Hey, it’s John Garrett and good morning. It’s Monday. That means it’s another episode of Green Apple Slices, where I always talk through an article that we find online about employee engagement and culture and how to make workplace better and find more value in your people. On the other line, we have back in North America, Accountants & Alliances for Sage Canada, Rachel Fisch.

Rachel: Hello. How are you?

John: Good. Really good. Yeah, this is a busy week.

Rachel: I’m just tired.

John: Yeah, I agree. I can imagine. I can imagine. Just in time for you to get onto another airplane.

Rachel: Another plane, yeah, this time heading to New Orleans for Accounting Salon, but I wouldn’t miss it. Yeah, check it out, the #AccountingSalon on Twitter, and you’ll see some of the fun stuff we’ll be doing over the next couple of days.

John: That’s awesome. Yeah, and I’m heading to OneStream Software. I get to be the closing keynote for that. The opening keynote is Lou Holtz who was the Notre Dame Football coach when I was there, so I’m super jacked up on that.

Rachel: Oh, my God. Yeah, no kidding. Are you in heaven right now? What?

John: Right, pretty much, pretty much. So yeah, it’s going to be fun. I’m looking forward to it. But before then, we have this article I found on Thrive Global. It was by Glassdoor. It’s 6 Secrets to Staying Happy at Work and Battle Boredom and Find Fulfillment. And there’s a smiley face with paper clips.

Rachel: It is pretty cute. It is pretty cute. But I think that what happens when, you know, there’s kind of like that honeymoon period when you start a new job where everything’s amazing and you’re meeting all these great new people. And then sometimes when you start to actually try to get things done is where things kind of go off the rails a little bit. I actually was just having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day about this. One of the things that I love about working at Sage is that no matter where I am or what I’m doing, there’s always something really cool that I can explore. I feel like in a lot of cases, when people are frustrated with their job, they immediately think, “Well, then I need to leave this company,” and don’t think enough of what are some of the other things that I could do that are maybe a little more me or that would fulfill me a little more where I am? I think that if you’ve got a great relationship with your manager, if there’s somebody else at work that you can trust to talk about and say, “This has been really cool. I’m doing well here. I’d love to stay here. What are some of the options?” So sorry, all of that, this goes to number one on the list. Just switch it up, right? You don’t have to be doing the same thing the same way all the time. You can find new ways or, in some cases, find new areas of the company where you can really make a different.

John: Yeah. I love the line there: use different strengths. It’s important for fulfillment, because what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing, do more of that.

Rachel: Yeah. Sometimes they’re different things. Like one of the things that I’ve experienced is that I’m really good at almost like, not audit, but forensic bookkeeping, like the dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, and I’m really great at that. Do I want to spend my entire career doing that? Absolutely not. But how can I leverage those skills, those analytical skills in a different way?

John: Yeah, just do it on occasion. Yeah, absolutely. I think so many people try to, you know, let’s work on your weaknesses. It’s like, no, no, let’s just have me not use those. How about the things that I’m over here kicking butt at? How about I do those? because that’s a source of confidence as well which is great. But, obviously, there are some things that you do that maybe are in your weakness, but that’s not your whole job and let’s not focus on that.

Rachel: And I wish I knew that you were going to make that point because I read a really great article recently that talks about exactly that. Why are we spending so much time trying to make stronger what we know our weaknesses are when they could be innate personality, like knowledge weaknesses? It’s really challenging for you to do that. Why not just kick butt at the stuff that you do well? How can you just continue to do more of that? Or do more of that but in a different way because, number three, of course, is learn something new. So that excitement of continuing to create new neuron pathway, whatever, you know the brain thing.

John: Right.

Rachel: Particularly where you’re not strong in.

John: The medulla oblongata, the what? The what?

Rachel: Yeah, because it does prevent boredom when you’re learning new things but not if the thing that you’re trying to learn is a massive struggle for you and just do it, right?

John: Right. No, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I love number five, talk with your boss. It’s not just at the annual performance review. This goes back to just, if you’re a boss or a leader or anything like that, to take time to meet your people where they’re at and have those conversations more than just work conversations so that then it’s more natural to just have a normal conversation of “Look, I’m really in a rut. I need to fix something,” as opposed to waiting until the annual review which might not even come because you get so ticked off and quit before them.

Rachel: Yeah. Again, if the line of communication is open and if you want to try something new, one organization that I was with had a really good secondment program where basically you could kind of take like job swap almost. If you wanted to try, whether it was the same job in a different country or if you wanted to just try a different area of the business, then you can find kind of who else wants to do something like that to see if there’s a job swap opportunity or like a three-way swap or four-way swap or whatever, just make sure that the role is covered. But if you don’t talk to your boss about this, then you don’t know what kind of programs might be available or how they might be willing to help you stay happy. Because again, back to what we talked about last week, is that retaining employees is usually always preferred over high turnover because turnover can be so costly. So your boss should want you to be happy. If they don’t, then you probably have a bigger issue there.

John: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s important to differentiate between happiness and fulfillment because — I mean, happiness can be fleeting. One day you’re happy and then the next day you’re not and no one knows why and whatever. But fulfillment is you enjoy going to work. You’re happy with the work that you’re doing. You’re happy with the people that are around you and creating those relationships, not solely based on the work. There’s also a big part of that as well.

So yeah, so if you want to check out the whole article, you can go to greenapplepodcast.com, click the link there. Yeah, clearly Rachel is ecstatic and more than happy to be a part of the Green Apple Podcast Slices. I am even happier than that, that she answers the call every week. We are battling boredom every Monday. So don’t forget to hit Subscribe. Yeah, have a good trip, Rachel. We’ll talk to you next Monday.

Rachel: Yeah, you take care.