Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Tamara Myles, a professor, researcher, author, and speaker who specializes in helping people unlock the power of meaningful work. She combines research in Positive Psychology with understanding human organizational challenges to assist companies in creating a workplace full of connection and fulfilment. Tamara shares over two decades of expertise with Sara as they explore themes from her new book, “Meaningful Work”.
Tamara explains the positive benefits and importance of having meaningful work in our lives. Not only organizational benefits but personal ones like feeling more fulfilled with a greater sense of belonging. What Tamara’s research has shown is that nearly 50% of our experience of meaning at work is related to what our leaders do or don’t do. She and Sara discuss how meaningful work as imparted by leaders needs to address the Three C’s: community, contribution, and challenge.
Sara and Tamara speak to how the Three C’s offer meaning at work to each generation, explore what each one looks like in action, and highlight beautiful examples of each one in practical application. How feedback is given and what details are offered add additional meaning for the recipient, and simple things like that can have a great positive impact. Tamara explains concepts like character strengths and the findings of her research that both drive her work and inspire her upcoming co-authored book. This episode is a guide to the necessity of finding or creating meaningful work for fulfilled lives.
About Tamara Myles:
As a speaker, author, professor, and entrepreneur, Tamara specializes in blending the art and science of human flourishing with practical strategies that drive innovation, resilience, and growth. Her mission is simple: to unlock the power of meaningful work to build cultures where people feel connected, challenged, and fulfilled.
For over two decades, Tamara has worked with leaders at organizations like Microsoft, KPMG, Best Buy, and MassMutual delivering engaging workshops, keynotes, and trainings that yield measurable business results. Her work combines pioneering research in Positive Psychology with a deep understanding of organizational challenges like employee engagement, retention, and productivity.
She is also the co-author of “Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee” (April 2025, PublicAffairs). This book brings together research and actionable strategies to inspire leaders to cultivate meaningful work at every level of their organization.
At Boston College, Tamara teaches future leaders about the science of flourishing organizations, and as a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, she continues to study how meaningful work drives performance and well-being. Her research—the first rigorous academic study of leadership practices that increase meaning at work—has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, and USA TODAY.
She believes workplaces are the key to human flourishing. When leaders make work meaningful, they unlock potential—not just for individuals, but for entire organizations.
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Resources discussed in this episode:
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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:
Tamara Myles
- Website: TamaraMyles.com
- Tamara Myles on LinkedIn
- Book: “Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee” by Wes Adams and Tamara Myles
- Book Website: MakeWorkMeaningful.com
Transcript
Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there! I’m Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I’m joined by Tamara Myles. Tamara is a professor, researcher, author, and international speaker with over two decades of experience helping leaders improve business performance. She is the author of ‘The Secret to Peak Productivity’ and her second book, ‘Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee’, is set to publish on April 1st, 2025. Tamara’s insights have been featured in leading publications such as Forbes, Fast Company, USA today, and Business Insider. She has worked with clients such as Microsoft, KPMG, MassMutual, and Google. Tamara has a master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches at Boston College and the University of Pennsylvania, sharing the science of human flourishing and flourishing organizations. Tamara lives outside of Boston with her husband and three teenage children. Tamara, I’m so excited to welcome you to my podcast today and to talk about your fascinating book on the importance of meaningful work. Welcome.
Tamara Myles: [00:02:02] Thank you so much for having me. I’m so delighted to be here.
Sara Sheehan: [00:02:05] Your research has so many practical and pragmatic applications, and the critical value of finding meaning really came into the forefront following the pandemic. Although much of it is often hidden, the driving factor for nearly every thriving employee in a high performing team, you found, is finding meaning at work. Based on your research, what results did you see in connection with meaning and individual and team performance?
