by Ray White
Historically we have managed people like machines, looking for ways to make them more efficient and productive in a stable environment. Continuously improving how fast they could complete the same task was our measure of accomplishment. The challenge is that the migration to a knowledge worker economy has brought with it constant and accelerating change. Peter Vaill uses the metaphor of continuous white water. We are always in the rapids and in danger of drowning. Solving one challenge just clears our vision long enough to see five more coming toward us. We need something constant to strive for. A Higher Purpose in our work gives us that one constant. It is the point high above the rapids that we can use to re-orient ourselves after each challenge. When all the things we can’t control seem to conspire against us, we can realign with our Higher Purpose to determine our next course of action.
It is no longer reasonable to expect that we know the exact outcome of every decision. There is no “right answer.” There are too many variables in a constantly changing world. The best we can do is to use our Higher Purpose as our North Star so we will know we are generally heading the right direction and can make constant course corrections along the way.
How do you make progress in meaningful work?
“Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.” Amabile and Kramer
Meaningful work uses your strengths and aligns with your values. Find work that matters or find meaning in your work. Your happiness will be improved by your willingness to find how your work can help other people, how it can best utilize your strengths, and how it can align with your values.
A few ways to find purpose and meaning in your work include:
1.Identify how your company is helping its customers or the community. If you work at a restaurant, you could conclude that “I put up with grumpy, complaining people,” or you can believe that “I provide a much needed enjoyable experience with friends and family.” Are you more motivated to “put up with grumpy people” or to provide a much needed positive experience that will help your customer be happier?
2.Support a good cause. Recruit your friends and peers to support your favorite charity or focus on a cause you believe in.
3.Apply today’s lessons to your future. What are you learning that can be applied later in your career or in other parts of your life? Are there other forms of personal growth that are available through your work?
4.Ask your family to support you. Family can influence the meaning in you work either positively or negatively. They can put strains on the work due to demands for time, energy, or money. Your family can be focused on a desire for more money, which moves work farther from meaning, or your family can be supportive and proud of your work, which helps to give it meaning.
5.Focus on what you are accomplishing. Every day when you are ready to leave the office, write down what you accomplished for that day. It can be directly related to your work--how many customers you helped--or it can be an indirect result of your work--how many people you made smile or helped be more successful at their jobs. Keep track of the good things you are doing and focus on those. Happiness can be as much related to what you think about and remember as it is to what actually happens. Focusing on and thinking about the positive things you are accomplishing opens your mind to finding the purpose and meaning in your work.
6.Help someone else. Who are you interacting with? How are you positively impacting people? Who are you helping succeed? For some people, interacting with and helping the people they work with provides purpose and meaning. Is there meaning and purpose in helping your team complete a project or accomplish a goal? Who can you help today? Deepen and strengthen your relationships at work.
7.Connect what you are accomplishing to the company goals. Purpose and meaning are related to how much you think you are contributing or making a difference at work. Understanding your company’s or group’s goals and how you contribute helps you find meaning. You may also want to ask or determine how your work will help a person inside or outside of the organization. If you can connect your work to how it is better for society in general, it will be more meaningful.
8.Be authentic. In other words, identify how the organization reflects similar values to yours. Identify how you are using or how you can use your strengths. How do your values and the values shown by your company or peers match up?
Jobs, Careers, and Callings
Campbell, Converse, and Rodgers found that work satisfaction can account for up to 20% of life satisfaction, and work satisfaction can be improved by having a Calling. Amy Wrzesniewski and team have done significant work around how people relate to their work. They classify these “work orientations” as people feeling like they work at a Job, feeling like they are building a Career, or feeling like they have a Calling.
If you have a Job orientation, working is a chore and your paycheck is compensation for your effort. If you have a Career orientation, your work and long hours are an investment in your potential advancement and success. They are related to your social standing and self-esteem. If you have a Calling orientation, your efforts are part of a Higher Purpose. They are done for the betterment of your team or society in general. People with a Calling feel that work has meaning and a purpose, which helps them feel like they are making a difference. They put in longer hours with more energy because their work is inherently rewarding. These are the people who are more likely to get ahead and succeed. People with a Calling orientation are also more satisfied with their work.
As an employer, you probably want more of your employees to have a Calling orientation. In workgroups where a higher percentage of the membership had Calling orientations, there was stronger identification with the team, less conflict, more faith and trust in management, more commitment to the team, and better communication. Employees are more satisfied with their coworkers and their work. Workgroups where a higher percentage of the membership had Career orientations had the opposite results. More conflict, less identification with the team, less faith and trust in management, and less job satisfaction.
