a few years ago I was invited to the
retirement dinner of an acquaintance of
mine his name was Len and he was known
throughout the country and indeed the
world as the expert on bridges in fact
in the department where he worked he was
known as the bridge guy he also worked
with the road guy and the tired guy but
Len was the bridge guy and it was a
lovely evening there lots of nice
speeches celebrating what he’d done they
gave him a lovely present yes a gold
watch and there was a moment’s
proceedings where I managed to get Len
by himself and I went up to him and I
congratulated him for which he thanked
me and now I mean Nate Lee curious about
people’s perceptions of work so I said
Len here we are celebrating your career
I said tell me what has been the
highlight of your career and he looked
at me he looked down at his shoes and he
said I’ll actually always wanted to be a
carpenter and my jaw almost hit the
ground here we were celebrating his work
as the bridge guy and it’s not what he
wanted to do now don’t get me wrong
Len had a good career in fact he had a
very good career but it wasn’t great and
over the past 20 years of running a
career management firm I’ve seen this
scenario play out time and time again so
what happens well let’s start at the
beginning have you noticed when you ask
a kid what do you want to do when they
grow up their eyes light up with
excitement and I almost can’t get their
words out I want to be a train driver no
no a fireman no an astronaut don’t
definitely a train driver and then you
ask an adult what do you want to do when
you grow up and their eyes glaze over
and they go deny whatever pays the bills
I guess so what
now when I say the word work a little
bit inside of us into flights and it’s
easy to understand why when you think
about the emotional response the first
time you heard that word Johnny have you
done your homework you see we’ve been
taught being brought up we’ve been
taught that work is something that is
forced upon us something we have to do
and this started out from medieval times
when if you were a lord or a land holder
you had all the power and if you’re a
peasant you had to go and work the
fields and with the soldiers standing
over you the alternative was rather
unpleasant and still today our society
our media is replete with negative
stories about work every day we read
about fights between unions and
employers about redundancies
retrenchments corporate greed and
inequality in the workplace and yet work
is so important to us we spend a third
of our life at work third sleeping and
arguably a third in traffic so my idea
is a very simple one we need to reframe
how we think about work for the vast
majority of us work isn’t something that
is forced upon us it’s something we have
some choice over work becomes positive
when we realize it provides us with
opportunities to grow and develop as an
individual work becomes positive when we
realize it’s not what we do that matters
it’s who we are when we do what we do
that does so to shift to this positive
perspective of work we need to do too
simple and yet deceptively difficult
things first we need to decouple our
identity from our profession
subconsciously we allow ourselves to be
defined by what we do
and this is prolific you go to a social
event and you meet someone for the first
time you shake hands
the first question what’s your name the
second question so what do you do and
how do we typically respond I’m a nurse
an engineer or an auditor and instantly
the conversation closes down and why
because we stereotype about what people
are like in those professions and
professional identity is strong there is
this fascinating phenomena in the UK
where surgeons are referred to as mr. or
miss instead of doctor and this stemmed
from the Middle Ages where the
difference between barbers and surgeons
well there really wasn’t much same
implements surgeons just lacked a little
bit of finesse and then through the 18th
century the scientific approach to
surgery emerged and through the
discovery of anesthetics and through
Louis Pasteur antiseptics surgery was
propelled into reputable status and at
this time training to become a surgeon
followed the apprenticeship model you
were apprenticed to an existing surgeon
and when you were finished your training
you were awarded a diploma and not a
degree and therefore called mr. amiss
instead of dr. and so today surgeons
start out as mr. or miss study really
really hard become a doctor study even
harder become a mr. or miss again and
surgeons have clung to this quirk of
history because it’s so important to
their sense of their identity and this
is what the professions do they provide
an artificial external container from
which we derive a significant sense of
who we are and those professions with
more rules governing our behavior
constrain us the most think doctors
accountants lawyers financial planners
the list goes on
in fact many professions require
continuous professional development a
certain number of hours each year to in
order to remain within that profession
so subconsciously we allow cells to be
defined by our work and here is the
problem as soon as we do that when our
working life changes as it invariably
will it becomes harder to adapt for
example you might be retrenched from
your organization and lose your job you
might get a new manager who is just
awful or you might have a really bad
experience with a client and if our
perception of our work is tied up with
what we do then with these experiences
can lead us to hating our work and we
feel trapped and work becomes something
we have to do but we are so much more
than our work if we lift our perspective
to realize that work provides the
opportunities for us to explore our
potential and experience meaningfulness
then it becomes easier to adapt and this
is the second thing we need to do to be
aware of and explore where we can
experience meaning in our work one of
the leading researchers in this field