Tamara Myles: [00:02:47] Meaningful work is so important. Like you said, I think the pandemic really changed how we work. Sometimes when we break routine it gives us a little space. I think during that time people really started questioning why we work and if what they do every day even matters. We spend about a third of our lives at work. We spend more time at work than we do with our family, our friends, and just about doing anything else. That time should feel meaningful to us. Meaning at work shouldn’t be your only source of meaning. Of course, we have community and our family and many other rich sources of meaning. But what we found is that when work is meaningful, we are more engaged, we are more productive, we are more likely to stay in the organization, we are more creative, we feel a higher sense of belonging, we have more friends. Meaningful work has a lot of positive benefits, not only for us as individuals, we feel more fulfilled, we feel a higher sense of meaning in life. A lot of individual benefits, but also organizational benefits. I think a key point, something really important to know, is that these positive benefits, they don’t just stay at work. When we experience work as meaningful, we bring those positive benefits home with us. It affects the wellbeing of our family, of our friends, of our communities. I truly believe that increasing our meaning at work and increasing our wellbeing at work is the most powerful lever. We have to increase wellbeing at scale globally. Because our workplaces are one of the last places where diverse people come together. People with different ideas, different experiences. If we can all together experience more meaning at work, we can bring that home with us. And those effects ripple out in big ways.
Sara Sheehan: [00:05:10] That’s tremendous. As a follow up, what have you found that individuals and teams that were not connected to meaning, what have your findings been in your research when you don’t have that connection?
Tamara Myles: [00:05:30] When we don’t experience meaning at work, we are much more likely to be looking for another job, much more likely to leave. We are much more likely to experience burnout. One of the key pieces of meaning at work is the sense of growth and development, that we’re being challenged to learn. Research shows that most burnout comes from feeling stagnant, from working really hard without experiencing your own personal growth. We are more likely to burnout, more likely to be looking for another job, more likely to not feel fulfilled or engaged, to not feel that we matter or that what we’re doing even matters.
Sara Sheehan: [00:06:18] This is very important to address in a workplace.
Tamara Myles: [00:06:22] Very important. I like to say that meaningful work is the upstream strategy that unlocks all the benefits that leaders really care about. Leaders are often trying to measure and increase productivity and engagement and retention and all those really important metrics. What we find is if they go upstream and they focus on making work meaningful as the cornerstone of their leadership strategy, all these other outcomes are results of experiencing meaning at work.
Sara Sheehan: [00:07:00] That’s very telling. It puts an exclamation point on why leaders need to focus on this and understand what tactics will actually work to move the needle in their workplace.
Tamara Myles: [00:07:15] Something that I like to say, we’re speaking at the rational kind of level, the intellectual level with the data. I would love to take a moment to do a little bit of a reflection. Maybe I’ll have you do this reflection. I would love for you to think about a time when work felt really meaningful. Whether at your current role or at a previous role, think about that specific moment. Not just broadly, but a real specific moment. Who were you with, what happened, what did you feel like? Then what did you feel like after, and did you do anything as a result of that? Are you willing to share that moment?
Sara Sheehan: [00:08:08] I have a number of different projects, and these are consulting engagements, where I was a replacement. I came into a situation where several people had been in the role prior to me, but hadn’t connected with leadership in a way that could move the needle forward on the plan and help the organization start to move toward adoption of new behavior changes and the plan of what they needed to actually implement. In those situations, I was able to come in and stabilize the relationship and get a plan in place that the client and leadership agreed with and wanted to move forward on. It was a very bonding experience with the client and with leadership, and it was extremely productive.
Tamara Myles: [00:09:20] It sounds like you not only felt meaning through the contribution and the impact you had because you were able to move the needle, but also through the relationship in the sense of community that you were able to build. I think that it’s really important to know the data and to know intellectually how important meaningful work is. I think we can all connect on an emotional level, too. When we pause and think about those experiences of meaning that we have felt and we have experienced in our own career and how great it feels. It’s these moments of meaning that add up to fuel us to continue doing the work that we’re doing, to continue making an impact. I think it’s great to know intellectually how important meaningful work is, but also to feel experientially the emotional value of meaningful work.
