In his book, Healing Career Wounds, Rick spends a bit of time explaining the relevance of someone’s career wound or what Simon Sinek would call their why, specifically tied to their professional life. According to Rick a career wound is typically the reason someone is dissatisfied with their current job, the thing that’s missing from their life, the thing no one ever bothers to ask them about or show any interest in. Sometimes, a career wound is a shaft experience. This experience may spur us to move on to better opportunities, to a better environment, to a more supportive organization that can see us and appreciate us more fully and to which we can feel we belong. Or, for leaders, it can help us reflect on what we may have said or done, or NOT said or NOT done, that resulted in one of our employees having a shaft experience.
Many times, we don’t even know how we have contributed to a shaft experience of someone else, unless we are conscious and paying attention to both our OWN behavior and words, AS WELL AS how others are reacting to us (or ignoring us, if that is the case!).
I invite you to reflect on times you have both been the recipient of a shaft, as well as the deliverer of the shaft – whether recently or in your past. What can we learn from those times – how can we move forward in ways to prevent them from happening to us or us making them happen to others?