Design as a Radical Act of Agency: Lessons from Lesley-Ann Noel

In this episode of Meaningful Work Matters, Andrew is joined by Lesley-Ann Noel, Dean of Design at OCAD University and author of Design Social Change. Together they explore how design can be a radical act of agency that transforms workplaces and communities. The conversation covers the importance of self-awareness, listening deeply beyond empathy, and adopting an abolitionist mindset when incremental change is not enough.

Noel also shares why balancing anger with joy is essential for sustaining meaningful work over the long term.

When most people think of design, they picture creative problem-solving or innovative products. For Noel, design is also a tool for building a more equitable future, one intentional choice at a time.

Starting with Self-Awareness

For Noel, the first step in designing meaningful change is knowing yourself. She draws on Paulo Freire’s concept of critical consciousness and adapts it for designers and change-makers.

“We have to figure out what is important to us, and how that shapes the issues we focus on,” she explains. “We also have to see where we might have a bias, and how that will affect the work we do.”

She encourages declaring positionality, a practice from qualitative research where you articulate your identity, values, and lived experiences in relation to the work. In her own research, acknowledging her role as a mother influenced the questions she asked and the communities she worked with.

Self-awareness is not self-centeredness. Instead, it is the foundation for designing responsibly. When we understand our own lens, we can make more intentional decisions about where and how we focus our energy.

Listening Beyond Empathy

Empathy is an important part of design, but it has limits. As Noel explains, true understanding requires going beyond imagining how someone else feels. It means getting closer, asking harder questions, and paying attention to what is not said.

She offers examples from her own work where nonverbal cues, cultural practices, and even community anger were vital signals. In one case, she described how feedback from stakeholders was more valuable when she focused on the underlying message rather than the tone in which it was delivered.

“We cannot design well from only our point of view. We have to get as close as possible to other perspectives, often by working side-by-side with people.”

Listening beyond empathy is about creating proximity. It is also about co-design, giving people voice and choice in shaping the solutions that affect them. This principle applies equally in organizational leadership, where employee input and lived experience should shape workplace decisions.

The Abolitionist Mindset

One of the most striking ideas Noel shares is the abolitionist mindset.

It is a simple but powerful question: When is incremental change not enough?

An abolitionist mindset recognizes when a system or practice is too harmful to improve gradually and must be ended entirely. Noel describes colleagues at OCAD University who have applied this thinking to institutional policies, such as ensuring graduates who change their gender identity can have their chosen name on their degree.

This mindset invites us to confront the uncomfortable truth that some structures cannot be fixed. For leaders, it is a reminder to look for the policies, habits, and systems in our workplaces that perpetuate inequity, and to have the courage to stop them outright.

Anger as Fuel, Joy as Sustenance

Noel speaks openly about the role of emotions in social change. Anger, when harnessed, can be a powerful motivator. She recalls a mentor once challenging her to turn her frustration into clear, purposeful action. That guidance shaped much of her work.

“I have done a lot of angry work that has been very successful,” she says. “It is like how musicians sometimes write their best music when they are heartbroken.”

But anger alone is not enough. Sustaining change requires joy. Joy provides the energy to continue movements over the long term. For Noel, moments of joy come from collaborating with communities, celebrating wins, and seeing tangible results from the work.

Key Takeaways

• Know yourself to create change. Understanding your values, biases, and lived experiences shapes how you see problems and imagine solutions. This is ongoing work that requires revisiting your perspectives over time.

• Listen beyond empathy. Co-create with those affected and pay attention to unspoken cues and deeper needs. This requires time, trust, and humility, and may slow the pace but strengthens outcomes.

• Adopt the abolitionist mindset when needed. Recognize when systems must be ended rather than reformed. Be ready for resistance and prepare to articulate the case for change clearly.

• Balance anger with joy. Use anger to spark action and joy to sustain it over time. Without moments of joy, the emotional demands of change-making can lead to burnout.