The most interesting part of Wrzesniewski and team’s research was that the work orientation was determined by the person and not the work. Part of their research included 24 staff assistants who all worked for the same company. So it was basically the same job in the same company. Those 24 staff assistants self-selected evenly into all three categories. One-third had a Job orientation, one-third had a Career orientation, and one-third had a Calling orientation. It was the person’s attitude toward the work, and not the work itself, that determined his or her work orientation. Individuals define whether they have a Job, a Career, or a Calling. Being a teacher is only a Calling if the person teaching believes it is. Some could also look at it as a Job. It doesn't matter what type of job you have, it only matters whether you see it as a Calling or as a Job. A doctor could have a Job orientation, while a janitor could have a Calling orientation. It's all in your perspective.
If you identify your work orientation, it can help you perform better and improve your happiness at work. This awareness can help you choose to perceive your work differently. You can craft a better work situation in the current job, rather than going on a search for a new job where you may or may not change your work orientation. It will also give you insights into your peers and employees, and into why some of them are more successful than others.
How do you know if you have a Job, a Career, or a Calling? (Note: You could have characteristics from multiple orientations. Look for the one that best fits your feelings about your work.)
Individuals have a Job orientation if:
1.They need the money for something outside of work.
2.They would change jobs if they didn’t feel trapped by their circumstances
3.The job is a necessity.
4.They can’t wait to leave work. They live for the weekends.
5.They would not choose this line of work agai
n or would not recommend it to friends and family.
People have a Career orientation if:
1.They enjoy their work but are always looking for the next big thing.
2.They are focused on several goals related to future, more important positions.
3.This is a waypoint, and they just need to do well enough to get promoted to the next position.
4.A promotion is the ultimate recognition, and it scores big points in the competition with peers.
5.Self-esteem and social standing are very tied to work and level of accomplishment.
People have a Calling orientation if:
1.Work is the most important part of their life.
2.They love their work.
3.They have a lot of their friends at work.
4.They feel their work matters and makes a difference.
5.They would recommend their work to anyone.
6.They would prefer to continue working rather than retire.
Jobs, Careers, and Callings are not permanent situations. People can transition from one to the other, based on how they choose to perceive their work. What is going on in their personal lives, how their job is changing, their relationship with their supervisor or peers, the success of their company, and how their company is embodying certain values can all have an impact on those perceptions. It is important to note, however, that these are work orientations, which means it is not the characteristics of the job but how the person perceives those characteristics that results in them falling into one of the three orientations.
You also have the option to maintain your current work orientation. Some people choose a Job or Career orientation because their Higher Purpose is not related to work and they are not interested in making that connection. For them, there may not be a reason to identify a Higher Purpose at work. If you have a Job orientation, you might identify the purpose and meaning your job enables. In other words, making money at this job allows me to take the time to teach surfing. If you have a Career orientation, it is important not to confuse your advancement goals with meaning.
Having a Career orientation and being motivated by external promotions, raises, and recognition are good; but they are external, pleasurable, and fleeting, as opposed to having meaning and offering fulfillment. We often think we are finding meaning because we are always chasing that next raise or promotion; but once we get them our sense of joy and excitement are only temporary, and we are quickly chasing the next raise or promotion. With a Career orientation, you may want to identify the Higher Purpose your advancement will enable. If it will help you raise your family, invest in your church, or provide some other form of intrinsic satisfaction, it will be more fulfilling in the long term.
If you would like to change your Job orientation into a Calling orientation, you might try re-writing your job description as if you're trying to entice someone else to do it. What is the list of tasks or experiences that are fun, interesting, or challenging about your work? How does your work impact others in a positive way? What are the bigger picture things you can choose to do? Can you re-write the work of “cleaning up after kids” to “giving children a safer, healthier place to learn”?
Activity: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Your Work
1.On one side of a page, make a list of tasks that are related to your work.
2.For each task, draw an arrow to the other side of the page and write a possible meaning that could be found in that task.
For example:
Purpose and meaning come from how we purposely choose to perceive our work and its importance to other people.
In the next section we will review Job Crafting and how you can craft your work to help you create a Calling orientation.
Job Crafting
Wrzesniewski, Berg, and Dutton wrote about improving your work satisfaction by changing aspects of your job. They call it Job Crafting. You can change your tasks, relationships, or perceptions about the work, and it can improve your satisfaction with that work. Changing how you see your tasks changes how much meaning you find in them. You can add more meaning to your job by how you construct the tasks, interactions, and descriptions of your job. Chefs don’t cook, they create works of art. Stewardesses became Flight Attendants focused on safety instead of glorified waitresses.