Amy Ruiz neski and her colleagues did a
great study in a hospitals where they
interviewed a whole bunch of hospital
cleaners and they asked them what does
your work mean to you and there was one
group that said well we’re here for
infection control and as a result of
that perspective they did good work but
there was another group when asked what
does your job as a hospital cleaner mean
to you they said we are here to make the
nurses and doctors lives easier to give
the best possible experience for our
patients oh and by the way would do
infection control and what was really
interesting about this group was that
they altered the way they did their work
to have more interactions with those
people you see there’s two sources of
meaning that we get from our work first
there’s meaning in work that’s from the
tasks and activities themselves you know
that sense of meaning you get when you
solve a complex problem or get a video
to work or
get a spreadsheet popular to work and
second there’s meaning at work that is
from the interactions we have with the
people during the course of our day I
was speaking recently with a lady called
Jodi and she didn’t really like the
people she worked with and yet she was
about to hit her 10th year anniversary
and had no intentions of leaving and why
because Jodi sat at the reception desk
greeted all the lovely clients that came
in took a few hundred phone calls and
didn’t really have to do much with those
people out the back in fact she went out
of her way to avoid dealing with those
people at the back and so here’s the
fascinating point we already act in ways
to make our work more positive it’s just
that we don’t talk about it imagine for
a moment the conversation at the dinner
table tonight when your family asks you
so how was your day and instead of the
usual response of yeah it was all right
imagine instead if you shared about an
interaction you had with someone that
made you think about a problem in a
different way imagine if you shared a
story about how the opportunity to work
helped you to grow and develop as an
individual the other day I went to my
ten-year-old daughter and I said what
happens if instead of us calling in
homework we call it home learning she
looked at me silently walked across to
the table got out a homework book and a
thick black pen crossed out work and
wrote learning work is not something
negative work provides us with the
opportunity to explore our sense of self
to grow and develop and make a
contribution to our society
subconsciously we already act in ways to
make work will pop more positive it’s
about time that we share these stories
about how we’re growing as human beings
through the work that we do
and by sharing such stories inspire
others to grow develop and contribute
and next time you have a conversation
with a five-year-old about their future
rather than ask them what do you want to
do when you grow up perhaps we should
ask them who do you want to be when you grow up
retirement dinner of an acquaintance of
mine his name was Len and he was known
throughout the country and indeed the
world as the expert on bridges in fact
in the department where he worked he was
known as the bridge guy he also worked
with the road guy and the tired guy but
Len was the bridge guy and it was a
lovely evening there lots of nice
speeches celebrating what he’d done they
gave him a lovely present yes a gold
watch and there was a moment’s
proceedings where I managed to get Len
by himself and I went up to him and I
congratulated him for which he thanked
me and now I mean Nate Lee curious about
people’s perceptions of work so I said
Len here we are celebrating your career
I said tell me what has been the
highlight of your career and he looked
at me he looked down at his shoes and he
said I’ll actually always wanted to be a
carpenter and my jaw almost hit the
ground here we were celebrating his work
as the bridge guy and it’s not what he
wanted to do now don’t get me wrong
Len had a good career in fact he had a
very good career but it wasn’t great and
over the past 20 years of running a
career management firm I’ve seen this
scenario play out time and time again so
what happens well let’s start at the
beginning have you noticed when you ask
a kid what do you want to do when they
grow up their eyes light up with
excitement and I almost can’t get their
words out I want to be a train driver no
no a fireman no an astronaut don’t
definitely a train driver and then you
ask an adult what do you want to do when
you grow up and their eyes glaze over
and they go deny whatever pays the bills
I guess so what
now when I say the word work a little
bit inside of us into flights and it’s
easy to understand why when you think
about the emotional response the first
time you heard that word Johnny have you
done your homework you see we’ve been
taught being brought up we’ve been
taught that work is something that is
forced upon us something we have to do
and this started out from medieval times
when if you were a lord or a land holder
you had all the power and if you’re a
peasant you had to go and work the
fields and with the soldiers standing
over you the alternative was rather
unpleasant and still today our society
our media is replete with negative
stories about work every day we read
about fights between unions and
employers about redundancies
retrenchments corporate greed and
inequality in the workplace and yet work
is so important to us we spend a third
of our life at work third sleeping and
arguably a third in traffic so my idea
is a very simple one we need to reframe
how we think about work for the vast
majority of us work isn’t something that
is forced upon us it’s something we have
some choice over work becomes positive
when we realize it provides us with
opportunities to grow and develop as an
individual work becomes positive when we
realize it’s not what we do that matters
it’s who we are when we do what we do
that does so to shift to this positive
