How Do I Get My Team to Love Work? (HBR Podcast)

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[upbeat music] I'm Alison Beard. This is the HBR Idea Cast, and we're looking at how to find joy in our work. At a time when lots of people are feeling burnt out, disengaged, and unhappy in their professional lives, we're explaining, with the help of author Marcus Buckingham, how to change our jobs for the better. We've already talked about how to figure out what makes you happy and shift your job so you spend more time doing those things. Today, it's about the team and organization, how to get everyone doing more of the work they love.

What I've discovered over time is that my strengths are somebody else's weaknesses, and my weaknesses are somebody else's strengths. So I really rely on my staff and my interns and my attorney and my accountant to help me in the areas that are not my core competencies so that they have not only a chance to shine, but also do good work for me. And because they are subject matter experts in these areas, it takes them less time to do.

I really love the people that I work with. The team is incredible, passion-driven, and really wants to make a difference and be accountable to the work, their work. And as president, I manage that team. So I am, uh, working directly with a variety of different team members, trying to make sure that they're happy and fulfilled in all of the work that they do.

Marcus's book is called Love and Work. And Marcus, I'm so happy to have you back.

I'm so happy to be back.

We've talked a lot so far about what we can do on an individual level, you know, managing ourself and what this process should look like. The next step, obviously, would be to try to scale that up to the team level. You can do it, as we discussed before, by helping other people find their red threads, which are those things that really bring them joy, get them into flow. But then how does the sort of higher-level person, the boss, the team manager, make sure that every direct report is moving in this more positive direction?

Well, it begins with something ... What we're talking about here is teaming. It is interesting, you know. You're on the phone with CEOs all the time, as you can imagine, because people are, like, asking about, "Well, what about culture, and should we bring