Three groups of talents are often associated with people in supervisory positions: the initiators or developers – the people who come up with the vision and get the ball rolling; the planners and analyzers – the people who take that vision and make it a reality by planning on how to put the right elements in place, or improve upon what is already there; and the front-line managers or operations supervisors- the people who maintain it and keep the organizational crank turning efficiently and effectively.

All three have a knack for dealing with conflicting priorities in organizations, and for conflict resolution. 

These three groups make up about 30% of the workforce.

Your clients can learn to do these things through training, but if they have a natural talent for supervision, they will have one of these three, which puts them in a category of 10% of the working population.

This is one reason it is so difficult to find good managers. They are few and far between and many supervisors/managers end up in jobs that don’t match their natural managerial talent. 



How can you help your clients determine if they are natural supervisors and, if they are, which particular kind of manager are they?

Developers & Initiators

This kind of talent likes to get things started. Listen for stories about starting up things—projects, enterprises, causes. Do others describe them as entrepreneurial? Why? What do they see your client doing that causes them to say this?

They will be good at getting projects off the ground, or taking an existing enterprise and turning it around. But, once it’s off the ground, or making progress again, they will probably have a tendency to lose interest in maintaining that project.

In fact, others might criticize them for not finishing things. Or, for being impatient, or for acting too quickly without weighing the evidence more carefully because when they are part of a group or team and things get bogged down, your client will tend to take the ball and run with it, even if it means going against what’s popular or currently accepted.

In action, this talent often appears as a spark plug or catalyst for coordinating the activities of others to start up new projects, programs, or systems, often as a self-starter who works on hunches.

Planners & Analyzers

This kind of talent likes to take something already created, make it come to life, or improve upon it. 

These clients have a natural talent for planning – a knack for seeing into the future to determine the details and sequences of events

Listen for stories about them devising and planning an approach to meet a specific goal, whether it’s playing chess, or football, or a major home renovation, or a political campaign, or a major holiday. They enjoy working with strategies, tactics and angles.

Do they like to plan things out before they get started on a major project? Or do they tend to plan as they go? This talent has a clear idea of how to map out a long range plan over 3-5 years. Do they get excited about the details that are necessary in planning a project that involves a combination of people, processes, and schedules? You may find that they know about or find it easy to learn to use a GANT or PERT chart or a critical path methodology. They have a knack for budget planning or term cost scheduling. And, they may express frustration with others who really don’t take time to plan things right!

In action, this talent likes to give full consideration to time, costs, equipment, personnel, facilities, so much so, that others might criticize them for paralysis by analysis, for being indecisive and afraid to take risks, when they are simply trying to ensure accuracy and precision.

Front-line and Operations

This kind of talent loves to get their hands dirty solving problems on the “shop floor’ or at the front desk. Listen for stories where they are running things on a daily basis.

A stay-at-home who enjoys making her family’s busy life tick over efficiently and effectively probably did the same thing in her previous life as an office manager, or nursing supervisor, or classroom teacher.

How do they get people who are very different with different objectives to work together towards a common goal? Do they like to bring out the best in others? If so, how do they do it?

In action, this talent is very good at process, and makes a valuable contribution to any organization as a stabilizing influence–at home or at work, they are the glue that holds things together. Others might criticize them for lacking spontaneity and flexibility because they prefer things to be permanent.

Listen carefully for important distinctions

Someone who says they can do anything if only people would get out of the way, is not a natural front-line supervisor. An individual who would rather manage a project from start-to-finish is not a natural operations manager, who would prefer to manager a department, plant, or company over a period of time.

And, of course, the number one distinction to listen for is consistent enjoyment in these tasks. Just because somebody is good at something doesn’t mean they have a natural talent for it.

For example, the oldest child of four who grew up in a single-parent household may, by necessity, learned how to help out their parent by getting their younger siblings organized for school and life each day, so they are successful at running an office, or plant, or company, but it may drain them rather than energize them.

