In 1966, a young woman named Linda Mornell, climbed on a greyhound bus headed for San Francisco. She was leaving her small, remote childhood farm in Indiana right after completing her RN and BS in a nursing training program in Indianapolis. She had a few dollars carefully folded in her small purse but no secure sense of what lay ahead. She knew only that she wanted out- out of the mid-west, that she loved psychiatric nursing and that one of the best mental health facilities in the country, was in San Francisco. She headed west.

Fast forward forty six years to 2012 in San Francisco. I was attending a fundraiser for an organization called Summer Search. I did not know much about the program but two things quickly became obvious. First, we were there to honor the astounding success of the students as well as the founder, Linda Mornell. Second, there was a palpable charge in the air that night that let me know that this program and Linda Mornell were something very, very special.

I wanted to know more Linda Mornell and about Summer Search, but with the many demands on my time that moment passed.

Read more at For Linda Mornell…Right Work IS Changing Young Lives…Forever. HuffPost, July 20, 2015

July 25th will mark his 79th birthday.

I had always wanted to meet Warren Hellman because, in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live, he was a living legend in his own time: a billionaire who found his right work, maybe even in spite of having so very much money. Eventually, I had the opportunity to interview him for my book, Finding Right Work: Five Steps to a Life You Love.

From a life perspective, Warren said that the best thing you can do for yourself is to choose a family to be born into that has some wealth. He called it the “lucky sperm club.” He had managed to do that himself by picking both the Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo families to form his family tree.

In addition, he was wildly successful in his own right, generating personal wealth far beyond most of our wildest dreams. He became a billionaire.

Read the full story at  Finding Right Work, Even When You Don’t Need Money, HuffPost July 18, 2013

Robert Mondavi was 52 years old when he was unceremoniously ejected from his family’s wine business. He had been placed on a terminal “leave of absence.” Differences, seemingly irreconcilable, had built walls between family members, between their philosophies of life and business

Mondavi had never looked for a job before. In fact, he had never even thought about a career as being anything other than carrying on the business his father had built.

It’s hard to believe now, but at the time Mondavi was facing his mid-career crisis people in America, if they ever drank wine at all, drank jug wine. Beer and whiskey were the alcohols consumed in America. There was no such thing as fine wine-making… or drinking. Mondavi, relatively late in his career, changed all that to introduce Americans to fine wine. The rest is history!

Read full article in Finding Right Work… at Any Age! HuffPost June 25, 2013

Where are all the jobs and why aren’t they coming back?

Why are so many people, ” looking for jobs in all the wrong places”?

The Sunday New York Times of May 17, 2013 included an enthusiastic readers response to Jared Bernstien’s query (Op-Ed, May 3) entitled “Where Have All the Jobs Gone?”

Per Mr. Bernstein’s article, the jobless rate is still at 7.5 percent, with 11.7 million people looking for work, including 4.4 million who have been out of work for at least half a year. About eight million more were said to be “stuck” in underemployment as part-time workers who needed full time employment. Reader response was incredibly thoughtful relative to “An Economy in Transition” and there…

is where we begin our story…

Read full story in What is Your Right Work? Huffington Post June 5, 2013

I have also worked with hundreds of employers and businesses who hope that the people they hire are right for the job they want done. These employers have learned the hard way that turning their work over to the wrong person who is in their wrong work is a costly and painful process. And they need more than a resume, references, and a standard interview to make sure that does not happen.

My life’s work is been a fascinating journey for me personally, and it has taught me a lot about work. That is what I want to share with you in this column over the coming months.

I cannot emphasize enough how impressed I am with the important role that work plays in everyone’s life. Work along with our family life will, to a large extent, shapes our happiness, our health, our wealth, and our ability to feel connected to our community.

Sigmund Freud defined mental health itself as the ability to love and to work.

Buddha cautioned, “We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living.” (The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching [Parallax Press, 1998], p. 104).

In fact it is hard to find any sage who has not paid homage to the important role work plays in our lives.

Indeed, when we actually think about it, few would dispute that our work will go a long way to determining our happiness in life. And yet, especially with work, few of us really give much thought or have much understanding of how we can define, find, and be in our Right Work. Instead, it is not exaggeration to say that most of us prove Thoreau was right when he said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

I now know with certainty, it does not have to be that way.

Based on my experience working with individuals and employers I have learned that we can do a much better job of finding work that actually makes our hearts sing and makes us happy.

That is what I call “Right Work.”

