Ask This Question More Often

“What makes this meaningful?”

Ask this question of yourself. Ask it of close friends. Ask it of clients, colleagues, supervisors, and direct reports. Even competitors.

Ask it without apology. Then sit in whatever follows, be it silence or sound. Give meaning the space it needs to emerge.

What if we lived in a world where we began there?
Where meaning was not an afterthought to our work, our play, or our hobbies, but the starting place?

What kind of world would that be?

Resist the temptation to dismiss the question as impractical, existential, or unhelpful to the bottom line. Give yourself, and the people around you, the gift of reflection.

Not simply on what works.
But on what makes the work meaningful.

Conflict often looks like disagreement over positions:
What we want.
What we insist on.
What we’re unwilling to give up.

At Emergent, we sometimes name a deeper distinction: positions versus interests.
Many conflicts seem intractable not because interests are incompatible, but because they’re unexamined. Everyone has their positions sorted out, and they won’t budge. But why do they have these positions? Have they considered what lies beneath their opinions? Have they explored the dimly-lit rooms of the mind where purpose and authenticity quietly endure?

I’m increasingly convinced that reflecting on meaning helps unlock that exploration.

When we ask, “What makes this meaningful?”we begin to surface interests that rarely show up in the heat of disagreement: care, security, purpose, dignity, contribution.

Offering time and energy to reflect on meaning, and to hear one another’s answers, slows the conversation in a helpful way. It shifts us from defending positions to understanding what matters.

This practice does not eliminate conflict, but rather makes it intelligible.

And understanding, often, is where resolution begins.

So reader, what made this post meaningful to you?

Let me know by email [email protected], or in the comments below.