How to escape the diktat of "meaning at work" ?

Did you miss the collaborative workshop at the HEC Life Project evening? Helène de St Front (H.10), an expert in coherence and corporate culture will make you experience the evening as if you were there.

Where does this pressure to find meaning in your work come from? 

The findings:

A fashionable trend

Like happiness a few years ago, today it is the meaning that is the panacea of our careers according to the media. It is talked about everywhere, sold to us in various forms, from Mindfulness to coaching, and organizations and managers are asked to "make sense" of it before anything else. It's a lot of pressure!

A false solution to the loss of meaning in companies.

Paradoxically, this pressure to individually find meaning in one's work (or to "provide" meaning to others) comes in a dehumanized corporate context, where most relationships are transactional or virtual, and where time pressure no longer allows time for socializing and stepping back. Asking individuals to find meaning in this context and even encouraging them to do so with corporate coaches, etc., is therefore also a way for the company to try to compensate for what it has destroyed, thus relieving itself of its responsibility to provide a framework and working relationships conducive to fulfilment.

A new field of application for our perfectionism

And the soil is all the more fertile as our beloved "Be perfect" driver finds a wonderful field of application here. Since perfection is no longer having a big job and earning lots of money, so let's get our pressure machine and our internal judge back to work on this injunction to find meaning in our work, criticizing each of our actions that is not 100% aligned with our values, blaming ourselves for not having found our ultimate vocation at 30 years old and blaming ourselves for not saving the planet every day. Great, I can get over the pressure.

So, now what do we do to get out of the diktat? 

First, we get the hell out of here! There, I said it. Driver's in the closet. 

Then here are some tracks we've discussed:

Give time to time

In the reign of immediacy one would want everything to make sense, right away. Wisdom is already to accept that not everything makes sense, or at least not always in the present moment. It also means knowing how to accept contradictory situations, moments of hollowness or vagueness. Not always trying to understand everything or filtering everything through the filter of meaning. Relax. 

Seek the "small sense"

Doing things that we like, having fun, having small successes, learning and progressing, sharing good times with nice colleagues, it's every day to be perfectly fulfilled in one's job, no need to look too far!

Clarifying the framework

Often it is enough to be clear about my role, my place, my prerogatives, the needs and the stakes so that in my head I understand the meaning of my work. I bring a small stone, and I understand what it is used for in my perimeter. No need then to talk to me about cathedrals.

If it's not bad, it's already very good

Okay, we're not gonna save the Earth. But we can still be useful when we help Chantal do her job properly. To help her collaborators grow. Find solutions for our clients. It also means focusing on her local and direct impact. It's living life as an experience that enriches us, without trying to constantly evaluate the global impact.

Finding meaning outside of work 

And the meaning, it's not just at work! It's also very good to have a food job that allows us to take to the sea for three months, or to spend time with our friends or our children, or to prepare a play, in short to realize ourselves outside of our work. And that makes a lot of sense. 

The advice at the end:

• Let go
• Don't waste your time looking for that meaning...
• Follow the thread of taste, of feelings
• Dare to be meaningless at the moment
• Listen to what you really want, you
• Experiment, without analyzing
• Stop saying "ça fait du sens", that's not French.
• Leave yourself alone!
  

And to conclude, as my grandmother says, "Rooh, but you ask yourself too many questions! »