Natural supervisors get energized by initiating, planning or managing at the front-line. That’s what sets them apart from others who can do the same thing.

It’s Monday morning again! “How do you feel about going into work? Perhaps you’re having a hard time getting started. Write down right now 2-3 job duties that drag you down; you’d prefer to push them aside, and do them later in the day, or tomorrow…or never.”

This is a simple conversation that you can have as a career professional with any client. Many of our clients will present us with a story about a bad jobfit, which is often characterized with negative opinions about the job’s circumstances, such as lousy pay, a bad boss, a long commute, and so on.

But take some time to probe their story for more details about regular or frequent job duties.  Here’s a simple exercise you can use to bring more clarity into the situation.  Ask them, what are the 5-10 job duties that they are expected to perform each day or week as critical job requirements? Get them to identify which  job duties they enjoy and don’t enjoy.

Ask them if they can remember a time when they looked forward to Monday mornings, in their current job, or in another job.  If you have their resume handy, ask them to highlight  the critical job requirements that they enjoyed performing on a regular basis in their previous jobs.

Perhaps they procrastinate with starting or completing certain job duties.  Get them to identify the job duties in their current and previous jobs where they procrastinated.

Identify items (both positive and negative) that seem to recur in their performance evaluations, regardless of who does the assessment.

Make a list with two columns: one of job duties that energized them, duties that they enjoyed performing consistently; and, another column, of job duties that drain them, duties that they push aside or procrastinate on.

Then take their current job description and estimate how much time is spent each day or week performing job duties that drain them. If they are spending 40% or more of their time performing job duties that drain them, or duties that they chronically delay doing, they may be suffering from a job misfit in terms of their critical job requirements.

What is a good jobfit?

It may be helpful to remind your client that there is no such thing as a perfect job where one is 100% happy and satisfied all the time with their core job duties. The world is just not organized that way! However, many studies show that the key to career success is to limit the downside of a job to 40% of job duties.

The remaining 60% of job duties should be organized around your client’s natural strengths, especially how well their talents and motivations correlate with their core job duties. In general, if we spend about 60% of work hours in a jobfit, then our work will be challenging and will provide a sense of growth and fulfillment.

Try to correlate your client’s natural strengths with specific job duties. Help them develop a job description aligned with what makes them happy and productive in the workplace, so that they can operate 60% of the time in a mode that comes naturally and effortlessly to them. This 60/40 split will energize them. This is jobfit.

However, we may also need to remind them of the likelihood that many times this 60/40 ratio may slip to 40/60 or worse, in which case they may feel drained by brief periods of routine work. This is nothing to be alarmed about as long as the ratio returns to 60/40 in due course; if it doesn’t, they’ll need to take action.

In performing this simple exercise with your client, you may discover that they do, indeed, have a good jobfit. You can then turn your attention to the frustrating factors of their job circumstances. I will deal with those factors in my next article.

But if you and your client agree that there is a serious misalignment between their natural strengths and the critical requirements of their current job, you can then discuss opportunities for refashioning their current job into a better jobfit, or finding a better fit with their current employer, or identifying other careers/jobs that will recognize and reward them for the job duties that energize them.

At that point, an assessment may be in order, one that can match them to good jobfits–specific jobs in specific work settings with the right combination of extrinsic and intrinsic factors to bring out the best in them and reward you for their strengths. A good career assessment can provide such matches with clarity. The information may be valuable in terms of developing options with their current employer or with a new career target.

If how you feel about going to work on a Monday morning is an accurate “thermometer” for measuring your jobfit, then you can raise the temperature by helping your clients wake up excited about the coming day’s activities.

In his 1969 book by the same name,  Dr. Laurence Peter, formulated the following principle: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”  It is based on the notion that employees will be promoted so long as they work competently until they reach a position where they are no longer competent and there they stay, stuck, unable to earn further promotions.

