FINDING MEANING
IN WORK
MARY C. GENTILE
Work is a fundamental part of the human experience. Most adults say they spend
the majority of their time on various work activities. This applies equally to paid
work that requires professional training, to unskilled labor, to the unpaid work
of maintaining a home and raising children. People also may consider it work to
study a new subject or learn a new skill. Work can be a fulfilling source of dignity
and can bring us joy; it also can be demeaning, frustrating, and demoralizing.
Work can bring meaning to our lives or be something we do primarily to earn
money for housing and to put food on the table. It can be something we look
forward to each workday, or something we can’t wait to escape. Regardless of
how we experience work, we spend a large percentage, if not the majority, of our
adult lives doing it.
Given this reality—that we spend a
large portion of our lives engaged in some
sort of work—it seems fair to conclude that
people who have work that they experience
as meaningful and fairly compensated will
be more engaged and more productive,
happier and less alienated, in their work
lives specifically and in their wider lives
more generally. At a time when so many
individuals appear to be feeling discon-
nected and underappreciated (consider the
“Great Resignation”) and therefore are sus-
ceptible to depression, believing false in-
formation, addictions, and even violent
behavior, it is critically important that
more people have access to meaningful
work. Accordingly, it is in the interest not
only of individuals but of the nations and
communities we live in, the organizations
where we work, and the economies to
which we contribute to strive to create such
meaningful work opportunities.
Government initiatives and organiza-
tional efforts to provide more meaningful
work have included increased access to
education and training, more apprentice-
ship opportunities, and so on. But it is also
critical to consider how we, individuals
and the wider society, define meaningful
work and how can we can make the work
we engage in, by choice and by necessity,
more meaningful.
I believe that finding meaning in our
work requires that we find ways to be and
to express our whole selves in our work.
This means finding work that we can be-
lieve at least does no harm, but also work
that in some way reflects the person we are.
This may be a work activity that enables us
to take pleasure in our craftsmanship or in
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the cleverness of our work product,
whether it is a well-prepared meal, a care-
fully arranged hotel room, a well-argued
legal brief, a flawless spreadsheet, or a
clever strategic plan. Or, we may find
meaning in our work by bringing our own
values to bear on the ways we interact with
our colleagues and customers or in the im-
pact we have on the organization’s deci-
sions. This last is the focus of my own life’s
work: finding ways to build a capacity for
effectively Giving Voice to Values (GVV).1
The foundational idea of my work in
GVV is that acting ethically feels more
possible and becomes more likely when we
frame it as aspirational—as finding ways
to act that are in keeping with our deepest
moral values—than when we frame it as
limiting or as putting boundaries around
what we are allowed to do. Acting ethically
becomes even more attractive when we see
it as entrepreneurial—as finding creative
ways to do what we think is right—than
when we see it as a set of constraints on
our actions or “thou shalt nots.”
Work feels most meaningful when we
see it as a way to express our individual
identity, rather than as a constricting
framework we must act within for the du-
ration of our workday. Of course, there are
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
some hugely important factors that are
typically controlled by our employers
and/or the regulations within which they
operate—compensation, working con-
ditions, even the variety of tasks. We can-
not underestimate the significance of these
factors, and it is essential that we work to
find public and private-sector, educational
and NGO initiatives and partnerships to
address them. Nevertheless, we do have a
great deal of control over our ability to
frame our work as self-expression. This is
where the lessons of GVV can be most
useful. GVV is basically a reframing. It re-
frames the idea of ethics education as
being less about rules and more about
tools; less about debating so-called ethical
dilemmas—as if acting on our values was
entirely a cognitive challenge to figure out
what the right thing to do may be—and
more about action planning and scripting
and peer coaching. Acting on our values is
often a matter of finding approaches that
feel feasible, and GVV is based on three
such reframings or reversals: GVV re-
verses “what” it is we are talking about
when we talk about values and ethics in
our work lives; it reverses “who” we think
we are talking to; and it reverses “how” we
have that conversation. Similarly, as I dis-
Mary C. Gentile is Creator and Director of Giving Voice to Values (GVV) (www.GivingVoiceTo-
ValuesTheBook.com), which was jointly launched by The Aspen Institute and Yale School of Man-
agement and hosted at Babson College for six years; it is now based at UVA Darden. This
pioneering curriculum for values-driven leadership has been piloted and/or presented at more than
1,400 sites globally and has been featured in the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Stanford
Social Innovation Review, McKinsey Quarterly, and more. A consultant, speaker, and author on
GVV, Gentile was formerly the Richard M. Waitzer Bicentennial Professor of Ethics at UVA Darden
and worked previously at the Harvard Business School.
© 2023 Mary C. Gentile
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Mary C. Gentile
cuss below, these three reversals can be
useful in finding ways to experience work
as personally meaningful, as a true expres-
sion of ourselves.
First, GVV reframes the “what” by
pointing out that, when we think about
values conflicts in our work lives, the typi-
cal approach has been to consider thorny
situations in which it is difficult to figure
out what the right and responsible thing to
do may be. GVV reverses this and suggests
that it is more impactful to consider those
many situations where we know what we
think the right thing to do is but may not
know how to get it done. In this way, we
shift our attention from the endless debate
about ethical dilemmas to situations where
most of us can agree that one course of ac-
tion is not appropriate and then move on
to discussing strategies and tactics for
doing the right thing.
