Sunday Story: Meaningful Autonomy in Work and Leadership

Welcome back folks! Are you one of the lucky ones who mostly looks forward to going to work each day? Does your job fill your bucket, bring you joy, and align with what you feel your purpose is?

For a lot of people, the answer to the above question is an emphatic “no!” - their work is not fulfilling, it doesn’t bring them joy, and it’s not connected to a larger pur-pose. Indeed for many folks, their work takes them away from their larger purpose - they are forced to spend 8+ hours a day away from loved ones, or spend the majority of their energy earning a wage rather than pursuing their passions. No doubt most of us have had jobs that made us feel this way from time to time and we can relate to how this feels.

But, these negative feelings about work are not true for everyone or even the ma-jority of us. Half of Americans feel they are extremely or very well satisfied in their job overall, with only 12% saying they are not satisfied to a significant degree. There are other numbers that suggest for most folks, work isn’t that bad - they enjoy their col-leagues, the nature of their work, and overall express satisfaction.

An unsatisfied employee can be highly disruptive. When a worker isn’t satisfied, you’ll see increases in all the bad stuff - conflict, negative storytelling, sick days, burn out and more all increase in folks who do not feel satisfied in their work and do not feel their work connects to their purpose.

Studies show there are a few key areas that leaders can lean on to help improve a person’s sense of satisfaction and purpose, and this Sunday Story is all about three big ones.

The Importance of Purpose

If you’ve been reading our blog for any length of time, you’ll know that we are big on values-based leadership, putting people first, and recognizing that our life is precious and far too short to be spending our valuable time in a context or environment that’s bad for us. Living in a way that aligns with one’s purpose is the best way to avoid this problem, but a lot of people don’t know what their purpose is or how to articulate it.

It’s important to differentiate between a purpose and what someone does. You may work with a wonderful admin support person who manages your calendars, exe-cutes business processes for your team, and ensure meetings are recorded effectively - but that’s this person’s job, not their purpose. That’s what they do; to channel a bit of Simon Sinek, a “purpose” isn’t what they do it’s why they do it.

Do you have conversations about purpose with your employees during 1 on 1s? If not, now is a good time to start! Since COVID, we’ve seen a significant shift in how staff prioritize things, and more and more if staff are not living their purpose in your organization, they are likely to leave for a place where they can. In fact, some data suggests that while 85% of senior leaders feel they get to live their purpose every day, over 85% of front line staff feel the opposite (or at least unsure if they are living their purpose or not).

A key misconception that many folks run into is the idea that they must “discover” their purpose, and they passively wait for that discovery to come to them. In our re-search and experience, a purpose isn’t something that is delivered to you. It is an ac-tive process of discovery, one where a person must decide what to be and go be it. Without the intentional coaching form a leader, a lot of people don’t realize that they get to decide what their life is meant to be about, but something as simple as you adding this conversation to your 1:1s can go a long way to helping them figure that out.

As individual human beings grow and evolve over time, our purpose can evolve; the importance of environmental justice or advocacy for peace can look different after a person becomes a parent, for example. A person in financial distress may create a purpose centred around solving that problem, but when the solution is achieved their purpose shifts to something else. This is a normal part of the human experience, and it’s why as a Leader, you should be having conversations about purpose with those you lead on a regular basis. It can help you stay informed about what your people are most passionate about and that means you can ensure their work aligns with those passions, and it can help indicate when a person’s purpose may not align with your organization so you can help them achieve the next stage of their career in an inten-tional and planned way rather than in a reactive way after they quit. This means you get the benefit of continuity planning for your organization and reduce the impact of disruption immensely, and everyone wants fewer disruptions, right?

Recognition Matters

Now we’re onto part 2 - you’ve mastered Part 1, and you’ve made a habit of “big talk” conversations about purpose and did what you could to ensure job alignment with that purpose. Great work by you as a leader, which has enabled great work by your team.

