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journey of meaning at work, The

Group Facilitation, Spring 2003 by Epps, John

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The three phases are described below as they appear in the three primary approaches to meaning undertaken by people at work.

Unlike Alte One, this road map assumes that meaning is at least potentially available in any organization and any job. Unlike Alternative Two, each stage of the work life is considered authentic and meaningful and worth engaging fully in.

I trust that you will find this map less likely to get you lost than its alternatives. I welcome refinements that might contribute to the accuracy of this description of the way through.

Definition and phrases

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By "meaning at work" we mean the "worthwhileness" or worthiness of an undertaking, a sense of its importance in a larger framework. Meaning at work is the contribution of a particular undertaking to a larger context that the meaning-- seeker values. Work that contributes to nothing beyond itself is often considered meaningless. Meaning at work, then, is the relationship between a particular undertaking and a larger framework in which it exists and to which it contributes.

A necessary precondition for meaning at work is a sense of value. If you do not value the larger context, then particular contributions to it carry no weight. If you don't care about your organization (or society, or humanity, or the cosmos, or God whatever your larger context is), then your work's importance to that context does not hold meaning for you. On the other hand, if the self is tops in your value chain, then work that contributes to the self (whether it enhances growth, pleasure or compensation), will be meaningful to you.

Meaning at work is the connection between the particular activity you are doing and something that you care about. As a relationship, it is both objective and subjective. Objectively, the connection, however remote, does exist; in the contemporary worldview of quantum physics, everything is related to everything else 4. Furthermore, a connection exists to an infinite number of realities: your particular work is not isolated. Subjectively, the quality of meaning varies with how much you value the broader contexts in which you operate. Those valuations constantly shift, so that meaning varies on a daily basis . Meaning at work is intensely personal, but to be real and not simply an illusion, it has to refer to an objective reality beyond itself- its valued context.

Despite the variations, there are three discernable phases through which the journey of meaning at work passes. In Phase One, you are subjectively fixated on the broader context. In Phase Two, your attention reverts to the particular situation in which you are immersed. In Phase Three, you experience attraction to the relationship between particular and universal. Another way to put it is that in Phase One, you have a naive attachment to a grand cause; in Phase Two, the cause seems finite, fallible, and possibly even fraudulent, wholly unable to allay the awareness of spending your life in trivial particulars. In Phase Three, you "see through" to the ultimate unworthiness of all that is and therefore its objective value as a connected, interrelated whole6. These phases are described in detail later.

journey of meaning at work, The

Group Facilitation, Spring 2003 by Epps, John

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