There are frustrations even in the perfect job. With experience we learn the grass is not always greener on the other side. Yet, there are times when the job just isn't worth it. How do you know when to make a move?

Jim Hayhurst is a former CEO and author of Where Have I Gone Right? He spends a lot of time coaching people on their careers. He says you can't tell if the job is wrong unless you really understand yourself. Without clarity on your core values, skills and interests you can't distinguish between the annoyances you should live through and more profound issues. Your fundamental values may revolve around integrity, or working on a team, or making a difference in the world, or any number of other things. If the job conflicts with a fundamental value then you owe it to yourself to leave.

In the technology industry, which is traditionally male-dominated, women often crash up against the old boy's network. Is this a challenge you should struggle to overcome or a signal that you ought to be looking for another job? That depends completely on you. If you are a fighter who loves a challenge then punching your way through that may be completely in tune with your inner self. Other women feel, "I just want to do my job. Fighting this battle is not me." When you understand who you are, you can make the right call.

Jim worked with Jennifer whose mom had always said, "You are bright. You can do whatever you want." Jennifer loved outdoors, studied geology, and ended up running a geological survey crew in the Arctic. It was horrendous. The crew was all men, they were not at ease working with women, and they were very effective at making life difficult for her. She could have become as tough as nails and battled through it, but she understood that one of her core values was working in a team environment. It would never happen there. She had to be willing to "climb a different mountain"; to chase not what she thought she had wanted, but what was in fact true to her own desires.

If you have to contort who you are to do the job then it's time to leave because not only are you being unfair to yourself, you will never be delivering as much as you could.

Finding Who You Are
Finding who you are requires learning from your own experience in the world. Jim tells the story of Elizabeth, a really bright kid who wanted to be a lawyer. She did very well in law school and got a job in the law firm of her choice. It was a mistake. The firm demanded 2200 hours of billing each year. Elizabeth lamented, "I have no social life. I don't have time to work out. I never see my friends."

A clue for Elizabeth came from a chance meeting in an elevator. A poor guy was standing there with his head down. He looked so awful that Elizabeth said, "Are you all right?" He replied, "Who are you?" She explained she was a new associate and he asked, "How can you stand it here?" It turned out he was new in town, didn't know anyone, and was feeling lost. She took him to lunch, invited him to a party, and soon both of them felt better.

This was a reference point - an example of something she had done that made her feel good. This is one of the fundamental tools Jim works with. The method is to look into your life and find those incidents you really felt good about. They don't need to be big things, and they aren't based on what other people told you was good. Usually there is a reference point that really exemplifies the feeling of "rightness" and then you look for other cases to see if this is true. Elizabeth saw this was part of a pattern. She liked coaching people. Without this element she would not be happy in a job.

The story has a surprise ending. Instead of leaving the law firm she went to the partners and said she wanted a new kind of role, one where she could help attract students to the law firm and coach them along. They created a position for her and their retention of new lawyers has improved enormously.

It's not uncommon for firms to be able to create new roles to meet your needs, but only if you can clearly articulate what those needs are.

Knowing Who You Are in an Allegorical Sense
One way to articulate who you are is the use of allegories. Jim stumbled across this when a friend asked him to help some CEOs who were in outplacement counselling. The CEOs went around the room giving three minute capsule profiles of who they were. They felt pretty good about themselves as they described how they were bottom-line entrepreneurial managers, who drove change and were good with people. Jim said, "This is wrong. You all sound identical, which is not at all true." At which point he got the obvious response, "OK, Jim you give us the capsule about who you are." He didn't have one but it was the end of the day so he was able to postpone his performance. After pondering about it for four hours he came up with the same empty words the other CEOs had used. That wouldn't do. He kept at it, and by 4:30 am he had it: he was a Wagon Master.

At the morning meeting he stood in front of the eight CEOs and told his story. In the 1800s people would come to North America from Europe seeking a better life in a land where the streets were paved with gold. They'd arrive and learn just how bad conditions were and decide they'd made a terrible mistake. Then someone would say, "Go West! There's free land!" This may have been a good idea, but the newcomers didn't know about handling horses, crossing rivers, and dealing with the natives. So then a wagon master would come into town. He did have experience travelling and he would lead the people west to the land of their dreams. That what Jim was, a wagon master, leading people to their dreams.

One CEO looked at him and said, "Hayhurst you aren't a wagon master, you're an idiot." But Jim said, "Look. We just learned something. I like off-the-wall images and you're a straight arrow engineer. We'd never work well together and we discovered that in three minutes. I could contort my true self to match your expectations, but that wouldn't do any good for either of us."

The next day everyone was talking about "the wagon master" and the outplacement firm even offered Jim a job. He said, "Let's look at this. You're a partnership. You have meetings to decide when you are going to have a meeting. Have you ever seen a wagon master running decisions by a committee? It doesn't fit."

The power of the allegory is that it provides a template against which you can judge your existing job and potential new careers. Christine describes herself as an apostle. "I don't create ideas. I find something I really believe in and then tell absolutely everyone." Michael says he's a navigator like in the America's Cup yacht race. The captain stands behind the wheel. The navigator stands behind the captain gathering data about wind, waves, and the competition and passing it forward. A sales manager says, "I'm a player-coach. I like the management stuff, but if I just have to sit in the office I won't be effective." In each case the allegory provide a vivid image for people to use in deciding if they are in the right job.

The Special Challenges Women Face
According to Hayhurst, women, more then men, face the pressure of society telling them what to do. People say, "You are a really good lawyer. You ought to commit yourself to being the managing partner." Many feel somehow duty bound to follow this kind of "encouragement". Women often lament the lack of role models. Women are always struggling with the feeling that they are not doing enough for their career or not doing enough for their families.

The answer is to stop looking for a role model, stop doing what your told, and instead listen to yourself. If you look for those reference points that really gave you pleasure, if you can find the patterns, and the allegory for who you really are, then you can find the right job.

Jim says, "I don't want to sound like a broken record but knowing yourself is really the key; and you know yourself not by taking a psychological test, but by looking at your past and learning from what has made you happy before."

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