But recognition matters - everyone likes to hear they’ve done a good job. That’s part 2. Recognize good work! Seems deceptively simple, but it’s not as easy as send-ing a once a week email to your team telling them they did a good job.

Quality recognition needs to be authentic, specific, and measured. One of the best ways is explicit communication - telling the person (or team) exactly what they did well and the impact it had – especially if that impact aligns with the “big talk” things they find value in during your 1 on 1s - is a great way to provide recognition for your people.

One of the most under-utilized ways of recognizing your people is trust, and it’s so simple: When someone has done great work, trust them to do more great work in the future. Trust them to have a bigger role in the project, more responsibility, etc. I’m not talking about the concept of promotions or fancy titles (though that works too); I’m referring to the small ways a leader can show trust in their team with more responsibil-ity. The best example is when you need to delegate a task or a project; many leaders dip into management mode here and start having a certain degree of “hands on” with the project. There’s even a word if they dip too far – “micromanagement”. The kind of trust I’m talking bout is the opposite micromanagement – it’s saying “here’s the de-liverable, I know you know how to do this and that the results will be good. Let me know if you have questions otherwise I’ll leave you to it”.

No extra detail, no step-by-step project plan, just a full delegation and trust that the person will get it done. It feels good to be trusted, right? This is bringing that feel-ing into your leadership practice.

Obviously, take care to avoid taking advantage of your people by asking them to do unpaid labour and work - if their job scope or responsibilities are changing signifi-cantly, its proper and appropriate to recognize that with an increase in pay or other compensation, but even within the scope of their existing jobs, trusting your people with slightly more important or higher stakes tasks or projects can be a great way for a leader to recognize a staff member.

Everyone likes being trusted to do a good job by a leader they respect, because we all like having autonomy - but that autonomy has to be meaningful.

Meaningful Autonomy

People like having a sense of freedom, and autonomy and freedom are largely inter-changeable concepts. But at work, autonomy refers typically to how much discretion a person has in their role. Every job has some level of autonomy, but often that level of autonomy is not meaningful.

For example, even an entry level worker in an office is likely to have the autonomy to manage their own email inbox, but that’s probably not too closely connected to the purpose they have chosen for their lives. As folks advance in their careers, autonomy typically does increase - they become responsible for ordering the tasks of others when they become a manager, for example, but they may struggle connecting the tasks of others with their purpose without help. That is the key thing for a leader - you need to try to provide everyone with some degree of autonomy that is meaningful to them.

It could be something as simple as giving them flexible work arrangements or the decision of where they engage in their work. This can also be a mix of coaching and workload management. As a leader, you can help explain how the decision of your people connects to the broader mission and make an impact. It feels particularly good to recognize a staff member’s independent achievement; you aren’t just recognizing the outcome, but you are recognizing that they were in control of the process as well. In terms of workload management, there are always opportunities for innovation or change, and if you have an employee who is passionate about their purpose connect-ed to a project that fulfills it, you’ll often be amazed at the zeal at which they’ll take it on and what they produce .

The leader also has to ensure that they are supporting this meaningful autonomy with the appropriate resources. If you empower your people to do a bigger or more significant task or project, you better also ensure they have the resources (money, training, time, etc.) to be successful with that task or project. If you don’t do this, and they aren’t successful, not only will it be a hit to their confidence and sense of ability, but there’s a good chance the leader will hold the individual accountable for the fail-ure and potentially not give them the same meaningful autonomy in the future, when the actual reason for the failure was a leadership decision about other resources, not the autonomy of the individual.

Conclusion

People in every organization are pretty much the same. We want to feel respected, psychologically and physically safe, and to engage in work that means something to us. The leader is responsible for all of this and more, and by taking the approach of providing meaningful autonomy, recognizing good work, and aligning with purpose, you can help lead your people in a way that doesn’t make them want to hit the snooze alarm too many times come Monday morning.

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next Sunday!