Meaningful Work: The Three Things That Keep People Engaged and Performing

Episode notes

Learn how to build a team culture where people feel genuinely motivated, using a research-backed framework that drives engagement, reduces burnout, and improves retention. Meaningful work is not a soft concept. It is a measurable driver of productivity, engagement, resilience, and retention, and leaders have far more influence over it than most realise. Tamara Myles, co-author of Meaningful Work and professor at Boston College, has spent five and a half years researching exactly what leaders do to create it, across 25 industries and thousands of employees. Her three-C framework is the core of this episode: Community (people feel they belong), Contribution (people feel their work matters), and Challenge (people feel someone believes in their potential and invests in it). All three must be present, because they create a multiplier effect. If any one is missing, it cancels the others out. The episode is practical throughout. Tamara covers the number one meaning killer in organisations, why generational differences in engagement are more about career stage than age, and how a single well-structured one-to-one can address all three Cs at once.