Manic Monday, Mellow Monday, or Holy Mother of God it's Monday again....
Or if you're reading this on a Tuesday, I'm so sorry to have given you a scare.
I was talking with one of my coaching clients last week (some of my work these days is mentoring and coaching climate and sustainability professionals), and she was talking about how much one part of her work was enlivening. This made me exceptionally happy as her coach!
And then she contrasted this with work she used to do which was….[she searched for a word]….endeadening!
We laughed. (And then, of course, I made a mental note to make it into a post. You have to be aware of this possibility when you talk to me these days.)
The reality is that many (many) people dread Monday mornings. They drag themselves up and out to do work that, while it might be useful and important in some way, isn’t useful or important in the way that that resonates with them. Or they hate their boss. That’s the other possibility. Work begins to suck the soul out of you.
Most of us need an income to be able to do things we enjoy, like living in an apartment as opposed to a tent, and eating food. But the problem with a lot of the way the ‘world of work’ is set up is that it assumes income is the main motivation for you to put on hard pants1 and get to the office.
Income is clearly A motivation (please consider a paid subscription to this newsletter….pleeeeaaase?), but it’s not why most people do what they do (you can also subscribe for free). Most people want to share their talent or knowledge to help people, create, inspire change, and be useful in any number of ways. But it’s almost like employers actively remove the possibility of you being able to find meaning and purpose in your work and instead impose rules and incentives based merely on efficiency and the assumption that you want more money. (See more on this whole topic in a great book and a Ted Talk by Barry Schwartz.)
I believe the Great Resignation was less about wanting a better paycheck or even more flexible work conditions, and more about finding work and employers that allowed more of the employee to come to work in the first place - a workplace that valued YOU and your unique contribution.
I do actually believe that’s changing.
I see more and more organizations embracing the possibility that they can employ real people with real (and varying) talent and allow those people to demonstrate initiative, share ideas, and still be trusted to do the work they’re assigned without constant scrutiny.
In other words, employers are increasingly seeing that the outcome can be accomplished several different ways and ‘how’ an employee does the work might need to vary if that employee is to consider their work meaningful and supportive of their lifestyle. The employee needs to be able to add value to their position in their unique way. If employers allow that, productivity has been shown to increase by as much as 20% (see Schwartz’s book for more on this).
But here’s the real kicker.
You (the employee) also have to be willing to bring your full self to the table in order for your current or future employer to see your capacity for initiative, ideas, competence, drive, and a desire to help people. You have to demonstrate vulnerability in sharing ideas - not all of which will be good, let alone implementable in your organization. And you have to bring them anyway. You have to be able to consistently show up and do the work - sometimes annoying work - in order for people to see your integrity, attention, and abilities. They have to be able to trust you as much as you want to be able to trust them.
In other words, if we want work to work better for us in our next chapter (as employer or employee), we have to consider it a relationship, not just a transaction. On both sides.
What part of the relationship is yours to create this Monday?
Apparently, during the pandemic, so many people got used to yoga pants, that everything else became ‘hard pants’. I love it.