Sara Sheehan: [00:10:21] It goes beyond the independent experience and even the collective, when you look at a number of different experiences that were meaningful. It is definitely deeper than face value. It has a lasting impact on your perception of what you’re doing and the value that you’re providing. One of the fascinating points that I found in your research is that nearly 50% of an employee’s experience of meaning at work is tied to what their leaders do or fail to do. As you so astutely point out, I definitely agree that great leaders cultivate the conditions that the individuals and their teams need to thrive. With that question, can you provide a high level overview of how leaders can help their teams find meaning at work?
Tamara Myles: [00:11:20] Yes, absolutely. This was a really exciting finding for us because when we set out to do this study, we stood on the shoulders of giants. There’s many people who we deeply admire that do research on meaningful work that we learned from and drew from to do our study. Our study is the first one to look at the leadership impact. Most of the studies before ours were done from the individual perspective. How can I experience my own work as more meaningful? That’s really important because you have agency, there are some things you can do to experience more meaning at work. We were really curious about the leadership role and the leader’s impact. We thought that impact was significant, but we were pretty shocked about how significant and how important it is. Like you said, almost half of our experience of meaning at work is directly related to what our leaders do or don’t do. Even if we know the practices to foster more meaning individually, it’s really hard because we can only impact half of our experience. What we found, the practices that we found fall under what we call the three Cs. Community, contribution and challenge.
Tamara Myles: [00:12:38] Community is about understanding how I matter, feeling that I matter in the organization, that people care about me. That I belong, that I have a sense of belonging, that I have relationships at work. You mentioned earlier in your meaning story that you were able to build that relationship. This sense of community is foundational to meaningful work. The second C is contribution. Where community says ‘I matter here’, contribution says ‘my work matters here’. It’s understanding how what I do every day matters. What’s the impact that I’m having? That’s the second C, and the third C is challenge. Challenge says ‘my growth matters here’. Challenge is about learning, growing, and developing. As humans, we are wired for growth and we want to know that somebody believes in us and our growth and is giving us these opportunities to stretch and learn. There are practices under each ‘C’ that foster more meaning at work for individuals.
Sara Sheehan: [00:13:54] That’s very insightful. Can you share with me what an employee can do if they need to rectify a situation where there is a lack of meaning in an appropriate way? Because it may be perceived differently by leadership if an employee tries to initiate the conversation.
Tamara Myles: [00:14:18] That’s a really great question because a lot of times we can’t control what our leaders do or don’t do. But what we find is you can lead from anywhere. When we talk about leadership, we don’t necessarily mean power or hierarchical position, we mean influence. You have influence over the people you interact with. Something you can do to increase meaning at work, for yourself and for those around you, is to start building those three Cs. A simple question you can ask yourself for each one, I’ll give you one question per C that can help you increase meaning at work for the people that you have influence around. For community is, did I connect with someone today? You can ask yourself this every day. Who did I connect with today? Then make an effort to really connect with people. Of course this will increase meaning at work for you, but also for the people you connect with. That’s something you can foster in your own circle of influence. You don’t need to be a leader with power to do that. For contribution, you can ask yourself, is anything better in the world because of what I did today? You can ask your colleagues that. What impact did you have today? Help people make meaning and make those connections between what they do and the impact that it has. Then for challenge, it’s about learning. What did I learn today? Or, did I learn something new today? Keeping those questions in mind, that’s just one simple question you can ask for each of the Cs. Of course there’s many practices and nuances, but sometimes I feel like you read a book or you read a research article and it’s so much to digest that I like sometimes to just boil it down. What’s one question you can ask for each of the Cs?
Sara Sheehan: [00:16:16] I think having a bite sized chunk makes it a little bit more manageable, and it takes some of the fear out around addressing something that has deep roots, if you will. That really does affect you in a truly immeasurable way. The more we can make it bite size, the better.