Final Thoughts

Noel’s perspective reframes design as more than a creative discipline. It is a way of exercising agency, building equity, and fostering the conditions for meaningful work in any context.

Whether you are leading a team, shaping policy, or influencing culture, her approach offers a practical framework for transforming both the systems around you and your own role within them.

Resources for Further Exploration

• Design Social Change by Lesley-Ann Noel

• The Designer’s Critical Alphabet

• The Positionality Wheel

• Connect with Lesley-Ann on LinkedIn, or follow her on Instagram

Dismantling The Myth of Work-Life Balance: Lessons from Morten Albæk

In this episode of Meaningful Work Matters, Andrew Soren is joined by Danish philosopher and business leader Morten Albæk to explore why modern life, despite its progress, often feels empty.

Together, they unpack the distinction between happiness, satisfaction, and meaning, and how our failure to understand these differences has shaped organizations, leadership, and even our personal sense of purpose.

Albæk is the founder of Voluntās, a global advisory firm that measures and builds meaning into companies, governments, and societies. His approach is grounded in both philosophical inquiry and real-world leadership experience, with a background that spans executive roles in banking and wind energy.

The Great Paradox of Our Time

Albæk begins by naming what he sees as the most urgent challenge facing his generation: a deep contradiction between our material progress and our emotional decline.

By many economic and health indicators, life is better than ever. Yet levels of stress, loneliness, anxiety, and depression are rising.

He describes it as the greatest paradox of our time. We are living longer and becoming wealthier, but also feeling less connected, less whole, and less human.

One reason, Albæk argues, is the speed at which we now live. We fill our days with activity but leave little room for reflection. He offers a compelling metaphor: just as music requires pauses to reveal a melody, life requires pauses to reveal meaning. Without those pauses, everything becomes noise.

Meaning, Not Perfection

Albæk emphasizes that perfection is a false ideal because we all arrive in life imperfect.

We are born with physical, cognitive, and emotional variation, which is a part of being human and worth embracing.

A meaningful life is shaped through reflection, honesty, and the pursuit of dignity within the complexity of daily experience.

This distinction matters, especially when so much of modern work culture pushes us toward optimization and control. In contrast, Albæk’s framework centers meaning as the only emotional state that can support us through difficulty and imperfection.

What Is Meaning?

Albæk distinguishes meaning from both satisfaction and happiness, which are two concepts often mistaken for deeper fulfillment.

• Satisfaction is the feeling we get when a need is met. It’s transactional and temporary.

• Happiness refers to extraordinary moments. By nature, those moments come and go. If every moment were extraordinary, none would be.

“Meaning is when we stand in the now, reflecting upon the life we have lived and predicting the life that is ahead of us—and believing that the life ahead will be hopeful and dignified.”

This definition is central to Albæk’s work. Unlike satisfaction or happiness, meaning can coexist with sorrow, frustration, or loss. It is what allows us to continue moving forward with integrity, even when things are hard.

Work Is Not Separate from Life

A major focus of the episode is the idea that work and life are not opposites. Albæk takes aim at the language of “work-life balance,” calling it both inaccurate and damaging.

If work is something separate from life, then we are encouraged to treat it as a necessary burden rather than something that can (and should) be meaningful. Albæk points out that even if we could separate work from life, the hours we spend working are still hours we never get back.

Instead of chasing balance, he suggests we embrace what he calls the perfect imbalance. There will always be trade-offs between roles and responsibilities, but the goal is to keep that imbalance in a place where life still feels meaningful overall.

Meaningful Work Requires New Metrics

The conversation shifts toward how we evaluate work and organizations.

Albæk believes we are measuring the wrong things. Most notably, employee satisfaction. He argues that trying to meet everyone’s needs all the time is not only impossible, but also the wrong goal.

Instead, Voluntās measures what Albæk calls a meaningfulness quotient, based on four core drivers:

1. A sense of purpose

2. A sense of belonging

3. A sense of leadership

4. A sense of personal growth

These indicators offer a more human and realistic view of what makes work feel worthwhile.

