The Wrong Thing To Look For In A Great Job: Martin Lesperance (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of engagement expert Martin Lesperance’s talk titled “The Wrong Thing To Look For In A Great Job” at TEDxLakefield College School 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Finding Purpose in Your Career

MARTIN LESPERANCE: What do you want to be when you grow up? That is the question that has annoyed and terrified young people forever. Answering it was never easy, and it got even more complicated in 2010 when we were all told that we need to start with why. That we need purpose to be happy and to feel that work.

And yet, people are still leaving their jobs in record numbers. And even worse, the number of people staying in the job and being miserable has never been so high. So, is finding your why enough to make you happy? Or is it just creating unnecessary pressure?

That’s what happened to me. I’m 25 years old, I graduate from university, and I start working as a high school science teacher in Montreal. I love the job from the moment I step into the classroom.

I love how the students are engaged, how they are willing to learn, and how much of my creativity I can bring into work. In the classroom, I am filled with a great sense of purpose, and I am convinced that this is going to be my job for the rest of my life. It’s about two months later that what happens outside the classroom starts to take its toll.

I have no patience with all the office politics, as many of my colleagues are very negative, pushing back on new ideas, complaining all the time, and on. I also hate supervising students so they don’t misbehave during lunch, and I also need to supervise detention. I mean, I never signed up to be a police officer.

All of this adds up and starts to affect how I feel about the job, and by the end of the school year, I can’t take it anymore. Don’t get me wrong, the time spent with the students, I love. But the sense of purpose just isn’t enough anymore, and the moment an opportunity comes, boom, I’m out.

The Pressure on Students

But for the students, the future changemakers, you know when you’re deciding what to do with your life? I know, you must think about what mom and dad want you to do, what your friends expect you to do, what you think you’ll be good at, what you think you will like, what will make you money, what’s going to make you look good on social media, what will save the planet, what you won’t regret choosing in a few years, and on top of that, all of this needs to bring purpose and fulfillment. It’s enough to drive anyone up the wall.

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In reality, you can think about all those things and take years, weighing every factor inside your decisions, and it still won’t matter. As simply, you cannot know what a job will truly be like until you actually do it. And even if you manage to find a career that is perfectly aligned with your why, when you start that job, there’s a good chance your day-to-day will be filled with doing the basics, doing some boring tasks that are so, so linked to what you thought the job would be.

I mean, you’re going in to save the world and make it a better place, and you’re in a two-hour meeting deciding on the font size of the newsletter. Any talk of purpose in there will sound absurd. But with time, though, this will change.

You’ve been working for some time, you know what you are good at, you know what you like and you dislike, and you might want your job, your work, to have meaning. You know, your job where you spend most of your time to be more than just a job. So you’ll start looking for a company that offers you that sense of mission, a feeling that you’re making a difference in the world.

The Importance of Relationships at Work

And then you can finally say that you’re starting with why. But if purpose is so important, why is it never mentioned as a reason when people leave a company? What truly matters is your relationship to your manager, your relationship to your colleagues, and how you fit with the culture of the organization. In finding a job you love, those are the things you need to watch for.

And yet, we spend so much time at work, it’s no surprise. We want our work to have meaning. But purpose will not stop you from leaving the job. And more importantly, it will not make you love the job. Take my wife for example, Stephanie. She’s an optometrist, an eye doctor.

And most of her days are filled with providing people with new prescriptions, sun wear, daily disposable contacts, drugs for dry eyes. That’s her bread and butter. Of course, she will accept every eye emergency. But if she needs to wait to see someone’s vision to feel a sense of purpose, she’ll hate her job 11 months of the year. If you ask her though, she absolutely loves her work. Because of stories like what happened a couple of weeks ago.

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This long time patient, we’ll call her Mary for a year, Mary calls into the clinic, “I can’t see anymore, can I see the doctor?” And my wife skips lunch again to see a patient. Mary answers the exam room in a bit of a panic mode, “I can’t see doctor, please help me. Is everything okay?”

“Are your glasses okay?” “Yes, they are.” He runs the test and Stephanie is looking at Mary’s file, and goes, “Mary, I don’t get it. According to the results, your vision has not changed.

You should be seeing perfectly right now. Unless, unless Mary, are these really your glasses?” Mary looks closely and says, “Oh no, they’re my husband’s glasses.” And they laugh until they cry.

Finding Joy in the Small Things

And those are the reasons why Stephanie loves her job.

She gets funny, weird stories like this one every week. She gets to help people with small things that don’t feel small to them. She connects with people over time and creates relationships.

The way most people think about purpose, is that they’re looking for this big, extraordinary impact somewhere else from where they are, far in the future. And that almost never works. What we need to look for are the small things that are right in front of us every day. Like helping your colleague, helping your patient, helping your client, having good discussions with your colleague.

It’s also all the stories you can collect and bring to your weekend barbecue. All those interactions will define how you spend most of your life. Now, of course, if they can accumulate and snowball into this world-changing impact on their life, amazing.

Yet, what we need to do is get to appreciate them. In the moment, right now. This is how you’ll love your job. That’s been my experience since I left that school job. It’s my wife’s experience every day. And it’s also what the research says.

There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that practicing gratitude in the workplace will foster stronger relationships, higher engagement, greater resilience, and a better connection to your work. So how can you do this? Well, take a quiet moment.

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Finding a Job You Love

Sit down and start writing everything that you love about that job. Everything that you love to do. Create that list. Make it long. Because when that voice will come back and say, “Why am I doing this?” You can use your list as a reminder of why you love to do what you do. And if ever you decide to pursue your adventure somewhere else, then you can use this as a prescription for finding a job you love.

For the students, the future change makers, look at everything that you loved doing in your past school years and find a job that allows you to do those things, or most of those things, every day. It could be the time spent where you work uninterrupted, the time where you’re meeting new people, the time when you’re learning new things. It could be traveling the world inspiring people.

Whatever puts a smile on your face. The more of these moments you can line up in your day-to-day, the easier it will be to love your job. Now, I am not saying that a higher purpose, a higher why isn’t needed.

I’m not saying that any job is worth doing just because you enjoy it. By all means, serve someone else than yourself. What I’m saying is that purpose, as defined by most people, is not the only thing we need, and it might not be a good starting point for some of us.

What do you want to be when you grow up was never a great question to answer. And being told, start with why, might not be the magic answer it’s made out to be. Let’s focus on how we do what we do.

Why that puts a smile on your face. This is how you’ll find happiness and fulfillment. Some will say, find a job you love. I say, you can also love the job you have. Thank you.