Who They Impact Through Their Purpose

When running a large company, or even a small department within an organization of any size, it may seem a bit odd for some to consider how we can help our team members accomplish their own dreams and goals; their individual purpose… In What’s KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!), I shared a few examples of folks I knew who were promoted into roles where they were supervising people who had been their peers, many of which were actually their very close friends. I also provided details on how those close personal relationships contributed to some of the struggles those new supervisors faced in how they held their teams accountable. If you were to consider just those struggles, I could see how someone would be reluctant to build the kind of relationships with their team members that allows us to understand them as individuals. But we cannot consider just those struggles if we’re going to fulfill our leadership responsibility, have any shot of achieving our organization’s purpose, or help each of those team members work toward their individual purpose.

While I’ve stressed this in other places, I need to clarify something before I move on here; supervising or managing someone we have a longstanding relationship with can be awkward but that doesn’t mean we should be treating them any better or any worse than every other member of our team. All too often, I’ve seen people in this situation struggle in separating the action a team member takes from the outside relationship they have with that team member. Just like becoming a trained observer can help us differentiate between what someone says is their goal and what they’re actually willing to work toward, seeing behaviors for what they are without assigning intention to them can be the determining factor between supervising a group of people and leading a team that achieves great results. Since that’s outside our topic here, I won’t go deeper but you’re welcome to reach out to me directly if you have questions.

Make no mistake, none of what I’m suggesting here should take away from holding high expectations for each team member to execute each of their required job duties. If anything, helping them work toward an individual purpose that’s directly connected to our organization’s purpose will likely result in them exceeding what’s expected of them. If the purpose they’re motivated by has no connection to what we need to achieve as a company, it might just serve everyone involved to help them find somewhere else that’s more in line with what they need. There is, however, a chance that the path toward their purpose pulls them away from our organizational purpose over time. While seeing someone move on comes with costs, especially when we can about them and we’ve invested into their growth, the best leaders I’ve ever known have been more interested in seeing their people succeed than holding those people back for the sake what’s easier at the moment.

Having addressed all that, how do we help our team members see exactly who they’re impacting as they work to achieve their individual purpose? By knowing who and what they care about most, we can be very specific in detailing how their work makes a lasting difference in the lives of their family members, their friends, or even the client base we serve. As we paint that picture with a message that’s tailored just for them, we can help them see how building to both our organizational purpose and their individual purpose matters now as well as how it can leave a positive mark for generations to come.

One of the last questions I’ll ask you in this look at leading with a clear purpose is “Are you willing to go the extra mile to do it?” Rather than leaving it open-ended, I’ll wrap this up by providing a reason that should show even the most task-oriented executive on the planet that the juice is indeed worth the squeeze!