Environment: What Do I Need To Thrive?

So far we’ve explored the following:

• Personality – How am I wired?
• Interests – What do I enjoy?
• Strengths – What am I good at?
• Skills – What can I do?
• Values – What is important to me?

Each of these areas explores an internal facet of who we are. For the final blog in our sweet spot series, we turn the focus outward to explore our ENVIRONMENT. As we transition to this external focus, we ask the question “What do I need to thrive?” 

Identifying our optimal working environment contributes to greater productivity IN our work and enhances the enjoyment OF our work. As important as it is to find a career that aligns with who we are, it’s also important to choose the company, organization, or school where we can best flourish.

Exploring Environment

Here are two examples to help explain what that looks like:

Story #1: As a student in college majoring in human development & family science, one of the career fields I explored was mental health counseling. In one of my classes, I was given the opportunity to shadow a Licensed Mental Health Practitioner at the university. I arrived eager to silently observe. A few hours in, and I started to realize that being in the same room day after day, seeing patient after patient, was a part of the occupation that I wasn’t too eager about. Even though I liked the people-focused and relationship-building nature of the job, I realized I needed a little more variety in my environment and day-to-day activities, which didn’t align with the counseling profession, from what I observed. I’m thankful I recognized that sooner rather than later and have chosen to pursue careers in changing environments with variable tasks.

Story #2: Recently, Morgan had a client who had been in education for almost 10 years and felt stuck. After going through the KYP’s career exploration process, they determined that having the right environment was more important to this client than her specific role. While she loved working as a teacher, she craved a different environment with a thriving company culture and better work-life balance. Because of those realizations, she completely switched roles and industries. She is now working in sales at a start-up and is flourishing in the company’s culture with a better work-life balance.

Optimizing Environment

Below are some categories and questions that you can utilize to begin thinking through your optimal environment.

Physical Environment

• Do you prefer an in-person or remote environment?
• Do you prefer your own work space or collaborative work spaces?

Relational Dynamics

• Do you prefer supervisors who give direct instruction or supervisors who take more of a hands-off approach?
• How much involvement do you want from coworkers with your work – collaboration at all times, part of the time, or not at all?

Work Schedule

• Do you prefer your work responsibilities to be different day-to-day or do you prefer to stick to a routine?
• Do you prefer a set Monday-Friday schedule or more sporadic throughout the week?

Company Culture

• What do you look for in a company’s culture?
• What do you think should be the main priorities of your company?

While answering questions like these gets us started, another practical step is observing the job/company for yourself to see if you could envision yourself working in that environment. This is why the KYP believes in the time-tested method of job shadowing. If you’re considering a career switch, we’d encourage you to shadow someone in that job or company before making the move.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – when who we are (personality, interests, strengths, skills, values) aligns with what we do (environment/job), that’s the SWEET SPOT we’re aiming to hit!