2010 Keynote Address


Vanessa Urch Druskat 
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Management

Vanessa Urch Druskat is Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Management at the Whittemore School of Business & Economics. Professor Druskat joined the Whittemore School faculty as an Associate Professor in 2003 after spending eight years on the faculty of the Department of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University. She has received several awards for the contributions made by her innovative research on group norms and processes that enable a team to exceed its performance potential and leadership behaviors and strategies that support the development of effective teams. She is particularly interested in teams that face complex interpersonal challenges.

Druskat is a sought after speaker and consultant in the areas of work team effectiveness and emotional intelligence. She has conducted numerous leadership and team development seminars and workshops domestically and internationally for organizations ranging from Fortune 100 Companies to public schools.

She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from Boston University, an M.A. in organizational psychology from Columbia University, Teachers College, and her B.A. in Psychology from Indiana University, Bloomington. She lives in Durham with her husband and two children.

Discovering Your Passion: A Lifetime Pursuit

Thank you, Charlotte, President Huddleston, Provost Aber and members of the platform party, honors graduates, parents, grandparents and invited guests.  It is a pleasure to be here today with all of you.

Hello graduating seniors.   I have been asked to speak to you as a representative of the UNH faculty.  The faculty would like me to congratulate you, tell you that we are proud of you, and that you have been a joy to teach and to learn from.  We will miss you.  
 
Most of you have never met me, so I want to begin by telling you a little bit about who I am and what I do.  I teach in the Business School.  I do research in many areas, but one of my favorites is identifying the behaviors and competencies that lead to success at work. For that research, I go into many different organizations, large companies whose names you’d recognize and small ones you never knew existed. Then, I compare employees who are “outstanding performers,” to those who are “average performers.”  The purpose is to determine what outstanding performers do that average performers don’t do. I’ve been doing this research for almost 20 years and today I want to share a couple of things I’ve learned from it.   

First, everything you need to be an “outstanding” performer at work is already inside of you.  You will need to work hard, you will need to start at the bottom and build new knowledge and skills – continually building knowledge and skills is essential.  You would not be sitting here today if you could not solve the problems that lay ahead of you in the workplace.  Although you may only feel exhaustion at the moment, at UNH you have learned an invaluable set of problem solving and critical thinking skills that will serve you well.  Remember all those assignments where the directions were not very clear – well that is exactly the world you are stepping into.   

Let me give you an example of how you will use those skills in the “organization of the future.”   My friend Arlene was hired by such an organization a few years ago. She arrived at work on the first day to meet her new manager and learn about her job responsibilities.  Well, her manager told her that her job for the next few months was to conduct interviews and research and then to write her own job description.  Her task was to figure out what the organization needed most right now to increase its success -- and then to do it.   

This is the “workplace of the future.”  It is more flexible and proactive than it has ever been.  The days of having a boss who gives you clear directions are disappearing.  Successful organizations – whether it is the Red Cross – or IBM, are getting more entrepreneurial and creative.  Jobs with clear and simple directions are now being sent to India or Vietnam where labor is cheaper.

Navigating your education here at UNH has provided you with a baseline set of skills that will enable you to continue to learn and build the skills you’ll need to perform well at work.     

But there is something more that we observe in “Outstanding Performers” and I’m not so sure we have prepared you for this – so this is what I want to talk to you about for the next few minutes. 

Outstanding performers are enthusiastic and passionate about their work. They have chosen work that motivates them.  It fits their interests, personality, and values and allows them to use their unique abilities and talents.   You see, they have done the homework and built the skills necessary to end up in a career that is meaningful for them.  On Monday mornings, they look forward to starting their day. The motivation that comes out of this kind of enthusiasm drives outstanding performance.  It cannot be manufactured – it comes out of an emotional connection to one’s work.   So – here is the challenge for you – to be outstanding in what you pursue you first need to identify the kind of work that will “light your fire” -- and then you need to do the homework and “pay the dues” necessary to get there.

Here is the dilemma: You have probably received a lifetime of advice from your parents, teachers and advisors aimed at helping you find a “good job” that will provide a nice lifestyle for you. But, these advisors tend to be primarily focused on your safety and security.   We may not have adequately prepared you for the exciting and nearly limitless breadth of choices you have ahead of you. 

John Stewart of The Daily Show says that what is most exciting is that in the “real world” there is no more core curriculum that you must take.  From now life is an “elective.”  And the best thing -- YOU get to design this elective.  As long as you pay your bills, and you must pay your bills, you can design and live a life that fits your unique interests, talents, and desires.   Again, the challenge is in figuring out what that looks like.

Professor Jerome Baluth of Colgate University worries about you graduating seniors.  He is   getting ready to retire and for decades he has stayed in touch with students who have graduated, gone into the workplace and created their lives.  He has learned something he wants to tell you and all graduating seniors. --- You must recognize that society will attempt to define “success” for you. Society will tell you that success requires a lifetime of persistent struggle climbing the ladder for status that is visible to others and judged by their impressions.  Instead, he wants you to recognize that you are a unique individual who does not need to follow that convention.  You do not have to define success their way.   You can and must identify your own unique definition of success and follow a path that has “heart” in it for you.   

