How to Navigate Alienation at Work
Anthropology and coaching have given me windows into many worlds of work, from mines in South Asia to markets in Hong Kong, from engineers in the Silicon Valley to writers across the world carving spaces at their kitchen tables to put their thoughts on the page. Work means many things for many people. For some, it is a source of income, a job you put your time into that sustains the rest of life. For others, it is a source of meaning, purpose, and self expression, a way of contributing to a larger collective. For many, these two elements, income and meaning, can be at odds with each other, tugging in different directions.
People who made choices in both directions reach out to me. Some of my clients have applied their skills to find jobs that bring them financial stability. They seek support as other aspects of work are hard. Some of them value empathy and long to work collaboratively but are surrounded by colleagues who don't listen. Others are process-oriented and want to follow the arc of a method of discovery but are rushed by managers who want quick turnarounds. Some long to collaborate across teams but are stymied by unenthusiastic superiors and feel stuck as the people who most need to be in conversation are not speaking to each other. Others want to start projects that reflect their skills and passions but worry about being judged and let others take initiative instead. Many of their challenges stem from work environments that are misaligned with their desires for empathy and collaboration.
As a coach, I also meet clients who move in the other direction. For them, work centers around self actualization, artistic explorations, a sense of purpose, and autonomy—having the time and freedom to work as they wish. They seek to reorient their lives to discover work that aligns with who they are. This is not easy. For many of my clients, the parts of themselves that come alive when they do what they love are the very parts that feel vulnerable to share with the world. Many of them were told when they were young that it is risky to do what they love and directed to follow a script external to themselves. It takes effort to keep these voices out, to hold them at bay, so they can give themselves permission to build what they want to build.
How do we navigate these conundrums around work? What do we do when our desires for the work we want to do and the way we want to engage others at work seem hard to reach?
Create a Container
When there's a mismatch between our values and the work environment we are in, making significant changes to the context can be challenging, especially if we try to make it happen this alone. I want to propose a path to find work that is aligned from a place of being resourced, so you don’t burnout. The first is to reflect on and recalibrate the timeline of your expectations for getting where you want to go. If you have a short horizon for aligning your work with who you are, the urgency creates pressure that can get in the way. However, if you see it as a process that unfolds over time, this brings a sense of spaciousness and makes room for experimentation so you can build at a sustainable pace.
The second is to create a container in which you can have the experiences you want to have. Often, this means building at the small scale what you want to access at a larger scale. It could look like starting a writing group, an artists collective, or a community that gathers around shared interests. It might require looking for other outliers in your field who are also hungry for the things that you are missing at work. In these small collectives, you can create a safe space to run small experiments and explore your interests in a supportive community without fear. These containers are sustained through resonance, a sense of shared reality, where you don't have to work hard to be seen. By immersing yourself in such spaces, you can access possibility and expand it, including into the work environment you are currently in. This way, you build from a sense of fullness and groundedness in what you want and can invite other people into the experience with you. This can be a first step in an iterative process of finding your way towards the work you want.