I just love Seth Godin and his irreverent way of telling us what we really need to hear at the very moment we need to hear it.

Here’s something from a recent Seth blog that I think might be worth sharing with your team (not to mention reflecting upon ourselves as motivated leaders). It is about employee engagement…starting, as always, with self.

Perhaps it is time to raise your hand and create the kind of job experience that will really satisfy you and make you proud.

- Kathy McAfee, America’s Marketing Motivator (and Seth Godin fan)

Different kinds of work by Seth Godin

If your boss asks you to move a box from point a to point b, it’s probably not okay to say, “I don’t feel like it right now.”

If you work on the chain gang and it’s time to dig a ditch, you don’t get a reprieve if you roll your eyes and say, “that’s not what they pay me for.”

And if you’re a dishwasher, you don’t get a chance to say, “I guess I’m just not the kind of person who’s good at putting his hands into really hot soapy water all day.”

And yet.

And yet when we ask you to look people in the eye, be creative, brainstorm, be generous, find a way to satisfy an angry customer, work with a bully, learn a new skill or bring joy to work, suddenly the excuses pile up. Is this a different sort of work? Is raising your hand in class too much to ask of you?

The jobs most of us would like to have are jobs like this. And yet we put up a fight when given the chance to do them well.

• To read more musings from Seth Godin, visit his blog site or better yet, sign up for Seth’s blog. He is prolific and wickedly sensible!