I think I’ve figured out the secret to how you can know if you are in the right career field, or job, for you. Believe me, or don’t, but bear with me: 

I was telling a friend of mine a story about this one time that I was called quiet at work. It’s a funny story simply because I’m the least quiet person that you have ever heard of—both in the volume of my voice and in the amount of words that come out of my mouth on a daily basis.

Trust me, I even annoy myself sometimes.

So, how does this have anything to do with how to know if you’re in the right job or not? 

I thought I was in the right field! I was in physical security and I would spend time reading the association magazines, shadowing people in different roles, participating in online training and in-person seminars, networking my butt off and dreaming of one day becoming the Chief Security Officer of a Fortune 500 company. 

Meanwhile, I hated the job that I was in, but I thought it was something that would pass. I would pay my dues and move up to a better role. One day I would have a job that I loved. 

Then I was sitting at a group offsite and I happened to speak up during one of the meetings. Everyone turned to look at me and the Director said, “Oh wow, it’s nice to hear you speak. You are so quiet.” I just laughed a little and responded, “Geez, can you tell my mom that?”. Nobody else got the joke. 

Shortly thereafter I moved on, left the 9-5 entirely and got interested in entrepreneurship and consulting. I spent a couple years figuring out what I was supposed to be when I grew up, what my passions were, and then how I could fit my numerous skills, special abilities and unique background (check out my TEDx talk here) into that. I figured out what my dream life looked like and am now setting out to build it. 

I realized that I liked learning and development, human interactions, and culture, culture, culture. I found my groove, my niche, and the area that I can focus on becoming a true expert in for the rest of my life. In my business now I focus on helping business leaders to understand some basic truths about culture, think about and internalize some things that matter, and then build a strategy to get their company to the phenomenal growth culture of their dreams. It’s a great job, with a great mission and I hope I can do it forever. I’m good at it, I love the topic, and it seems that every talent or skill that I have ever worked on developing in my life, and every life experience I’ve ever had comes to play in what I do. I’m even going back for a PhD in my topic so that I can keep developing (and add some letters to my name, of course). 

Just yesterday I was on a call with another culture/organizational development consultant, and we were talking business, strategy and, of course, culture. 30 minutes turned into an hour and we had such an engaging conversation. At the end of the call, he said to me, “Gosh, Daniella, I really appreciate every conversation that I have with you. I hang up feeling so energized and motivated to get back to work. It gets me on fire.” 

I thought about it and said, “You see, this is how we know that we are both in the right career fields for ourselves.” When you can have a conversation about work and it energizes you, pumps you up, gets you thinking about the hard problems and motivates you to go out and solve them, that’s when you know. 

So, what I would say is this: if a boss or a co-worker says something to you about your personality type or a specific trait that you have, and you think to yourself, “huh, that is so NOT me”, spend some more time thinking about what that means. It most likely means that you are not bringing your full self to work, to what you do for the majority of your waking hours on a daily basis. Workplaces today, and leaders today, should be embracing you for who and what you are, the whole you. The right kind of workplaces and the right kind of cultures do. You should be in a role, at a company, and in a career field, where your personality traits are your biggest asset, not something that you are always trying to hide. Don’t work somewhere where you are expected to leave part of yourself at home.  

I know one thing for sure, nobody that I have met in the past several years would EVER accuse me of being quiet. 

DANIELLA YOUNG IS AN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, CULTURE STRATEGY AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT AT CAVNESSHR. DANIELLA SPECIALIZES IN HELPING BUSINESSES CREATE A CUSTOMIZED ROADMAP TO THE GROWTH CULTURE THAT EVERY ORGANIZATION WANTS ACHIEVE, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. WANT TO LEARN MORE? CLICK HERE TO SCHEDULE AN INTRO CALL.