Why Do You Do What You Do? Continued

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the Why of Work Rankings

This book asks: How do leaders create, for themselves and others, a sense of abundance (meaning, purpose, hope, and pleasure) that not only engages employees but also delivers value to customers, investors, and communities?

The title of the book comes from Viktor Frankl, who survived a Nazi concentration camp for 3 years. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning (which sold more than 9 million copies), he quotes philosopher Friedrich Nietzche: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” As Frankl suggests, the search for meaning is more about how we think than about the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

The book addresses 7 questions that drive abundance:

1. What am I Known For (Identity)?

This question focuses on how leaders can help individuals use their personal strengths to foster that identity and succeed at work. Underneath our role, profession, appearance, or observable talents are what psychologists call signature strengths: the character traits and values most central to who we are.

When leaders help employees develop honest self-perceptions, they help them invest in the real dreams that bring meaning to life. They help employees discover identity through formal assessments, informal observations, conversations, and assignments.

Abundant organizations have diversity with unity. These organizations avoid groupthink by valuing different perspectives and strengths, but they also coalesce individual interests into shared organizational goals.

2. Where am I Going (Purpose and Motivation)?

In a world of information overload and centrifugal goals, employees and organizations often spin away from their basic sense of purpose and direction. Herbert Simon, the Nobel-prize winning economist defined the principle of satisficing. Satisficing suggests that some things, while worthwhile may not be worth excelling at. There are things worth doing poorly. Those things that define our identity and purpose require our maximum efforts and energy.

Out of this World Leaders need to help employees recognize what motivates them and match their motivations with work needed to be done.

3. Whom Do I Travel With?

Abundant organizations take work relationships beyond high-performing teams to high-relating teams. Out of this World Leaders help employees build skills for professional friendships between people and among teams.

Research by the Gallup organization reveals that employees who have a best friend at work are 7 times more likely to be highly engaged than those who do not. Those with a close friend at work are almost twice as likely to be satisfied with their pay. While we often think our best friends are people we have a lot in common with, research suggests that proximity is really the more important variable in who will become a close friend.

Ask yourself whom you would be most likely to turn to if you needed a creative solution to a problem—a close friend or a relative stranger. While we would probably feel more comfortable turning to a close friend, research suggests that we will probably get a more creative solution from the stranger. People we don’t know as well are more likely to think of something we haven’t thought of, to bring fresh perspectives and unusual information to bear on our problem.

At NASA, that’s why we’ve focused on building a culture of Inclusion to drive Innovation. Bring together diverse teams—people who aren’t alike—and they come up with richer solutions than homogenous groups.

4. How Do I Build a Positive Work Environment?

Abundant organizations create positive work environments that affirm and connect people throughout the organization. When leaders act with a sense of humility, even in the midst of success, prosperity continues. But when leaders become arrogant, prosperity reverses and declines. The liability of success can be overcome if leaders remain learning focused and service oriented.

Leaders who emphasize other-service more than self-interest demonstrate a real commitment to treat people with fairness and respect. They help create work environments where people look out for and serve each other because people trust that the small sacrifices they make for the public good will be reciprocated

5. What Challenges Interest Me?

As leaders involve both teams and individuals in enjoyable challenges, they engage employees’ hearts and minds. Commitment or engagement grows when we work in a company with a vision, have opportunities to learn and grow, do work that has an impact, receive fair pay for work done, work with people we like, and enjoy flexibility in the terms and conditions of work.

Abundance occurs when companies can engage not only employees’ skills (competence) and loyalty (commitment) but also their values (contribution).

Too often employees feel emotionally disconnected from the work they do; their work may capture their talents and time, but not their heart and soul. Great leaders personalize work conditions so that employees know how their work contributes to outcomes that matter to them.

So, learn what outcomes matter to your team members. How does their job relate to their identity, values, and purpose? Help them see a line of sight between what they do and the outcomes they value.

6. How Do I Respond to Change (Growth, Learning, and Resilience)?

Abundance is less about getting things right and more about moving in the right direction. Abundance means we not only learn attitudes of resilience that help us thrive under stress; we also use these principles to make do with what we have.

If you are not failing at something, you are probably not pushing yourself hard enough. Failure should also be disappointing. If it’s not, the work you tried probably wasn’t that important to you.

Personal resilience, the ability to bounce back from defeat, increases when leaders:

  • Maintain an optimistic attitude. Resilient leaders see opportunity even in the midst of dramatic change.
  • Live out a strong moral code. Many of the most resilient victims of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 attributed their response to their faith and moral compass.

An executive recently said that a business that took 50 years to build could be lost in 2 if it does not respond to change. Individuals, teams, and organizations that respond to change with learning and resilience have a chance to succeed.

7. What Delights Me?

Abundant organizations attend not only to outward demographic diversity but also to the diversity of what makes individuals feel happy, cared for, and excited about life.

Great leaders move away from hostility and intolerance toward multiculturalism through problem solving, listening, curiosity, diversity, and compassion and by bringing creativity, pleasure, humor, and delight into their organizations.

Abraham Lincoln is often quoted, “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Ulrich and Ulrich wrap up their book by tweaking this quote a bit: “Most people find about as much meaning in their lives as they make up their minds to find.”  They point out that the heart of leadership is fundamentally about the creation of meaning and that leaders have primary accountability to work with their employees to unleash it. A focus on meaning can yield employees who are more productive and committed, who build the organization’s capacity to respond to business challenges, and who help their organizations succeed.

May you help your team members find meaning, as both you and they shoot for the stars!