Albæk believes that improving these metrics benefits both individuals and organizations. Engaged employees are more productive, creative, and committed. Not because they are being satisfied, but because they find meaning in what they do.

Virtues Over Values

Albæk draws a clear line between values and virtues. Many organizations proudly display their values, but he believes this practice is fundamentally flawed.

Values, he says, are not something an organization can claim for itself. They are given by customers, employees, and communities, and are based on how the organization behaves.

Virtues, on the other hand, are aspirations. They are qualities a company can strive for, knowing it will sometimes fall short but committing to the effort anyway.

“There’s no humility in corporate values. But there is humility in striving for a virtue.”

Replacing values with virtues brings both moral clarity and human honesty to the workplace. It invites continuous reflection and accountability, rather than empty declarations.

Why This Matters

Albæk invites us to redefine how we understand progress, both in society and in the context of work.

When we treat meaning as essential and measurable, we can design organizations that support purpose, belonging, growth, and moral clarity.

This matters because work plays a central role in shaping how people experience their lives. When meaning is present, individuals feel more grounded, more capable, and more connected to something larger than themselves.

Building meaningful organizations is a human imperative.

Why Caregiving Might Be The Most Meaningful Work: Lessons from T.L. Boyd

In this episode of Meaningful Work Matters, Dr. T.L. Boyd joins Andrew Soren to explore how caregiving, particularly in its non-traditional forms, influences leadership, resilience, and inclusion in the workplace.

Dr. Boyd is an Assistant Professor of Management and Leadership at Texas Christian University. His work focuses on historically marginalized populations and the often-unseen dimensions of meaningful work, such as caregiving responsibilities that fall outside traditional definitions.

Together, they examine how recognizing caregiving as real work can change how we support employees, build more inclusive environments, and challenge outdated assumptions about who is “fit” for leadership.

Making the Invisible Visible

Boyd opens the conversation by explaining his research focus: bringing visibility to stories that are often left out of organizational life.

As a Black man and an academic, he emphasizes how “me-search” can be just as powerful as research. His personal and professional identities are tightly linked, which helps shape the stories and questions he brings into his academic work.

At the heart of this episode is a call to expand how we define work.

Traditional workplace culture often draws a firm line between what counts as work and what belongs to life outside of it. Caregiving, especially the kind that doesn’t fit into conventional molds, tends to get ignored entirely.

Boyd challenges that divide. As he puts it:

“Meaningful work isn’t just what we’re paid to do. It’s what we do with intention and purpose.”

What Counts as Caregiving?

When people hear the word “caregiver,” many picture a parent caring for a child. But Boyd’s research invites a much broader definition. Non-traditional caregivers include those caring for aging parents, disabled siblings, partners, or anyone outside the classic nuclear family model.

In fact, many caregivers may not even identify themselves with that label. They might not wear a badge or disclose their responsibilities at work, but their roles still influence how they show up.

Boyd shares examples from his own community: a friend who is the primary caregiver for both her younger brother with Down syndrome and her mother with physical disabilities, and another who advocates for her son on the autism spectrum. These roles require resilience, empathy, and complex coordination skills that often rival those of high-level executives.

As Boyd puts it, “You need a CEO? Get a mom.”

Caregiving as a Strength, Not a Deficit

Boyd champions a shift from deficit thinking to a strengths-based approach. Traditionally, caregiving is seen as a distraction or a limitation when it comes to professional advancement. Boyd flips that narrative.

Non-traditional caregivers often build skills that are deeply valuable in the workplace. These include:

• Resilience: The ability to face setbacks and find creative ways forward

• Empathy: A deep understanding of others’ needs and emotions

• Time management: The capacity to prioritize, juggle, and plan effectively

• Adaptability: Navigating unexpected changes with flexibility

These are not soft skills. They are leadership skills. Yet many organizations fail to recognize them because they are developed outside of formal roles.