For years, colleagues, clients, and friends have told me I should write down for others what I have learned and been teaching my clients about finding Right Work. And that is what I have done with my new book, Finding Right Work: Five Steps to a Life You Love.

In Finding Right Work, I describe many of the remarkable people I have met over the course of my career who have transitioned into their Right Work. They have come in all different “sizes and shapes” with a remarkable array of stories.

And from them, I have learned about the steps successful people take to move into their Right Work. Some of these people, like Robert Mondavi, who introduced America to fine wines, are rich and famous. Others, like Linda Wosskow, who found that what she most loved to do in the world was promote salsa music, are anything but household names. Nor are they necessarily all affluent. However, what they do all share in common is their happy astonishment that they are actually getting paid for doing something they love as the work they now do each day.

This is not something that just happens by chance or luck.

If we study their stories, as I have up-close and personal over a lifetime, a consistent pattern emerges that lets us–with some confidence–identify the steps leading to Right Work. It is not necessarily an easy journey, nor is it something that can be rushed. It is, however, a method that, more often than not, will leave the person going through it feeling transformed–not only in their work–but in their life.

What I would like to do over the coming months in this blog is share with you some of the insights I have gained in helping people find their Right Work.

I will tell you the full story of Robert Mondavi and Linda Wosskow, but I will also tell you of many more, like Snorkel Bob (Robert Wintner) whose dozens of snorkel rental stores those of you who have traveled to Hawaii have probably seen dotting the landscape of that Island Paradise.

More importantly, however, for employers and workers alike, I will also explain the process that these people personify in finding Right Work. I truly believe all of us have our own right work which may well change as our priorities change, but it is not something we “stumble into.” Instead, it comes from a painstaking understanding of who we are, what our most important priorities, values and talents are, and how we can harmonize those ingredients into Right Work. It is not always fast and easy, but it is much easier once people understand the fundamental ingredients of right work and learned the process of how to find it.

It is also increasingly done by astute employers.

They understand the importance of taking time to understand both their job requirements and individual definitions of right work in their candidate base. In doing so, employers gain an effective competitive advantage with higher employee retention as well as productivity

Finding Right Work is a process that can be learned. I have seen it done and, in many cases, helped people learn it. Now I would like to share it with you.

And, of course, I would love your comments, questions, and contributions to the process.

Leni

Warmly,

Next Week: What is “Right Work” Anyway?

SAUSALITO, CA – December 11, 2012

The way we work is changing continuously—and change is speeding up. Finding work, finding work that is right, and working right are skills we all need. And they are exactly the skills that Leni Miller guides readers through in her timely new book Finding Right Work: Five Steps to a Life You Love ($16.75 Amazon).

A professional in the job placement and search business for over thirty years, Miller knows what right work is—and she knows its value to companies, individuals, and the community at large. She interviewed thousands of people who had been dragging themselves to jobs that were wrong for them. She also interviewed a wide range of people who had found jobs or created work that energized, inspired, and satisfied them beyond anything they had thought possible. No surprise which group was more productive and happy.

“When I speak to groups about finding right work, many people don’t believe it’s possible to be really happy with work and have no idea what their right work would be,” says Miller. “That is why I wrote this book. I want everyone to know how to determine what is their right work and how to find it.”

Miller has teased out the common factors that define right work for people. It’s what makes the match—and it’s the right work—that inspires people and makes them happy. She saw clearly that people in their right work—work that best uses their gifts, skills, and talents, and that aligns with their personal values and priorities—had followed similar paths to discovering their own right work. Miller has distilled these similarities down into five steps. In Finding Right Work, she defines what right work is and provides detailed guidance for the process of finding it.

Why is this book so timely? A very high percentage of people hate their jobs—and a report published by the Society for Human Resource Management in October 2012 indicates a distinctly downward trend in employees’ overall satisfaction with their jobs. In Finding Right Work you’ll read of people of all ages who have dramatically changed their lives for the better as they discovered their right work—and some who transformed their existing work simply by identifying their current priorities and changing their attitudes. As Miller says, “It’s not as difficult to find right work as people think.  My book guides readers through the process.”

Leni Miller provides her readers with proven steps and specific actions to take en route to defining and discovering their own right work. She knows that those who read Finding Right Work and complete its guides for action will create or find their own right work. They, too, will know what it is like to honestly say: “I love what I do! Can you believe I get paid to do this?”

Finding Right Work: Five Steps to a Life You Love