What your Boss needs to know about meaningful work.

I loved going to the University of Sussex where I studied Artificial Intelligence. It was a start of a very long journey for me to find meaning in my life and recognize what freedom is.

Professor Katie Bailey, an employee engagement expert at the University of Sussex’s School of Business, has just done some very interesting research about the role of a boss in creating meaningful work. The findings are little bit shocking...

Meaningful work not created
– only destroyed – by bosses

As you and I know not all bosses destroy work and this is a reminder to us all in a leadership position what we can encourage in ourselves and others. As Professor Bailey says:

“In experiencing work as meaningful we cease to be workers or employees and relate as human beings, reaching out in a bond of common humanity to others.

So how do we develop the capacity to reach out and be authentic in our shared humanity? My approach has been through years to investigate and to be curious about who I am and how I relate to others. Mindfulness has been a central practice for me, though in the early days it was a wonderful way of avoiding other people. As I moved into a leadership role running large residential family camps I was drawn into the interpersonal aspects of mindfulness.

When I had to take what I had learned about myself and had to apply it to others, I soon found out that I had only seen some parts of myself in my solitary practices. The relational part had been missing and the families threw me back into understanding at a much deeper level of how I was wired and how my habits had been formed.  After a decade of running the residential family camps I developed the interpersonal approach of mindfulness into my current framework of explore-play-love. This is what has brought meaning to me and the people I work with - it is relational.

There are five qualities to meaningful work that come from this research:

Self-Transcendent, Poignant, Episodic, Reflective and Personal

This translates into: make the work about other people. Work is not always going to be meaningful. Set the tone towards meaningfulness and put work into a wider context. Mindfulness is a great way to reflect on who we are in a wider context, in how we relate to the world and each other.  In this way we can start to support each others growth and develop a culture which supports kindness, contentment and ultimately freedom, which is not dependent on any set of conditions.

As Dr Maddon, another researcher, suggested

“Organizations that succeed in this are more likely to attract, retain, and motivate the employees they need to build sustainably for the future, and to create the kind of workplaces where human beings can thrive.”

If you don't want to create workplaces that thrive the top tip from the research is you

disconnect people from
supporting relationships

You can find the other six negative points and the full article here.

If your interested in applying mindfulness in leadership or in having a more meaningful life - drop me an email.

Image is from here