GIVING while GROWING

Reading this book is like hearing Helen's exuberant, reflected and concise presentations. She is profoundly knowledgeable and shares her experiences. Helen is sending us a message that comes from the brain, the heart and the gut. - Bent Gringer, chief advisor, Agency for Competence Development in the State Sector For many years, I have worked with well-being in the workplace and job satisfaction, and people often tell me that they have to work at an ever faster pace in order to get their work done, that they have to deal with constant change in the organization, job tasks or routines or that they find it difficult to keep up and ensure a quality job performance. Consequently, many feel stressed and completely drained when they go home to their family, where they collapse on the sofa and doze off to the evening news, if they even last that long. Part of my work deals with enhancing workplace well-being, and in my opinion, free fruit, bonus systems and other perks are not necessarily the best way to achieve that. Instead, I think the best approach is to maximize the sense of purpose for management and staff - on a personal as well as a job-related level. And this sense of purpose and meaning comes from giving while we grow. It is not enough to simply trade our labour for a pay cheque. Work should never just be a place we go every day to give it everything we have. Work should also help us grow as human beings. At this point, some readers might be thinking, 'Growing - that doesn't sound like something I have time for.' But it is not about giving more of yourself; it is about being able to leave work with the same level of energy you had when you came in - or more. Being slightly or maybe even quite provocative, I claim that we can actually leave with even more energy than we came with. You might think, 'You clearly haven't seen the stacks on my desk, ' or 'You obviously don't know my boss.' And you are right. I haven't, and I don't. But through my work I have acquired a fair amount of insight into why we respond the way we do when we are under pressure, and the reasons involve several factors, including workload, leadership or the lack of it, organizational restructuring and changes in working procedures.