So what does defining your own path involve?  Well, right now, you must get a job that will pay your bills. From there you must use every opportunity to learn more about yourself: which tasks do you enjoy doing in your work, which are you good at, which tasks are so enjoyable that time goes by in a flash, which tasks make you feel useful and alive. Consider everything you do an opportunity to experiment and then move step by step closer to that work and life you want.  Designing a life that has heart in it for you is a life-time pursuit – in part because you and your situation are moving targets.  But also because landing interesting work usually requires lots of exploration and hard work and -- lots of hard work.   Interesting work tends to be hard work.       So, get out, talk to people, ask them what they like about their jobs, try things.  learn from everything you do and use what you learn to make your next choice – here is the kick – make sure you are designing the path rather than simply taking the next thing that comes your way.    

Over the years, I’ve met far too many people who feel they have hit a dead end and will never reach their potential.  I’m telling you now NOT to let that happen to you.  Do your homework; make your life the elective that YOU want it to be. This will give you the kick and the motivation to be outstanding at any career you chose to pursue – and will allow subsequent doors to open.  

The best example I can give you is my own, so, I will now tell you a bit about my path.  Because I’m telling it quickly, this will sound linear and simple – but it has been anything but linear and simple – nothing in my life has come easily or without LOTS of hard work. 

When I graduated with a degree in psychology I did not know what I wanted to do.  I moved home and asked my Dad for advice. He told me I had good people skills and should become a manager.  So, I went to a job-placement firm in Boston and told the interviewer that I had good people skills and wanted to be a manager.  He laughed and said, “Managing what?” 

Soon after that I was in a car with my friends and heading to Aspen Colorado to become a “ski-bum.”

 This was a great adventure that taught me a lot.  I started out waiting on tables and working in kitchens and – but, though lots of hard work and great effort landed a job with the Aspen Skking company working with a team that ran all the ski races on the mountain. Everyday winter morning I watched the sun rise in the mountains as I skied behind a snowmobile to get to work on the top of Aspen Mountain. I also talked myself into a summer job working on a ranch with 50 horses.  I shoveled a lot of horse manure to get that job – but it allowed me to work as a guide taking riders up into the Rocky Mountains on horseback.    

In Aspen, I discovered that I loved my physical freedom and working outdoors. But I also learned that I craved intellectual stimulation that I wasn’t getting at work or with friends I’d met.  

It was a grueling decision to leave because so much seemed right in Colorado – but I wanted more, so I moved to Boston to get my first “professional job.”  A long and painful job search finally produced a job in human resource management.  Six months into that job, I realized that working in an office was not a good fit for me –especially not after my experience in Colorado. The pay and the security were fantastic.  But, I soon became the most boring and lazy worker in that office.  Where I had always been a motivated hard worker – here there was nothing to look forward to and I could hardley get out of bed in the morning.  The problem that the work was not a good fit for me, I wasn’t good and couldn’t stand taking work home at night.

Since that time, I have spoken to people in organizations all over the world who believe that because they are unmotivated in their jobs, that they are unmotivated individuals.  The problem with working in a job you don’t like is that you start to lose perspective.  You blame yourself for being lazy and you blame the organization for not giving you more interesting work.  The lack of motivation zaps your energy to get out and find work that is a better “fit” for you.

Luckily, I worked near a library, which I stared visiting during my lunch hour to search through books about different kinds of jobs.  Months into this process, I found a thin pamphlet that described a career that involved studying group dynamics and conflict management in the workplace. The focus was on building relationships between members of groups who didn’t naturally get along.  WOW!  This sounded fantastic to me – who would have ever thought about doing that with your life.  The pamphlet went into great detail about two Ph.D. programs that prepared someone for this kind of work. 

Pursing this career, like most things in my life was not the easy path.  To begin with my applications to those two schools were both rejected.   But when you feel in your bones that a career move is right it motivates you to knock on doors, and take actions that in other situations you’d never have the energy to do.  

Eventually, I got my Ph.D. And, my first job as an Assistant Professor was in the very program I had read about in that pamphlet in the library stacks.  Of course I never told them that they had rejected by application 8 years earlier.  I LOVED this job and worked very very hard because of that.  My vocation was my avocation – life was good!  But situations change.  After 8 years I realized that living in Ohio was not for me.  I missed the mountains and the ocean.  I realized that WHERE I lived mattered a lot to me. 

Now, because that job had been a great fit for me and because I had worked so hard – I had options to move.  Other universities were interested in hiring me.  So, my husband and I said – Where should we go?  Where do we want to live?  Well, what would you choose?  We did exactly what you did – We moved to Durham, New Hampshire and UNH.   

 So, today at UNH – everything seems right.  And as you know, the students here are fabulous!!!

Just like you, I have little insight into what will happen next in my life --  but I do know that passion is a life-time pursuit.

I hope that you too do the homework and hard work necessary to craft a life that fulfills your own unique passions and uses your unique gifts.
  
So, I end with a quote from one of my favorite authors and activists – Helen Keller --  who said that life requires that we learn by stepping out of our comfort zones.  She knew something about that topic because she was both deaf and blind.  She wanted to become an author – and she did.   

Anyway, she said:  “Security does not exist in nature… – Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” 

I wish you all the best with the adventure you have ahead of you!

Thank you.