Preparing Leaders

Happy Monday, Cadre crew. Everyone in the cadres sphere. Hope you're having a good Monday. Kind of gloomy up here in northern Minnesota, but it's kind of nice getting the rain finally pretty dry for a while. Today we'll be talking about meaning. We're on the m portion of the perma model for well being, focusing on organizational well being and workplace well being. So talking about meaning for the individual, meaning doesn't start in the workplace. If you're talking about workplace meaning for the individual, it doesn't start with their work.

Work is the vehicle for their meaning. They can use their work to fulfill their meaning. So if you break, go back further, and you go out of the workplace meaning, what is the meaning of life? Is probably the oldest question of time, and I can't really answer that for you. If I was asked what meaning of life is, I would say that the meaning of life is to have meaning. There is no one definition for the meaning of life because everybody's meaning for life is different. If you're just joining us, we're talking about meaning and workplace well being and finding meaning in your work.

And then for the person finding meaning in their work, it kind of starts outside of their work. So my meaning, I have a purpose statement to describe it, and it's exploring high potential within individuals and myself. It starts going back to my college days of playing baseball, but essentially exploring. I want to find new ways and try new things to get better every single day, and mainly to help other people get better every single day. And I say individuals and myself because I have to do it first before I can tell other people to try it, or else it's just going to be phony.

And humans have a great ability to pick up on inauthenticity dating back to evolution and the process of wanting to have the right people in your group. So if they know that you're phony, they're going to pick up on that. So I say individuals and myself because I need to do it first. So if you want to find your meaning and try to foster, you can say hi to Loki, he's joining us today. But if you want to find your meaning, start for your meaning at work. Start with finding your meaning outside of work.

Arthur Brooks, professor at Harvard, professor on happiness, he asked two questions for you to find your meaning. He says, why are you alive? So kind of what gets you out of bed every single day? What drives you? And the other question is, for what would you be willing to die for today? What are you passionate about? What are you willing to put everything out on the line for? And these can help you find your meaning. You can do that yourself. And just look at those questions if you want to work with somebody to help you find your meaning.

Simon Sinek has a great question. And you go to a close friend, not any family members, and you ask them, why are we friends? And you keep digging and digging and digging until you can get the reason why they're friends with you. And once you get that ask, what makes it about you that when you're around them, well, how do they feel? And this can get to that deeper meaning. And once you feel that emotional response, then you're close to finding your meaning. Hey Alec, thanks for joining us. So once you can find your meaning, and there's a lot of great resources online as well that can, that you can explore and take quizzes that can help you explore your meaning.

But once you figure out your meaning as an individual, work is then the vehicle for your meaning. So then for me, I want to explore high potentials within individuals and myself. The work I do when I do leadership development trainings, this is helping others find their high potential and build up their skills. Or maybe it's when I help organizations identify emerging talent, this is finding talented people and putting them in places for them to succeed, to help other people. So it's exploring high potential.

And I'm using the vehicle of my work to fulfill that meaning. And so find your meaning outside of work and then use your work as your vehicle. If you don't have a direct link to work, maybe your meaning in life is just to take care of your family, your kids. Well then the work is your vehicle to make money to support them. Or maybe you want to travel and see the world. Then your work and the meaning of your work would be to make money, to travel, to have the flexibility in your work, to travel. So finding your meaning can then find your meaning of work.

And as a leader in the organization, you can help fulfill and put meaning into the work they're doing. So as the individual in the workplace, you have to find your own meaning and work through, through your job for your meaning. But as a leader in the organization, you can put more meaning behind the actual work that is being done. I can't translate into done. Siri thought I was talking to her. There we go. So, meaning. Let's first take a step back and look at meaning and then apply it to an organizational setting.

So meaning can be broken down into three components. Sense of why things happen, the way they do. And that's coherence. Direction and goals, and that's purpose. And would it matter if I was even here? Significance. So coherence. So looking a sense of things and why they happen the way they do. So in an organization, a leader can provide their employees kind of a behind the scene on a regular basis of why things are being done the way they're being done. So it doesn't seem like everything is happening behind closed doors.

An example is maybe a company is expanding. So instead of just telling employees, hey, we're expanding, we need more work out of you. So here's some more work, the employee's just gonna see like they're just taking from you and they're not getting anything out of it. But instead of saying, hey, we're expanding to help rural areas and this is going to help a lot of those like the real population for different reasons. And we got a grant to do this, so we're going to need some people to help step up to help.

That way they know, like, oh, they got a grant to help other people. And it's not just seems like stuff is happening without their knowledge. Another second component of meaning is direction and goals. Having a purpose. A lot of companies have a purpose statement, but a lot of times it's just put on the wall and when you first get there, like, oh yeah, here's our purpose statement, or on the website, it's the marketing technique, but actually living by the purpose and the direction and the goals of that company and showing that in actions can help the employees feel connected because they know how things are done.

And it doesn't seem that these leaders are inauthentic. They're, let's say your purposes are hope and optimism and I'm just making stuff up here. But if your purposes are hopefully, then the leaders provide hope by encouraging their employees, by if something goes wrong, they don't criticize, but they instead help figure out new ways to get something done. So by having direction and goals, stating them and then living by them, that can provide more meaning in the work of the employees. And then the last one is, would it even matter if I were here?

And this goes back to leaders showing gratitude and appreciation for the work of their employees. And that can be done either in like meetings when somebody joins on Zoom. Just saying. Hey, I appreciate you joining me today. I always have a great discussion with you and you help me in these ways. Or maybe in a performance review you can state how the work that they're doing is contributing to the work around them. Or helping you as the leader. So stating how their work is significant to the overall organization.

So that's meaning at work kind of a lot but meaning is kind of a lot too. So for yourself start with finding your own meaning, asking questions to yourself, asking questions to your close friends and then using the answers that you get to form a meaning or a purpose statement and then figuring out how work is the vehicle to drive your meaningful. And then second as a leader you can provide more meaning in the work that is being done by showing people the reasons why things happen in the company that they do providing directions and goals for projects or other areas of the company and then would it matter if you are here.

So the last is showing that they are significant in the organization so stay on here. We got Gene on at 1130 in about 15 minutes. JC is on at 1230 and then Darryl Glaze is on tonight. Have a great Monday everybody. Bye.