Relevance.

We all want to be important. To someone or a group of someones. To a business, to a team - everyone wants to feel they have value and would be missed by someone if they leave.

Patrick Lencioni describes "Irrelevance" as the second sign of a miserable job. This is the feeling we've all felt in some scenario or another - that what we do has no impact on the lives of others. Everyone wants to feel that the actual work they do has a direct impact on someone else. For a doctor like me, its very easy - my patients. But I have a lot of others that, hopefully, I impact in a decent way - my wife, my kids, my Medical Assistant (T. Mankes, the best MA ever just in case she's reading this today), the people at our church. For a firefighter, again, obvious.

Some have to think about it a bit. Tanisha, my MA, directly impacts my patients' lives as well, but she really influences my life. She makes it much smoother, organizes it, gets me on track. She may not think of it that way since our emphasis is constantly on patients, but that part of her job is certainly big to me.

What about Lencioni's example of a pizza place? The waitresses obviously impact the experience of the customers and, as we know, the waitress' attitude can have an immense impact on how we enjoy our night out. How about the busboys? They impact the waitress' jobs directly, the owner's life and bottom line.

In general, I think you can almost always say that an employee's job at the very least impacts the quality of their manager's life. And managers need to appreciate that and comment on it. A "Thanks for making my life easier" at the right time can be a homerun for an employee and their morale.

Figure out who you are relevant to. Managers, thank your employees. Employees, sit down with your managers if you are struggling with this concept. It makes work something of value rather than something you do.