Official Qeola

“So, what do you do?” I’m usually taken aback by this question, torn between just listing my routine tasks of writing email newsletters, sales copies, reports etc., and finding a better answer. I currently serve as a marketing associate at Qeola and my job is anything but a boring set of routines. As a marketing, sales, or administrative employee, you may often struggle to articulate your role, especially if you feel that you lack the perceived prestige or innovative projects of say an engineer for instance. However, your answer to this question is the secret to enriching your work and life! How do you perceive your role in your organization? Is it something cast in stone or is it flexible? Adam Grant brilliantly illustrates this concept in the book Originals. As part of a Google project aimed at enhancing the work experience of sales and administrative staff, who often felt they lacked the autonomy, prestige, and innovative projects enjoyed by engineers, Adam Grant collaborated with Yale professor Amy Wrzesniewski and Justin Berg to explore this issue. Their findings were remarkable. Employees were taken through workshops designed to instil in them a fresh perception of their jobs. They were encouraged to embrace a dynamic approach to work, where tasks are seen as adaptable building blocks rather than rigid structures. Through examples such as an artistic salesperson crafting a logo or an outgoing financial analyst using video chat to connect with clients, participants were empowered to envision and create a more ideal, yet realistic, version of their roles. The entire exercise took 90 minutes but six weeks after the training, they reported a spike in happiness and performance. ‘Employees after discovering their jobs were malleable had taken action to improve them. Instead of using only their existing talents, they took the initiative to develop new capabilities that enabled them to create an original personalized job and as a result, were 70 per cent more likely than their peers to land a promotion or a transition to a coveted role. Many of their limits, they came to realize, were their own making.' So, do I just go over a set of boring routines every day? No. I don't just write sales copies and emails or do mundane tasks—I help my clients make money by effectively distributing their ideas, products or services. I do anything and everything I can to achieve that goal, including but not limited to those tasks. I've designed flyers, dabbled in coding (a story for another day), and even done some video editing. My team lead, Abayomi-Perez Okekunle, always says, "Even if you don't know how to do it, still accept it and then figure it out." It's this flexibility that makes work exciting. Who knows what I'll be doing tomorrow?