Page 51 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

THE WHY OF WORK

cooperative, and constructive. They had a clear line of sight
between how their actions could deliver company goals while
saving the jobs of people they cared about.
Because finding meaning at work is itself hard work, and
because meaning is very personal, we can’t promise leaders
easy methods for replacing deficit thinking with abundance
thinking. What we can offer leaders is a series of questions,
which we will explore in the next section. We hope these
questions will begin to structure conversations between
leaders and their multiple constituents—conversations about
what our organizations are trying to accomplish, why, and
what those efforts suggest about the meaning of our lives.
These meaning-exploring questions are intended to pro-
duce the following outcomes:

• • Increasing clarity about identity and signature strengths
• • Gaining a sense of purpose to understand better what
motivates us
• • Managing work complexity through teamwork
• • Replacing social isolation with positive work settings
• • Identifying and responding to challenges that we care
about and that engage us
• • Growing from change by learning and becoming
resilient
• • Building sources of delight and civility into our work
routines

. . . and do all this within the fiscal constraints that help
keep us honest about whether we are adding real value for
customers, shareholders, and communities.

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