November 1, 2022 • 27 mins
Does your work feel like a job, a career, or a calling? Barry has done extensive research on these three attitudes toward work, and he explains what they mean and how they can impact satisfaction with your work life.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history
examined and science explained. This is one day university. Welcome.
(00:36):
You're listening to the Happiness Formula. I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli.
Last time, Barry taught us why we can't just incentivize
people to do good work. Today he uncovers the secrets
of effective motivation based on research, and he talks about
how to answer those eternal questions that plague students and
(00:57):
adults alike, what's my calling? Do I have one? And
how do I find it? Here? There? So I hope
you're convinced that good work is wise work. And what
we're going to talk about now is what some of
(01:21):
the attributes are of good work and what role we
as individuals can play in making our work good. A
lot of what I talked to you about today derives
from research done by a colleague of mine named Amy
res Nwski, and she and I have worked together on
(01:43):
some of the studies I'm going to talk to you about.
But the question is, when we're looking at work and
deciding that it's a good good work or not, is
it a characteristic of the work, is it a characteristic
of the worker, of the attitude people bring to their work,
(02:03):
or is it some combination of both. And what we'll
see is that there are certain kinds of jobs that
it's very hard to turn into good jobs. But there's
a lot that we as individuals can do to make
bad work into at least better work. So let's talk
first about a distinction that Amy and I made some
(02:29):
years ago between three different attitudes people might have towards
their work. I'll read you a scenario. Anderson works to
earn enough money to support her life outside her of
her job. If Anderson were financially secure, she would no
longer continue with this current line of work, but she
(02:52):
would really rather be doing something else instead. Anderson's job
is basically a necessity of life, a lot like breathing
or sleeping. She often wishes the time would pass more quickly.
At work, Anderson greatly anticipates weekends and vacation. If she
lived her life over again, Anderson would probably not go
(03:16):
into the same line of work. Anderson would not encourage
friends or her children to enter this line of work.
She's very eager to retire. So this is a description
of a made up person named Anderson, and the description
is meant to capture an attitude towards work that work
(03:37):
is a job. Work is all about the paycheck. Now
let's consider a different scenario. This is Brady. Brady basically
enjoys work, but doesn't expect to be in this current
job five years from now. Instead, Brady plans to move
(03:59):
on to a better, higher level job. Brady has several
goals for the future, pining to the positions she would
eventually like to hold. Sometimes Brady's work seems like a
waste of time, but Brady knows that she must do
sufficiently well in this current position in order to move on.
Brady can't wait to get a promotion. For Brady, a
(04:22):
promotion means recognition of good work and is a sign
of success in competition with coworkers. So this scenario is
meant to capture an attitude toward work as a career
rather than as a job. A job is doing the
same thing day after day, week after week, year after year,
(04:43):
whereas if you have a career, you're on a trajectory.
You're going somewhere. The work will get better, the work
will get more important, the compensation will get better. The
reason you're doing. What you're doing today is because you're
imagining that it's a step to doing something different and
more important tomorrow. Now. People who have studied attitudes towards
(05:05):
work have made this kind of distinction between jobs and
careers for many, many years. What a man I did
is at a third category of attitude toward work, and
I'll read you this scenario. Kramer's work is one of
the most important parts of her life. Kramer is very
(05:26):
pleased to be in this line of work because what
she does for a living is a vital part of
who she is. It is one of the first things
Kramer talks to people about. Kramer tends to take work
home and on vacations too. The majority of Kramer's friends
are from where she works, and Kramer belongs to several
organizations and clubs relating to her work. Kramer feels good
(05:49):
about work because she loves it and because she thinks
it makes the world a better place. Kramer would encourage
friends and children to enter this line of work. Kramer
would be pretty upset if forced to stop working, and
she is not part purely looking forward to retirement. So
(06:11):
this third attitude we described as having the attitude that
work is a calling, and the word calling originated in
a kind of religious context as being called by God
to do this, that or some other thing. And in
this description, work is so central to who the person
(06:33):
is that she couldn't imagine doing anything else. Retirement is
not on the screen. She gets enormous satisfaction and fulfillment
out of being on the job every day, and she
doesn't need to be on a trajectory of increased status
and increased salary. So, just to turn this into a list,
(06:57):
if you have a job, you work for pay. Work
is a necessity of life. You would stop in a
minute if you could. You would do something else if
given a chance. You can't wait for the weekend t
g I F. You're eager to retire, and you wouldn't
encourage your friends or your children to do what you do.
