By: Dave and Wendy Ulrich

We like to ask random people in airports and elevators what they like about their job. Answers vary from “the challenge” to “the people” to “having free time to read” to “Are you kidding? I hate my job.” A few of the people giving these answers make big bucks in big companies and others sweep up after the people who make the big bucks, but neither position nor salary seem to have much to do with finding meaning in work.

Even in horrible work settings that are degrading and dangerous, some people thrive. This doesn’t mean they are happy about their circumstances, but it does suggest they manage to find meaning despite them. “Finding meaning” is probably a misnomer, however. Meaning is not a dropped coin we pick up by chance. It is more like fine pottery we craft. People have to create the meaning of their work and their lives, and that process requires skill and practice, not just luck.

Indeed, employers cannot afford to leave the creation of meaning to chance. People who discover meaning at work also tend to work harder, more creatively, and with more tenacity, giving the companies that employ them a leg up in the marketplace. When people make sense of their jobs they also make cents for their companies, a bottom line leaders can’t ignore. While data to support this assertion are often indirect, consider a few telling scenarios:

• Over a 10 year period (1998 to 2008) “best companies to work for” have a 6.8 % stock appreciation vs. 1.0% for the average firm.

• 61 hospitals in the UK had a 7% decline in death rate of patients when they invested in the well-being of their staff.

• Only 13% of disengaged employees would recommend their company’s products or services, compared with 78% of engaged employees.

• The probability of an Initial Public Offering succeeding goes from 60 to 79% when the new company invests in its people.

• Disengaged employees are ten times more likely to say they will leave their company within a year.

Such examples support the conclusion that when companies invest in the well-being of employees they invest in their own bottom line. But what connects the dots between money spent on people and money earned? Should companies invest in better health care packages? Child care facilities? Cruises for high performers? Dog parks for pets at work?
While any of these things might be supremely valued by one employee or another, we believe leaders can make more informed decisions about how to motivate and engage their employees by considering the question of meaning. When have you had a meaningful experience at work? Even in unfavorable circumstances, people can experience an activity as meaningful when it resonates with chosen values, connects them with people they like, raises their sense of competence, or gives them an ah-ha moment of insight. From what we know about how the human brain works, the ability to create meaning is also enhanced by challenge (solving a problem that is not too hard or too easy), emotional safety (fostered by friendship, fairness, and self-esteem), autonomy (structure but not micromanagement), and perhaps most importantly, by learning from experienced meaning-makers. In other words, we learn to create meaning like we learn most things – from watching and listening to others who do it well.

Enter, the Leader. Leaders who help shape a vision that is engaging to others, who weave the stories that help people make sense of the past and imagine the future, and who tap into the unique desires and values of individuals engage people’s hearts as well as their heads and hands.

So how can leaders more systematically help employees find meaning at work? In The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations that Win we cull research from diverse fields of thought to suggest seven drivers of meaning leaders can leverage to this end:

1. Help employees identify and creatively use the traits and values (like integrity, leadership, love of learning, kindness, etc.) they most identify with. How can leaders help employees develop strengths that strengthen others?

2. Match the purposes (insight, achievement, connection, or empowerment) that motivate employees to the jobs they do, helping them create a line of sight between their work and the results that matter most to each person. How can leaders help others create the story that connects their work to their passions?

3. Foster friendships and key relationship-building skills to create high-performing, high-relating teams. How can employees learn to connect with each other both socially and emotionally?

4. Promote positive work environments through attention to characteristics like humility, selflessness, order, and openness. How can leaders promote a physical and emotional work environment with affirming routines that resonates for employees and customers alike?

5. Help people identify and work at the types of challenges that line up with their personal experience of engagement or flow. How can leaders customize what work employees do and how they do increase flow and creativity?

6. Build in time for both individual and corporate-level self-reflection to help people discover lessons from setbacks and develop resilience and to get in front of the pace of change. How can leaders consciously generate ideas with impact and generalize them throughout the organization?

7. Encourage civility and delight from little things that personalize and civilize the world of work (e.g., time to chat, recognition, praise, friendly competitions, cookies, pictures, playfulness, humor, and creativity). How can leaders promote civility and delight without turning the plant floor into a frat house?

To paraphrase Nietzsche, “He who has a why to work can bear with almost any how.” Leaders are the experienced “others” we look to for help in finding our own “why of work.” We hope to begin a dialogue that also helps leaders explore the “how” of creating this essential “why.”

The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations that Win, will be available from McGraw Hill in June.