What Makes Work Meaningful Anyway? Values Schmalues?

Posted on February 21, 2025 by Joel Dietz, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Think about a time you learned what someone does for a living and thought “How the heck could anyone do THAT all day?”

Performing autopsies. Teaching 6th graders. Cosmetic wax. Doing stunts on film. Hazmat cleaning. Gastroenterology in general. Consumer debt collections. Preparing someone else’s tax return. Divorce lawyering. Directing funerals. Critiquing three-act German opera performances.

OK, so I’m projecting, partly to amuse myself.

Every career transition coach or career counselor has worked with a client targeting a seemingly baffling line of work. You have your own list of undesirable jobs. Of course, necessity and the need to pay bills informs staying in jobs, especially for those who invested time and student loan debt preparing for said jobs. Yet some people choose to stay long term doing jobs that seem terribly undesirable. Why?

Turns out, what makes for meaningful work often has little to do with the work itself.
Those of us lucky enough to find their work satisfying are typically the benefactors of well-researched characteristics that make work meaningful, some of which include the following, according to retirement expert, Pauline Johnson-Zielonka PhD in Retirement Life Plan: Navigating the Transition from a Rewarding Career (2018).

•Alignment with the self; reflecting personal motivations, values & beliefs.
•Sense of belonging and connectedness (with colleagues, leaders, or organization)
•Task identity – the ability to see the whole job/task through, from start to finish
•Positive leadership – having leaders that develop and inspire others with a collective purpose, mission, or vision
•Skill variety
•Positive impact on others

So, considering that…

•An undertaker, with a deep commitment to helping others in times of great pain, may find this profession continually gratifying.

•The middle-school educator participating in multiple committees at the district level could realize connection with their students, other teachers, parents, and administrators.

•The wax tech at Smooth Sensations works for a franchise owner who creates a work environment of fun, team spirit and support, and growth potential. (Ba dump bump.)

•A hazmat cleanup worker causes a dramatic, and incredibly important change between the start and end of a job.

•Dr. Tum-Tums appreciates being able to flip between research, surgery, and teaching.

Personal values and work values are beyond correlated to job satisfaction. (No citations here. They are endless.) So much so, that it’s very common for retirees to feel a real letdown after they finish a year or two of committed leisure. I discuss the documented impacts of losing an outlet to express those values in another post with a summary of the research of the late Robert Atchley. Retirement may not be relevant to you now, but this illustrates that we, as humans, dislike life circumstances in which we can’t easily express what we most value.

Why does any of this matter?

If you’re finding yourself uninspired in your own job and struggling to figure out exactly why, then do a thorough inventory of your personal and professional values. Doing so will produce the most useful insight into your career quandary. Once you have those values documented, validated, and prioritized, they can serve as effective guideposts to any path you’re considering for your career, the one you’re in now or one you’re considering.

Now what?

If you’re struggling to love your job, get to the bottom of the “why” question before taking action, especially one that could recycle the same struggle.

If you know “why” you don’t love your job, but the “what I want next is ____” fails to connect strongly with your personal and work values (which you may have or have not identified,) history is bound to repeat itself.

Here are just a few of the many resources that will help you do this deep dive into your values.

•If you’re self-aware and prefer self-discovery, UK career strategist John Lees’ How to Get a Job You Love is in its 11th edition and offers some handy tools in chapter 5 to help you explore your values and motivators.

•If you’re not feeling as self-aware and could use some prompts then values card sort decks (paper or digital) are fun and evocative tools to help anyone think through, “What the hell are my values?” Don’t feel awkward. Most of us can’t answer this question on the spot.

•Andreea Niculescu and Lisa Congdon’s Live Your Values Deck: Sort Out, Honor, and Practice What Matters Most to You helps you do just that.

•Career transition coaching following a proven approach such as the Firework™ framework provides a guided process with built-in accountability. A good career coach doesn’t just dole out advice on career change. They are flexible and customize their approach based on where you are. A skilled coach also offers the advantage of noticing what you aren’t and providing you with objective feedback.

Copyright © 2025 Orange Door LLC. All Rights Reserved.