August
16,
2024
What’s there to love about change management consulting?
In your consulting career, imagine supporting a professional team to bring to life a cause that’s near and dear to your heart. Your colleagues are brilliant, caring, and fun, the organization is behind your efforts to scale this impactful program and, at the end of every day, you feel like you’re doing something meaningful for your community and the world.
Then, when you launch the program, you see immediate positive results, and people talk about how they can use the content in their professional and personal lives – even with their kids! Two years later, what started as a pilot program with 30 people has gone global and reached thousands. It’s a hot ticket!
What’s not to love?
What you’ve just read is a true story of my own experience on an Emerson project for one of our clients. I could talk for hours into the minutiae of the subject matter and the results the team achieved. It was the single greatest project of my consulting career.
When considering what I loved most about this work, three themes emerged.
- Work that means something. When we use our strengths in service of what we care about, work isn’t a grind or a drag. Instead, it becomes an act of service and creativity. We can see that we’re making a contribution to the people around us. We feel like we matter.
- Working with awesome people. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to work in variety of settings with people of diverse career experiences. They’ll bring their talents and their personalities into our world, and we’ll get to go into theirs. We’ll form genuine connections and express care for one another over a long period of time, even after we move beyond our daily work together. Relationships are at the heart of work; when those are solid, the work gets done with more ease.
- Paying it forward. Supporting other people to perform at their best is everything: offering mentorship and guidance, holding space for people to think deeply, making connections within and among networks, and watching others succeed. It’s not about me; it’s about we.
Since that project, my role at Emerson has changed. I’m now an Associate Client Director, and the same themes appear in a new way.
- Helping others see how they matter. Doing client work can sometimes feel like being caught in the weeds. It’s easy to forget how today’s actions serve to the bigger picture. Because I get to have a perspective that’s a bit zoomed out, I’m able to help others identify the puzzle pieces they’re placing and how important their work is.
- Developing relationships with more people. You mean I get to meet and get to know more people? Sign me up. Every person is fascinating to me, and just being with them lights up my world. Whether we’re talking about AI, learning ROI, or helping people to do their best work, we’re connecting on humans at work, and THAT energizes me. When relationships are good, work comes easily, so building relationships improves life for us all. Huzzah!
- Anchoring my efforts to ensure the success of others. I love to see others win and people win together.
When work is personally meaningful, it’s easy to love it.
As leaders, when we help ourselves find personal meaning in the work we do, we’re better able to help our colleagues and teams do the same.
People are eager to make a difference. Help them connect the dots, and you’ll see engagement and performance soar. And they’ll be happier and healthier doing it.
