14Leading for Meaningfulness

This chapter will guide you in building a sense of meaningfulness in your team. As we discussed in chapters 2 and 3, it is the pull of a meaningful work purpose that initiates the rest of the self-management process. So ensuring a sense of meaningfulness is often a key place to begin leading for engagement.

The material in this chapter is organized around the five key building blocks of meaningfulness:

  • A noncynical climate
  • Clearly identified passions
  • An exciting vision
  • Relevant task purposes
  • Whole tasks

Each of these building blocks, when missing, will create an obstacle to meaningfulness. You can use this set of building blocks as a diagnostic tool to troubleshoot the sources of low meaningfulness in your team ...

Get Intrinsic Motivation at Work, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.