perspective of work we need to do too
simple and yet deceptively difficult
things first we need to decouple our
identity from our profession
subconsciously we allow ourselves to be
defined by what we do
and this is prolific you go to a social
event and you meet someone for the first
time you shake hands
the first question what’s your name the
second question so what do you do and
how do we typically respond I’m a nurse
an engineer or an auditor and instantly
the conversation closes down and why
because we stereotype about what people
are like in those professions and
professional identity is strong there is
this fascinating phenomena in the UK
where surgeons are referred to as mr. or
miss instead of doctor and this stemmed
from the Middle Ages where the
difference between barbers and surgeons
well there really wasn’t much same
implements surgeons just lacked a little
bit of finesse and then through the 18th
century the scientific approach to
surgery emerged and through the
discovery of anesthetics and through
Louis Pasteur antiseptics surgery was
propelled into reputable status and at
this time training to become a surgeon
followed the apprenticeship model you
were apprenticed to an existing surgeon
and when you were finished your training
you were awarded a diploma and not a
degree and therefore called mr. amiss
instead of dr. and so today surgeons
start out as mr. or miss study really
really hard become a doctor study even
harder become a mr. or miss again and
surgeons have clung to this quirk of
history because it’s so important to
their sense of their identity and this
is what the professions do they provide
an artificial external container from
which we derive a significant sense of
who we are and those professions with
more rules governing our behavior
constrain us the most think doctors
accountants lawyers financial planners
the list goes on
in fact many professions require
continuous professional development a
certain number of hours each year to in
order to remain within that profession
so subconsciously we allow cells to be
defined by our work and here is the
problem as soon as we do that when our
working life changes as it invariably
will it becomes harder to adapt for
example you might be retrenched from
your organization and lose your job you
might get a new manager who is just
awful or you might have a really bad
experience with a client and if our
perception of our work is tied up with
what we do then with these experiences
can lead us to hating our work and we
feel trapped and work becomes something
we have to do but we are so much more
than our work if we lift our perspective
to realize that work provides the
opportunities for us to explore our
potential and experience meaningfulness
then it becomes easier to adapt and this
is the second thing we need to do to be
aware of and explore where we can
experience meaning in our work one of
the leading researchers in this field
Amy Ruiz neski and her colleagues did a
great study in a hospitals where they
interviewed a whole bunch of hospital
cleaners and they asked them what does
your work mean to you and there was one
group that said well we’re here for
infection control and as a result of
that perspective they did good work but
there was another group when asked what
does your job as a hospital cleaner mean
to you they said we are here to make the
nurses and doctors lives easier to give
the best possible experience for our
patients oh and by the way would do
infection control and what was really
interesting about this group was that
they altered the way they did their work
to have more interactions with those
people you see there’s two sources of
meaning that we get from our work first
there’s meaning in work that’s from the
tasks and activities themselves you know
that sense of meaning you get when you
solve a complex problem or get a video
to work or
get a spreadsheet popular to work and
second there’s meaning at work that is
from the interactions we have with the
people during the course of our day I
was speaking recently with a lady called
Jodi and she didn’t really like the
people she worked with and yet she was
about to hit her 10th year anniversary
and had no intentions of leaving and why
because Jodi sat at the reception desk
greeted all the lovely clients that came
in took a few hundred phone calls and
didn’t really have to do much with those
people out the back in fact she went out
of her way to avoid dealing with those
people at the back and so here’s the
fascinating point we already act in ways
to make our work more positive it’s just
that we don’t talk about it imagine for
a moment the conversation at the dinner
table tonight when your family asks you
so how was your day and instead of the
usual response of yeah it was all right
imagine instead if you shared about an
interaction you had with someone that
made you think about a problem in a
different way imagine if you shared a
story about how the opportunity to work
helped you to grow and develop as an
individual the other day I went to my
ten-year-old daughter and I said what
happens if instead of us calling in
homework we call it home learning she
looked at me silently walked across to
the table got out a homework book and a
thick black pen crossed out work and
wrote learning work is not something
negative work provides us with the
opportunity to explore our sense of self
to grow and develop and make a
contribution to our society
subconsciously we already act in ways to
make work will pop more positive it’s
about time that we share these stories
about how we’re growing as human beings
through the work that we do
and by sharing such stories inspire
others to grow develop and contribute
and next time you have a conversation
with a five-year-old about their future
rather than ask them what do you want to
do when you grow up perhaps we should
ask them who do you want to be when you grow up
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