourself.
All of that time I spent looking at the faculty catalogs I wrote about in the first chapter of this book made me realize it’s not the degrees that make the difference. It’s you. Of course, you need a specific level of education for certain jobs. You can’t be a lawyer without a law degree, and many businesses will not hire you unless you’re a college grad. But it’s you, not your degrees, that will make you effective.
There is an obsession worldwide with obtaining more certificates and degrees and adding more skills to your résumé. Go to the gates outside any university campus in Japan and you will see a small army of people handing out flyers to undergraduate students. The flyers advertise cram schools for job hunting, classes for job interviews, schools for taking the Graduate Record Exam or the GMAT, or for becoming a CPA. And there are professors and counselors who will tell the students they should take as many of those courses and classes as they can.
There is nothing wrong with having these skills and certificates, but when I’m asked if they’re a good idea and are necessary, I simply say, “Know what you want first.” That’s the place to start.
How about you?
What do you want work to be?
What do you want to create at work?
What if you looked at work in a different way?
What if you looked at work as a place where you could make the dreams of your life come true?
What if you focused on the kind of life you would like to have at work?
What if you looked at work as a blank canvas where you could paint part of your life?
Think you are too busy? What could be more important than making the changes that would make your life better?
Maybe you think it’s impossible to think about what you really want because you’ve invested so much time in the job you currently have, or because you have just started out in your career. Maybe you think it’s impossible because you worry about what others will say. Or it’s impossible because you count on that big salary and you think you will lose it if you make a change.
But it’s not impossible. You might even earn more money. You need to give some serious thought to what you want. All it will take is time and the determination to make work better using your own resources—your personality, your character, your actions.
What action can you take that will help you have the kind of life you want at work today? What can you change about the way you work?
Nelson Mandela knew that if he were to lead the people of South Africa, he could not set himself apart from others. That included the way people referred to him. When I saw him being interviewed on TV, he told the interviewer, “Call me Nelson. That’s what I prefer.” I thought, How amazing, how wonderful. The great Nelson Mandela goes by his first name.
On that day, I decided to no longer signal to students that I wanted to be called doctor or professor or mister. When classes started again, I just wrote “Bob Tobin” on the board. No titles. No degrees. I didn’t lose any stature or prestige. I signaled to my students from day one that the class and the professor would be accessible to them. It was simple.
As I was becoming the kind of professor I wanted to be, some colleagues were curious about what I was doing in class, and I extended an open invitation to them to visit. None did. One friend who taught at another university was always looking for ways to put some excitement in his teaching. His course was on trade regulations, and he would go over the intricacies of each of the laws with the students. He’d tell me how he wanted to change how he taught and he’d ask for teaching suggestions.
“Why not have students research the laws and then present them?” I asked him. “Great idea,” he said. But he worried the students might be uncomfortable and would not explain some of the laws clearly. I told him he could encourage the students, make corrections, or offer a summary.
But again he hesitated, and continued to teach in the same way. He came back the following year and told me once again that the students were so quiet and didn’t participate. I gave him a few more ideas, but eventually we stopped meeting. Although he perceived the barrier to be the students, the real barrier was him.
And the same is true for all of us. It’s not about them. It’s really about us. And taking action requires courage and confidence to do things differently. I’ll talk about both concepts in other chapters of this book.
But first, let’s talk about your dreams.
Dreams Have Soul; Objectives Don’t
I don’t understand why people think their dreams are something for later, something for when they retire. Retirement is not a guarantee, especially in these economic times. Why wait until life expectancy is at its shortest to begin to live fully? Do they think they will live forever? A person’s life can be cut short in an instant, and their dreams die with their last breath.
That’s why I always ask new clients about their dreams. It’s your dreams that connect to your soul and your spirit. Paraphrasing the words of Henry David Thoreau, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”1
It’s rare for people to talk about their dreams in these terms, or even talk about their dreams at all. Usually people label their dream as something narrower, like attaining a specific income level, becoming a CEO, or buying a Mercedes-Benz. But those are not the dreams I am talking about. Dreams are bigger. The dreams I mean are those aspirational thoughts about how your life could be when your work aligns with your values. I define a dream as what a person wants for his or her life, including career, lifestyle, place, and values.
Jared Chan, my new client in Hong Kong, was trying to figure out what to do next in his life. He was thirty-six, a graduate of one of the top business schools in America. He had trained as an architect in Australia and was recruited by high-tech firms in Silicon Valley. He stayed with a well-known company there for six years after business school. After he quit, he got in touch with me.
“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” he told me. He didn’t even stick