Free Family Finance

A recent study has determined that job satisfaction in America is at an all time low:

Even Americans who are lucky enough to have work in this economy are becoming more unhappy with their jobs, according to a new survey that found only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work.

That was the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue. In 2008, 49 percent of those surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs.

Given that this dissatisfaction is spread across the board, what can we attribute it to? The author suggests the economy. However, many of the reasons provided for dissatisfaction, point more directly to a lack a leadership, than economy issues.

Workers seem to suffer from a clear sense of vision. An important role of a company’s leadership is provide a clear mission for its employees. This adds interest to their job. They understand why their responsibilities are important:

Fewer workers consider their jobs to be interesting.

A good leader instills an corporate atmosphere of teamwork & comradery:

“There is no sense of teamwork in most places any more,” Carrasco gripes.

‘Listening’ is one of the most influential leadership skills”

“Most of the time they only listen to what their bosses are saying,” he says. “Bosses need to come down to the employee level more and see what actually goes on, versus what their paperwork tells them is happening in the stores.”

It is important for baby boomers to understand, 40 years in the business does not make you a leader. Leadership is an art form – and maybe a skill set that hasn’t been previously required of that particular team member. However, as baby boomers climb the corporate ladder, they can completely transform their company by developing their leadership skills.

via Americans’ job satisfaction falls to record low – Yahoo! Finance.
Photo by pegwinn

The daughter of Hugh Hefner, Christie Hefner, was the CEO of Playboy for 21 years. She recently spoke to the students of Syracuse University, providing 7 tips for success:

1. Lose the jargon - “Try not to be either intimidated by or a captive of jargon. Even though it’s language, and language is about communication, it often exists actually to obfuscate, and to control power, and not to communicate.”
2. Don’t ever stop meeting people - “I don’t think you can know too many smart people.”
3. Don’t ever stop trying to learn - “If you ever get to a point where you stop learning you will find your professional options and your personal satisfaction severely curtailed. Because this world is changing much too quickly.”
4. Read history - “I learned more about leadership reading about Abraham Lincoln than I ever learned reading The One-Minute Manager.”
5. Really listen – “For smart people leadership is harder, ironically, because you’re already a step ahead so you’re not really listening. There’s a wonderful expression that a strategic facilitator I worked with years ago gave me that I love, which is ‘When you’re in a meeting and someone comes up with a new idea, don’t send a heat-sinking missile’, and what that means is, you know what the easiest thing to do is? Find the fatal flaw. It’s to say, ‘Well that won’t work because…’ What you really want, if you’re a leader, is to create a culture in which instead of that being the reaction, what people say is ‘Well that’s a really interesting idea, I wonder if we just twisted a little bit this way…’ So you’re nurturing ideas instead of killing them in their infancy.”
6. Learn how to learn – “If I learned to value one quality above all others in interviewing for senior positions, it was actually not IQ, although I do like smart people, it was intellectual agility.”
7. We are each our own brands – “All the decisions you make, all the interactions you have with people, all the things you do and don’t do will accumulate and define what your brand is. I hope you treat your brand well.”

As the daughter of Hugh Hefner, I am certain Christie has lived among much criticism and high expectations. Say what you will about the line of work, but I like the advice. Some thoughts:

2. What’s the old adage? “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

3. Our world is ever-changing – more so now than ever before in human history. If you are not keeping up, you are being left behind.

4. History over leadership books? Interesting. I just began reading “Cigars, Whiskey and Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant“, so I guess that is a little bit of both.

5. This is huge. Given how quick our business environment is changing, if you can’t rely on the experts around you, you will be hard-pressed to keep up.

6. Learn how to learn – I like this. For Gen Y, we have infinite information at our fingertips. Our challenge is to learn how to manage that info.

7. This reminds me of another great blog post.

via Christie Hefner’s Advice for College Students – ABC News.

Eighteen months after being laid off, Judith Lederman, a 50-year-old divorcee who lives in Scarsdale, N.Y., is ready to consider jobs paying half the $120,000 she earned as a publicity manager at Lord & Taylor. That’s mostly because she’s desperate, but it also makes sense when you consider how this country punishes work effort. While the first $60,000 of her income would be lightly taxed, the next $60,000 would be hit with what is in effect a 79% tax rate. Given a choice between a part-time or easy job paying $60,000 and a demanding, stress-ridden job paying $120,000, Lederman would be wise to take the former. In the tougher job she would be contributing twice as much to the economy. But she wouldn’t be doing herself much good. It would make more sense to take it easy and spend more time with her high school senior daughter, Casey.

79% marginal tax rate??!!

How did a middle-class single mom wind up with a 79% marginal tax rate? At $120,000 she would pay $16,500 a year more in federal and state taxes, wouldn’t qualify for the five-year $12,000-a-year cut in her mortgage payments she’s applying for and would be eligible for $19,000 a year less in need-based college financial aid.

Mortgage relief? The voters clamored for it. Scholarships for less-prosperous students? Everyone wants poor kids to get the same chances in life as rich ones. Add up all these good intentions, though, and you get some perverse incentives.

As the United States continues along its current path toward socialism, we should expect to see more situations such as this. As people, as citizens of the United States of American, our government was founded upon these inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our government does not owe us happiness. They owe us the freedom to pursue and obtain happiness for ourselves. Since many Americans choose not to pursue happiness on their own, our government attempts to legislate happiness on their behalf. This is an example of legislated happiness interferes with the pursuit of happiness.

Work isn’t the only middle-class virtue that is getting punished. The system penalizes savings, too–not just through taxes, but also through programs that reward debtors, the profligate and college families that show up at the financial aid office with empty pockets.

Our country is headed in a very sad direction.

via When Work Doesn’t Pay For The Middle Class – Forbes.com.