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Transcript
You may hear sometimes that it’s important to give your people purpose, that giving them purpose can be motivating and it’s good to do as a leader. But when it comes to purpose, what does that really mean and how do you do that?
Now, I’ve read a misconception that some people have about purpose. And some of that is because they have a misconception about business as a whole. But this misconception is this:
I was reading the article and the person mentioned that, yeah, it’s a good idea to give purpose. So maybe your company should offer volunteer stuff or donate some of its money to some organization, nonprofit, something. So everything that it was talking about when it came to purpose was outside the organization.
And that’s often, that’s wrong because if your company, if you’re in the business, and your company is doing a service for people, i’s providing a product that people like and want, you aren’t ripping people off by providing that if they’re willingly buying it from you. You are helping someone either satisfying a need or whether it’s entertainment or whatever it may be, you are providing something for someone that satisfies them somehow.
That in itself can be a purpose because you’re doing something that benefits the customer.
The mission of your organization
With that being said, let’s look a little bit deeper into giving purpose. Purpose really is the why behind the work. Why is it important? And in an organization, especially if you are the leader of the organization, the CEO, the owner, or even over a nonprofit, whatever it may be, it’s ultimately on you, whether you establish the vision or mission or purpose yourself with your team or talking to the organization.
However you create it, ultimately it’s on you as the leader to lead people toward that vision, to make sure that goal or that purpose is established. And that’s the ultimate big purpose is what is the purpose, the mission of your organization. And those are usually written in your mission statement.
Sometimes people confuse what mission statements are and you’ll see different definitions, but generally the mission statement is your mission, what your purpose is.
And the purpose goes beyond making profit. I know Peter Drucker, if you’ve read much of his material, he is very against the idea of the profit maximization, or profit being the purpose. Because as he says, the ultimate purpose of a business is to satisfy a customer. And your purpose is more than just making money, it’s somehow doing something for other people through your business.
So the first question for you, is do you have a clear purpose or mission for your organization that you are driving to? Because when you do, people can see if you attach it, and we’ll talk about that, that the work they do has purpose, it has a reason for it, they have a reason for what the organization is doing, and you can also, or actually it helps you make better decisions and take better actions, everybody in the organization, because everything you do revolves around that.
It’s a guiding light that can in ways make decisions and other things easier because you ask, does this align with our purpose? Yes, then you may want to do it. If no, then you probably don’t want to do it.
Applying the mission as a manager team leader
Let’s say though that you aren’t the head of a company. You aren’t the business owner. You aren’t the CEO on the executive team. You’re a team leader or a supervisor or manager within the company.
Part of your job, if your company has the mission, is to take that mission and own it. You own it and you lead your people toward it. And within that, you can create your own mission or purpose or goals.
And I didn’t mention goals earlier, but that’s part of purpose is sometimes as a company, you set these big goals that help you move towards your mission. And those are purposeful, because these are things we’re trying to accomplish that ultimately get to the mission.
So as a team leader or whatever you may be, you can set goals, purpose within your team that your team moves toward. And if your organization doesn’t have a purpose it really pursues, you can really create one for your team as well.
No matter what position you are in, you’re still leading people toward a purpose, toward a direction, whether you establish it yourself or you take it from the company and own it and maybe make your own goals based off that, so on.
Based on the overall purpose and your team’s goals, then each individual can also have goals they’re pursuing toward the overarching goal. So each person’s in their positions can move toward that. That is one aspect of purpose, the overall purpose and people have goals toward it. And that’s an aspect of it to think about.
Helping people see the big picture
Now, when you are talking with your people, when they have their roles and the tasks and projects they’re doing, part of giving them purpose is helping them see the big picture of the work that they’re doing.
Whatever they’re doing, what work they’re doing, how does it affect the big picture? How does it move the goal forward?
That’s part of the purpose part, because if you feel like your work has no meaning and no purpose, you’re not going to be motivated in it because you’re asking, why am I doing this? It has no purpose. You want to attach purpose and let people see how their work individually affects the big picture.
David Marquet in his book, Turn the Ship Around, he was a captain of a submarine in the Navy. One of the things he said in his book was that connecting their day to day activities to something larger was a big motivator for his crew.
How your work impacts others
Another aspect is to help people see how what they do impacts other people. Because generally people are more motivated by how it impacts others versus themselves. Simon Sinek, and I think it was The Infinite Game, it was one of his books, he talked about some lifeguards, and with the lifeguards, they separated them into two different groups. One group talked about all the benefits for them and how the job benefited them and all the things they got from it, the perks and so on. And the other one had videos of other lifeguards and such explaining how they were able to save people’s lives. And so it was more other people focused.
And they found because of that, those who were focused on or who watched the videos that were other focused were more motivated and driven than those who were just on the about themselves.
Jim Collins and Bill Lazier in their book Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 also said something similar because they said one of the biggest motivators is knowing that people are depending on you.
This can be done in different ways. It can be on the customer. How is what they’re doing impacting and benefiting the customer? Sometimes they are directly doing something with them, are they’re part of the process, whatever it may be.
But it can go deeper than that because it can also be how does it affect other people within the organization? They may not directly impact the customer, but they may be helping someone else do their job, which then ultimately benefits other people.
Or it could be even you. If someone’s just doing things that’s benefiting you, make sure to let them know how it impacts you and the effect it has and the benefit of it. Let them know your appreciation for that.
Individual goals
Then there’s the, on the more micro level, something we kind of mentioned earlier was that people’s own personal goals. Michael Abershoff in his book, It’s Your Ship, he was a captain of, I think a destroyer, but it was the US Navy of the Benefold, and he said in the book that he took the time to learn everyone’s names and personal and professional goals. And part of it, the reason he did that was he wanted to link their goals from the ship and their own personal goals to give them an opportunity, as he said, “to apply their talents and give their jobs a real purpose.”
So when you look at your team and as you get to know them, what are some of their own personal goals, their career goals?
And how does the work they do tie into that? Or can you give them specific work? That’s something to consider as well as you are delegating tasks. If something really aligns with someone, that might be part of the consideration in giving that task to someone.
How does it affect their personal goals? How does it affect their career goals? The more you can align all of those together, the more motivated people will be, the more they’ll see the why of their work, and the more ownership and invested they will be in what they’re doing.
Questions for you
Question for you then from all of this is, are you giving your team purpose in what they do? And if you aren’t, what steps can you take from this point forward?
And if you are, can you do a better job at it? Is there something that we’ve talked about that you can apply to help your team see more purpose?
If you don’t have goals, if you don’t have a direction, if you don’t have a clear path that you’re taking people on, that’s the first step to take. And if you do, then you can look at the other aspects as well to help your team have purpose and through that to help motivate and help your team take ownership of what they do.
Hope this helps. See you next time.
