Calling

School has started for our kids. Soon enough, they’ll understand that learning never stops. Speaking of continually learning, I came across an article about frontline leaders needing leadership skills. The main points were these:

• Managers are important to organizations but lack leadership skills.
• More seriously, 12% of respondents to a survey felt their organizations invested enough in developing them.

The article mentions the changing demographics of frontline managers, older ones making way for Millennials. However, the point that struck me was the importance of taking “a broader view of their own work, as well as the work of the team.” This means skills beyond doing the job in front of you.
The article mentions several critical skills, but one missing skill may be the most important: translating one’s work into a sense of calling. The skills mentioned in the article (I’m not mentioning them here so you can do the article’s author the courtesy of a visit to that page) are functional. Translating one’s work into a sense of calling requires a higher order skill. Why is that important?
First, let’s define calling. Michael Novak said in Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life, “A career in business is not only a morally serious vocation but a morally noble one.” I heard an insurance executive say his company wasn’t selling insurance. It was providing protection for families against the kind of loss that disrupts lives and breaks dreams. The actress, Shannen Doherty, recently said her management team let her insurance lapse, putting her at serious risk in the face of catastrophic illness. More than just selling commodities, business people like that insurance executive have the potential to do good through their work.
Calling is a way to focus on the greater good you can do through your work. Relate what you do at work to what Michael Novak says:

• “…fulfilling something you were meant to do.”
• “…a sense of having uncovered our personal destiny.”
• “…a sense of having been able to contribute something worthwhile to the common public life.”
• “…something we were good at and something we enjoyed.”

What must you learn to get to that point? What skill is needed to translate what you do at work into a better understanding of your calling? Think about cultivating the ability to have a vision. Vision is what you believe the world will look like as a result of pursuing your calling. Continually refining that vision will help you understand your calling more clearly.
How can you refine your vision? One way is to engage in reflective practice. Reflective practice involves thinking deeply about your experiences to gain a clearer understanding of your work and how it relates to your life. Here are some ideas from my own experience:

• Keep a journal. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can be collections of articles on topics that help you think and reflect. Modern software like Evernote and OneNote and bookmarking sites like Diigo and Delicious make it easy to collect and annotate those articles.
• Consult with others. Friends, family, and mentors know you well. Using them as sounding boards can shed light on things you may not have noticed or considered before.
• Read books. Besides absorbing writing skills by reading well-written books, following a story or argument through the length of a book will spark your imagination.
• Turn off the radio during your commute. The quiet of your car can help you reflect.
• Keep a voice recording with you. I discovered that Dragon Naturally Speaking has a speech-to-text capability and can turn what you record into text you can use for notes. In that quiet car, you’ll surprise yourself with how much you record.
• Invest in leadership training. It doesn’t have to be only degree programs. Solid leadership training through classroom and online certificate programs will serve you well.

Your calling is a powerful force. Discovering that calling by refining a personal vision through reflective practice will help you lift your eyes above the horizon to see the greater good you’re doing through your job.