(07:18):
If you have a career, work is enjoyable, but you
expect to be moving on to something better. Your goals
have to do with your trajectory uh, and you can't
wait to get a promotion. And if you have a calling,
work is one of the most important parts of your life.
You're pleased to be doing this kind of work. It's
(07:39):
a vital part of your identity. You take work home
and on vacations. Many of your friends are from the workplace.
You belong to several organizations and clubs relating to your work.
You think your work makes the world a better place.
You would encourage your friends and your children to do
this kind of work, and you're not looking forward to retire.
(08:03):
So this third category job career calling, introduces um something
about the motivation that people bring with them to the workplace.
And I guess it's obvious from the description that people
who feel called to do the work they do get
(08:24):
much more satisfaction out of it than people who are
simply working for a paycheck. And when we did the
research on this, we found that for most people there,
orientation to work was unambiguous, in the sense that some
people thought what they were doing was a job, some
(08:47):
people thought that what they were doing was a career,
and some people thought that what they were doing was
a calling. But interestingly, when we did research with people
all of whom were doing the same job, about a
third of them thought it was a job, about a
third of them thought it was a career, and about
a third of them thought it was a calling. And
(09:09):
what this suggests is that to some degree, it's less
about the work you're doing and more about the attitude
you bring to the work you're doing. Nominally, all of
these people are doing the same work, and yet their
attitudes towards it are quite different. And it turns out
that your attitude towards your work matters. What we find
(09:32):
is that if you think your work is a calling,
you do better work, you get more satisfaction out of
your work, you're more satisfied with your life in general,
and you have better physical health. In other words, having
work that is a calling is good for you, and
(09:54):
it's good for the people who you work for, for
the customers you sell to, for the clients you serve. Now,
what does it take for work to be a calling?
Several things are required. Uh, you know, it's not easy
to work in a call center answering I rate calls
(10:15):
from people who can't get their software to work, and
somehow convince yourself that you're that you are called to
help people use their word processing software or their Internet
access software. It's not impossible, but it's hard. Whereas if
you're a brain surgeon, it's not so hard to convince
(10:36):
yourself that you have a calling. Nonetheless, what we think
is true is that in order to think you have
a calling, you need to have a sense of the
purpose of the work you do and of the organization
you do it for. You need to have a sense
of partnership. You're not simply being given a list of
(10:58):
instructions to follow. Instead, you have a fair amount of discretion,
an autonomy, and you work with your managers, not for
your managers. And you need to have a sense that, uh,
what exactly you do in the course of a work
(11:21):
day or a work week is to a large degree
up to you. In other words, you need to be
working in a workplace that seems to encourage and nurture
the use of practical wisdom in doing your job. If
you're a hospital janitor and you've got that long list
(11:41):
of duties that I talked to you about several lectures ago,
and you've got a supervisor walking around behind you and
making sure that you do all of the items on
the list and nothing else, then it's going to be
pretty hard for you to have the attitude that your
work is participating in an or an institution that cures
(12:07):
disease and ease is suffering. If, however, you're working as
a janitor and you have a fair amount of discretion
and control over how you spend your day so that
you can try to cheer up patients. You can try
to make patients relatives feel a bit more comfortable. You
can help nurses as they discharge some of their duties
(12:30):
with individual patients. If you've got the discretion to do
that kind of work as part of your job, even
though it's not part of your job description, well then
your attitude towards your work as a janitor will be
or can be very different. Almost any work then can
(12:52):
be a calling, even if you're working retail in a
shopping mall. If your attitude is that your job is
to sell as much stuff as possible, then chances are
it's a job. If your attitude is that everyone who
comes into the store has a problem and your job
(13:12):
is to help them solve the problem, then it's not
so hard to imagine feeling that what you're doing is
a calling. People leave the store in better shape than
they were in when they came in. Now it doesn't
have to be that you're making a major change in
people's lives. It can be a minor change, But minor
(13:32):
improvements in the lives of several hundred people every week
is not a bad thing to show for a a
work week or even a work life. Mike, here, did
you find yourself relating to Anderson, Brady or Cramer when
it comes to your own work life? Do you have
(13:53):
a job, a career or calling. We'll take a quick break,
but when we come back, how companies can miss the
mark when it comes to inspiring their teams and hiring
the people. What doesn't make worker calling is an inspiring
(14:20):
message from the CEO at the annual shareholders meeting about
how the company is there to serve customers, clients, shareholders
and stakeholders. After which nothing that the company does is
true to that inspiring message from the CEO. In fact,
(14:43):
often what happens when CEOs make these speeches is it
creates a kind of cynicism in the workforce because they
know that their day to day activities have nothing to
do with this lofty vision that the CEO just expressed. Instead,
what's required is that somehow the lofty message from the
(15:05):
CEO gets translated filters down into every aspect of the system,
so that the instructions your managers give you about how
to do your job are designed to achieve the very
same goals that the CEO articulated at the annual shareholders meeting.
