If you want to know what engages employees, ask them what they do outside of work—coaching, cooking, gardening, finishing the basement, volunteering at Church, building boats, fishing, sewing, reading, traveling, spending time with family and friends. Evenings and weekends are full of activities that express individuality and rejuvenate the soul. People light up when they talk about their families, hobbies, and volunteer ventures. I am amazed how much work people do during their “leisure time.”

What if the work we get paid for was as energizing as the work we do for free? What if our paying jobs reflected our individuality and rejuvenated our souls? Sound absurd? Yes, because it is counter-cultural. Work, we are led to believe, is supposed to be painful, stressful drudgery. It doesn’t have to be!

It is possible for work to be energizing and engaging. All it takes is paying attention to what energizes us, and doing more of it, and paying attention to what zaps our energy, and doing less of it. Of course, this is an absurd notion because in reality most employees have few choices about the work they get to do. Such important decisions as making assignments are to be made by “the boss.”

What if this wasn’t so? What if employees had more choices about their assignments? I have tried this counter-cultural path and it works! I have reframed my job from being assigner to matchmaker. I match individuals with the work that needs to be done, based on their preferences. In taking this radical approach, I have made two important discoveries that make this work. First, there is a high correlation between what people are good at and what they love to do. So making assignments based on preferences usually means people work in their areas of strength. Second, because people are diverse in their preferences, there are seldom coverage gaps in the work. One person’s drudgery is another’s joy.

I am a better leader when I share ownership of the work with the people who to do it. Imagine a workplace where everyone does only and exactly what each loves to do and all the work gets done! It is possible.

For more radical ideas about how to improve your workplace, see my book, Management Culture at mgmtculture.com or through Amazon. If you have read the book, please consider writing a review on Amazon, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.