Leaders Help Their Teams Embrace the Purpose

A Harvard Business Review article by former Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly called How to Connect Employees to Your Company’s Purpose opened like this:

When I ask CEOs in the new CEO workshop we run at Harvard Business School to rate the importance of having and living a great corporate purpose to the success of their company, their average response is 9.1 out of 10. In contrast, when I ask them how effectively their company’s purpose is coming to life today, their average rating is around 6 out of 10. This highlights that there is often a big gap between a company’s purpose and the reality for employees.

Joly followed that by emphasizing, “Unless companies figure out how to close this gap, they will fail to deliver on their potential. Doing so ultimately requires figuring out what will enable their frontliners to embrace and connect with their company’s purpose and values so they can make it come to life.” Closing that gap so our team members can connect with the organization’s purpose relies so heavily on leaders painting a clear picture of that purpose; through their words AND their actions!

Once we have that clarity on how our required tasks tie to our own definite purpose and we’ve connected those to the purpose our organization is aimed at, this gives us the chance to share those details with our teams on a daily basis. They’re most definitely watching what we do, whether we realize it or not; that’s part of being in a leadership role and why leaders never have the luxury of setting a bad example. With that being the case, it’s not so much about telling them what we’ve done - they already know. It’s really about explaining why we’ve done what we’ve done, and ensuring they understand how the things they’ve seen us do builds to the purpose we’re working to fulfill; the organizational purpose and even our own since there should be some close ties between the two.

As we do this consistently, we can share how these things also exemplify our values and support the mission and vision that’s printed in the policy manual or on the lobby wall. But it’s never all about us! This is where we get to begin tying the tasks each team member is responsible for in their own role back to the mission, vision, and values - AND our organization’s purpose. In most cases, the team surrounding a leader produces more than the leader ever could alone. Without understanding exactly how their work makes a difference (by living out the values in working toward the mission, vision, and purpose), the majority of our team members will likely just go through the motions and never give it all they’ve got. Remember that fifty-seven percent increased discretionary effort I’ve referred to a few times previously?

We can take a significant step toward earning that kind of engagement from our teams when we provide them with clarity around how each thing they do helps the entire organization succeed so we’ll wrap this up by looking at how we can create that kind of atmosphere…