Boyd argues that this hidden labor is often the most formative. “Caregivers are doing the work of inclusion and leadership every day,” he explains. “But unless organizations are willing to look beyond surface-level metrics, they miss it.”

Family-To-Work-Spillover

One concept Boyd raises in the episode is how caregiving experiences can carry over into the workplace. He describes this as “family-to-work spillover,” where the skills, empathy, and resilience developed at home begin to shape how someone leads or collaborates at work.

For example, someone who has navigated the healthcare system for a parent may become more patient and resourceful at work. A foster parent might bring a deeper sense of empathy to their team.

Boyd calls this dynamic “enrichment,” where lessons learned in one part of life make another part stronger. He encourages both individuals and organizations to stop treating caregiving as something separate from work and to start treating it as an asset.

What Organizations and Managers Can Do

The episode turns toward practical implications with a challenge for leaders: Are your policies and workplace cultures designed for everyone, or only for people in traditional family structures?

Boyd and Soren explore how often support systems like parental leave or caregiver benefits are narrowly defined. Many non-traditional caregivers either don’t qualify or aren’t aware of what’s available to them.

The solution starts with awareness.

Boyd emphasizes that managers have a responsibility to understand the caregiving realities of their teams, not just in one-on-one check-ins but in how they shape team culture. He describes managers as “climate engineers” who set the tone for openness and inclusion.

If leaders want employees to be honest about their needs, they have to build environments where people feel safe to share. That means being trained, being proactive, and being willing to learn from those with lived experience.

Creating Space for Growth Without Pressure

Soren raises an important tension in the conversation: how to explore the growth potential in caregiving without gaslighting people who are struggling.

Boyd emphasizes that the first step is not asking caregivers to do more emotional labor. Instead, organizations should begin by evaluating their own systems. Before assuming that someone is underutilizing available resources, leaders should ask a different question: Do people even know this support exists?

As Boyd puts it, the burden shouldn’t fall on potentially overwhelmed caregivers to navigate confusing systems or justify their needs. Support begins with awareness, and that awareness must come from leadership.

He encourages HR professionals, team leads, and inclusion advocates to take the following steps:

1. Audit policies: Are current benefits accessible to non-traditional caregivers?

2. Train leaders: Equip managers with language and tools to support disclosure and dialogue.

3. Create space: Normalize conversations around caregiving, just like we do for other forms of diversity.

4. Recognize skills: Acknowledge caregiving as valid experience that builds leadership capacity.

Why This Matters for Meaningful Work

The concept of meaningful work often centers on personal fulfillment, but that fulfillment is shaped by the broader systems we work within. If those systems ignore caregiving, they are missing a key part of what makes people whole.

Meaningful work cannot be separated from a meaningful life. And caregiving is one of the most meaningful, yet overlooked, forms of work there is.

Organizations that want to retain talent, build inclusive cultures, and prepare the next generation of leaders need to start asking better questions. Not just about performance, but about what people carry with them when they come to work each day.

Resources for Further Exploration

• Read T.L. Boyd’s co-authored research paper: Out of the Shadows: Bringing Nontraditional Caregiving to the Foreground of Management Research

• Connect on LinkedIn here!

Realizing our Eudaimonic Potential: Lessons from Dr. Alan Waterman

In this episode of Meaningful Work Matters, Dr. Alan Waterman joins Andrew Soren to unpack what eudaimonia looks like in everyday life, especially when it comes to the work we do.

Dr. Waterman is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at The College of New Jersey. He is widely recognized for his pioneering research on identity, intrinsic motivation, and the distinction between eudaimonic and hedonic well-being. His work brings together philosophy and psychology to explore what it means to live a life of purpose and fulfillment.

Their conversation touches on themes like motivation, personal values, calling versus obligation, and the kind of support individuals need to develop a fulfilling life, whether that fulfillment is found through their job, outside of it, or both.

