109: Wharton Professor Amy Wrzesniewski | Job Crafting and Creating Meaning

Amy Wrzesniewski, professor at the Wharton School of Pennsylvania, is an award-winning professor who researches how people make meaning of their work. Her research on job crafting examines how people redraw the boundaries of their jobs to change both their work identity and the meaning of the work. Amy’s work has been published in prestigious academic journals as well as mainstream outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review.

And in 2015 and 2019 Amy won the “Inspiring Yale” Award, voted by students as the most inspiring professor at Yale’s School of Management.

Amy earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the Wharton School, Amy was on faculty at Yale and NYU.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We make a mistake in thinking that certain jobs are meaningful and other jobs are not. However, the meaning is really in the relationship between people and their work, which makes finding meaning a far more personal endeavor.
• It’s not just about finding fit. It’s also about creating fit. Just as there is some finite number of people we could build a great life with, there are also some number of jobs or careers we could make our own and find meaning in.
• By changing both our perception and behaviors, we can alter the meaning and significance of our jobs.
• Whether we view our job as cleaning hospital rooms or as healing people, there is significant flexibility in how we can craft our jobs and derive meaning from our work.

Follow Amy:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/amywrzesniewski

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-wrzesniewski-032229/

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

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