(15:27):
Often the CEO will say, we are here to say
it's a you know, a major bank. We are here
to help finance new businesses, to help people buy houses, uh,
and to help people say for their retirement. We serve
the community. And then the actual behavior of the bank,
you're they're charging fees to people for services that at
(15:49):
weren't actually provided, they're opening accounts that people don't even
know they have, they're basically committing larceny against their customers.
Then all you do is create cynicism. But if this
message that you are a bank that is there to
serve the community is reflected in how the loan officers
(16:10):
at the local branch act and how the tellers at
the local branch act, and customers are treated well and
helped rather than cheated well, then even though you're working
as a teller in a bank, you can feel called
to the work that you do because of the role
that you play in serving the community. And we see
(16:34):
this um the Volvo the car company some years ago
um you started showing testimonials from owners of all those
who talked about how their lives were spared in serious
car crashes. Volvo was of course, always reputed to be
(16:54):
the safest of cars, basically built like a tank. A
medical device maker name called Medtronic has showed testimonials of
patients whose lives were saved by some of these medical
devices uh and these patients made little speeches at holiday parties,
(17:15):
And this of course inspired the people who worked for
this company because they could see what the mission of
the company was and how life improving their work was
if they did their work well. Adam granted with college
students who were trying to get alumni to make contributions
(17:36):
to a scholarship fund, and a five minute presentation by
a recent graduate who had only been able to go
to this institution because of a scholarship dramatically motivated the callers,
and they got three times as much in contributions from
alumni as they as another group that hadn't heard this
(18:00):
speech from a recent graduate. So the point here is
not simply that you have a mission that improves welfare,
but that you are public and articulate about that mission
and that you make sure that the mission is communicated
all the way up and down the chain of employees.
(18:22):
And when you do that, even people who show up
for work every day to do something fairly mundane can
feel like what they're doing is a calling and not
merely a job to pay the bills. Interestingly, Amy and
I did a study of west Point cadets. West Point,
(18:44):
you know, trains people who go on to become officers
in the U. S. Army. It's a very rigorous, high
quality college admission. There is no tuition. If you get in,
it's free, uh and you in addition to studying the
academic subjects that people study at universities, you also learn
(19:08):
how to be an officer in the military. And you're
required to serve five years after you graduate from west Point.
That's the way you pay back your free college tuition.
So we studied about twelve thousand west Point cadets, and
we had information that west Point collects about their reasons
(19:33):
for coming to west Point, about their demographics, their race,
their gender, their ethnicity, their family income and stuff like that,
and what was the primary motivation for coming. Some students
came to west Point and said, I want to go
to west Point because it's free college. I want to
(19:56):
go to west Point because I'm going to learn skills
that will enable me to get a great job after
I leave the Army. I want to go to west
Point because I'll make good connections with other people that
will help me in my life later on. And other
people gave reasons for coming to west Point that had
to do with I want to serve my country. I
(20:19):
want to be part of a a respected organization that's
larger than i am. I want to be loyal to
the United States and do my part. I want to
defend the homeland, those sorts of things that are more
sort of intrinsically connected to being a soldier. And so
we had all these eighteen year olds who entered West
(20:43):
Point for a wide variety of different reasons, and the
question we asked was, does the reason people have for
going to west Point affect a how successful they are
at West Point and be how likely they are to
stay in the Army after they've done their five years
(21:05):
of military service. And what we found is that if
you go to west Point because it's going to get
you a good job, or you're going to make connections,
or you're gonna learn skills that will be very remunerative
in later life. You are a worse student at west
Point then if you go to west Point to serve
(21:28):
your country. If you go to west Point because you're
hoping to get a better job later on, you are
less likely to stay in the army after your five
years required services over than if you go to west
Point because you want to serve your country. If you
go to west Point for instrumental reasons, you are less
(21:51):
likely to get recommended for early promotion then if you
go to west Point because you want to serve your country.
