Hey, this is Christ with Hacking your Leadership. Today's discussion on employee engagement. I want to talk about an article that I found on the Fast Company website from last year by Stephanie Vosa. It's called the Job Hater's Guide to Finding More Meaning in your Work. And I like this because you know, I've known a lot of job haters in my life, and you know there there are two different types of job haters. And I want to
be clear on who this is for. If you know people in your life who who don't just hate their job, they hate jobs like they just don't want to work at all, this is not who this is about. This is this is about people who are having difficulty finding meaning or love of their job and trying to figure out how to find that or to discover whether or not you should move on from that. And and but it has to start with this, this concept, or this
at least the pretext of that. You you want it to work if it's possible to work, and if it's not possible to work, then you know you go a different, different route. But you have to you have to go into it with good faith and hopefully you have a boss or a leadership team that also goes and meets you halfway in that good faith. So the job Hater's
Guide to fining more meaning in your work. I like this article because it talks about how, first of all, it's every person's responsibility to decide whether or not they can love their job or not. And I like that element of it because I've never it's never sat well with me that someone that it's someone else's responsibility to make me happy at my job. Do I hope they feel a sense of responsibility to do it? Absolutely? As
a leader, should they feel a sense of responsibility. Sure, But as an individual person, I know that if I if I put all of my eggs in the basket of my happiness rises and falls on the actions of my boss, then that is a recipe for disaster, because I'll feel like I don't have any control over my own situation anymore. I need to know that I have some control over the way that I approach things and the way that I, you know, set my mindset to, you know, towards something or how I shift my mindset
to making things better or worse. So I think it's an important article for figuring out whether or not the job that you're in is right for you? And and and if you're on the fence, if you don't know whether it's right for you, how to figure it out in a way that makes it most likely to work.
Yeah, No, it's it's such a great call out. And I think it's I think sometimes this happens a lot where it's kind of like it's all on leaders to like figure out culture or belonging or engagement or just overall satisfaction with the job. And like, look, they play a major part of that. We wouldn't have this podcast and be talking about these things for so many years if, in fact, we didn't understand that leadership is a major
component of how people feel about work. We know that there is a major component of all of this that is the responsibility of leaders. And when you raise your hand and say I want to be a leader, you accept that responsibility.
Uh.
But I think in these types of articles and things and data that we're seeing in polls and surveys, I think a part of this is that you you have to have somebody who also is looking for that opportunity to have an engaging workplace, somebody that's looking for an opportunity to do really well, to to show up, to challenge themselves, to you know, to not just be okay
with you know, maybe mediocrity or complacency. Like there's a part of this that if you want to have an engaging, you know environment, if you want to find meaning in the work that you do, you also have to be open to finding out what that meaning is.
Uh.
And it can and it won't. It won't always be on day one, page one of what's going on here. There can be meaning that you can find in a
lot of places and for a lot of reasons. But I think for me, as you were talking through that's exactly what I was thinking, is like there has to be some element of this has to be the person as well, being in a place in life where they are searching for meaning, but in a very open and positive way to figure out how do I get the meaning that I need in the moment that I have to be able to move into the next place that
I want to be. And I think that that's a you know, whether we wanted to find that as somebody who is overall positive or has good energy or is curious, like there's a lot of ways that we talk about that but for me, that's kind of at the core of what this.
Means, right right. You see it all the time, and you know, you have people who who started saying from middle school when you said what do you want to be, and they go, I want to be a doctor or I want to be a lawyer. And they started saying that when they were eleven, and then you come to find out that when they're thirty five or forty and they've been a doctor or a lawyer for five or ten or fifteen years or whatnot, and they are miserable and burnt out and they quit that it was never
what they wanted anyway. They were doing it for you know, a family member or you know, expectations from family or culture or whatever it is. That that's where it was rooted in. And so you know, this, this idea of being open to finding meaning starts with this with the ability to not assign what you believe that meaning is going to be first, and then try to make your
job fit into that. What it is is trying to find meaning with this idea that you might not know what the definition of that is, yet you might have some idea of it. You might know what your values are Hopefully you know what your values are. Hopefully you know what the values of the organization are and that
those align. Because I'll tell you when my values, my personal values, and the values of the organization I'm working for are aligned, it is very easy to find meaning in the work because the things that I'm doing are are done through the lens of what those shared values are. And I could be doing the exact same task or project or work whatever it is for a company whose values I did not align with, and it does not
feel like I've found meaning in my work. It does not feel like I enjoy that work and it's the exact same work. So what's the different, Well, the difference is whether or not the work that I'm doing I can connect it to something broader, that is something that really hits home on my values and makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something because it is align with my values.
And so just kind of like shifting your mindset is the first step of this is not starting with a preconceived notion of what you define meaning is and then trying to like fit the round peg into the square hole.
