Why Your Work Doesn't Seem to Count
Why Your Work Doesn't Seem to Count
Your job requires clear accounting for the tasks you do. Too often these charting systems miss human encounter, human care.
You spend a lot of time and energy charting your work.
The good thing about that sort of task-tallying is obvious: charts make your work visible to your company’s leadership.
But, geez, wouldn’t it be nice if charts could show how your work actually works? Wouldn’t it be nice if charts could somehow show how you’re engaging and caring for people’s feelings? What people expect. What people want. What people fear. What people love. Researchers call that dimension of your job emotional labor. It’s the sort of work you do when your feelings are here and your communication has to be there.
Sure, Mr. Pissed-Off Person, I would be happy to help you find the toilet paper in Aisle 29.
I’m making emotional labor sound like a bad thing—because it really can burn a body out. But emotional labor is also a life-giving part of a lot of jobs. As Allison Pugh’s article in Slate put it just this week, “By some accounts, the U.S. is moving from a ‘thinking economy’ to a ‘feeling economy,’ as many deploy their emotional antennae to bear witness and reflect back what they understand so that clients, patients, and students feel seen.”
Her just-published book’s subtitle calls this “The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World.” Human encounter. Human care. That’s the labor that gives meaning to your work.
But it’s awfully hard to chart the labor of human connection.
How Your Company Usually Pays Attention to Your Work
If you’ve been mode/switching with me for a while now, you won’t be surprised to hear me say that what’s wrong with most reporting systems is what’s wrong with our approaches to communication. For our purposes, let’s talk about two such approaches:
Informational model: When you do your work so that it can be easily charted, you do your work as a series of (what D. Graham Burnett calls) triggers and targets. The system triggers a task. You target the task. Then you report that sucker. Communication, in other words, is all about clear signaling from one part of a machine to another. Signals feel essential when the world’s moving fast. Signals can be mapped and charted with clarity and brevity.
Relational model: When you do your work to make connection possible, you engage a network of relationships. People show up at your counter or on your screen, and, suddenly, the work of connection is right in front of you. Companies don’t usually notice the labor of humans connecting to humans, because it’s hard to chart. It feels like a non sequitur, as if someone asks you for the time, and you hand them a cupcake.
A moment’s thought will make clear that we need both these approaches in every organization. Another moment’s thought will make clear which model tends to eliminate the other in our working communities.
How to Change the Way Your Company Notices Your Work
The mode/switches I recommend in this newsletter generally involve altering two things. Changing your mind, changing your behavior. Let’s talk about both as ways to change how your company notices what you do.
The first step is to change the way you pay attention to your work. That’s what I mean by changing your mind. Instead of noticing what charts help you see—how ahead of others or behind others you are—try shifting your attention to what’s happening between you and others.
Here’s what that feels like.
A few weeks ago, I was at the Common Ground Gathering, a conference in Indianapolis. Just before lunch, Vipin Thekk of Togetherness Practice told us to look around the room and meet someone’s eyes. It was a little uncomfortable. I’d been comfortably in spectator mode, and suddenly I was a participant. But the guy whose gaze I met turned out to be a Black 20-something Muslim from Philadelphia. You probably know I’m a white 50-something Christian from Grand Rapids. He and I could hardly have been more different.
But we sat down next to each other and asked some open-ended questions. As we talked, something palpable opened between us. It was a commonality that felt like it was there before we sat down together.
It reminded me of that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Indy steps out on what looks like empty air and finds a footbridge has been there the whole time.
But in order to see that kind of commonness in your work, you have to stop thinking about signals of progress and markers status—and start thinking about what’s happening between you and others. It’ll feel like you’re stepping out on empty air.
But the better you get at noticing that betweenness, the better you’ll be at talking about the role of connection your work.
The next step is to change the way you talk about your work.
Turn a broadcast into a conversation. Instead of simply sending your boss charts to prove you’re doing your work, try opening conversations about the work you’re doing. Especially the work of human connection. But sometimes you also have to…
Turn a conversation into a broadcast. Talking about the true work of human connection that your job requires might require you interrupt the usual signal paths in your company with some good old fashioned noisemaking. You might need to blare a little. But take heart: a little courageous unilateral communication can help your working community notice what would otherwise remain inaudible.
How to Count Your Work in a World of Charts
One big reason we create so many charts is we want our work to count. But another reason is, we need energy. And we have a hunch that charting things will motivate us. Look how many things I’ve ticked off my to-do list! Look how far I’ve come!
At the same time, nothing is so energizing as your relationship with your coworkers. Nothing is so life-giving as community with your clients.
You can’t chart that stuff. It’s like the psalm puts it: “Taste and see!” The power, the spirit, the breath, that comes with people-care is a force you can learn to taste and see and share. And doing that, will show you a whole new way to count your work.
Listen While You Work
This week, as I was writing this piece, my thinking was guided by Ezra Klein’s interview with D. Graham Burnett, “Your Mind Is Being Fracked.” You should listen to the conversation! And when you do, you’ll recognize that what I’m trying to say about communication, they’re saying about attention. To strengthen your attention, here’s a Hannah playlist centered on music for better focus.