Meaningful Work

• Library: Positive Professionals: Creating High-Performing Profitable Firms Through Engagement (ABA) (2017 Ed.)

Meaningful Work

The first ingredient in our foundation is meaningfulness. Experiencing our work as meaningful means that we believe that it matters and is valuable and that it contributes to personal growth and the greater good (Allan et al., 2015; Wrzensniewski et al., 2003). Meaningfulness is a super star motivator: It's the biggest contributor to engagement (e.g., Albrecht, 2013; May et al., 2004; Shuck & Rose, 2013). Some even argue that engagement is interchangeable with the experience of meaningfulness (Shuck & Rose, 2013). Most strategies in this book somehow connect to meaningfulness—how it's created or destroyed by daily events and how that influences engagement, well-being, and performance. This makes meaningfulness an essential element in the foundation of our positive law firms.

The Importance of Meaningfulness to Health and Well-Being

The importance of creating meaningfulness in our lives can hardly be overstated. In his famous book Man's Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Victor Frankl (1959) argued that a primary motivational force that drives us all is the desire to find meaning in life. He developed a whole theory of psychotherapy (called "logotherapy") based on that belief.

One of my mentors, positive psychology co-founder Dr. Martin Seligman (2011), agrees that meaning is a central component of human thriving. He developed his own theory of well-being that proposes five pillars—positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement (PERMA). How people balance these five elements in their own lives depends on their own values. I've talked with Marty many times about PERMA and he compares it to five distinct dials on the dash of a plane's navigation system that each slide up and down. We all set our collection of dials a bit differently. One thing I share with Marty is that we both have our "meaning" dials turned way up! Many other well-being theories agree that meaning and purpose are necessities.

A mountain of scientific research supports these views that meaning is a key ingredient of well-being. For example, meaning is not only important to psychological wellness but also to good physical health. Research has linked meaning in life to:

• Reduced risk of heart attack and stroke.
• Better emotion regulation.
• Reduced risk of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thinking.
• Reduced substance abuse.
• Healthy sleep.
• Cardiovascular health.
• Slower cognitive decline in Alzheimer's patients.
• Lower overall mortality for older adults. (Kim et al., 2015; Steger et al., 2006)

Creating a Meaningful Life through Meaningful Work

It's through meaningful work that many of us seek to build a meaningful life. "Work" is among the most common responses to surveys asking what gives life meaning (Allan et al., 2015). Research illustrates the importance of experiencing work as meaningful. For example, a 2003 study of how 25 top companies attract and retain top performers found that, above all, their practices conveyed that the company's work was significant, and each individual employee's work was important and valuable (Martel, 2003).

In addition to fueling engagement (which is associated with things like profitability and productivity), meaningfulness also is directly related to signs of business success such as:

• Higher job performance.
• Better job satisfaction.
• Greater cohesion with co-workers.
• Higher work effort.
• Lower stress and alienation at work.
• Less turnover. (Arnold et al., 2007; Jaramillo & Boles, 2013)

Meaningfulness research underscores that high salaries paid for prestigious jobs just aren't enough to create a vital sense of connection to our work over the long-term. It doesn't even create high levels of job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2010). In Daniel Pink's (2011) popular...