Good leadership is creating a good life at work

The other day, I was talking to ChatGPT and asked it what a good life is. It came up with an interesting answer that made me realize that good leadership is actually creating a good life at work.

What is a good life?

This is one of the most fundamental philosophical question there is. The great thinkers of the world have come up with many answers to that question and our society is built upon these answers. It takes a lot of time to read all those answers that have been given but that is why we have AI, right? So I asked AI. When I asked ChatGPT what a good life is, it answered that a good life is built up out of the following elements:

• Meaning and purpose. People have values and life as they live it should be aligned with those values. People also want to be part of something bigger, contribute to a better world.
• Connection and relationships. Social bonds are crucial for well-being and thus a good life.
• Health and vitality. A healthy environment and a healthy body and mind are crucial to living a good life.
• Growth and fulfillment. Life is about evolution. People need to feel like they are growing, getting better, evolving. If one has goals and achieves them, one feels fulfilled which is a crucial element of a good life.
• Freedom and autonomy. People need to feel free to make their own choices and pursue their passions to have lead a good life.
• Joy and gratitude. A good life needs fun, having a laugh, having a good time. This can be small things and appreciation of what one has adds to the feeling of leading a good life.
• Contribution and help. Helping others, making the world a better place adds to the feeling that a life is well lead.

Work life

Work is a big part of our lives so a lot of the elements that make up a good life need to come from our work life. So the responsibility of leadership is to make sure all these elements are in order. Leadership is not just making sure the organization makes money, the responsibility of leadership is making sure the people in the organization lead a good life while they are at work. If we start from the elements of the good life, we can see that there are a lot of things an organizaion can do to make sure the people inside the organization lead a good life. If they lead a good work life, this will contribute to the profit in the end. Build teams first, then products.

The work life journey

Work life starts when you get interested to work in an organization. Maybe you are interested because of the mission and vision of the company (meaning and purpose). You get invited for a job interview and you see the building, the equipment, and interior design. This gives you an indication of the value the company puts on the well-being of its employees (health and vitality). Then there is the interview. Are the people who you talk to able to hold space for you, see you, actually listen to you? Are they open-minded and warm? (connection and relationships). If you get to work at the company, you will find out how the mission and vision work in reality. You also get to experience if you are given the authority to make decisions and plan your own work (freedom and autonomy). In time, you will see what the opportunities to grow are within the company (growth and fulfillment). The mission and vision should lead to targets and milestones that are achieved. You will find out if these milestones are achievements that get celebrated because they are important and if they organization organizes parties and other social gatherings (joy and gratitude). In teams and between teams you will find out how open the culture is and if you are able to help other people in your team or in other teams and truly co-create (contribution and help). If all this goes well, you lead a good work life and enjoy your stay at the company. If one or more of these elements of a good life are not in place, work life is not that good and maybe you get some satisfaction from your paycheck, job title, or position of power.

Leadership and a good work life

From these elements, we can reverse engineer what leadership needs to do to create a good work life. Leadership needs to do three things:

1. Any organization starts with a vision, with strategy. Why does this organization exist? How does it achieve its vision? This is what draws people in, gives people direction, and keeps them motivated. A lot of other things like freedom and autonomy are only possible if there is a vision. People also connect to other people who have the same vision so vision also plays a role in connections and relationships. And without a vision and the goals connected to that, there can also be no achievements and thus fulfillment.
2. Create a nice, warm, and healthy physical work environment. A good life needs a place to feel at home in. The amount of energy and resources that are directed towards creating a space where people feel welcome and at home is a good foundation of a good work life. A good home needs all the equipment that is needed to operate and a home with nice equipment is nicer to work in. A company with a super nice office can still host a toxic work culture so it’s not a guarantee but it’s a good start :)
3. Psychological safety is the next big thing to achieve. This is a complex element and has to do with power dynamics, ego’s, the way authority is organized, openness, how failure is treated, humility, appreciation etc. If there is psychological safety, people can be open and connection, co-creation, autonomy is possible. Connection, relationships, freedom, autonomy, joy, gratitude, contribution, and help all are dependent on psychological safety.

The human perspective

It’s basically the human perspective on work, the personal approach to work, to organization, to leadership. The other approach is the impersonal approach. The impersonal approach is focussed on the organization instead of the people, puts trust in hierarchy instead of people, relies on rules instead of the interactions between people, treats people as human resources instead of human beings, relies on the ration instead of intuition, on science instead of the spirit. If people like to work in an organization, they are far more productive. If people do not like to work in an organization, they will quit or quiet quit.

In my experience, the Agile ways of working offer a lot of tools and organization designs that enables us to create a human-centered organization. Product vision, retrospectives, iterations, co-creation in teams with T-shaped people, the pull mechanism for planning, the autonomy of the development team, these are all elements with which a good work environment can be created that spawns high performing teams. If the elements of a good life and therefor a good work life are clear, these are the goals for leadership. Work can be a platform to make life more interesting and inspiring.

Thank you for taking the time to read this essay. I hope you enjoyed it. If you clap for this essay, I will know I connected with you. If you follow me here on Medium, you will see more essays pop up on your Medium homepage. You can also subscribe to an email service here on Medium which will drop new essays right into your inbox. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to see new articles in your timeline or chat with me there.