Hard Work

It’s Friday morning, about nine hours after I wrapped a five hour School Board meeting and the tail end of week-long business trip (currently on Amtrak coming home).

If you asked me this week, “How’s work?” I would reply, “Hard.” I have no doubt you’ve felt the same at one point or another in your adult life.

But what do we mean when we say our work is “hard”?  And why did I get so nerdy-excited in my Uber an hour ago when I thought, “OMG! That is so connected to last night’s School Board meeting!”?

What we mean by “hard work”

First off, let me say that what I am about to write has some privilege attached to it. For many people, “hard work” involves hazardous conditions, needing to work multiple jobs because their labor is undervalued, or not being able to find work at all.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a safe, stable job that pays a living wage, “hard work” usually means some combination of three things:

1. The knowledge and skills needed to do the job. Sometimes our work is hard because we feel ill-equipped to do it. For example, in the job I took last year at TED I create online courses for adult learners. I know a lot about instructional design and educational media, but I have never had to film anyone in a studio. Words cannot convey how little A-Game I brought to this task. Fortunately, I found freelancers who are helping and schooling me. What once seemed overwhelming is now really exciting.

For managers and leaders, this means making sure your employees have the professional learning they need to do their job well and feel like they are learning and growing. For employees, it means speaking up to ask for the training and resources you need.

2. The time we need to do our jobs well (and live the rest of our lives). Work can be hard because there’s simply too much of it at any given time. Sometimes we are tasked with too much, and other times it’s because we overcommit ourselves. (My husband and I talk about my overscheduling All. The. Time.)

​This can be painfully obvious, as in “You are now expected to create eight reports a week instead of five.” But often it’s more subtle and accumulates over time—we find ourselves logging in an hour earlier, dining al desko, taking on more work to be a “team player” during a hiring freeze.

3. The emotional labor that work requires. Researchers define “emotional labor” as the work of managing one’s own emotions that is required by certain professions. Think about flight attendants, who are expected to be friendly and respectful to passengers even in stressful situations. I include in “emotional labor” the significant emotional freight that’s inherent in certain kinds of work: for example, ICU nursing, human rights law, the ministry.

If we care about our colleagues and the people we serve in our jobs, then a certain amount of emotional labor comes with the territory. We run into trouble, however, when we pile on additional, unnecessary emotional labor for others. Office politics. Dysfunctional communication. A hostile work environment.

I once joined a nonprofit as its executive director and discovered that its financial health had been wildly overstated during the hiring process. Because my predecessor hadn’t been able to bring herself to conduct the necessary layoffs I had to do it, two months in and a week after my father died. It was one of the hardest times in my life. There was no question the layoffs had to be done, but it mattered a lot to me how it was done. I had to combine a dispassionate acceptance of our finances with a lot of compassionate, honest and vulnerable communication with my team.


When I talk to people about how their work is “hard,” most often they tell me about the emotional labor they’re performing. It’s been my experience that we’ll go the extra mile to upskill or take on an extra task, but it’s harder for us to accept feeling undervalued, patronized or taken for granted.

I’ve been a perpetrator and a victim of this. [Note to self: need to watch a little less Law & Order.]  For example, last December I wrote about my initial impressions as a School Board Member-Elect.

I had only good intentions when I wrote this piece: were were coming out of a tense time when the relationship between the community and the School Board had been badly damaged. I felt (and still do) that there was room for improvement on both sides to communicate more effectively.

But in writing about the School Board as an institution, I unintentionally harmed the individual humans who serve in this role and who were still grappling with (and I think it’s fair to say “recovering from”) the tremendous emotional labor of the previous year and a half. (Whether you agree with the decisions they made during that time—I think we can all agree that the emotional labor involved was significant.) In short, I ended up creating extra, unnecessary emotional labor for them.

For that, I am sorry. The job is hard enough as it is.


Why I’m thinking about last night’s School Board meeting

I see application of what I’ve written above in so many parts of my School Board work—last night’s meeting is a fine example. For instance:

Staff retention and engagement.  Last night several APS employees spoke during public comment. I am reflecting on the question: How can we make their work “less hard”?

• Are we doing all we can to provide them with the knowledge, skills, resources and time to do their jobs well?
• Are we equipping them to perform the emotional labor that’s inherent in their work and not creating extra, unnecessary emotional labor for them?
• How can we navigate the advent of collective bargaining—new territory for all of us—in a way that allows us to communicate institutionally/collectively and human-to-human?

Consequential votes. Last night APS Facilities staff presented the proposed schematic design for the Career Center. This is a significant and costly project, and one that’s understandably emotional for the school community involved.

• How do School Board members acquire and analyze the necessary information? How do we respect the expertise of APS staff and use a “critical friend” lens to achieve the best possible governance?
• How do we make decisions dispassionately (looking as objectively as possible at the data, weighing the needs across the system now and in the future) and compassionately?

My first consequential vote as a School Board member was to pause the VLP program last February. I’d been assigned to be the VLP School Board liaison and had gotten to know several of these families pretty well during my first six weeks. For me, this vote was as emotional as the layoffs I’d had to make in a previous work life.

Restorative practices. Gradis White talked last night about restorative work with students in our schools. I think we can apply this in other areas, too.

Are we taking the time to understand the root causes of other people’s statements and actions?

When tough calls need to be made—whether it’s a mandatory student suspension, a grievance  or a consequential School Board vote—are we taking steps to follow up with those affected and repair relationships that may have been damaged so that we can interact productively in the future?


As a public servant, I can’t make everyone happy. But I can aim to avoid missteps that create unnecessary “hard work” for myself and others.