Why Leaders Need a Clear Purpose…

If you really think about the challenge my friend shared with me in running one of his businesses, I’m betting you can relate! To that end, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve all felt that way at some point regardless of the role we’re in. In chapter eight of What’s Killing Your Profitability?, I emphasized the importance of setting (and maintaining) both clear and high expectations for our teams. Tying those expectations to a meaningful purpose can make a critical difference in the level of engagement we get from those team members when we do. We’ll look at that more soon, but right now let’s focus on just how we need that meaningful purpose just as much - and maybe even more - than anyone we’re attempting to lead!

Truth be told, I’m convinced this matters for any role we ever fill - at any level and in any organization. Life throws crap at all of us from time to time. But when we’ve accepted responsibility for leading, it can seem like that crap is being thrown by a Cy Young winning pitcher instead of the fat guy in beer league softball!

As I often do, I scoured the internet for articles sharing statistics that showed a measurable difference in the performance of leaders who had a clear purpose versus leaders who did not. My initial search didn’t yield much that grabbed my attention. Nearly everything I found was blog posts from someone I had never heard of sharing their opinion. Rather than quoting some random guy’s opinion to you here, I’ll give you mine instead; at least we’ve got a bit of a connection and share some common ground…

I frequently emphasize that leadership is hard. And I always qualify that by cautioning anyone I’m speaking with to not confuse hard with complicated. Quite frankly, I’m convinced that leading a team effectively is far simpler and requires way less effort than attempting to manage our way to great results without earning influence. The hard I’m referring to is based on the intentional (and often extra) effort we need to apply daily to earn that influence and truly lead from a place of service instead of managing from a position based purely on authority. Before I share why I believe a clear and strong purpose is a must - especially in leadership - I need you to understand that I’m also convinced that the daily behaviors to lead this way that require slightly more effort are still significantly easier than the never ending difficulty tied to falling short of our goals due to not choosing that approach!

When we’ve got that clear and powerful purpose, though, nothing really seems as hard! The bad days suck a little less and even the worst tasks don’t drain us as much. When we have clarity around why everything we’re doing matters and we see the impact we’re making on the teams we lead and the customers or clients we serve, we’re excited to get out of bed in the morning and charge ahead into the day. But without that clear purpose, it can feel like every step we take is through thick and slimy red clay after a hard rain. As leaders, we carry a heavier personal load - whether we’re leading a team of employees or providing a service to our clients. While the responsibility of any given team member may not be the same, having a clear purpose matters just as much for them so we’ll pick up there next time…