3 Podcasts about Finding Meaning in Work, and Finding Work in Meaning

While we’re in the thick of 2018, let’s take a small step back and remind ourselves why we’re here and why we do what we do. Here’s a bit of audio inspiration—3 podcasts on making work a meaningful endeavour.

Work in Progress by Slack | From the Ground Up

“My passion is to diminish the pain that people have, so you can see there is a point where chocolate and medicine have this common thing, which is making people happy,” he says. “Everything I’m doing is about passion — a passion for helping humanity.”

Work in Progress is a podcast series that examines meaning and identity in work through real-life stories. From the Ground Up tells the story of medical student Tareq Hadhad and his family, who left everything behind in war-torn Syria to start life anew in Canada. There, they would start Peace by Chocolate, a chocolate company that is a testament that doing meaningful work is one of the keys to a successful business.

Work in Progress is a podcast series by team collaboration software maker Slack.

How I Built This with Guy Raz | Patagonia: Yvon Chouinard

“We’ve got a truck that’s going around the country, repairing people’s clothes no matter whether they’re Patagonia or not. And we’re trying to teach people that you don’t throw things away, you repair them.”

“We now have the largest garment repair centre in North America.”

Even if you’ve never heard of Yvon Chouinard you’ve probably heard of his globally successful outdoor apparel business, Patagonia. More lifestyle than company, Patagonia has built a reputation for going against the capitalist grain and advocating a “buy nothing” attitude during Black Friday sales. Consumers have uncanny ways of knowing when your company’s values are genuine, and when they get a strong sense of that, they’ll really dig your brand.

Culture Chat: On Grit

The Culture Chat spoke to Caroline Miller, author of Getting Grit: The Evidence-Based Approach to Cultivating Passion, Perseverance and Purpose on what she’s learnt from speaking to recruiters and HR professionals about the connection between Grit and the workplace.

One revelation I found particularly interesting from this podcast was the relation between tenacity and finding meaning in one’s work. According to Miller’s research, the more one was accustomed to sticking with difficult problems, the more likely they were to find meaning in their work:

“They (recruiters) looked for athletes, particularly ones who did sports where there were no cheerleaders, and they really liked swimmers and wrestlers, ‘cos they know there’re no cheerleaders. Also they get up in the morning and do something very hard, for intrinsic value, and not because anybody’s watching them. And like they to look for people who’ve really stuck with things for a really long period of time, particularly when there’s a physical difficulty. They also love kids who come from family farms. Because the farm culture gives you a work ethic.”

And another nugget of gold from Miller:

“It’s not enough to be ambitious, its not enough to be a hard worker, its not enough to be conscientious, its not enough to be passionate, what you want are people who get lit up, there’s something that really turns them on, that they’re passionate about, and they identify with something they’re doing that feels meaningful to them. And that particular quality of passion, and not being somebody who quits.”

Do you listen to any HR, business or work culture-related podcasts? We’d like to know what they are, so drop us a comment if you know of any good ones 🙂