Screen-Shot-2019-03-13-at-9.42.57-AM

Should you “love” your job?

"Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert explains why "do what you love" isn't always great career advice on LinkedIn's "Hello Monday" podcast.
-

As technology continues to change the nature of work and the workforce, more and more jobs will require additional investments in time and money for education and training. A report from the Strada Institute for the Future of Work released in January of this year suggests more than 32 million working-class Americans are at risk of being left behind even further unless we figure out how to scale-up on-ramp education and training programs designed to put them on a quicker path to upward mobility.

At the same time, workers may find themselves wondering, should our professions bring us purpose and fulfillment? In his famous commencement speech to Stanford, Steve Jobs urged grads to “love what you do.” But is that great career advice?

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, doesn’t necessarily think you need to love your job. On LinkedIn’s Hello Monday podcast, LinkedIn Senior Editor Jessi Hempel talks about this with Gilbert, who opens up about choosing a calling over a career, and why “do what you love” isn’t always great career advice.

You can read a transcript of the interview here.

WorkingNation has addressed connecting your work to your purpose in life by featuring columns from best-selling author Dr. Mark Goulston and Mick Kubiak, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in parent counseling and life coaching.

“Many of us associate our job with our purpose in life. It’s so common, in fact, that often we are not even conscious of the fact that our job and our purpose in life are two separate things that sometimes overlap, and sometimes do not,” Kubiak writes. “Believing that your job and your purpose in life are one and the same can be quite harmless, so long as nothing ever changes. As long as we have a lifelong guarantee of job stability and security, we can go on without ever suffering from this mistaken belief, and no real harm will come to us. Until we retire, that is. This is why retirement is so often associated with existential confusion if not outright despair.”

There are organizations offering solutions for workers who are reskilling and students looking to find the right career pathway. Dr. Goulston mentions a program called Path2HappiSuccess. The program helps students determine their top career, best major and path in life, and has resulted in 70 million U.S. workers actively considering a career change.

Should you love your job? Join our conversation on Facebook.

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.