TALKING HEADS
T
urce of work’s value
performance indicators or targets or
the ephemeral hedonic satisfaction
of extrinsic reward, but a sense that
the work helps to make the world a
better, safer, more just place. Decades
of social science illustrate that what
makes communities truly resilient
isn’t how rich they are but how far the
people in them know and care about
each other.
Recently, contemplating the
volatility and uncertainty of the times
ahead of us, I interviewed a number of
leaders who had navigated existential
crises in the past: moments when
their businesses and sometimes
they themselves stood on the brink
of collapse. These were unforgettable,
gut-wrenching conversations and in
each case, at some point, each of my
interviewees wept.
What, I wondered, had kept them
going through years of agony? Just two
things. First, they were lucky enough
to have friends who understood, who
cared about them, who provided
moral and emotional support. Second,
they knew that the sacrifices they and
many of their colleagues had to make
were for a good cause, one bigger
than themselves. That was enough
to keep them at their gruelling work
long and hard enough to survive.
The rampant individualism of the
past few decades has made the
concept of sacrifice unfashionable.
Social norms more often target
our selfishness than our altruism.
But change never occurs without
sacrifice. And the changes required
by the climate crisis, by the rising
rates of mental illness, by the redesign
of work won’t occur without much
in the status quo being assigned
to history.
As individuals, we accept sacrifices
when we know that they are necessary,
when they make us feel active in the
face of otherwise paralysing threats,
and when we believe they are shared
equally. We embrace them because
they confer a shared sense of nobility,
speaking to our deepest sense of
value and meaning.
That’s why it is important to call
them out for the sacrifices that they
are so that together people can feel
valuable to one another. The challenge
for leaders in this new decade will
be to model sacrifice, to define it
with care and justice and to inspire
it in others.
In doing so, all the various demands
for purpose, meaning and resilience
will be met as we return to the source
of work’s value: that we do it for
each other.
Dr Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur,
CEO, writer and keynote speaker.
“The rampant
individualism
of the past few
decades has
made the concept
of sacrifice
unfashionable”
February – May 2020 // 43