This principle is famously played out in the popular TV series The Office by actor Steve Carroll, who portrays the role of Michael Scott, branch manager of paper company Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvannia.  If you watch the series, you may find it hard to believe that Michael was ever competent at anything!

But, the fact is that people are promoted because they are competent.  And they are competent because they have a particular flair or talent or strength for performing certain job duties.  Their work is valued so much that they are often rewarded with a promotion to a supervisory position.

Peter Principle

However,  the Peter Principle becomes active when a managerial position requires a set of skills that do not come easily or naturally to the person who has been promoted into it.

For example, I have worked with a good number of engineers who excelled at troubleshooting technical problems, especially when they were left alone to work in their own way at their own speed to analyze a particular problem and design a solution, often building the solution with special tools & equipment.

They were masters of a physical world of structures, machinery, and processes.  Then they are promoted into a managerial position where they are required to collaborate with others on committees and make decisions through long meetings before moving those decisions up a hierarchy for approval.

In the meantime, they must resolve disputes between employees who disagree on how to proceed; they must plan years in advance for potential scenarios and compete with their colleagues for scarce organizational resources, and fight about money and budgets—none of which they have a genuine interest in or a knack for dealing with.

However, some engineers feel they must put up with this job misfit for the sake of a better compensation package, or the admiration of their peers, or the expectations of power, prestige, and status for someone their age.

And, of course, it is very difficult for accomplished individuals to admit that they might not be good at everything they turn their hand to.  Ego.  Or, to put it in traditional terms: pride goeth before the fall.  But, the simple fact is, not every individual is cut out for management.  The American Management Association estimates that only one-third of individuals have a knack for core managerial duties.

Motivation is the Key

If someone is not motivated by their core job duties, their performance will degrade, so that when the inevitable downturns of an economy occur, they may be laid off when their performance is compared to others who are suited to managerial duties and feel motivated by their work.  Or, the level of job dissatisfaction fosters dis-ease that leads to physical illness, anxiety, depression or any number of stress-related disorders.

Sure, we can learn managerial skills by taking courses but just because we know how to do something doesn’t mean we will do it.  For example, you can learn how to do conflict resolution but if you avoid conflicting situations or highly charged emotional encounters then you will not excel in such situations.

Listen for talent clues

Helping our clients find their right jobfit is never easy.  But, in the end, guiding them into a managerial position when they are not suited for it does not serve them or you in the long term.  Listen carefully to their stories.  What parts of their experiences energizes them most?

- Do they come alive in situations during which they take an active role (high-involvement or high-touch) in managing the talents of people under their authority?

- Are they comfortable with authority and the inevitable stresses and strains that accompany it?

- Do they have a knack for selecting or choosing people, matching tasks and people, and tapping the strengths of those under them?

- Can they negotiate well with peers for competing priorities in their organizations, or do they tend to withdraw when they need to be assertive?

- Do they confuse leadership—the ability to motivate and inspire others to follow a cause, aim, purpose, or objective—with management, a talent for resolving conflict at different levels between corporate goals and union objectives, between stakeholder interests, contract disputes, supplier complaints, or putting out fires on the front lines of daily operations?

There are many paths to success.  The one most healthy is the one most natural.  Help your clients stick to their strengths.  Help them navigate the world of work and advance in their careers efficiently and effectively.  By doing so, you add value to their careers and to your business.

As career professionals, we know that the number one reason an employee leaves a job is because of a bad relationship with their immediate supervisor.  This story comes in many shapes and forms.  Undoubtedly, there are bad bosses out there.  And, some workplaces are structurally dysfunctional.

But each relationship is a two-way street, and most relationships break down due to poor communications which, in itself, is often a symptom of deeply rooted misunderstandings about what truly motivates us.