Tamara Myles: [00:16:41] I agree. Especially because sometimes we might feel discouraged. If we work for a manager that might not make an effort to build any of these Cs, we might feel really discouraged and hopeless. I think having a question like this for each one gives you a little bit of control back. I can connect with someone today, I can learn something new. Then these positive effects start creating upward spirals and can ripple out, you can have impact and influence on your colleagues, and little by little things get better.
Sara Sheehan: [00:17:17] Absolutely. Moving forward, I found it very interesting and insightful that in your research you found across generations that people view meaning at work as crucial to their happiness and their future at work. That across generations there’s a lot of similarity between not only the value of meaning at work, but how they actually view fulfillment. When we take a step back, what are the differences across generations in how they want to view their work as having meaning?
Tamara Myles: [00:18:08] It’s really interesting because I think the popular discourse is very much, Gen Z cares about meaningful work, but you just have to work hard. Head down, you need to earn it and all of that. But what the research actually shows is that everyone cares about meaningful work and defines it pretty similarly. We all want that third of our lives that we spend at work to be meaningful, to mean something. There’s some nuance to that, that we found. I will say that our sample size of over 2000 people wasn’t large enough to find significant differences, so I’ll just caveat with that because we didn’t have enough numbers in each generation to statistically significantly state these findings so we’re continuing the research. What started to emerge is that while we all care about meaningful work, and we all define it really similarly, some of the Cs matter more for people depending on where they are in their career. For example, Gen Z cares a lot about all the Cs, but mostly about challenge. They want to learn and grow and develop, and that makes so much sense because they are beginning in their career. They want to learn, they want somebody who believes in them, who mentors them. Gen X, which is my generation, cares more about contribution. What impact am I having? What is going to be my legacy? What am I doing that matters, that’s going to leave a mark in the world? There’s slight differences, but everybody cares about all three Cs. Everybody defines meaningful work very similarly, but there’s slight differences. Another nuance which is in the research more broadly, not our research necessarily, is that these nuances aren’t necessarily generational, but they are more about your position, your career stage. Most Gen Z-ers are in early career stages, so they care mostly about learning and development and challenge. But you might have somebody who is a Gen X or a millennial that’s early in their career, and they’re going to care about that as well. There’s a lot of nuance and layers to the research, but I think the key point is every generation cares about meaningful work and every generation defines it similarly.
Sara Sheehan: [00:20:45] That’s very interesting, especially as we have so many multigenerational workplaces. It’s only increasing right now as some people stay in the work place and you have newer, younger generations joining. It definitely is an interesting way to bring people together to talk about meaning and to address how everyone can find meaning in a unified way. That’s very compelling. Looking forward, one of the other points in your research that I found very interesting is that you found that the best leaders in the workplace are the ones that create and foster belonging. What are some examples that you found on how these leaders made a difference? What did they do?
Tamara Myles: [00:21:42] That is so key. Community, feeling like we belong, is a key driver of human wellbeing. The same alarms in our brains activate when we feel lonely or disconnected as they do when we feel hungry or thirsty. It’s a fundamental need. We are driven to belong, to be part of a group, to be part of the tribe. Belonging is all about feeling accepted and included, rather than rejected or ignored. We all want to be included in the decision making, in the water cooler conversation, in a meeting. Even if we’re not going to contribute something, we want to be there, we want to listen in. To build belonging under the community ‘C’, we found there’s two main pathways. One is what we call cultivating connection, and the other one is embracing authenticity. Cultivating connection means taking the time to build relationships and to foster relationships across the organization. We found that the organizations we study really care about individuals feeling connected. Not just with the teams that they work with, but across teams, across functions, across the whole organization. They do this in a myriad of ways. By inviting different people to different meetings, by creating shared opportunities for shared experiences. Whether that is volunteering together, whether that is having a budget for people to organize, self-organize based on the regions where they work now with hybrid and remote. They do things like that, and then being intentional about making individuals feel that you care about them. One of the questions in our survey that we created is, does my leader care about me? That’s very simple. A story that we use in the book, that I think is a beautiful illustration of caring, is the story of Devon Still. He was an NFL player with the Cincinnati Bengals, and he is one of the cherished members of our positive psychology community. He was a student at the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology a few years after we graduated.
