What makes for beautiful work

When your work has meaning, it’s because you have defined that meaning

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Q: I just had an incredibly open heart convo with my boss last Thursday who told me he was questioning his role as it lacked meaning. Any ideas for him? 

Dear OpenHearted One,

Your question reminded me of all the conversations I had with Tony Hsieh, the business leader and founder of Zappos, who passed away recently. I’ve been thinking about him, and you, and us. Pondering the cost of not knowing the answer to this question. 

You see, Tony and I had several open-heart convos on this topic, too. Hours-long, late-night, feet-tucked-up-on-a-couch type conversations. And, I had observed that despite writing a best-selling book on happiness and good cultures, he had genuinely struggled with both. (Which Forbes publicly confirmed.) 

And, so, I don’t know if I have ideas for your boss. I only have my own struggles.

FEEL YOUR PAIN AND YOU CAN FEEL FOR MEANING

Like many of you, this year has been hard. Full of fights, conflicts and tension. But as I was sharing with a pal, Ruchika, each fight has been a revelation of meaning. 

And then there was the fight with the guy you all know as “ThisWeek.” 

You’ll remember, he had shown up with compliments galore to ask me to join him on his podcast, without acknowledging how he had abused a ridiculous bunch of my time the year prior, not honored his side of the bargain. I had written to you how none of us need to be like the Giving Tree where service and love is given to the point where all that is is left is a depleted shell for the tree, while the boy gets everything he asks for. Writing that post made me see how very tired I am of cultures that celebrate a type of giving that is devoid of mutuality. THAT matters to me.

In that same post, I had written how I wanted to do things in love, but not for love. But of course, I also want to do things for love. It’s naive, even false to say “you don’t need their validation”. That would be equivalent to saying “don’t be human”. Because all of us are social animals, and we need to belong as a condition of our existence. We all need to be loved. And we deserve to be loved. Seen for our capacities, celebrated for them. I was rejecting this so hard because his words were so clearly manipulative, a “come here little girl” lure with his compliments. (All of which, by the way, he 100% rescinded when I didn't do exactly what he wanted me to do.). I was ashamed of this need to be loved. And so I am working on forgiving myself, and healing. And that matters to me. 

And there was the dear friend to whom I had turned to when ThisWeek had written his gas-lighting note. I had taken all my anxiety of “am I being unreasonable” to her. And in the course of the conversation I said something I deeply regret, because it hurt her. 

And as I unpacked that scene, I saw that I had shown a lack of courage ages ago. How she had said something when we first met about how my work was right for the “25-year-old her,” and regardless of how amazing she was at 25, it had felt pejorative and had left me filled with doubt about my work. So, by not cleaning it up way back when, it had festered subconsciously, and then erupted in this vulnerable moment like puss out of a zit, oozing and gross, and leaving behind a visible scar.

And I see now how big friendships require having the tough conversations as early and as often as needed to be real with each other. I had wanted a really deep relationship with someone whose brain (and heart) I so admired, yet I wasn’t being real enough to ask, do you love my brain, too? I hurt us by suppressing this, because I feared hearing her answer. And so I will commit to make the next appointment with fear, because THIS matters, too.

Mary Parker Follett, a social worker who was one of the first management thinkers, and whose prescient work very much influences mine said that leaders often think the problem in our organization is conflicts. And she said, nope that’s not it. It’s not how many conflicts you have, for conflicts are the essence of how people come together, but *what* are your conflicts.

If you can name what a fight is really about, you can also name what you’re fighting for. Which is to say, you can name what you value. 

And when you name what you value, you have... meaning.

LAUGH AT MY JOKES

The problem with meaning is that we don't understand the difference between happiness and meaning. So, we might reach for happiness when what we really want and need is meaning. 

When we don’t understand the difference, we’ll surround ourselves with people who laugh at our jokes, which gives us the ever fleeting feeling of belonging. But then, as we realize that they’re really only laughing because they’re being paid to do so, it makes us realize we're all alone. 

This is what I wasn’t able to convince Tony of. 

That while happiness and meaning can and do overlap, they aren’t one and the same.  

Years ago, as I was writing Power of Onlyness, I read literally every piece of academic research that Dr. Jennifer Aaker, an expert on these topics, had done. Let me condense those 1,000 pages for you. She and her colleagues found that meaningful choices are often not pleasurable to make and indeed may come at a cost or involve pain. Her other big insight? Happiness is more about getting; meaningfulness is more about giving. I like to think of meaning as the way in which these two connect. And why I say that Onlyness is that which only you have that can meaningfully serve the world. 

MEANING IS CHOSEN, DEFINED, DECIDED, PICKED

When your work has meaning, it’s because you have defined that meaning.

Or as John W. Gardner, the former secretary of health, education, and welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, said, “Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or a prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed onto you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. [But], you are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.”

Meaning shows up in the smallest of ways, in any this or that choice you’ve made. It's a journey you’re always on. It’s not a fixed point. You don’t cross a line one day and, voilà, you have meaning! It is not out there, it is in you. There is just what you decide matters. That’s ALL that meaning is. 

Meaning gets richer, deeper over time, but that’s because it’s a groove worn into a path that is fully your own. It becomes more strategic when making decisions about what’s next, as you collect up your different choices, and say what they collectively signal. 

But meaning is always there. In the smallest this and that. 

And the way we live a life of meaning is to live in alignment with what we know matters. What fellow columnist Paul Smalera wrote so beautifully about when he wrote Fail Juice: 

That if you aren’t honest with yourself, you can’t be honest with anyone else. That if you don’t identify your tribe and trust them and let them in, you will never stand in a place of real security and clarity. You cannot have confidence if you haven’t done the work. And you cannot trust yourself, because you’ve shown yourself that you’re untrustworthy. 

That’s what makes it hard. Not that any role doesn’t have meaning, but that we’re the ones who have to do that work, ← that link by the way is the one that started this column of #atwork. 

That’s also what makes it worth doing. 

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And with that, we are logged off for an extended period of time; our next column will be in January. But do keep this conversation alive. Add your thoughts about meaning at work in the comments section, which we’ve opened up to all readers this week. And write back to this email to explore your own questions about being fully alive at work.