In other words, the reasons people have as eighteen year
olds for entering west Point Point cast a shadow on
what they are like at West Point and after. In
(22:11):
some cases, we have information about these students as eighteen
year olds and then track them until they're in their
early thirties, and their reasons for entering West Point at
eighteen give us useful information about what they're going to
be like as soldiers or not when they're thirty one.
(22:33):
So reasons matter, and having good reasons for engaging in
an activity, it turns out, makes you better at that
activity than having less good reasons for engaging in the activity.
And what means good reasons and bad reasons. Well, good
(22:53):
reasons are reasons that are sort of intrinsically connected to
the activity. Serving your country, leading others, defending the homeland.
All of those are intrinsically connected to serving in the military,
learning a skill. There are other places you could go
and learn a skill, making connections. There are other places
you could go to make connections, so those are not
(23:15):
internally connected to going to West Point and serving in
the army. And external reasons are less effective motivators than
internal reasons, and it's not hard to see why this
would be true. Suppose you want to improve your golf game.
(23:37):
If your motivation is to become a better golfer, you
will practice assiduously. Uh work on various aspects of your game,
read about how to be a better golfer, watch videos
about being a better golfer. You do all of those
things to improve your golf game. What you won't do
(24:00):
is cheat on your scorecard and say you shot a
seventy for when in fact you shot an eighty one.
Why won't you do that? You won't do that because
the score on the scorecard is not a reflection of
how good a golfer you are unless you're honest about
the score on the scorecard. So if your motivation is
(24:21):
to impress other people, then you might cheat on your scorecard.
If your motivation is to become a better golfer, than
when you cheat on the scorecard, the only person you're
cheating is yourself. And so it seems obvious that if
you have the right reasons for wanting to be a
better golfer, you will almost certainly become a better golfer
(24:42):
than you will if you have the wrong reasons. And
the Jeffrey Feffer, a person I mentioned to you a
few lectures ago in talking about writing about how companies
should make hiring decisions, said something that is quite counterintuitive
(25:02):
until you think about it, and when you start to
think about it, it's like, duh, yeah, that's exactly the
right thing to do. Here's what he said. He said,
there are some things that we know how to teach
people to do. We know how to teach people to
do spreadsheet analysis. We know how to teach people to
(25:22):
write code. Presumably we know how to teach people to
do accounting audits. There are other things we don't know
how to teach people. We don't know how to teach
people to have integrity. We don't know how to teach
people to have commitment. We don't know how to teach
people to have empathy. I mean, maybe somebody knows how
(25:45):
to teach these things to people, but it's a lot
harder to teach those attributes, those character traits than it
is to teach people how to do an audit. And
his suggestion is that companies should hire people on the
basis of attributes they don't know how to teach, and
and teach the skills they do know how to teach.
(26:09):
This is, of course the opposite of what most companies do.
Most companies hire people who already know how to do
spreadsheet analysis so that they can be adding productivity to
the company h day one on the job. They don't
worry so much about the characters traits that are going
to matter in the long term. So his point is
(26:31):
higher good people and then teach them the skills, instead
of hiring people who have skills and then hoping that
they're good. As I say, this is counterintuitive until somebody
says it. He said it, and it was like the
scales were removed from my eyes because I think that
what he said is exactly right. We want to hire
(26:53):
people who feel called to do the work that we're
going to be asking them to do. So the job
is just a job. I mean it could be, but
if you really want to feel better about your life,
finding a way to connect your job to your calling
(27:14):
is a great way to do it. I hope you
join us next time when Barry explains how to craft
your job. The Happiness Formula from One Day University is
a production of I Heart Podcasts and School of Humans.
