I spent an hour on the phone recently coaching someone who has the same kind of problems that each of us has in our workplaces, although I think some would think that his may be unique.

Let’s call him Mark.

Mark’s major issue is that the regional federal agency he runs has no direct funding and is dependent on what, in the nonprofit world, would be called “fundraising” from the other federal agencies it seeks to serve in its region.

Use of the agency’s services, which constitute mostly training, while clearly of benefit to government employees, is strictly voluntary: the choice to use those training services is almost exclusively on an individual-by-individual basis—not on an agency-by-agency or even a department-by-department-within-each-agency basis. Without a mandate or even a recommendation from management, there are too few takers. Consequently, he cancels a lot of programs.

Additionally, the heads of those dozen or so federal agencies he serves in his region sit on what amounts to his “board of directors” and almost all of them “out-rank” him. In the time he’s been in the job, he’s been unable to get their attention—forget about getting them engaged.

Oh, one more thing: Mark is his entire staff. If he needs staff assistance, say for an event or a special project, his only option is to go to one of those agencies and beg for it.

It’s a frustrating situation, and Mark is understandably frustrated.

It’s a “temporary assignment” of about three years, which means that Mark could just sit back and “do his time,” as some of his peers in the other regions appear to be doing, except that (1) that isn’t who Mark is (I could tell that within the first ten minutes of the call), (2) Mark actually believes in the services his agency can provide and, (3) Mark is noticing that his frustration is increasingly being expressed through cynicism and he doesn’t like that trend in himself.

What to do?

After some questions, discussion, and coaching, it was clear that Mark already knew what he needed to do, which was to develop a relationship with each of those agency heads.

Not all of those relationships will be equal. Depending on the personalities involved, some will be more “personal” than others—you know, talking about families, vacations, and life changes—while others will be “strictly business.” The goal here, however, is not equality, but developing the best possible relationship with each—whatever that might look like. More than simply tilting the overall situation in his favor, that will ensure his success.

And the reason that Mark had not done so to date was, quite simply, that he hadn’t developed a Practice to get himself there. (Note: A “Practice” is an activity that one does mindfully at first and which can become habitual over time that is intended to lead to a reasonably expected outcome or result.)

Since Mark didn’t have a Practice for this, we came up with one together: he is scheduling 30 minutes in his calendar every Thursday morning to call the agency heads. He’ll start at the top of the list and work down. Some days one call will use the entire 30 minutes; other days the 30 minutes may be spread over a series of voicemail messages as he works down the list. (“Hi, Joan, this is Mark. Just thought I’d give you a call and see how things are going with you there at XYZ . . . . “)

If a conflict arises, he may move the 30 minutes to another time or day, but he can’t delete it.

When he gets to the end of the list, he starts again at the top.

He’s going to let me know how it goes after a couple of weeks.

I already know. I know because I understand the simple power and powerful simplicity of Developing Practices. Indeed, Developing Practices is perhaps the most important tool I use to maintain my own personal Life Balance program.

Practices don’t need to be complex or hard to do as evidenced by the one we came up with for Mark. What they do need to be is mindful, regularly scheduled, and filled with intention and attention—as the Zen saying goes, “When you wash the dishes, wash the dishes.”

If Mark makes, well, a practice of this Practice of regularly calling his agency heads, it will change everything. That’s already a foregone conclusion. The only question is whether he will in fact embrace it as a Practice, and that is up to him as it is with each of us.

Where do you want to go? What Practices have you developed and practiced to get yourself there? What Practices do you want to develop now?

So, what’s stopping you?

An Authentic Interview is your best chance for a great job—don’t blow it!

My best interview ever was when I didn’t get the job!

Not only did I not get an offer, but midway through the interview, I politely invited the interviewers to call a halt to the process so we wouldn’t waste any more of each other’s time.

Right about now, you may be wondering whether I was out of my mind—and in a certain sense, I was—but that was a very good thing.

You see, I believe that for most people a job interview is a totally mind-centered event and as such, it takes into account little of what may be happening in their emotions, their bodies, and their spirits—in other words, the totality of the Authentic Self.

In a career that has stretched over nearly four decades, I have participated in hundreds of interviews. On occasion I’ve been the candidate, but mostly I’ve been the hiring manager or somewhere in the new hire interview and approval chain.

I’ve seen far too many candidates who were not going to let the fact that this was clearly the “wrong job” for them get in the way of their doing everything conceivable to get an offer.

“What’s the wrong job?” you might ask.

A job can be “wrong” for any number of reasons: because your skill set doesn’t match the job requirements, you don’t really like the work, your heart is elsewhere but you believe this is the only thing you are trained or qualified to do, the culture of the hiring organization is inconsistent with your personality, and so on.

Rather than using the job interview to determine if there is a “fit,” many interviewees have the wrong mindset; namely, to get an offer no matter what. They view receiving an offer after an interview or a series of interviews as something akin to a trophy or winner’s cup. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen a candidate transform right before my eyes in an effort to convince me that he or she is the “ideal candidate” for a job. Interestingly, that visible transformation into who he or she wasn’t told me a significant amount about who he or she was—and as often as not, it was inconsistent with the ideal candidate I was seeking for the position.

When someone succeeds in fooling an interviewer—and often him- or herself—into believing that “I’m the ideal candidate for this position” when that isn’t really the case, everyone suffers. What’s the point of setting yourself up to have a difficult time dealing with the demands of a job around which you have anything less than keen interest? Why would you want to go through the difficulties of adapting to a work culture that isn’t natural to your disposition and personality? On the other side of the fence, your employer suddenly finds itself with a new employee unsuited to the position or to the organizational culture—or worse, both. These are not the starting ingredients for success. Getting a job the “real” you doesn’t want is a short-term solution to any of several possible situations with long-term negative consequences.

The only way you will know if a job is right for you is to test it for fit during the interview with everything you can bring to bear. That means asking questions and listening with your mind, your feelings, and your intuition for the answers: How will it feel to work here every day? Will I enjoy doing this work day after day after day? What will it feel like to immerse myself in this organizational culture for several years? For the sake of your career, ask yourself, do I want this person sitting across from me as my manager knowing that I am putting a key piece of my professional future in his or her hands?

The best way—no, the only way—to get accurate answers to those questions is to bring your Authentic Self to the interview. There is nothing you can do to increase your chances of succeeding in your next job in terms of both career and personal happiness other than to just be yourself during the interview—nothing!

Look at it this way: If you are hired because of who you really are instead of who or what you are pretending to be, you have a significant performance advantage over nearly everyone else in your new workplace because many of those folks are expending energy trying to be the people they represented themselves to be during their interviews. You, on the other hand, will find that having magnificent results by simply being who you are is a lot easier than having satisfactory results trying to be someone you aren’t!

When asked by my interviewers why I was suggesting terminating the interview, I explained that based on the questions they had already asked me, I felt intuitively that this job was not a match for me. While I think that answer surprised them, they readily acquiesced (why wouldn’t they have?); we shook hands and went our separate ways.

That truncated interview was well over three decades ago, but the importance of that event and the potential lesson it holds for all job-seekers was not lost on me: Don’t let an opportunity to steer clear of the wrong job pass you by!