Current theorizing suggests leaders and job tasks are the primary drivers of meaningfulness. The role played by employee skills has been left in the background, with an implicit assumption that the only skills that matter are sociotechnical skills that facilitate task performance. Working with employees at Second Chance, a multi-state nonprofit thrift store chain, our research introduces romanticizing skills as a novel, skill-based predictor of meaningfulness. Romanticizing skills is a proficiency at idealizing and glamorizing a wide range of jobs. Someone high in romanticizing skills is adept at taking a job like accountant and idealizing and glamorizing it to become “a masterful conductor, transforming chaos into harmony with precise calculations.” Our findings show that romanticizing skills predicted meaningfulness, especially when jobs are low in the job characteristics that typically cultivate it. Those results held when controlling for a cognitive form of job crafting. Building on these findings, we conducted a follow-up experiment illustrating that individuals can be trained to be better at romanticizing skills. Our findings expand research opportunities for scholars by opening the door to a skill-based approach to meaningfulness.