If you're enjoying the show, leave a review in your
favorite podcast app, and check out the Curiosity Audio Network
(27:37):
for podcasts covering history, pop culture, true crime, and more.
School of Humans
Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history
examined and science explained. This is one day university. Welcome.
(00:36):
You're listening to the Happiness Formula. I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli.
Last time, Barry taught us why we can't just incentivize
people to do good work. Today he uncovers the secrets
of effective motivation based on research, and he talks about
how to answer those eternal questions that plague students and
(00:57):
adults alike, what's my calling? Do I have one? And
how do I find it? Here? There? So I hope
you're convinced that good work is wise work. And what
we're going to talk about now is what some of
(01:21):
the attributes are of good work and what role we
as individuals can play in making our work good. A
lot of what I talked to you about today derives
from research done by a colleague of mine named Amy
res Nwski, and she and I have worked together on
(01:43):
some of the studies I'm going to talk to you about.
But the question is, when we're looking at work and
deciding that it's a good good work or not, is
it a characteristic of the work, is it a characteristic
of the worker, of the attitude people bring to their work,
(02:03):
or is it some combination of both. And what we'll
see is that there are certain kinds of jobs that
it's very hard to turn into good jobs. But there's
a lot that we as individuals can do to make
bad work into at least better work. So let's talk
first about a distinction that Amy and I made some
(02:29):
years ago between three different attitudes people might have towards
their work. I'll read you a scenario. Anderson works to
earn enough money to support her life outside her of
her job. If Anderson were financially secure, she would no
longer continue with this current line of work, but she
(02:52):
would really rather be doing something else instead. Anderson's job
is basically a necessity of life, a lot like breathing
or sleeping. She often wishes the time would pass more quickly.
At work, Anderson greatly anticipates weekends and vacation. If she
lived her life over again, Anderson would probably not go
(03:16):
into the same line of work. Anderson would not encourage
friends or her children to enter this line of work.
She's very eager to retire. So this is a description
of a made up person named Anderson, and the description
is meant to capture an attitude towards work that work
(03:37):
is a job. Work is all about the paycheck. Now
let's consider a different scenario. This is Brady. Brady basically
enjoys work, but doesn't expect to be in this current
job five years from now. Instead, Brady plans to move
(03:59):
on to a better, higher level job. Brady has several
goals for the future, pining to the positions she would
eventually like to hold. Sometimes Brady's work seems like a
waste of time, but Brady knows that she must do
sufficiently well in this current position in order to move on.
Brady can't wait to get a promotion. For Brady, a
(04:22):
promotion means recognition of good work and is a sign
of success in competition with coworkers. So this scenario is
meant to capture an attitude toward work as a career
rather than as a job. A job is doing the
same thing day after day, week after week, year after year,
(04:43):
whereas if you have a career, you're on a trajectory.
You're going somewhere. The work will get better, the work
will get more important, the compensation will get better. The
reason you're doing. What you're doing today is because you're
imagining that it's a step to doing something different and
more important tomorrow. Now. People who have studied attitudes towards
(05:05):
work have made this kind of distinction between jobs and
careers for many, many years. What a man I did
is at a third category of attitude toward work, and
I'll read you this scenario. Kramer's work is one of
the most important parts of her life. Kramer is very
(05:26):
pleased to be in this line of work because what
she does for a living is a vital part of
who she is. It is one of the first things
Kramer talks to people about. Kramer tends to take work
home and on vacations too. The majority of Kramer's friends
are from where she works, and Kramer belongs to several
organizations and clubs relating to her work. Kramer feels good
(05:49):
about work because she loves it and because she thinks
it makes the world a better place. Kramer would encourage
friends and children to enter this line of work. Kramer
would be pretty upset if forced to stop working, and
she is not part purely looking forward to retirement. So
(06:11):
this third attitude we described as having the attitude that
work is a calling, and the word calling originated in
a kind of religious context as being called by God
to do this, that or some other thing. And in
this description, work is so central to who the person
(06:33):
is that she couldn't imagine doing anything else. Retirement is
not on the screen. She gets enormous satisfaction and fulfillment
out of being on the job every day, and she
doesn't need to be on a trajectory of increased status
and increased salary. So, just to turn this into a list,
(06:57):
if you have a job, you work for pay. Work
is a necessity of life. You would stop in a
minute if you could. You would do something else if
given a chance. You can't wait for the weekend t
g I F. You're eager to retire, and you wouldn't
encourage your friends or your children to do what you do.
