Coming Alive: Work that Fulfils our Whole Self: Beingful Work

Beingful Leadership by Indian School of Business (ISB)

Professor Ram Nidumolu discusses his research on 'beingful work,' which involves aligning one's professional life with their whole self. He

Key takeaways

• Beingful work requires meeting needs across five dimensions: material, psychological, social, natural, and moral.
• Psychological fulfillment in the workplace is driven by autonomy, independence, and intellectual stimulation.

Main topics

• Dimensions of beingful work
• Finding professional purpose

Notable quotes

Can you make this work? Can you do it in such a way that your whole self is at work?

Conclusion

Finding meaning in work is possible by viewing employment as a means t

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) Hello and welcome to the podcast series on beingfulness by Professor Ram Nidamolu, Practice Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Indian School of Business. My name is Pavitra, your host and friend through this series. With each emerging episode of this series, Professor Ram, through his narration of personal anecdotes and stories from the Upanishads, will help us break down the concepts of beingfulness. Make sure to stay with us till the end of each episode. where we pose a pressing managerial question to Professor Ram. Speaker 1 (0:38) In the modern workplace, each employee spends a minimum of eight hours at work. Now, whether this is in person or virtual or even both in some cases, this is a very, very large part of our life. It's very, very detrimental to our well-being. So after hearing so much about the concepts of beingfulness through the series, I'm wondering if there is a way to incorporate beingfulness in our work. Now, luckily for us, Professor has led some research on this very topic. So let's hear from him. I Speaker 2 (1:13) also want to talk about another important aspect of beingfulness, and that is beingful work. And so, you know, we, many of us are working in situations where we feel the sense of, you know, is this all worth it? Are we here just for the money? And sometimes the money is also not good enough. And we are always chasing deadlines. We're always on a treadmill in a way. We're, you know, pressure. Pressure of getting things done. Pressure of, you know, work overload. Doing much more than what we're capable of. Bosses putting pressure on us. Team workers, the politics behind the workplace and so on. So all this leads to this, really the sense of, is this worth it? If only I could just throw this away. And, you know, perhaps do what I've always wanted to do. Perhaps it was to go teach in a school or to do some social work or healthcare. Whatever it is that we dream of. We often find ourselves in that setting, especially in this pandemic, where we also worried, is this the kind of work I'm doing really what I want to do in my life? Is this at all purposeful? Is this meaningful? So these kinds of questions come up. And I've been there many times when I was an entrepreneur and when things really became bad, it would be, did I give up this comfortable, challenging life in academia that I was stimulated mentally in terms of intellectually, intellectually challenging and physically comfortable life? Was it all worth it to give up all that and to plunge into the setting where everything was seemingly out of control? Everything was difficult. And so I'd lie awake in the night worrying, is this really what I wanted to do? Did I make a big mistake? That often happens. So in those kinds of settings, it helps, and I've learned, it helps to think of work in a more holistic way. To think of work, what I call as being for work. And that is, can you make this work? Can you do it in such a way that your whole self is at work? And to identify work, really that meets the needs of your whole self. There is of course a material aspect. It needs to give us enough money. But often just that is not good enough. It doesn't stimulate us. It doesn't give us a sense of purpose. So you need also work that is psychologically suited to us. It gives us a sense of control, some autonomy, more independence in how you make decisions, and intellectual stimulation. It's amazing how independent of the field that you're in, you do want, we're human beings who want to be stimulated intellectually, creatively. So that's the psychological aspect of work. And also we are human beings who want others to work with us. We want to be in teams. We want to have the comfort of social relationships. That's something that the pandemic has really affected. We're not there with other people, drinking coffee with them, having lunch with them, talking to them in cubicles. So all that is missing. So that's a key part of our work, the social side of it. And for those of us who care about nature and the environment, that too is an important part. Are we doing things, are we doing at work something that has a positive impact on nature? That too might matter, and it