Economic recessions are often coupled with psychological recessions. Increasingly work has become a universal setting for individual to meet their universal needs for meaning. As organizations emerge from the recession, leaders need to become meaning makers who help employees replace deficit thinking with abundant thinking.
Abundance is not found in circumstances or events—in how big a raise we got or how many people report to us. Abundance is found in the value we place on those events and the way we interpret their impact on us. Meaning is not inherent in events; it is made by people. This is thegood news and the not-so-good news. Good news: the meaning of our lives is not controlled by what happens—as [Viktor] Frankl discovered, we can find purpose, value, and also happiness in a wide variety of even unpleasant circumstances. Not-so-good news: We have to work at this meaning-making process. It takes work to determine what work means, at either a corporate or a personal level. Leaders have the primary responsibility for this meaning-making process.
