Labor Matters

This past Monday was Labor Day. I spent it working as usual. I’d like to share a little something about work, mainly about a perspective that, if the work matters, it doesn’t matter if it’s unpleasant.

I’ve just finished reading Zach Mercurio’s book The Power of Mattering. The book is mainly about showing other people that they matter, and how to do that, particularly as a business leader, although the principles apply to parents, friends, and everybody. Near the end is a section called “Develop a ‘So-That’ Mindset.” Mercurio tells a story of someone he met as a doctoral student:

When I was a doctoral student, one of the first research interviews I conducted was with Susan, a sought-after cleaner in the housing department at the local university. Her interview reflects much of what researchers know about how people perceive their work as meaningful, and themselves as mattering. I asked Susan, “What part of your job is the most meaningful to you?” Without pause, she described cleaning the university dormitory bathrooms on Monday morning. To me that sounded extremely unpleasant. She admitted it was, but then pivoted, saying, “I’m cleaning their bathroom so they don’t get sick. You know?”

Susan told me that she regularly uses this “so-that” framing, repeating the statement to herself as she’s doing the task: “I’m cleaning this bathroom so that these kids don’t get sick.”

Later in our interview she recalled a blind student who lived in the dormitory. “When we cleaned her room, we had to make sure we put everything back when we vacuumed—make sure the trash can was in the same spot, and that nothing was moved—so that, when she would come back into her room, she would not trip over anything.”

Then he added this:

Susan’s story is also a reminder that what’s purposeful isn’t always pleasurable. Experiencing mattering has less to do with what we’re doing and more with how we see the impact of what we’re doing. Everything has a “so that.” If you look hard enough, you’ll see another human being at the end of almost every act.

That got my attention this week. It’s certainly true that not all work is pleasurable. There’s a saying that, if you find work you love, then it never feels like work. It’s a nice sentiment, but in real life work entails hard things. Sometimes the unpleasantness is icky or dirty-hands kind of work—like Susan’s cleaning dorm bathrooms. Sometimes it’s mundane, boring tasks, like paperwork or billing, things that have to be done whether you like them or not. Sometimes it’s interpersonally unpleasant tasks like laying off employees or dealing with conflict within a team.

But if you have a larger picture, a “so-that” mindset, you can see the meaning that makes the unpleasant tasks worth doing.

To read the full article, follow link to Substack.