Your Biggest Motivator

What is your five-year plan? What are your career goals? Where do you see yourself in the coming years? We’ve all been asked these questions before. At the heart of them, the person asking them is trying to understand what motivates you—or if you are motivated at all.

While I have a great deal of respect for those who are highly motivated, I’ve never understood the thinking behind such questions. My response has never been that I see myself doing job X at firm Y making Z amount of money by a certain date. I see myself working hard and doing something great that brings meaning to me and those around me. That goal is the same as it was yesterday and in the coming years.

I was fortunate to learn a good work ethic at a young age and to apply it to every task that I do—no matter how mundane and dirty the job may be. I see that same work ethic in Local 63 members. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard members looking at a plant, road, pipeline, bridge, or some other project say, “I helped build that!” They may not have been the mastermind behind it or engineered it, but they contributed to its ultimate success.

Climbing the company ladder as a goal or a career motivator never made much sense to me. But if you end up climbing the ladder as a result of your hard work and doing the right thing, you can take satisfaction in knowing that your path was motivated by the right reasons. The same satisfaction that you get when you look back at projects you’ve worked on. Your career is the sum of many such projects where you contributed your talents and energy to build things—big or small, fantastic or mundane—that serve and help people.

So the next time someone asks you what your five-year plan is, or what your career goals are, don’t hesitate to let them know that they’re the same as today—taking pride in doing something great that brings meaning to you and those around you.