Tamara Myles: [00:24:17] While he was playing for the Cincinnati Bengals, he experienced a lot of personal hardship. He had a season-ending injury and then had surgery and then had complications from the surgery. It was one thing after another. Then the worst thing happened a few weeks later when his four year old daughter, Leah, was diagnosed with cancer and that was horrible and, of course, heart wrenching. She was four years old. The Bengals did something remarkable to show that they cared. They released Devon from the team, but then they immediately re-signed him to the practice squad. What that allowed was for him to stay home, because if he was part of the team he would have to travel with the team. But if he’s in the practice squad, he can stay home, he could take care of Leah and be with her through her treatment. He was still getting paid and he was still receiving health insurance benefits and all of those things. It’s a simple act of caring, but then they went above and beyond. They created Devon Still jerseys, they started selling and promoting the Devon Stills jerseys more, and all the money that they raised from the sales of his jersey were then donated to her cancer treatment. Within weeks, they raised over $1 million. People were checking in on him, and he really felt buoyed by the community. People cared, people had his back. These are examples of simple things that leaders can do to show they care.
Sara Sheehan: [00:26:00] That is such a great example. That is so powerful, incredibly touching, and it really didn’t take them that much to do that. Clearly there was some conversation there between them, and then maybe the team went to him and said, what do you think about this option? Having that kind of a conversation, that is so incredibly powerful to a team member.
Tamara Myles: [00:26:33] It’s so powerful. I love this example because sometimes you think, athletes and sports, NFL, they made it, they have everything. But we all face struggles, we all bring things to work. It doesn’t have to be something huge like this, it can just be simple practices like checking in with employees about their lives outside of work. Doctor Vivek Murthy, who was the former surgeon general, talks a lot about loneliness and he has a book that’s amazing. One of the practices that he instituted with his team is something he calls ‘inside scoop’. He was noticing that they were all disconnected and people were remote, and we all have busy lives. What he did is at the start of every meeting, they have these weekly, all-team meetings. He started this practice called ‘Inside Scoop’. Each week someone else gets to bring in a personal picture, and share and spend the first five minutes of the meeting telling the story of that picture. It could be that, if I was in that group, I might bring a picture of my son’s latest wrestling match that he won, and I might talk about how amazing it is to see his discipline and his effort and how he got 100 wins and how proud of him I am, or something like that. What that allows is for you to take a peek inside how I spend my time outside of work, but also for you to say, my brother wrestled in high school and we might find things in common outside of work that we might connect with. He said that that practice, those five minutes in each meeting, had a transformative effect on the team’s sense of belonging and community. The beautiful thing is that it doesn’t take long and it doesn’t take any budget. It just takes intention.
Sara Sheehan: [00:28:36] Exactly. That is very touching and very powerful. I also noticed in your research that positive performance feedback is better received than critical feedback. This is no surprise to me having spent so many years in structured management consulting. Can you tell me more about your best model and how that seeks to create a positive path forward on feedback?
