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Strive for fulfillment
How can you tell if you’re happy at work is the same way as telling if you’re happy in any human relationship. We have relationships with our organizations, with our jobs, as we have relationships with any tribe. If you’re a member of a club where you have unbelievable love and loyalty for the people in that club, that church, then you go do it more and you give lots of energy and time to it. Well, it’s the same thing. Do you wake up excited to get dressed and go to work? Do you dread Mondays? Do you like the people with whom you work? Do you love the people with whom you work? If your job feeds you, makes you feel like you can be yourself – how many people can say that my job helps me be myself? Well if you do, if you can say that, you work for an amazing organization.
Waking up every day to work hard for something we don’t particularly love: that’s called stress. Whereas waking up every day to work hard for something we love: that’s called passion. You can’t manufacture passion. It’s about being part of something that you truly enjoy. You will work extra hard because you want to. It’s discretionary. What I absolutely hate is that we see this thing called loving our work as a luxury. We treat it like it’s a lottery, right? That we go out for dinner with some of our friends, and somebody at the table says, “I love my job,” and the rest of us turn around and say, “You’re so lucky.” Like they won something. And at the end of the day, loving our job, fulfillment, is a right, not a privilege. It’s not something you get lucky at – it’s something we can demand. But it’s absolutely achievable if we can figure out the steps that we need to take to get there.
Be better together
How do we – if we do not work in an environment that offers us that safe circle that we can express ourselves thusly – then the question is, what are we supposed to do? Well, it’s kind of like any human relationship. You don’t start on the first date, telling them all of your fears and anxieties and insecurities. That would be madness, right? We find those few people and take little risks. And you share something small. And you see if they listen and they make you feel understood and they make you feel heard, or if they make you feel stupid or small. And if it feels safe, you take another little risk, and they take a risk. If you’re the only one doing it, it doesn’t work either. And you say things like, “I’m not sure, are you?” And they go, “No, not really.” And you’ve just expressed weakness to each other. It’s wonderful. And you’ll help each other, and that’s the point. It’s about relationships. It’s not about, “me finding strength;” it’s about us expressing our fallibility and our humanity together, and together we will help each other. And together, we will do whatever needs to be done, because we are better together.
Manage up
“I believe what you believe, but what do I do if my boss doesn’t get it?” Well, there’s two answers. One is depending on how high they are. If they’re multiple levels up, you don’t worry about it, because you can’t control what you can’t control. And you worry about the people whose names you know and whose faces you recognize. You worry about your own circle, and you work hard to protect your friends and colleagues from that boss who doesn’t get it. In other words, you must become the leader you wish you had. That is the responsibility. But you can’t try to change someone more senior. Now, if it’s one level up, start by exhibiting empathy. Just as we want them to have empathy for us, we have to have empathy for them. Are they bad leaders because they don’t care, or are they bad leaders because there’s overwhelming stress on them every day? Because they’re having trouble at home? Because they’ve been put in a position that they don’t know how to do that job and no one’s trained them, and they’re too afraid to say, “I don’t know what I’m doing?” Let us have empathy. Let us try to consider that maybe they’re under a lot of pressure. And instead of piling it on and calling them crazy or idiots or whatever we do when we get mad at our bosses, rather say, “I hope they’re okay. Let me see if I can help.” That’s a good place to start.