It's just kind of thinking about, Okay, what can I control, what things are very easy to take inventory of and from a from a value standpoint, and then you know and and then going back in and saying, Okay, what can I find in the work that I already do that I would say is a positive thing or fits towards that, instead of just dwelling on the things that I think are not working towards that, or the negative things.
If you're always finding the negative things, then it's going to be very easy to think that they're all negative. And if you're able to find the positive things, it's going to be easy to think that your work is positive and that it is fitting with something that you can find meaning in. It's one of those cliche whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
I want to go over some of the things that you can do besides just shifting your mindset, the actual actionables that you can do to try to find more meaning in your work. But first I'm gonna get to one of our sponsors. All right, So, if you're trying to find more meaning in your job or figure out whether or not it's the right job for you, and you've already shifted your mindset, so you've already tried to find the things that you can look at that you
see as a positive of your job. And if you work forty hours a week, then hopefully you find things that tick up somewhere between five, ten, fifteen, twenty hours of your job are positive things. And the things that you that you don't you know, really thrive on or that you love doing are are a lesser than forty hour thing. So if you if you focus on those things and you find the gratitude in those things, and you've aligned with your values, the next step is to
kind of recraft the job. So what steps can you take to make those things that take up part of your week, what things can you do to make them take up more of your week? And and how can you spend less time on the things that are not as as as meaningful. And that doesn't mean eliminating things that you just don't like doing. That that's the that's the simplistic way to say I don't want to do I don't want to do work. There's always going to be things that you don't enjoy doing in your job.
But if you can make the majority of the time that you spend in your job beyond things that you do find meaning and enjoyment in. Then it can make the mundane things are the things that you don't find meaning in. It can make them go by far quicker. They can make them not feel as as draining emotions or or mentally, if you know that right around the corner is more work that you can do, Like I love I love delivering you know, kind of you know,
conversations around coaching and goals and accomplishing goals. I can't stand the formal performance, appraisal, evaluation delivering thing because to me, it's a formality that if I've done the right things throughout the quarter, then this should just be a very quick thing. And and and to me it feels like I'm checking a box off. So I don't love doing it,
but I have to do it. And I know that if I, if I do the right things during the quarter of having those conversations and talking about goals and development, then it becomes a much smaller part of my time to actually deliver those conversations because there's no surprises and it goes by much more quickly. So the things that you can do to maximize the time that you spend on meaningful things and minimizing the time you can spend
on the not meaningful things without shirking your responsibility. I think that's a real big key to it.
Yeah, and I think, you know, I think the final piece of this is just around support. But I think that when supporting your people and supporting your people through change, or supporting your people to to to look at things differently, the first two things you just spoke about are critical mission critical to making that happen. Like, you can't get to that point without without them, without spending that time without you know, making sure that you're setting the stage
for eventually the change that you're looking for. And and that's you know, it's it's dialogue that has to happen,
and it's clarity that has to happen. And I think that getting people and getting your teams on the same page and being able to you know, show up for them, because again, if if you're getting if if you're asking people to adjust their perspective, change how they see things, be more engaged, find more meaning in their work, that means that for some people and for a lot of people, they're gonna have to you know, uh, open up, They're going to have to take some calculated risk here, they're
going to have to you know, showcase and share when they're when they're not sure of something, when they have questions, when you know, when everything around them will tell them to kind of fake it until you make it. And the idea here is to be be open and honest and transparent and question things, but do it in a
positive way, in a way that's really about curiosity. When you're when you're looking to support people in that space, it's really important that you start with the foundational elements of getting them there and getting your relationship in a healthy place where you're able to have that kind of conversation.
Right right that The example the article gives, which I love, is if you go to get support to help make this happen from your leader, and you start with I'm miserable at work. You've created a terrible environment, you know, fix it. Then, as a leader, it's really difficult for me to kind of like go all in on supporting that person because they're basically putting it all on me,
that they're putting their happiness on me. But if they come to me and say, you know, the way that I do my job, I think I'll be more engaged and productive, and they'll be more fulfilling if I could do this and this and this more, and this and this and this less. And look what I've done already to make that, to make that happen. Can I get your support in that? As a leader, I am much more likely to move mountains. For an employee who has done that work first and comes to me with a
with a sense of ownership around their own happiness. I want to get behind that person. I want to. I almost feel a too much responsibility. I put their success and their happiness almost too much on myself when I see that they've done all that work because I want I want it to be to be successful for them. I want it to work because they put that effort in. And when they haven't put the work in or the effort in, then I don't have as much buy into
making it happen. Like I'll do what I can, I'll let them know what the resources are, but at the end of the day, I need to see that coming from them first in order to be all in on that support. And so the support is important, and it is important as a leader that you do own some of this for your people. But it's it's far more successful if they've taken a personal ownership of it. First, thank you for joining us on this episode. We appreciate it.
Join us next Thursday we'll continue talk about employ engagement. You have a great day.