Purpose is a Precursor to Contribution!

Earlier I shared Marcus Buckingham’s comment about love being the most powerful force in business for driving behavior - except he probably spells it behaviour… In that same talk, he said that “love is the precursor to contribution,” and related it to the engagement we can achieve from our employees and clients when we provide them with an experience they truly love. With that in mind, I’ll challenge you to think back to the 57 percent improvement in discretionary effort that I’ve referenced a few times already from the HBR article and the piece from the Forbes article stating that, “Loving your job is not just an added bonus to success, but actually an important precursor. If you enjoy what you do, working at it is easier, and your motivation to improve is somewhat innate, rather than forced.”

If we can become effective in connecting the most annoying tasks we’re responsible for back to something we really do love - that clear purpose we’ve been looking at - even those are likely to suck a little less. And if we’re able to keep how they tie to our purpose woven in with the things that motivate us the most (based on our individual behavioral style), we can expect a boost of energy to come with it!

Think for a minute about the things you’ve been involved with where time just flies by, as opposed to the ones where you feel like it’s been the longest week of your life and it’s only 10am on Monday… How much more do you feel like you’re able to accomplish on the things where time moves fast? And how much more energy are you left with even when you step away from those tasks? For me, it’s often hard to stop. The tasks that I love most, the ones that I can directly connect to the clear purpose that gets me out of bed each day, seem to be the ones where I find myself still plugging away late into the evening without being the least bit tired! But the inverse is just as true; just a small amount of time tied up with the things that are out of that scope can drain me almost immediately…

The difference is so often in how we can tie our responsibilities to our purpose and frame them around how we’re wired. When we can do this with just a few of the more tedious things on our plate, we’ll have far more juice left for the crap that comes with leading that rarely fits in with anyone’s purpose. Those things we love certainly are a precursor to increased contribution, but recognizing how even the things we don’t necessarily love can help us achieve our purpose can provide a boost in energy too! With that being that case, I’d argue that purpose is likely more of a precursor to contribution than even love… And when we can begin to picture how to make these things fit, we can begin to design both love and purpose into our routines - so we’ll pick up there soon.