“I can’t stand this job anymore. I can’t stand the workload.”
Throughout my conversations with people over the past years, I’ve heard similar themes come up again and again: frustration with the manager, frustration with the company as a whole, work demotivation, low self-confidence, perfectionism, worry about failure or worry about making mistakes.
One of these stories sounds like this:
“I can’t stand this job anymore. I can’t stand the workload. I haven’t received a salary increase in the past few years, even if I took on more work. We don’t have the necessary tools to make our work more efficient as a team. We’re still mostly using Excel.
I feel demotivated, I’m angry about work.
I don’t do things for myself anymore, because I don’t feel like it anymore. I can’t disconnect from work.
I’m not applying anywhere else.”
It’s a story I’ve heard in different variations, about the emotional and mental weight of being trapped between dissatisfaction and inaction.
If this person were my client, we wouldn’t start with a job search. We’d start with clarity.
I would ask questions like:
– What would you want to have instead of anger, demotivation?
– How would you know you felt motivated, fulfilled?
– What would you notice differently about your thoughts, about your energy levels, about your behaviour?
– On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is your ideal situation and 1 is the total opposite, where do you think and feel you are now?
We would build the image of a suitable role, one where the work itself and environment motivate the person.
I would then ask role clarifying questions like:
– Knowing what you know now, what role would give you motivation, satisfaction, etc?
– What would the daily activities be?
– How would your relationships at work look?
– What compensation would you like to have based on the work you described?
And then I would ask about actions:
– What is the first small step you could take to move half a point up the scale?
– What do you need in order to take this small step?
– What are you committing to, today?
– Who can help you?
This process is about helping them see the possibilities again, so they can choose a way forward that’s right for them, whether that’s moving to a new company, renegotiating their current role, or creating something different.
If you find yourself in a similar spot, you don’t have to stay stuck. With the right questions, clarity and committed steps, you can move from demotivation to fulfillment.
That’s exactly what I help my clients do. If you want to obtain your own meaningful next step, send me a message and let’s talk.
