It was Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, shortly after it was published in 1959 that first put that question in my gray matter. Actually, it was a conversation in a theology class by an esteemed professor that first intrigued me about the subject. And here I am still writing and thinking about it in 2018. Funny how some ideas are always intriguing. And this one was intriguing enough to impact my behavior ever since...
Happily, two researchers published the answers to these questions in the MIT Sloan Review. Their findings are illuminating.
Meaningfulness at work tends to be something employees discover for themselves. What’s meaningful for you may not be meaningful for me, and vice-versa. And furthermore, meaningfulness seems to have no relation whatsoever to the notion of engagement. Nor was it the result of actions clearly taken by their managers. In sum, those who could see they had fulfilled their potential, or found their work creative, absorbing and interesting, tended to perceive their work as meaningful.
But, meaninglessness was usually about how they were treated by their managers and leaders. The researchers listed seven deadly sins:
--taking your employees for granted.
--disconnecting people from their values
--giving people pointless work to do
--treating people unfairly
--overriding people’s better judgment
--disconnecting people from supportive relationships
--putting people at risk of physical or emotional harm
It’s pretty obvious that the benefits both for individuals and organizations that accrue from meaningful workplaces can be immense.
See: MIT Sloan Management Review. What makes work meaningful? Summer 2016, p. 53