By Nicki Gilmour, Executive Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Have you ever thought about your peak experience at work? A time, team or task where you literally had a good time and felt great about the project? Maybe it was the achievements, or accolades, or the people involved or the fact that you just liked the task in hand? You see, the point is that everyone is different and what we need to feel  good at work is in part, a lot to do with our personality.

When coaching, I often run an assessment called the Hogan on my clients as it can help identify what is important to you, and only you. So, for some people, it is the power and recognition that feels good, while others like the rewards that can be banked or even the feeling of putting out an aesthetically perfect project. Others are people or relationship focused and want to have fun at work or feel highly affiliated with the team or the firm or the values attached to the work.

Either way, stopping to think about when you were happiest and looking deeper at those elements that created that good feeling is a very good exercise to do once a year or so. Equally looking at projects or tasks that brought you down is worth examination also.

Culture at work ( or how we do things around here) is very much made up of behaviors from you and the other people in the company. You have a personality, and that is fairly intrinsic but what does change is the environment that you work in and that effects how you act and react.

A fun but thought provoking book to read on personalities is called ‘”The Chameleon- Life Changing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has a Personality or Knows Someone who Does” as it will help you understand yourself and others around you. If you want an academic read, i would recommend Dr. Robert Hogan’s “Personality and the Fate of Organizations.

Also, knowing that you have “go to” behaviors is something that is invaluable in certain situations because as soon as learn what types of situations and people stress you out, then you can see your reaction in your mind’s eye and you get to choose how that plays out. Caveat, you can get stuck in roles and yes people see you for your social identities way more than they should ( such as gender and their notions of “how women should be” etc) but you get to truly choose your behavior if you start to do this work to know yourself better.

If you are interested in hiring an executive coach to help you navigate your career then please email nicki@theglasshammer.com for more information