(07:18):
If you have a career, work is enjoyable, but you
expect to be moving on to something better. Your goals
have to do with your trajectory uh, and you can't
wait to get a promotion. And if you have a calling,
work is one of the most important parts of your life.
You're pleased to be doing this kind of work. It's
(07:39):
a vital part of your identity. You take work home
and on vacations. Many of your friends are from the workplace.
You belong to several organizations and clubs relating to your work.
You think your work makes the world a better place.
You would encourage your friends and your children to do
this kind of work, and you're not looking forward to retire.
(08:03):
So this third category job career calling, introduces um something
about the motivation that people bring with them to the workplace.
And I guess it's obvious from the description that people
who feel called to do the work they do get
(08:24):
much more satisfaction out of it than people who are
simply working for a paycheck. And when we did the
research on this, we found that for most people there,
orientation to work was unambiguous, in the sense that some
people thought what they were doing was a job, some
(08:47):
people thought that what they were doing was a career,
and some people thought that what they were doing was
a calling. But interestingly, when we did research with people
all of whom were doing the same job, about a
third of them thought it was a job, about a
third of them thought it was a career, and about
a third of them thought it was a calling. And
(09:09):
what this suggests is that to some degree, it's less
about the work you're doing and more about the attitude
you bring to the work you're doing. Nominally, all of
these people are doing the same work, and yet their
attitudes towards it are quite different. And it turns out
that your attitude towards your work matters. What we find
(09:32):
is that if you think your work is a calling,
you do better work, you get more satisfaction out of
your work, you're more satisfied with your life in general,
and you have better physical health. In other words, having
work that is a calling is good for you, and
(09:54):
it's good for the people who you work for, for
the customers you sell to, for the clients you serve. Now,
what does it take for work to be a calling?
Several things are required. Uh, you know, it's not easy
to work in a call center answering I rate calls
(10:15):
from people who can't get their software to work, and
somehow convince yourself that you're that you are called to
help people use their word processing software or their Internet
access software. It's not impossible, but it's hard. Whereas if
you're a brain surgeon, it's not so hard to convince
(10:36):
yourself that you have a calling. Nonetheless, what we think
is true is that in order to think you have
a calling, you need to have a sense of the
purpose of the work you do and of the organization
you do it for. You need to have a sense
of partnership. You're not simply being given a list of
(10:58):
instructions to follow. Instead, you have a fair amount of discretion,
an autonomy, and you work with your managers, not for
your managers. And you need to have a sense that, uh,
what exactly you do in the course of a work
(11:21):
day or a work week is to a large degree
up to you. In other words, you need to be
working in a workplace that seems to encourage and nurture
the use of practical wisdom in doing your job. If
you're a hospital janitor and you've got that long list
(11:41):
of duties that I talked to you about several lectures ago,
and you've got a supervisor walking around behind you and
making sure that you do all of the items on
the list and nothing else, then it's going to be
pretty hard for you to have the attitude that your
work is participating in an or an institution that cures
(12:07):
disease and ease is suffering. If, however, you're working as
a janitor and you have a fair amount of discretion
and control over how you spend your day so that
you can try to cheer up patients. You can try
to make patients relatives feel a bit more comfortable. You
can help nurses as they discharge some of their duties
(12:30):
with individual patients. If you've got the discretion to do
that kind of work as part of your job, even
though it's not part of your job description, well then
your attitude towards your work as a janitor will be
or can be very different. Almost any work then can
(12:52):
be a calling, even if you're working retail in a
shopping mall. If your attitude is that your job is
to sell as much stuff as possible, then chances are
it's a job. If your attitude is that everyone who
comes into the store has a problem and your job
(13:12):
is to help them solve the problem, then it's not
so hard to imagine feeling that what you're doing is
a calling. People leave the store in better shape than
they were in when they came in. Now it doesn't
have to be that you're making a major change in
people's lives. It can be a minor change, But minor
(13:32):
improvements in the lives of several hundred people every week
is not a bad thing to show for a a
work week or even a work life. Mike, here, did
you find yourself relating to Anderson, Brady or Cramer when
it comes to your own work life? Do you have
(13:53):
a job, a career or calling. We'll take a quick break,
but when we come back, how companies can miss the
mark when it comes to inspiring their teams and hiring
the people. What doesn't make worker calling is an inspiring
(14:20):
message from the CEO at the annual shareholders meeting about
how the company is there to serve customers, clients, shareholders
and stakeholders. After which nothing that the company does is
true to that inspiring message from the CEO. In fact,
(14:43):
often what happens when CEOs make these speeches is it
creates a kind of cynicism in the workforce because they
know that their day to day activities have nothing to
do with this lofty vision that the CEO just expressed. Instead,
what's required is that somehow the lofty message from the
(15:05):
CEO gets translated filters down into every aspect of the system,
so that the instructions your managers give you about how
to do your job are designed to achieve the very
same goals that the CEO articulated at the annual shareholders meeting.