Old  School

For example, if a particular manager has a directorial management style, they might conflict with an employee who functions best with ‘hands-off’ style management.  The manager prefers to get the work done through the efforts of others–subordinates, assistants, associates– in the manner they, as the boss, determine is correct, appropriate, or effective.  This is often referred to as an “old school” management style, or the familiar “command-and control” management style adopted from the military, from which, of course, many post-WWII managers were sourced.  The employee, on the other hand, operates best under a manager who allows them to exercise independent control over their specific area of responsibility.  They prefer a manager who lays out the goals and objectives for a project, then leaves them to get the desired result in their own way.  The manager’s preferred style clashes directly with the employees preference for being managed!  This is a recipe for workplace conflict.

Unless both manager and employee have a vocabulary for communicating how they best function and what kind of situations motivate them, their attempts to communicate can quickly deteriorate into negative interactions, involving resentments, misunderstandings, petty squabbles, accusations, silent resistance, passive aggressive behavior, harrassment, discrimination, and other common forms of unproductive workplace behaviors.

As professional career guides, we can help our clients navigate the choppy waters of on-the-job relations by helping them focus on how they work best as managers or employees.  The key to doing so is to help them step out of the volatile on-the-job circumstances, and tell stories about enjoyable projects at home or in the community.

How do they manage projects outside of work?

When listening to your client stories, listen to managers describe situations outside of work where they took responsibility for accomplishing a goal or getting something done by actively managing the efforts of others, such as in volunteer projects through a social service club, a sports team, a church or synagogue, or a professional association.  Do they actually step into such situations outside of work?

If they do, they may have a natural managerial talent that they enjoy using. Are they equally “old school” in those situations?   Or, do they adopt a different style of managing, perhaps as a team captain, where they act as an example to a team or put the team into action?  Or, do they take on more of a coordinator role, where their interactions with subordinates is participatory rather than authoratative in nature?  Or, do they tend to act and speak in a forthright manner as a leader causing others to follow them, or their cause, program, or mission?  Or, are they adept at determining what sort of work people are suited for, and encourage them, and how their abilities can best be used in that situation?

Some managers feel obliged to operate in a certain managerial style due to the corporate culture in which they work, but will gravitate to their more natural style during times when they are doing something they truly enjoy outside of work.

How do they prefer to be managed?

Similarly, employees can learn what kind of management sttyle they prefer by paying attention to the way they are managed in activities outside of their 9-5 job.  Some individuals prefer continuous support from someone who touches bases frequently and offers directions and advice as needed.  Others prefer oversight from someone who provides direction and support only at key points of a project, usually when a critical decision needs to be made.  I know that I prefer a manager who provides me with direction and support at the outset of a new assignment or responsibility, then leaves me pretty much alone to carry it out.  Some people are truly independent and thrive without any managerial direction.  Still others function best with a manager who treats them as an equal, who works with them as though they were involved in a “collaborative effort (from co-labor).

Vocabulary for harmony

The next step is to help them build a vocabulary from those positive experiences that will assist them to communicate to their colleagues how they best work, in order to mitigate the often destructive misunderstandings that arise when people do not know how they best operate with their natural talents and motivations.  This kind of informed communication is a key element for resolving many workplace disputes.

Let’s not overlook the obvious when analyzing the stories of our clients. I am always amazed by the depth of information available through stories that, on face value, are often presented as simple or trivial activities enjoyed by our clients.

For example, sometimes a client will mention how much they enjoy driving on a car trip.  This simple activity might reveal a knack for operating machinery or equipment, or coordinating gears and pedals.  Perhaps, they enjoy driving other vehicles, such as boats, snowmobiles, ATVs, forklifts, trucks, even airplanes. A  knack for operating equipment or coordinating gears correlates with core job duties in many occupations.

If they enjoy driving very fast, does that mean they are  a ‘speed freak’ who loves to live dangerously? Perhaps, but it may also indicate a talent for making a fast, responsible decision, the same talent that correlates with certain requirements related to being decisive with a physical response as in paramedic, athletic, referee, military, and other applications.

