Does Your Work Sing?
If the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted your work or your ability to work please know the article below is not intended to dismiss or diminish the adversity you face.
Additionally, if this crisis has raised questions about the work you do or have done and you’re wondering what’s next, I’m offering a free one-hour video consultation.
You may be more aware of the word "dissonance" than "consonance." You recognize dissonance in a musical piece. It's off. It doesn't fit. It makes you cringe involuntarily, at least a little bit.
Rather, consonance is defined as a combination of notes which are in harmony with each other due to the relationship between their frequencies.
Perhaps you've experienced this when listening to a musical score. If you have a half-tuned ear you can find yourself reveling in the remarkable beauty of the harmony. Composed instrumentation and wondrous voices, perfectly timed rests and soul-lifting crescendos.
Again, you've certainly experienced the opposite. Dissonance, disharmony, voices or instruments landing flat. You not only hear it, you feel it. It can be painful.
Why is it that we recognize dissonance in the flow of a musical piece, but we miss it – or tolerate it – in our own lives? We lack flow between our personal and professional focus. Within our career, it's often difficult to purposefully link our own fulfillment to a corporate vision we adopt. It's challenging to bridge a desire to exercise our unique voice while making a significant impact on organizational objectives. Often our values and skill sets don't align with the organization, but we suck it up and tolerate it day after day after day. After all, work's not supposed to be fun or fulfilling, right?
But what if it could be?
I spend my time helping people recognize dissonance and discover consonance - within their work and within their life.
Harvard Business Review carried an article from Laura Gassner Otting, who notes that the elements of consonance are the following:
Calling is a gravitational pull towards a goal larger than yourself — a business you want to build, a leader who inspires you, a societal ill you wish to remedy, a cause you wish to serve.
Connection gives you sightlines into how your everyday work serves that calling by solving the problem at hand, growing the company’s bottom line, or reaching that goal.
Contribution means that you understand how this job, this brand, this paycheck contributes to the community to which you want to belong, the person you want to be, or the lifestyle you’d like to live.
Control reflects how you are able to influence your connection to that calling in order to have some say in the assignment of projects, deadlines, colleagues, and clients; to offer input into shared goals; and to do work that contributes to your career trajectory and earnings.
If you're seeking consonance, if you want flow in your work and meaning in your life, let's talk.
You should know - typically much of the initial work I do with an individual takes place onsite, my site. But with travel restricted and appropriate cautions in place related to the coronavirus, I'm offering a special online, video process that will save you travel costs, time and risk of illness. You can reach out to me here. Let's at least have a conversation to explore whether this is an appropriate next step for you.
(If you’d like more from Laura Gassner Otting, you’ll find her article here. Check out her book: Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life here.)