(15:27):
Often the CEO will say, we are here to say
it's a you know, a major bank. We are here
to help finance new businesses, to help people buy houses, uh,
and to help people say for their retirement. We serve
the community. And then the actual behavior of the bank,
you're they're charging fees to people for services that at
(15:49):
weren't actually provided, they're opening accounts that people don't even
know they have, they're basically committing larceny against their customers.
Then all you do is create cynicism. But if this
message that you are a bank that is there to
serve the community is reflected in how the loan officers
(16:10):
at the local branch act and how the tellers at
the local branch act, and customers are treated well and
helped rather than cheated well, then even though you're working
as a teller in a bank, you can feel called
to the work that you do because of the role
that you play in serving the community. And we see
(16:34):
this um the Volvo the car company some years ago
um you started showing testimonials from owners of all those
who talked about how their lives were spared in serious
car crashes. Volvo was of course, always reputed to be
(16:54):
the safest of cars, basically built like a tank. A
medical device maker name called Medtronic has showed testimonials of
patients whose lives were saved by some of these medical
devices uh and these patients made little speeches at holiday parties,
(17:15):
And this of course inspired the people who worked for
this company because they could see what the mission of
the company was and how life improving their work was
if they did their work well. Adam granted with college
students who were trying to get alumni to make contributions
(17:36):
to a scholarship fund, and a five minute presentation by
a recent graduate who had only been able to go
to this institution because of a scholarship dramatically motivated the callers,
and they got three times as much in contributions from
alumni as they as another group that hadn't heard this
(18:00):
speech from a recent graduate. So the point here is
not simply that you have a mission that improves welfare,
but that you are public and articulate about that mission
and that you make sure that the mission is communicated
all the way up and down the chain of employees.
(18:22):
And when you do that, even people who show up
for work every day to do something fairly mundane can
feel like what they're doing is a calling and not
merely a job to pay the bills. Interestingly, Amy and
I did a study of west Point cadets. West Point,
(18:44):
you know, trains people who go on to become officers
in the U. S. Army. It's a very rigorous, high
quality college admission. There is no tuition. If you get in,
it's free, uh and you in addition to studying the
academic subjects that people study at universities, you also learn
(19:08):
how to be an officer in the military. And you're
required to serve five years after you graduate from west Point.
That's the way you pay back your free college tuition.
So we studied about twelve thousand west Point cadets, and
we had information that west Point collects about their reasons
(19:33):
for coming to west Point, about their demographics, their race,
their gender, their ethnicity, their family income and stuff like that,
and what was the primary motivation for coming. Some students
came to west Point and said, I want to go
to west Point because it's free college. I want to
(19:56):
go to west Point because I'm going to learn skills
that will enable me to get a great job after
I leave the Army. I want to go to west
Point because I'll make good connections with other people that
will help me in my life later on. And other
people gave reasons for coming to west Point that had
to do with I want to serve my country. I
(20:19):
want to be part of a a respected organization that's
larger than i am. I want to be loyal to
the United States and do my part. I want to
defend the homeland, those sorts of things that are more
sort of intrinsically connected to being a soldier. And so
we had all these eighteen year olds who entered West
(20:43):
Point for a wide variety of different reasons, and the
question we asked was, does the reason people have for
going to west Point affect a how successful they are
at West Point and be how likely they are to
stay in the Army after they've done their five years
(21:05):
of military service. And what we found is that if
you go to west Point because it's going to get
you a good job, or you're going to make connections,
or you're gonna learn skills that will be very remunerative
in later life. You are a worse student at west
Point then if you go to west Point to serve
(21:28):
your country. If you go to west Point because you're
hoping to get a better job later on, you are
less likely to stay in the army after your five
years required services over than if you go to west
Point because you want to serve your country. If you
go to west Point for instrumental reasons, you are less
(21:51):
likely to get recommended for early promotion then if you
go to west Point because you want to serve your country.