In other cases, what the client claims to enjoy is the opportunity to observe the cityscapes and landscapes they pass through on their car trip. They notice small things that others often miss, such as billboards, crops in fields, new flashing on homes in neighborhoods, or stickers on long haul transports. Police forces teach their recruits techniques of observation, but some individuals have a natural observing talent that correlates with core job duties involving investigations, or inspections, or monitoring.

Just because a client has one kind of observing talent, it doesn’t mean they have more. For example, the talent for observing details in your physical environment isn’t the same as a talent for observing details in legal documents, technical manuals, and so forth. Some individuals are natural proofreaders, who can acquire a manuscript-editing ability, or paralegal skills.

Others cannot stop their eyes from noticing details in blueprints or maps, and can acquire skills related to architects or general contractors, or military strategists or cartographer.  If you question them further, you might learn that your client has a natural observing talent for seeing a 3-dimensional object or building from a 2-dimensional drawing. Reading mechanical drawings, or aerial photographs, comes easily to them because of this spatial perception talent, which is a core job duty for a mechanical engineer who needs to see a completed turbine from a drawing, or a fashion designer who can look at a pattern and see the finished dress.

Gathering and interpreting this data as career professionals is how we can add value to the lives of our clients. However, we need to exercise discretion and wisdom when advising clients on career matches. We can mine our client’s stories for clues to their right work but we must be careful not to extrapolate an entire career from one or two obvious talents.

What matters in determining a client’s right work is their motivational pattern as a whole, not their individual variables.  A client may have a natural talent for observing details in their physical environment but we should not leap to the conclusion that policing is an obvious career choice. It is enough to point out that their talent correlates with a core job duty of police officers to demonstrate the value such a talent has in the world of work.

Other factors come into play when determining whether or not your client is suitable for police work. More information about their ambitions, personality, values, priorities, health condition, education, strengths, thoughts and feelings need to be taken into account for career decision-making.

Engaging your clients with what they do easily—telling their stories!–moves away from narrow assessments and towards a more holistic methodology that employs narrative counseling to help clients translate their natural talents and motivations into specific jobs or careers.

As career professionals, we often work with individuals who are seeking work but not motivated to take actions due, in some cases, to job misfit; that is, they hate their current job or are de-motivated to seek a similar job.

They want a different kind of job but have no idea what else they can do.  As career professionals, we can help them get started on finding a different path, by taking the following three actions.

First, we need to remind them that none of their current work experience is wasted.  We can clearly see that they have put the cart in front of the horse (the horse being that part of ourselves that represents our natural strengths, vitality, drive, energy).

We can help them re-connect with that authentic part of themselves and show them how to harness it to their tool cart, that part of their job experience that represents all the knowledge and skills they have acquired in their careers. Motivation is the natural result of putting the horse in front of the cart.

In fact, the clues to our right work are often found in our childhood preoccupations. For example, in one study conducted by British behavioral scientists, on the relationship between our desires in youth and adult success, 50 individuals were tracked over a period of 28 years, from the age of seven to 35.

The result? Nearly all of the subjects wound up engaged in a professional pursuit related to their interests during the ages 7 through 14. While most strayed from these interests after childhood, the successful adults were those who found their way back to their childhood dreams by the age of 35, even if only as a hobby or avocation. Don’t you find that amazing? I do!

If you’ve read my book, JobJoy , then you know that I put a lot of emphasis on understanding what we did and how we did it during ages 7-14.

What I have found over the years is that individuals who find jobjoy success early in life are often people who were lucky enough to have parents and other significant adults who recognized their natural talents and inclinations early in life, then helped nurture those talents into a specific vocation.

For most of us, this does not happen. We tend to drift away from our natural inclinations and focus on learned or acquired values and behaviors that have more to do with the agendas of others, or economic trends.