From Aristotle to Identity: What Is Eudaimonia?

Dr. Waterman explains eudaimonia as the process of realizing our fullest potential.

He draws an important distinction between two kinds of potential. Species-generic potential refers to the abilities and traits that are uniquely human, such as reason, creativity, and moral reflection. Individual-specific potential is about the strengths, values, and capacities that are unique to each person.

Both types matter.

From Waterman’s perspective, fulfillment happens when we develop our own individual strengths within the broader context of what it means to be human. It is not just about performing well, but about growing into the kind of person we are most capable of becoming.

He describes it this way, inspired by the work and research of David Norton:

“Being where one wants to be, doing what one wants to do, where what you are doing is something that is worth doing and worth doing to the best of your ability.”

This definition highlights that living well requires both self-knowledge and effort. We need to know what we are capable of and choose to act on it.

For Waterman, this is what gives life its meaning.

Work as a Calling vs. Work as a Job

One of the clearest applications of eudaimonia to modern life is how we approach work. Waterman distinguishes between work as a calling and work as a job.

• Work as a calling is intrinsically motivating. It’s often tied to activities or roles to which people feel connected. Not because of pay, status, or convenience, but because they find them worthwhile.

• Work as a job, by contrast, is usually chosen for practical reasons and tends to be extrinsically motivated. It may be necessary or even enjoyable, but lacks the deeper sense of purpose that defines a calling.

Waterman challenges the notion that callings are rare.

In his view, many people experience a calling: teachers, scientists, first responders, artists, etc. However, they may not always label it as such. He also emphasizes that callings can evolve over time and show up in multiple domains of life, not just in paid employment.

Intrinsic Motivation and Person-Activity Fit

So how do we know what path might lead to fulfillment?

Waterman points to intrinsic motivation as a key signal. The activities, values, or beliefs we feel a natural pull toward are often the ones most aligned with our individual potential.

He encourages us to pay attention to resonance, a term borrowed from music. Just as certain notes create harmony within us, certain tasks, roles, or values feel more aligned with who we are. When we ignore those signals, we may succeed externally but feel disconnected internally.

Waterman also highlights the difference between interpersonal comparisons (how we stack up against others) and intrapersonal comparisons (what we do best among all our own options).

Eudaimonic fulfillment, he argues, comes from the latter.

“We are not here to fulfill someone else’s version of success. The work of a meaningful life is identifying and developing the strengths that resonate most for us.”

Harmonious vs. Obsessive Passion

The conversation also explores a critical distinction in motivation theory: harmonious passion versus obsessive passion.

• Harmonious passions are intrinsically motivated and additive. They support our overall well-being and integrate well with other areas of life.

• Obsessive passions on the other hand often involve a rigid attachment to goals or identities. They can lead to burnout, alienation, or the neglect of other important life domains.

Waterman encourages anyone stuck in an obsessive loop to step back and assess what’s working and what’s not. He suggests revisiting earlier moments in life where balance or joy were more present. Oftentimes, rediscovering meaning starts with exposure to something new.

What This Means for Managers and Workplaces

While much of Waterman’s framework focuses on individual awareness and alignment, the conversation closes with a practical discussion about how leaders and organizations can support fulfillment both at work and beyond it.

• Not all jobs will be intrinsically motivating, and that’s okay. Every person still has the potential to find meaningful expression somewhere in their life.

• Managers can support employees by creating space for strengths exploration, autonomy, and values alignment even if that expression happens outside the workplace.

• When employers support the whole person, employees are more likely to feel grounded, satisfied, and capable in their roles.

Soren reflects on how organizations might expand their understanding of growth by including personal development alongside traditional professional development. Together, he and Waterman suggest that fulfillment at work is more likely when people are supported in growing in ways that feel personally meaningful.

Key Ideas to Reflect On

• Eudaimonia is about realizing your highest potential by making choices that lead to a lasting sense of fulfillment.