In other words, the reasons people have as eighteen year
olds for entering west Point Point cast a shadow on
what they are like at West Point and after. In
(22:11):
some cases, we have information about these students as eighteen
year olds and then track them until they're in their
early thirties, and their reasons for entering West Point at
eighteen give us useful information about what they're going to
be like as soldiers or not when they're thirty one.
(22:33):
So reasons matter, and having good reasons for engaging in
an activity, it turns out, makes you better at that
activity than having less good reasons for engaging in the activity.
And what means good reasons and bad reasons. Well, good
(22:53):
reasons are reasons that are sort of intrinsically connected to
the activity. Serving your country, leading others, defending the homeland.
All of those are intrinsically connected to serving in the military,
learning a skill. There are other places you could go
and learn a skill, making connections. There are other places
you could go to make connections, so those are not
(23:15):
internally connected to going to West Point and serving in
the army. And external reasons are less effective motivators than
internal reasons, and it's not hard to see why this
would be true. Suppose you want to improve your golf game.
(23:37):
If your motivation is to become a better golfer, you
will practice assiduously. Uh work on various aspects of your game,
read about how to be a better golfer, watch videos
about being a better golfer. You do all of those
things to improve your golf game. What you won't do
(24:00):
is cheat on your scorecard and say you shot a
seventy for when in fact you shot an eighty one.
Why won't you do that? You won't do that because
the score on the scorecard is not a reflection of
how good a golfer you are unless you're honest about
the score on the scorecard. So if your motivation is
(24:21):
to impress other people, then you might cheat on your scorecard.
If your motivation is to become a better golfer, than
when you cheat on the scorecard, the only person you're
cheating is yourself. And so it seems obvious that if
you have the right reasons for wanting to be a
better golfer, you will almost certainly become a better golfer
(24:42):
than you will if you have the wrong reasons. And
the Jeffrey Feffer, a person I mentioned to you a
few lectures ago in talking about writing about how companies
should make hiring decisions, said something that is quite counterintuitive
(25:02):
until you think about it, and when you start to
think about it, it's like, duh, yeah, that's exactly the
right thing to do. Here's what he said. He said,
there are some things that we know how to teach
people to do. We know how to teach people to
do spreadsheet analysis. We know how to teach people to
(25:22):
write code. Presumably we know how to teach people to
do accounting audits. There are other things we don't know
how to teach people. We don't know how to teach
people to have integrity. We don't know how to teach
people to have commitment. We don't know how to teach
people to have empathy. I mean, maybe somebody knows how
(25:45):
to teach these things to people, but it's a lot
harder to teach those attributes, those character traits than it
is to teach people how to do an audit. And
his suggestion is that companies should hire people on the
basis of attributes they don't know how to teach, and
and teach the skills they do know how to teach.
(26:09):
This is, of course the opposite of what most companies do.
Most companies hire people who already know how to do
spreadsheet analysis so that they can be adding productivity to
the company h day one on the job. They don't
worry so much about the characters traits that are going
to matter in the long term. So his point is
(26:31):
higher good people and then teach them the skills, instead
of hiring people who have skills and then hoping that
they're good. As I say, this is counterintuitive until somebody
says it. He said it, and it was like the
scales were removed from my eyes because I think that
what he said is exactly right. We want to hire
(26:53):
people who feel called to do the work that we're
going to be asking them to do. So the job
is just a job. I mean it could be, but
if you really want to feel better about your life,
finding a way to connect your job to your calling
(27:14):
is a great way to do it. I hope you
join us next time when Barry explains how to craft
your job. The Happiness Formula from One Day University is
a production of I Heart Podcasts and School of Humans.
If you're enjoying the show, leave a review in your
favorite podcast app, and check out the Curiosity Audio Network
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