Most individuals settle for this kind of career and that’s fine. However, if they reach an impasse, we have a choice to help them through it. Many of us fall victim to what the poet E.E. Cummings eloquently described: “To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best day and night into making you like everybody else is to fight the hardest battle there is and never stop fighting.”

I have found that many people lost this battle early in life and, by doing so, lost their memory of what they enjoyed most and did best as a child. The clues to our right work are always there in the details of our personal stories, our life history.

Second, ask your client to sit with you in a quiet office, no interruptions.  Ask them to close their eyes, and quiet their minds.  Ask them to let their thoughts drift back to childhood.

Ask the following kinds of questions: What did you enjoy doing at age six or seven? What were the activities that gave you pleasure? How did the world open up to you?  Over the next five years or so, what kinds of subjects did you gravitate towards in school and outside of school? How did you get the attention you wanted? What teachers influenced you the most? Whom were your heros?

This might be difficult for some clients.  Ask them to go home and take the time to go through family photos, watch home movies, talk to parents and relatives. Invite them to bring a list of impressions and memories to your next meeting.

One way to find jobjoy in life is to move back with conscious intention to what we drifted away from early in life.  Third, remind your clients that it’s not as difficult as they might think! The world rewards excellence. And our best chance for excellence is to develop our natural talents and motivations into a specific job or career—that’s the route to personal and professional success!

People who excel in their jobs often make it look easy and effortless. Like Robert Redford in the movie ‘The Natural,” they seem to have a knack, a flair, a talent for the core job duty; the same way Redford’s character had a natural talent for throwing and hitting a baseball.  This work is child’s play!

Do your clients think about changing jobs?  The power to do so is right under their noses…well, behind their noses actually!  Stored in their brains are memories about events and activities they truly enjoyed in life since childhood.

Here are some tips for analyzing their life histories for key success factors that reveal work that is personally and financially rewarding.

Get them to do a quick inventory from childhood years (ages 6-12), then teen years (ages 13-19), then young adult years (ages 20-29), then their thirties, forties, and so on.  In each period, there are specific examples.  Ask them to create a shortlist of their top 10 most enjoyable events.

The power of those stories is in the facts, people, and events of their lives.  These stories are like veins of gold that run through each life.  Mining gold, however, involves moving a lot of ore with tools and equipment to get at that precious metal.

Similarly, mining the veins of gold in life stories is easier when you use the tool of writing.  Emphasize that it is important to write about what is important to them, not what they did to please others.  Help them identify those activities that gave them an intrinsic sense of pleasure and satisfaction.

Above all, encourage them to be brutally honest about what is they truly enjoyed, as opposed to what they are simply proud of.  They may be proud of certain accomplishments but there is often no real innate pleasure from the activity itself.

For example, many people get high grades in school in order to please their parents, not because they truly love math, or history, or truly enjoy studying and doing homework.

It actually makes it easier for them to tell the story if they stick to a proven  format. You may want to analyze or evaluate their stories for an accurate and reliable picture of their unique motivational pattern.  Or, you may want to turn the exercise over to a personal story analyst to really nail down the essence of who and what they are in terms of work when they are doing what you enjoy most and doing it well.

For example, their  stories can be analyzed to identify and define Key Success Factors. Please understand that the factors critical to success are very different than personality traits, or the results you get from Myers-Briggs and other personality assessments.

A personal story assessment can answer in very clear, concise and meanginful terms the questions: What are their natural talents that consistently bring satisfaction to them when they are doing what they enjoy most and doing it well? What is the subject matter that they gravitate to without even trying? What circumstances or conditions have to exist in the job environment to bring out the best in them?  How do they naturally build relationships with others? How do these success factors combine to create an essential motivation; that is, the thing they are best at and best suited for in terms of work?

This accurate and reliable picture of their right work can be developed into an Ideal Job Description and matched to specific opportunities in the world of work.  This opens up a new level of coaching and service for you as their career coach.