Why EVERYONE Needs a Clear Purpose…

If someone as driven as the friend I mentioned before can lose some motivation or feel burnout when they don’t feel like they’re making a meaningful impact, I’m convinced anyone with any level of leadership responsibility will too - sooner or later! And if business owners and leaders need a clear purpose to fuel them to push through the tough times, I don’t think we should believe for a minute that every single member of our teams doesn't need a purpose that’s just as clearly tied directly to what they do!

Throughout What’s Killing Your Profitability?, I made references to a Harvard Business Review called Things They Do For Love, that shared:

“Company leaders won’t be surprised that employee engagement—the extent to which workers commit to something or someone in their organizations—influences performance and retention. But they may be surprised by how much engagement matters. Increased commitment can lead to a 57% improvement in discretionary effort—that is, employees’ willingness to exceed duty’s call. That greater effort produces, on average, a 20% individual performance improvement and an 87% reduction in the desire to pull up stakes, according to the Corporate Leadership Council, which surveyed more than 50,000 employees in more than 59 organizations worldwide.”

We’ll tie all this back to the impact a clear purpose can have on an entire organization shortly. For now, I’ll challenge you to name anyone you’ve ever seen who wasn’t in a leadership role who was willing to perform at their absolute best - indefinitely - without knowing exactly why the work they were doing mattered and who it was serving. I’ve known some incredibly hardworking people but even the best of them wouldn’t have maintained their highest pace without getting the fulfillment that only comes from latching onto a clear purpose!

With nearly every group we speak to or train, I make a strong case for just how important effective leadership is to earning the influence that yields the kind of employee engagement that drives the increased discretionary effort mentioned in the article. The best leaders I’ve ever had the privilege of working with were also the ones who were always intentional about providing every one of their team members with a clear purpose for what they were doing. And when they were able to replicate that skill in our leaders around them, it drove results in the entire organization. We’ll look at what that can do for a profit and loss statement next, then we’ll change gears to look at the power that clear purpose has AND how simple it is to keep it in front of a team…