My face doesn't fit at work, I hate the job and my boss .... Could a career counsellor help me improve my life at work?
If you’re reaching the stage when you can truly say “I hate the job” or “I hate my boss” and your dread of Mondays spoils the weekends, then you need a career counsellor – fast. The stress and misery caused when you hate the job almost always spills over into non working hours and other relationships. It puts your job security at risk - when “I hate the job and I hate my boss and colleagues too” is what you feel most of the time, how can you focus properly on your work?
The career counsellors at Careers Partnership (UK) will help you work out what’s going wrong (often you’re too stressed to work out exactly what the problems are – all you know is that somehow your face doesn’t fit round here). Your career counsellor will enable you to get your working life back on track, as simply, safely and constructively as possible and with the least disruption to your life and that of family members. With your counsellor’s advice and support, the job you hate right now can often be improved to the extent it becomes acceptable, possibly rewarding and OK to continue with, at least until you land your next career move.
Although all job problems are different, typically they’re best solved by working one to one with your career counsellor to:
- Identify the root causes of the “hate my boss, hate my job” problem you’re currently facing (is your suffering caused by “people problems”, structural issues – eg badly designed jobs – or situational problems – eg unmanageable change?)
- Create low risk, practical solutions to each of the major problems
- Plan each step towards improving life at work (including how your career counsellor is to support you through this period of high anxiety and loneliness).
Your career counsellor is keenly aware of the importance of reducing to the absolute minimum any risks to your job security and your need for strong support throughout the process.
Wherever practical, your career counsellor will help you build “alliances of interest” between yourself and the people – including the boss – with some influence over the job you hate. It’s always possible, for example, that the boss hate figure is as unhappy as you are and just as confused about how to improve work relationships.
Your career counsellor may use any of a variety of techniques to help you work on and solve your workplace problems. The emphasis is always on practical ways of changing the situation that makes you hate the job / boss and on supporting you, rather than exploring the emotional aspects of the problem.
Your career counsellor may get you to practise ways of communicating with the boss you hate that discourage bullying and scapegoating. If it’s the job you hate, your career counsellor will help you identify what sort of job would suit you better (using psychometric tests where these are useful to guide decisions on changing career) and how most easily to obtain it (staying with your current employer while changing career path can be an option, for example). Similarly, if the difficulties that make you hate the job are created by excessive working hours, being held accountable for achieving results though without the authority to influence what happens and so on, your career counsellor will work with you to prepare the case persuading senior management changes are necessary (and are actually in the best interests of the employer!).
Appointments with your career counsellor can be provided outside normal working hours, as can the Helpline support.
Improving life at work (Ref: L3)
Who is it for:
Adults, living anywhere in the UK, suffering workplace problems which make them doubt themselves, hate the job and dread the beginning of their working week.
Description:
You work with your career counsellor to explore why you hate the job and what's going wrong. The analysis helps you understand each of the key issues and personalities at work; the practical constraints you face in dealing with the problems; the range of possible solutions; and what your own preferred options truly are (eg stay and fight or get out as fast as you can).
Your career counsellor agrees an action plan with you for achieving the changes you want to see (eg working on improving the relationship between yourself and the boss hate figure) and then provides support through email and out of hours 'phone calls to help you implement it.
In many cases, one or two sessions with their career counsellor provide the stressed individual with enough support to achieve substantial improvements in their situation.
Location:
Leicester (70 mins by rail from London and close to motorways)
Fee:
£210 (for each half-day session booked)
For further information:
Email:
Tel: (01455) 284 020