Direction, motivation key to job search

You can’t navigate today’s workplace without encountering change. Job seekers need to find a new job, start a business or retrain for another career. Workers face new responsibilities, corporate structures and bosses. None of it is easy.

“Making changes can be hard, but knowing what you’re up against can help,” said Dan Heath, senior fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. He wrote “Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard,” with his brother Chip Heath, a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.

“Research tells us that the biggest obstacle lies in our having two minds — a rational mind and an emotional one,” said Heath. “In our book we adopted Jonathan Haidt’s image of describing the emotional side as an elephant and the rational side as the rider on top. It’s a powerful image.”

While it may look like the rider is in charge, if the elephant isn’t in agreement, he’s going to throw his six tons in a different direction. For example, your rational side says you need to lose weight; your emotional side argues that fajitas and margaritas with friends help you get through these tough times. Guess who wins?

But the elephant isn’t always the obstacle — sometimes it’s his courage or passion that makes change happen. Both rider and elephant have strengths and weaknesses.

If the rider doesn’t have a clear direction for how to achieve his goals, he tends to spin his wheels.

Yet people and organizations do make dramatic changes. “Switch” is filled with examples of personal and professional success stories. Researching them allowed the authors to suggest a three-part framework for changing behaviors. “You can use these three steps in any situation where you want to make a change,” said Heath.

1. Direct your rider: What looks like resistance might just be lack of clarity and concrete direction on how to get to the goal.

2. Motivate the elephant: People will learn new habits and change when they feel the reasons for it.

3. Shape the path: You may need to tweak the environment so that the right behaviors are easier and the wrong ones harder.

“You can expend a lot of energy fighting temptation, or you can remove it by changing the environment,” said Heath. For example, when he would sit down to write his book, a small voice in his head would say “check your e-mail.”

“My elephant can always find something easier to do than writing, so I bought an old laptop and removed all the Internet browser software. When I needed to focus, I’d take that laptop to the coffee shop or library to write — and the success speaks for itself,” said Heath.

Making a career change or finding a job is a daunting task, but the Heath’s three steps can make it manageable. “To direct the rider, you need to squeeze the ambiguity out of your plan,” said Heath. “Don’t just tell yourself to find a job. Instead give yourself specific instructions, like call your mentor for advice, find a resume-writing service, join a professional organization or find a job-search support group.”

“No one feels happy about a job loss, and your elephant is likely feeling overwhelmed and scared,” said Heath. “You can help motivate your elephant by shrinking the change. Coach it along with small steps that are achievable — two job-related phone calls a day — and those small successes will inspire you. Just getting yourself in motion can be the hardest part.”

“Switch” describes a woman who motivates herself to exercise by telling herself she just has to jog for one song on her i-Pod.

By the time the song is finished, her endorphins have kicked in and it’s easier to keep going.

Finding a job is a job, but it doesn’t feel like it when you’re at home in your bathrobe.