In my current job, our janitor Linda is one of the happiest people at our office. It was her goal to help make sure the “kids” (her name for our employees) had a wonderful, productive place to work. She crafted her job to be much more than being a janitor. Every morning she makes sure coffee is prepared and ready for quick brewing. Since my travel schedule is rough on the plants in my office, and I am a detriment to any plant I touch, Linda voluntarily takes care of my plants. She waters them, fertilizes them, and even moves them to bigger and bigger pots because they are growing so profusely. She added these and other tasks to her job, which helped her redefine her role from “cleaner of the bathrooms” to “preparer of the productivity palace.” As a side note, I use the term janitor because it has a universal meaning that everyone can understand. Linda is far more than a janitor: she is a valued and productive member of our team. She just happens to do a lot of the duties we would hire a janitor to do. Her positive attitude and ability to see her Higher Purpose led us to hire her away from our old office building to be a permanent part of our team when we moved to a new location. By re-crafting the tasks of her work, Linda changed her Job into a Calling.
Building and extending relationships is another route Wrzesniewski and team recommend to improve your work satisfaction through Job Crafting. Sandelands & Boudens concluded that when people talk about their work, they mostly describe their relationships with other people. What kinds of connections can you make with your peers so you know the real people behind the job descriptions? Non-work discussions about families, hobbies, and vacations enable positive feelings that help create an open dialogue when discussing the opportunities and challenges at work. Many people come to work because they enjoy the social interaction and team support of the people they work with. A Higher Purpose can often be focused on your relationships at work or can be identified through those relationships. For example, a peer may have connections to a charity you would be excited to work with.
A third way you can improve your work satisfaction through Job Crafting is by changing how you perceive the purpose of your job. We spoke earlier about my nephew Ben who changed his perception of his job from spending all day on the phone with unhappy people to helping them save their houses and helping them go from angry to happy. He even started measuring the number of people who said thank you and showed appreciation at the end of the call. His job didn’t change; his perception of what he was doing changed. He found a Higher Purpose.
Wrzesniewski, Berg, and Dutton’s research showed that Job Crafting helped people become more engaged and more satisfied with their work, show more resilience, and achieve higher levels of performance in their organizations.
Activity: Become a “Job Entrepreneur”
How can you make your work more satisfying and start identifying your Higher Purpose?
1.Write down the purpose of your work. For example, instead of cleaning bathrooms, you are preparing a productivity palace. Instead of handling phone calls you are saving houses. Instead of creating spreadsheets, you are preparing the foundation for organizational decision-making. Note: You may need family, friends, or peers to help you think differently about what you do. Focus on the areas of your work you are passionate about, that you think make a difference, or that you are excited about or at least interested in.
The purpose of my
work is:
2.List the tasks of your job and divide them into like and don’t like. How can you make the tasks you don’t like more fun?
3.What tasks can you add or change that will help your job better reflect the purpose you wrote in Step 1?
New or Enhanced Tasks
4.What relationships can you create, nurture, or change?<
br />
Person New way to interact with that person (e.g. introduce yourself, mentor, ask about his or her family, etc.)
5.How can you change your perceptions of your job?
Negative Perception
Changed to Positive Perception Supporting Your Purpose
Cues
Finding meaning in your work can be broken down into three main questions: What activities are you doing and how valuable are they? What is your perceived position in the organization and social structure? Why are your unique talents right for the job, and how do your peers and the organization value those unique talents?
To answer those questions, you interpret cues from your peers, supervisors, and the executives of the organization. Cues are the subtle meanings taken from the actions of the people in each of these groups. For example, when your colleagues say hello in the morning, that is a cue that you are personally valued.
When your supervisor uses your work as an example, that is a cue that your work is valued. When you observe a cue, you assign a motivation to it. Did they intentionally forget to say hello or did they just not see me? The motivation you assign is related to how you feel about the person and how you feel about yourself and the value of the work you are doing.
Most of the cues you interpret and place importance on are not provided consciously by the giver. For example, your supervisor may not include your work as an example because he or she already had enough examples, or because there had not been time to review it yet. It may not have anything to do with how they value you or your work. Noticing and interpreting these cues is an important part of identifying our meaning and value in the workplace, but it is also a subjective and biased process.
We choose which cues we want to pay attention to, and we determine what level of importance we want to place on each cue. For example, we may place a lot of importance on whether a visiting executive remembers our name and stops to talk to us during her visit. The executive, however, may have other things on her mind and may not take the time to stop and say hello. It is not a reflection of how she values our work, but a reflection of what challenges are occupying her mind at that time. Cues are a one-way communication where we interpret the message without any confirmation from the other side. As a result, if we are feeling bad about the value of our work, we are probably going to pay attention to and place more importance on those cues that support that negative belief.