People are saying goodbye to their jobs in record numbers—which is yet another curveball for leaders to confront. Part of this is the pandemic-related “Great Resignation” or “Turnover Tsunami,” but what’s really at the heart of the matter is people’s need to find meaning in the work they do. In her March 7 “Your Best Next Move” video, Bobbie LaPorte shares some winning strategies to help you create meaning and connection for your team.
Transcript of Your Best Next Move: Winning Strategies Against the Resignation Curveballs
Hi everyone, Bobbie LaPorte here again with my weekly leadership tip for your Best Next Move, where I help you see continuing curveballs as an opportunity. We’re done reacting to them, or pausing, waiting for a new kind certainty to return. This year I will help you actively use your personal agency to accelerate what you want to accomplish in 2022.
In my recent conversations with leaders, I’ve been seeing a theme (not new, though) about people not finding enough meaning and satisfaction in their work. Wait – I know what you are thinking: not another note about how we must provide meaning to the people who work for us and for ourselves.
Well, yes and no. Stay with me here…
The curveball associated with this is that people in droves are saying goodbye to their jobs….and it’s not just the “Great Resignation” you’ve all heard about ad nauseum. It’s deeper than the freedom people feel to move on.
For some context, let’s take a little step back in time.
Most of you are probably too young to remember the writer Studs Terkel. In his introduction to Working, the landmark 1974 oral history of work, Studs Terkel positioned meaning as an equal counterpart to financial compensation in motivating the American worker.
“[Work] is about a search…for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor,” he wrote.
Among those “happy few” he met who truly enjoyed their labors, Terkel noted a common attribute: They had “a meaning to their work over and beyond the reward of the paycheck.”
More than forty years later, myriad studies have substantiated the claim that American workers expect something deeper than a paycheck in return for their labors.
And this need for something deeper is not going away…..if anything, it is now amplified in a workplace where there is growing distrust of management, a lack of social connection in a remote environment and a general sense of wondering what work is all about – given the geopolitical world we are living in.
People are asking: “Why am I doing what I am doing?”
I feel so strongly about this I am going to talk about it again next week, with more specific guidance on how to operationalize meaning for your team.
So, here’s my tip for this week:
Before diving deeper with me next week, take some time toconsider Stud Terkel’s 4-decade old findings…
Consider ways to remind your team about their personal contribution and how it fits into what you are working to produce together.
Everyone wants to feel that their work matters. By helping them see how their work and the work of each team member is an important function that fulfills a higher purpose, motivates people to work in a more collaborative, collective fashion; and it helps them see how their own knowledge contributes to, but doesn’t fully satisfy, the complex outcomes of your business.
That’s my tip for this week. I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, make the effort to create meaning and connection for your team. This is one way to use your personal agency to make uncertainty a part of your success strategy for 2022.
Here are some related posts you might like:
How Can I Keep My Star Performers From Leaving?
Surviving the Turnover Tsunami.
Confidence Killers and High CEO Turnover
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