Meaningful Workplaces: Sense of Self

The key concept of the sense of self is the recognition that people bring their "whole selves" to work. Workers bring emotions and spiritual concerns to the job just as much as they bring their bodies and minds.

However, most workers are not fully aware of how much of themselves they bring, or how much more they can bring. Before anyone can bring their whole selves to work, people need to become more aware of who they are, of their values and beliefs, and what their sense of purpose in life is.

It is impossible to realize an individual's potential without first knowing what values and beliefs can be reached. This sense of self gets to the heart of a person, as opposed to what work a person does.

What people do is simply the label of a job that provides for their basic needs. Meaningful work that people identify with, however, is more than just a job.

It is the culmination of education, training, practice, development and emotional investment into a way of life that is, in effect, the performance of the worker's values, beliefs, moral philosophy, and personality. One way to integrate more of the self into work is find ways to include workers' spirituality.

This is not necessarily a sacred spirituality, although for many people, that is an important level of spirituality. Of more significance is "psychological spirituality" that is a kind of faith in the human spirit, one that unites all humans together and to the earth itself.

It is a mindset that promotes deep ethical and social awareness that "we are all in this together." Cultivating this psychological or secular spirituality at work helps workers identify their purpose because purpose depends on awareness of personal values, of which people usually only become aware through some sort of spiritual life.

Purpose can be identified through the overlapping of personal values, individual strengths, and interests. Often, workers might know that they are good at a particular kind of work, but if that work conflicts with their values or is not the kind of thing they enjoy, the work is unfulfilling and may even be detrimental at the psychological level.

In today's workforce, most people seem to find their purpose through helping others, and meaningful work seeks to instill the sense that the work of a company is helpful to society at large. In short, workers want to know that their own lives matter, and that their work matters to others.

In addition to workplace spiritual development and identifying work that cultivates purpose, sense of self involves self-actualization and self-efficacy. The former is a process where the worker's capacities are fully and creatively used.

It is a process of making choices for growth and of continually living, working, and relating to the world, rather than to individual accomplishments or meeting goals set by managers and leaders. The latter term, self-efficacy, is an attitude that recognizes that people's actions will produce the outcomes they desire, and provides the mental fortitude to withstand obstacles that impede those outcomes.

Meaningful work allows workers to make their own decisions to cope with various roadblocks and dilemmas in such a way that promotes the knowledge that workers will get past the roadblocks and to learn from them. The most important component of the sense of self to meaningful work is the need for continuous learning that moves beyond the old "outcome paradigm," which is concerned with minimal competence, avoiding failure, single-answer solutions and acceptable results, to one that is driven by understanding and wisdom.

Such a model would be based on continual personal and professional improvement, informed risk-taking, team and collective performance, cooperation and collaboration, coaching, support, multiple answers, conversation, and processes. Meaningful work depends on meaningful learning as a critical intrinsic motivator.

This article is based on the book "Meaningful Workplaces." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.