You’ll see, as well, that the strongest force pushing back against the lies, and the force that we all seek to harness in our lives, is the power of our own individuality—that the true power of human nature is that each human’s nature is unique, and that expressing this through our work is an act, ultimately, of love.

The more frequently and predictably you check in with your people or meet with your team—the more you offer your real-time attention to the reality of their work—the more performance and engagement you will get.

You tell stories, whether you know it or not, and you’re telling them all the time, in every conversation and at every meeting. What stories are you telling, and what do they say about what you find meaningful?

And in case you’re wondering, the data reveals that, for most of us, the problem of loveless work lies less in the fact that our job is too constricted and more in the fact that we can’t figure out how to weave. The ADP Research Institute’s global engagement study revealed that only 16–17 percent of workers say they have a chance to play to their strengths every day, whereas their surveys of a representative sample of the US working population reveal that 72 percent of workers say, “I have the freedom to modify my role to fit my strengths better.” In psychology we refer to this as an attitude-behavior consistency problem—we know we can modify our roles to fit ourselves better, but most of us simply don’t.

Think back for a moment on that someone you know who lived a full life. You get the sense, don’t you, that they were on to something. That they had somehow cut through all the noise, and tuned themselves into a signal only they could hear. And they didn’t do this in spite of their work. Rather, they seemed to be doing it through their work. Their loves and their work were inextricably linked.

In their telling, “work” does not simply mean “job.” It is not merely manual or knowledge labor. Instead, “work” is anything of value they created for someone else.