• Intrinsic motivation and alignment with personal values are reliable signals that you are on a path toward self-realization.

• Work can be experienced as a calling, a job, or something in between. Each orientation has its place, depending on context and individual goals.

• When employers support employee fulfillment outside of work, it can lead to greater well-being, motivation, and performance on the job.

Final Thoughts

From Waterman’s point of view, meaningful work is about recognizing your unique strengths, aligning with your values, and having the opportunity to express what matters most to you.

His insights are a reminder that fulfillment comes from choosing what is worth doing and committing to doing it well. This applies just as much to individuals seeking more purpose in their work as it does to leaders responsible for creating environments where people can thrive.

Resources for Further Exploration

• Books by Dr. Alan Waterman:

  The Best Within Us: Positive Psychological Perspectives on Eudaimonia (American Psychological Association, 2014)

  Flow Theory Re-Envisioned: A Conceptual Analysis and Response to Critiques (Oxford University Press, forthcoming Fall 2025)

• Related Episodes

  • Discovering Your Calling: Lessons from Jeff Thompson

  • The Many Paths to Meaningful Work: Lesson from Dr. Michael Pratt

  • How to Make Work Psychologically Rich: Lessons from Dr. Shigehiro Oishi

Taking CARE of Work Boundaries: A Guide to Balancing Your Life

In today’s fast-paced world, it can be challenging to strike a balance between work and personal life. Many of us find ourselves constantly struggling to keep up with the demands of our work while still trying to manage our personal commitments. This is where work boundaries come in. By creating boundaries between our work and our personal lives, we can better manage our time and energy, leading to improved focus, productivity, and well-being. In this blog, we’ll take a look at Eudaimonic By Design’s Work Boundaries and explore the CARE framework for creating and maintaining work boundaries.

Step 1: Choose

The first step in creating work boundaries is to choose whether to segment or integrate our work and personal domains. Segmenters keep their domains separate, while Integrators are more fluid between the two. There are pros and cons to both approaches, and most people fall somewhere in between. It's important to reflect on our preferences and needs, and to decide when to segment and when to integrate based on our workload, projects, and level of focus needed.

Step 2: Actualize

The next step is to actualize our boundaries by setting up physical, temporal, cognitive, and behavioral boundaries. Physical boundaries include elements that physically distinguish the different domains, such as walls, doors, curtains, and dedicated workspaces. Temporal boundaries are all about times and timing, such as setting specific work hours, using a calendar to time-block different activities, and setting a timer to denote the end of one activity. Cognitive boundaries are about using thinking and processing patterns that are appropriate for one domain and not for another, such as finding a routine to get into a state of focus or flow, shifting our mindset, or turning off alerts and noises that might distract our attention from one task to another. Behavioral boundaries are about adopting different behaviors for different domains, such as wearing work clothes and changing into leisure clothes at the end of the day or using more formal language in the work environment.

Step 3: Rituals

Rituals are important for crossing boundaries between work and personal life. There are three types of rituals: those that end an activity, those that transition between activities, and those that start a new activity. Examples of rituals could include putting away your workspace to end an activity, walking to a new location to transition between activities, or taking a few deep breaths before beginning a new activity.

Step 4: Enacting

Finally, it's important to enact our boundaries with others. Boundaries work best when they are chosen by the individual and are supported by other people in the individual’s life, both at home and at work. This means communicating our boundaries clearly to our colleagues, family, and friends, and making sure they understand and respect them.

In conclusion, work boundaries are an essential aspect of achieving a healthy work-life balance. By choosing our preferred approach to segmenting or integrating our work and personal domains, actualizing our boundaries through physical, temporal, cognitive, and behavioral elements, adopting rituals to cross boundaries, and enacting our boundaries with others, we can better manage our time and energy, leading to improved focus, productivity, and well-being. Remember, taking care of our work boundaries means taking care of ourselves and those around us, which in turn helps us live happier and more fulfilled lives.

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