|
 Many jobs are too small for the human spirit. Typically confined
by hours in the week and work descriptions, the boundaries
of many jobs simply aren't elastic enough to make room for
workers' vast hearts and spirits. As a result, the wasted
energy and abandoned vision are resources lost to both employer
and employee.
Studs Terkel chronicled this in his 1974 classic piece of
journalism, Working: People Talk
About What They Do All Day and How They Feel about It.
He interviewed a 25-year-old woman, Nora Watson, who put it
this way:
"As I work in the business world, I am more and more shocked.
You throw yourself into things because you feel that important
questions - self-discipline, goals, a meaning of your life
- are carried out in your work…You want it to be a million
things that it's not, and you want to give it a million parts
of yourself that nobody else wants there. So you end up wrecking
the conforming. Jobs are not big enough for people…So you
absent your spirit from it."
Absenting - isn't that a powerful term? It's the same as saying that many people survive their jobs by psyching themselves down to go to work. They lob off big parts of the mind, heart and spirit to go in and do a job that is too small for them.
In my own work, I meet people in various career crunches. They know they are underused and, for their own well-being, they had better find a fuller job. I'll never forget the young secretary who said to me, "I can do my job without much effort. I like my boss, and the work isn't that bad. But I'm not happy doing this. It's too easy…I've got all this stuff I know I could be doing. It's like I'm all dressed up with no place to go." Her boss eventually lost her when she quit to teach music.
As institutions and individuals we can't afford to allow
this absenting of spirit to go on much longer. It kills people,
and it kills productivity. The high performance companies
are the ones that dream a multi-purpose dream of services,
profitability, growth and development for all who are employed
there. These companies say, in effect, to their employees,
"Do you have a dream? You do? Well, come on board and see
if you can live it out here at our company. Let's add your
dream to our dream and see what happens."
This way people don't have to psych themselves down for their life's work. They psych themselves up. These companies are creating the future. They have goals and objectives like every other organization, but they know that a goal is a dream with a deadline.
About a year ago when I was talking to a large group about the power that comes from "working with a heart," a middle-aged gentleman came up to me during a break. He sidled me over to the corner, looked around furtively, and making sure no one could overhear, he whispered, "Say, I was just wondering. Are you spiritual?"
Surprised, I whispered back, "Yeah, are you?" And he poured out his values and dreams. He had no better place.
Employers can provide a better place. It is our duty as leaders to give our employees room to bring all of themselves to the workplace. We can start by asking everyone up and down the ranks to fill out personal mission statements concerning both our work and our life. We should ask ourselves why we do what we do all day, and how we feel about it. These statements will serve to remind us that we are all more than our job description. And our workers will know that we recognize that vast world of talent and values each one brings to the workplace. |