If we were to apply this reframing to
the question of “what” to focus on in our
efforts to make our own work, whatever it
may be, feel more meaningful, the question
becomes less about the individual actions
we engage in and more about the wider,
deeper purpose of our work. For example,
I remember the waitress in Studs Terkel’s
classic book Working, who explained that
she took pride in her work, which she saw
as “bringing food to people”—a noble un-
dertaking. Interestingly, although we
might assume that this strategy is most rel-
evant for repetitive or so-called unskilled
labor (“Unskilled” is really a misnomer.
Any activity can be done well or poorly,
with great or little mindfulness.), it is just
as important for professions that require a
higher level of formal education. Often the
biggest errors and most devastating ethical
infractions occur when the worker in-
volved, despite their level of education or
professional credentials, loses sight of the
wider impact and purpose of their en-
deavors—such as the manager who focuses
only on the next quarterly results rather
than on the long-term viability of the firm
and the impact they have on their cus-
tomers.
Second, GVV reframes the “who” we
think we are talking to when we talk about
ethics and values in our organizations. It
points out that we typically assume that
ethics training is about focusing on bad ac-
tors by changing them or weeding them
out. GVV then reverses this by suggesting
that our development efforts should focus
on the majority of us who would like to act
in accordance with our ethical values but
who either do so incompetently or not at
all because we are not confident, skillful, or
practiced enough to be effective.2 If we
were to apply this reframing to whom we
should focus on in our efforts to make our
own work feel more meaningful, the ques-
tion would be how we find the other col-
leagues—perhaps a silent majority—who
care about the work, want to enjoy it, and
want to do it well because they can see the
wider purpose, or because they simply take
pleasure and find self-respect in doing a
job well. Finding and connecting with
those colleagues and making the wider ob-
jectives clear to them can make our work
experience more satisfying. GVV starts
with the assumption that we are not alone
in wishing to act on our values, but we
often don’t know that until we start making
our values more apparent through our
voice and our actions. We also won’t dis-
cover who wants to see their work become
more meaningful until we begin to talk
about it.
Finally, GVV reframes the question of
how we can act on our values more often
and more successfully by asking a new
question. Instead of asking “What is the
right thing to do in any particular situ-
ation?” GVV asks, “How can I get the right
thing done and done effectively?” The idea
is that we are more likely to say and do
things we have practiced, especially if we
have practiced them with others who stand
in for the individuals we will encounter in
the actual situations. This is about building
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Finding Meaning in Work
In presenting GVV, we do not mean to
suggest that the task of making work
meaningful falls solely to the individual
worker. This is emphatically not the case.
However, we will not be able to provide
truly meaningful, fulfilling work if we do
not help workers—all workers, at every
level—begin to feel empowered and able to
take control of their own experiences. No
degree, no organization or government
policy, no regulatory framework can en-
sure that work will satisfy the human need
to have a purpose and a positive impact if
we do not know what work can mean, if we
do not understand the degree to which we
have control, if we do not realize that we in
fact have more choices than we may think
we do. GVV is about helping individuals to
see those choices, and to see that one of the
most direct ways to find meaning in our
work and in our wider personal lives is to
feel that we are living in accord with our
deepest values. GVV helps to build that
ability.
1 Gentile, M. C. (2010). Giving voice to values:
How to speak your mind when you know
what’s right. Yale University Press; (2012).
Values-driven leadership development:
Where we have been and where we could
go. Organization Management Journal, 9(3),
188-196.
2 Dees, G., & Crampton, P. (1991). Shred
bargaining on the moral frontier: Toward a
theory of morality in practice. Business
Ethics Quarterly, 1(2), 135-167.
3 See http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-
voice-to-values.
a new habit, a “moral muscle memory” if
you will. If we apply this reframed “how”
question to making our own work feel
more meaningful, it becomes less about fo-
cusing on the limitations of our work and
more about looking for opportunities to
have a wider, more positive impact on our
customers and clients or on our co-
workers—and on ourselves. It also be-
comes about
for positive
looking
experiences and positive examples to learn
from and to multiply.
The GVV curriculum3 offers hundreds
of materials, including case studies that de-
scribe how individuals around the world
and across professions have effectively
voiced and acted on their values. GVV has
been shared and/or piloted in over 1,400
educational and business settings on all
seven continents, including the United
States, Europe, Africa, India, China, Aus-
tralia, Canada, Israel, and the United Arab
Emirates.
Designed for use in graduate business
school curricula, the GVV approach has
moved well beyond that. It has been used
in undergraduate, MBA, and executive
education in business schools around the
world and has been a featured part of the
United Nations Global Compact Principles
for Responsible Management Education
programming, which supported a GVV
curriculum development initiative on anti-
corruption in India. A similar region-spe-
cific curriculum development initiative in
Egypt was supported by the German Uni-
versity of Cairo and the International
Labor Organization. GVV is increasingly
being adapted for educational purposes
beyond business, including the military,
medicine, nursing, engineering, law, ac-
counting, and the liberal arts. Many com-
panies and organizations have piloted or
invited presentations on the GVV ap-
proach, including Lockheed Martin, Un-
ilever, the Aspen Institute, and the Mayo
Clinic.
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