Tamara Myles: [00:29:10] I just want to be clear that I’m not advocating for never giving critical or corrective feedback. Of course sometimes that is necessary, but that’s typically the only feedback we receive. It’s just not enough because we can learn what not to do, but with negative feedback or critical or corrective feedback, we don’t learn what we’re doing right, that we can replicate and keep doing it right. It’s really important for us to receive positive feedback. It can be from our colleagues, it can be from our leaders. One of the things that the research finds is that when we receive any kind of acknowledgment or appreciation, I’ll share the best feedback model and that’s for more structured positive feedback. Even a simple, Hey Sara, I really appreciate the thoughtful questions you asked me in this podcast, it really stretched my thinking and allowed me to share some stories about the book, so that was really great. Thank you so much for the preparation you put into interviewing me today. Something like that, just a simple acknowledgment can really increase the strength of your connection by up to 55%. The beautiful thing about giving positive feedback is that not only does it increase our sense of contribution, because we understand the impact that we’re having, but it also increases our sense of community and connection with each other.
Tamara Myles: [00:30:37] It’s really great to do, so we developed the BEST feedback model. It stands for behavioral, explicit, strength-based and timely. Behavioral is all about focusing on the actions somebody took. What did I do right that I can replicate? Because if you just say, hey great job. You’re like, feels good, but I don’t know what I did right. Being specific about the behavior, not the character. Not like, you’re so great. Awesome, I feel great, but why am I great? Being specific about the behavior. Explicit is being explicit about the impact that that behavior had on you, on the team, on the customer. Highlighting the contribution. Then strength-based is focusing on the strengths that the person showed. One great way to do strength-based management and strength-based feedback is with the VIA survey. VIA is values in action, and it’s a foundation of positive psychology. It’s a free survey that’s available online and anyone can take it. The results show the 24 universal strengths. The VIA is the only real evidence based and research backed strength survey out there.
Sara Sheehan: [00:32:15] I’m going to go check it out. I’ve not heard of it.
Tamara Myles: [00:32:19] It’s amazing, and it’s the foundation of positive psychology. Positive psychology, it’s a critical part of how we are positive psychology practitioners, and how we apply the results. These are strengths that are found across time, across cultures, across religions. They scoured the literature and went to remote tribes and found, what are the qualities that people most value and admire in others? There’s 24 strengths. Some of them are creativity, authenticity, love of learning, curiosity, honesty, spirituality. These are character strengths. When you highlight somebody’s strengths, it makes them feel seen. It lets them know that their contributions matter. It could be, you showed great creativity by providing those in-depth profiles of potential customers and going above and beyond the assignment. You’re highlighting a strength that they showed, a contribution. Then timely is about when to give the feedback. As soon as possible after the event occurred or the thing that you’re going to highlight occurred is better. You don’t want to save something for, your review is coming up at the end of the year, so I’ll give you that positive feedback in six months. It’s still going to be great, but it’s not going to be as effective as doing it right after it happens. Behavioral, explicit, strength-based and time.
Sara Sheehan: [00:34:01] That’s very helpful. I’m really excited to hear about the values in action, and I’ll be checking that out. I’m very familiar with CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder), which I’m sure you are as well, but I’ll be fascinated to see the difference in the strengths that are included in their model.
Tamara Myles: [00:34:21] The VIA measures, what they call, the character strengths. These are parts of our personality that light us up, that make us feel seen, that are part of who we are. When you do your report, you will notice that they’re ranked from 1 to 24. I want to tell you a couple things, because you and some listeners might also go take it. Some things to note is that the top 5 to 7 strengths in your report are what’s called signature strengths. Those signature strengths usually fit three criteria that we call the three Es. The first one is that it’s easy. It feels really easy for you to use it. It comes really easily to you, so much so that sometimes you don’t even recognize it as a strength because you think, that’s so easy, everybody has that, it’s pretty natural. The other one is that it’s essential to who you are. You could not imagine having to go a day without using that strength. For me, love is my first one, which is all about the importance that I give to relationship building, to being warm, to caring about people. If you took that strength away from me and you said, for 24 hours you cannot ask people how they are. You cannot build relationships, you can’t be warm and genuine, you can’t hug your children. I’m almost crying, that would be horrible. It’s essential to who you are. Then the third E is that it’s effortless. You said it’s natural, it comes pretty easily to us. Those are the three Es, and that’s important to know. The top 5 to 7 usually fit that criteria. Something else to note is that, as humans we have a negativity bias. Most of us go right to number 24. We say, I’m so bad at that. It’s really important to note that the VIA does not measure weakness. It only measures our strengths in relationship to ourselves and to each other. For me, and this is so sad, the strength that comes up number 24 always is appreciation of beauty and excellence. I feel like I really appreciate beauty and excellence. Sometimes I watch videos of people, like the Olympic videos and the stories of struggle and how people excelled. I cry and I love it, but it’s not as essential to me as love in building relationships. I might still be higher in appreciation of beauty and excellence than someone else that has it at number 13, for example, because it’s only measuring it in relation to my other strengths.
