159: Professor Jeffery Thompson | Finding Your Calling

Meikles & Dimes

Jeffery Thompson is the director of the Romney Institute of Public Management at the BYU Marriott School of Management. He was raised in Boise, Idaho, and graduated from BYU with a BA in Japanese and a Masters degree in business. Jeff then earned a PhD in organizational behavior, with an emphasis in ethics, at the University of Minnesota, and then taught for four years in the business school at Miami University of Ohio prior to returning to BYU.

Jeff’s research focuses on organizational ethics and meaningful work. And in 2009, Jeff and his coauthor, Stuart Bunderson, published a paper that went viral in the academic world, and has been cited nearly 2,000 times. Much of our conversation today revolves around findings from that work.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Jeff found that the zookeepers he studied, consistent with others who have found their calling, have three things in common: First, they do work that has an other-orientation, a sense of service. Second, they embrace, and leverage, their own unique gifts. And third, they describe a sense of destiny, as if it were fate that had led them to their position.
• And even though Jeff eventually found his own calling, he realized that there was more to his calling than he initially thought, as he accepted new positions and embraced new opportunities.

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