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T oday, most high-achieving professionals want impact. They want to leverage their skills, talents, assets, gifts, and experiences to make a difference and leave a legacy at the office and beyond. Why is work today so unfulfilling and how can we change that? Let’s set our sights on having an impact and figure out a way to get there. Reaching our personal peak (Part 2)
experience, I’ve developed the following hierarchy for work-related motivation as illustrated in the image on the next page. A summary of these needs and how they track with our human needs (See Part 1 of this series for more on this) is presented below: ❚ ❚ Basic competence and readiness need. Our general ability to work and maintain employment. To do so, we must be sufficiently advanced in satisfying our overall human needs. “Early in our careers we strive to ‘master our craft’ and ‘make our name.’ Later, we strive to ‘make a difference’ and ‘leave a legacy.’”
This is not only possible – especially in the AEC industry. It can be a profitable strategy for leaders and organizations in terms of growth and employee engagement, recruitment, and retention. To achieve impact, however, leaders and organizations must decide whether they are more about their projects or their people. An important consideration is to understand how work and workplace motivations are, and can be, designed to align with our human needs. NEW RULES. Business – especially today – is about people. Whether our organization is large or small, its success rests on people serving people. So, it only makes sense that our needs to thrive at work would align with our needs to do so as a human. Based on my work, research, and direct
Peter Atherton
See PETER ATHERTON, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER November 11, 2019, ISSUE 1320
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