Sara Sheehan: [00:37:12] That’s super helpful.
Tamara Myles: [00:37:13] Those are very important things to note about the survey. I can’t wait to hear your results, you’ll have to share with me.
Sara Sheehan: [00:37:19] Absolutely, I’ll be glad to. I think knowing more about where your natural strengths are is only going to help you show up better every day, because you’re making sure that you’re using the best tools in your toolbox.
Tamara Myles: [00:37:38] We’re bringing the best of who we are to our work, to our relationships, to how we show up every day. Knowing our strengths can be transformative to how we show up. I think I messed up with the three Cs because I said ‘effortless’ twice. The third E is energizing. When we use that strength, it energizes us. It makes us come alive, and people can tell. If I get to use my creativity, all of a sudden I’m talking faster, my hands are moving, I light up. It’s effortless, essential and energizing.
Sara Sheehan: [00:38:15] That’s excellent, that’s very helpful. Is there one thing that you found in your research that surprised you the most?
Tamara Myles: [00:38:27] I would say there were a few things that surprised us. Maybe the thing that surprised us the most is the importance of beginnings. When we set out to study meaningful work and the leadership practices that make work meaningful, we thought we would find practices like the day to day work, and we did. In the everyday work and meetings and all the things and building relationships and thanking people. What we didn’t expect to find, though, is how important it is to make work meaningful from the moment you’re interviewing someone. Hiring and onboarding, the beginning of a relationship with a new employee, a new team member, sets the tone for how meaningful their work is going to be for the rest of their life in the organization. Beginnings really matter. Most people right now don’t have a really meaningful hiring and onboarding process. That’s an organizational structural thing more than a leadership practice thing, but not hard to implement. Instead of onboarding somebody by giving them a million HR videos to read and a new computer and saying ‘good luck’, what if you spent a little bit of time talking about the rituals that you do together, fostering that sense of belonging? What if you took the time to get to know them and then pair them up with an onboarding buddy or someone internally who can help them navigate those first few days. Somebody who they can ask questions to, somebody who can help introduce them to people. Again, really simple practices. Not easy, because if it was easy that’s what everybody would be doing. They’re simple, they just require a little thought and intention.
Sara Sheehan: [00:40:21] That’s very interesting because I find so many organizations, they may look at onboarding as a process, and they may even have a platform that manages onboarding where you can see where you are in the process, but it’s the personal touch that is missing.
Tamara Myles: [00:40:46] Can I tell you a story that perfectly illustrates this? It’s a personal story. About eight years ago when my kids were young, they were ten, nine and seven, we made a really difficult decision as a family to move towns. We were really happy in the town that we were, that’s where the kids were born, our roots were all there, we had community, we had a sense of belonging. But my husband had gotten a different job and he was commuting long hours, he was stuck in traffic, he was missing out on the things that mattered to us, family dinners and being able to coach. We made the really difficult decision to move. We spent months and months researching and we found the new community that we’re in now. It seemed like it checked all the boxes, but you don’t really know until you move. But we moved, and we moved in the summer right before school was about to start because we wanted the kids to start the school year already, instead of disrupting their school year.
