SEARCH FOR MEANING

It ought to be a commonsense observation that the accumulation of wealth is only a means to an end and should not be an end in itself, as the dominant leadership paradigm suggests.

Given what writers and scientists are increasingly saying about the primacy of relationships in any organizational context, it is good to remember that Austrian psychologist Viktor E. Frankl pointed out almost fifty years ago, in his classic work Man's Search for Meaning (Beacon, 1959), that the most important motivation for humans is not pleasure or the avoidance of pain but having a sense of meaning for one's life. The basic striving of humans, he argues, is to find meaning and fulfill purpose in life.

Frankl distinguishes between being driven to do something and striving to achieve something. People, he says, are pushed by drives but pulled by meaning. He argues that people discover the meaning of life through creative values (what they create and give to life), experiential values (what they take out of life), and attitudinal values (how they cope with fate and whatever life throws at them).

Value leadership accepts the notion that giving to life imparts the greatest and most sustained meaning to life. And this is not simply out of altruism; therein also lies the source of human happiness: connecting with people and the environment and adding value to enrich both other people and ourselves gives meaning to our lives.

Recent research is increasingly pointing to the reality that although the meaning of life is different for each of us, it is validated for all of us through our connection to people and through adding value to our common humanity.

Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, prefers to emphasize the remembering self as opposed to transient feelings. He believes that people are their memories more than they are the sum total of their experiences.

Seligman argues in his book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (Free Press, 2002) that there are three components of happiness: pleasure, engagement in relationships with other people, and meaning through serving others. Pleasure, he says, is the least consequential. “This is newsworthy because so many Americans build their lives around pursuing pleasure,” he writes. “It turns out that engagement and meaning are much more important.”