Three Powerful Steps to See How Your Work Makes a Difference

Work, career, profession is important to everyone.  

We all need to pursue something larger than ourselves to feel connected to a wider purpose, to feel connected to other people and (most importantly) to foster connection to ourselves in our work.

While this connection is important, it can also be very illusive; it’s difficult to see how completing a task, or a sitting in a repetitive meeting, is really moving the bar forward for your organization (or your career).

Fundamentally, your work is important (why would someone be paying you to do it if it wasn’t?).

Here are some strategies to connect more deeply to the many ways your work makes a difference.

1. Listen to the stories.  Your organization serves a purpose and a specific group of people (be they investors or end-clients using your products/services).  Deep organizations with complex hierarchies and highly matrix-ed working environments don’t often give every employee visibility to the ways these clients benefit – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t being collected somewhere.  Check in with your sales and marketing team (do some internal networking) and ask to hear client feedback and stories on the ways your organization has impacted them by meeting their needs.
   
2. Thread the stories back.  When you have a better idea how the organization makes a difference, the next step is to connect how what you do at work supports that difference.  On the surface it may be difficult to see how attending your weekly team meetings contributes, so thread it back.  Attending that weekly meeting ensures your team stays in alignment with organizational needs, allowing you to be informed and your team to make priority calls on what work gets completed, when and how.  You are in a better position to ask questions, and to highlight areas of concern, or impact, in the work you do. Maybe that team meeting doesn’t have a direct correlation to those client stories, but without it, your team would not be as effective in supporting them.
   
3.  Look at it in reverse.  If you are still unclear how your work makes a difference think about it another way; what would happen if the work you do just didn’t happen?  What would be the impact then?  Think of this not in terms of someone else having to pick up the slack (although that is an impact) but more in terms of the down-flow issues this would create in the way your organization operates.  Would not having this work done create a capacity issue?  Would your works’ absence mean there will be health and safety concerns?  Can all the right decisions get made without your works’ contributions?  There is always an impact, what would it be?
   

It’s important to remember that how you are recognized for the work you do is different from the value of the work you do; they are not always equal or compatible.

Both are key parts of meaning, but in better understanding how your work makes a difference, you are able to connect to the value and meaning of it (absent of others thoughts, opinions and actions).

This is a vital first step, because if you can’t connect to the difference your work makes for yourself, no amount of positive feedback, or recognition, will make you feel good about yourself in your work.

Not getting the recognition from others you deserve at work?  

Giving a voice to the value of your work, using concrete examples, empowers your ability to foster the respect your work deserves from others

Learn how to influence without authority, ensuring your contributions are noticed
for all the right reasons. 
More impact, more confidence,
less work.

Power Me Up!