Tamara Myles: [00:41:49] We had heard that the schools were great, and of course we knew that would really matter for their experience if they were able to make friends right away and integrate into the school. We had high hopes for the schools, but we didn’t know. We had enrolled the kids in the school, and I had filled out the forms about them so they could get placed in the right classes. About two weeks before school started, I got an email from the principal of the elementary school. My kids were going into fifth, fourth and second grade, so they were all in the same elementary school. I got an email from the principal, Mrs. Fernandez, and she said, hi, welcome to the school. As part of welcoming you into the school, we have this thing called the ‘New Families’ program. We want to offer you a tour of the school, bring the kids in before school starts so they can get a lay of the land and a sense of where they’re going to be and ask questions. She took us on a tour, and it was amazing. The kids were getting excited and they were asking questions. How many recesses do we have a day? Where do we get lunch? Do you have pizza? All the things that matter to kids. We were like, that’s great. Then as we were leaving she said, the next thing we’re going to do is introduce you to a family that has a kid in the same grade that’s going to be in their class, and then maybe you can have a play date or something before school starts. She introduced us to three families, one for each kid. But it wasn’t random, she had read the forms that I had filled out about them, and she selected a kid that she thought would have similar interests or be a good friend to them.
Sara Sheehan: [00:43:45] That’s remarkable.
Tamara Myles: [00:43:47] Even now thinking about it, I get so emotional. It was such a lifeline for us, it made all the difference. A week later we met with the families, the kids all now had a friendly face for the first day of school, somebody to sit with at lunch, somebody to go out to recess with. We had a lifeline to call and be like, how do you sign up for dance? What’s the best sushi in town? Do you have any babysitters that you recommend? It was amazing, transformative. One of the families has become one of our best friends. We travel with them, and the girls were very close all through elementary, middle and high school. That act of kindness and generosity made all the difference for us.
Sara Sheehan: [00:44:38] That is a great example. Tamara, I can’t thank you enough for our conversation today. It’s full of wonderful insights that are incredibly practical and pragmatic, and I know that it’s going to make a difference. Before we close today, can you share with me how my listeners can find you?
Tamara Myles: [00:45:06] I am on social media. The best way to interact with me is on LinkedIn. I always post new research findings or anything interesting that’s coming up in the work or research that we’re doing on there. LinkedIn, Instagram, also on my website, tamaramyles.com, it’s a great place. Then finally, on the book’s website which is makeworkmeaningful.com. That’s a fun website, you can take the assessment from the study, you can learn all about the research and my co-author Wes. Those are some great places to find me.
Sara Sheehan: [00:45:47] Excellent. I really appreciate your time today, Tamara. I know that your research is going to make a huge difference in the world and I’m so very excited for you about your book being published.
Tamara Myles: [00:46:01] Thank you so much, I really appreciate you having me.
Sara Sheehan: [00:46:04] I hope you have a great day.
Tamara Myles: [00:46:06] You too.
Sara Sheehan: [00:46:08] What an amazing conversation I just had with Tamara Myles on her cutting edge research on finding meaning at work. The three key takeaways from our enlightening conversation today include: leadership’s role in meaningful work. Tamara’s research emphasizes that nearly 50% of an employee’s sense of meaning at work is linked to their leader’s actions. Leaders should focus on the three Cs, community, contribution and challenge, to foster a meaningful workplace. Cross-generational similarities. Contrary to popular belief, people across generations all value meaningful work similarly. While there are nuanced preferences, such as Gen Z prioritizing growth, the core desire for meaningful engagement is universal. Powerful beginnings. The initial interactions during hiring and onboarding can set the tone for how meaningful an employee will find their work. Creating a welcoming and connected environment from the start is crucial. By all means, be on the lookout for Tamara’s upcoming book, ‘Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee’. It’s set to publish in April of this year, and it’s definitely one to watch out for and pre-purchase, if you can. Thanks so much for listening today. As always, share your thoughts in the comments and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
