The Power of Having a Clear Purpose

Any time I’m talking with a business owner, an executive, or really anyone with responsibility for attracting and retaining great team members, I share a critical lesson I learned early on during my time working in behavior based safety: people rarely shy away from tasks due difficulty, risk, or the level of compensation! If they did, there would be no such thing as a volunteer fire department or any of the great civic organizations that do so much to impact our communities. In each case, the individuals involved commit their time and energy to these causes because the work ties to their purpose!

Truth be told, this same thing applies at least as much in the workplace. A few years ago, my son chose to change jobs, moving to a role that initially paid him five dollars less per hour, because the work he had been doing for the six years leading up to that point was no longer providing him with purpose and the company he went to was very clear in communicating their purpose to every team member. We’ll revisit this soon enough. For now, let’s consider the power of having a clear purpose for anyone with leadership responsibility…

If we’re really being honest with ourselves, leading a team of any kind never allows us to just go through the motions. If we want to achieve anything of significance through the team we lead, we need to give it all we’ve got. (I’d go so far as to argue that anyone disagreeing with that statement has no business in a leadership role, but that’s a fight for another day…) In the fourth chapter of Intentional Living, John Maxwell gives some context to this by sharing “How Your Why Helps Find Your Way” when he says that “significance is usually not the result of anything spectacular. It’s based on small steps in line with purpose.”

A few years back while helping a company fill a few positions that would require a fair amount of overtime during a three-month period each year, but a really flexible schedule the rest of the year, I remember struggling to understand how any candidate would have an issue with an extra ten to twenty hours per week for such a short period of time - which they were well compensated for… I’m not sure I can point to a time in the last twenty-five years when I’ve only worked 50-60 hours in a week; be it directly in a full time role or any combination of a job and side hustle, and definitely not since becoming completely self-employed! And through all of that, I can only think of one time where it was truly exhausting…

For the last year or so I held a full time role, I had responsibility for human resources and safety with a construction company that had close to 100 employees. While it was a heavy workload, I had worked in both spaces (HR and safety) for the decade and a half leading up to that and had developed a strong skill set that helped me get solid results. While the work itself wasn’t terribly hard, it did require a high degree of focus to ensure the company maintained at least a reasonable level of compliance in both heavily regulated areas. Although that company now has that role divided between two or three people, I still produced what I believe were better than average results in 45 to 60 hours per week. 

I had started our business just a couple years prior to this, though. By that last year in a full time role, I usually had nearly as many hours involved in our business each week than I did in my job. Don’t miss my point here, this ain’t a sob story about me working too much! I had chosen all of it. The point I need you to understand here is that I was absolutely drained as I left my work office almost every day but I felt recharged immediately as I moved to work in my own business.

Physically and mentally, the tasks were very similar. But the purpose I drew from each was completely different! The longer I dealt with checking the government compliance boxes tied to employment law and safety, the more I considered looking for a tall bridge with fast moving traffic below it. But the heavier the workload became in our business, the more energized I was, largely because I was seeing an immediate impact on the people I was supporting.

I was earning a reasonable salary in the full time role and I could have lived comfortably with plenty of time left over to clown around outside of work. But I just wasn’t satisfied. In No Limits, John Maxwell shares a poem he wrote in his twenties called “The Mundane Man” that sums up where I would have been had I stuck with a role that didn’t fulfill my purpose.

Sad is that day for any man when he is absolutely satisfied with the life that he is living, thoughts that he is thinking, deeds that he is doing, until there ceases to be forever knocking on the door of his soul, a desire to do something great for God and his fellow-man.

Having a clear purpose was crucial in helping me avoid being that mundane man John talked about, but it’s just as crucial for a leader to have their own purpose if they’re going to achieve all they’re capable of. Identifying that purpose can prove more difficult though…

Since those go into a significant amount of detail, I won’t rehash it all here. However, I will share a few nuts and bolts that are critical if we’re going to have a shot at squeezing all the things that demand attention into our schedule and still be sure we can tie at least some of them back to a clear purpose. I recently heard Marcus Buckingham comment on how important that is, suggesting that we need at least twenty percent of our energy to be focused on activities that fulfill us or we’ll risk burnout. While I didn’t catch any specific study he was referencing, I’d guess most of us can understand his point…

I’ll skip the Required and Return parts here for time’s sake, but I’d definitely encourage you to dig into them deeper if you’re not completely tracking with how they fit into getting the most out of our time and determining our top priorities. The Reward piece, though, especially for leaders, is where we get the fuel to push through all those demands that come with the responsibility of leading. The kind of Reward John described wasn’t something we’d necessarily see on a paystub or in our bank account, but through the fulfillment we felt as a result of what we were doing. And I’m convinced Rewards of that nature are rarely achieved without having complete clarity around our purpose.

During a separate lesson in our Emerging Leader Development course (and several lessons in our Leading At The Next Level program), we share some foundational tools for building this thing called Emotional Intelligence. By detailing a practical approach to understanding and applying The Model of Human Behavior, we’re able to help participants realize how they’re wired and why they do many of the things they do. This same concept helps identify how each of the tasks we do connect with the purpose we hold most dear.

We’ll expand more on this later on. For now, my emphasis is just on how much identifying and connecting with that purpose matters when we’re faced with so many demands on our time and energy. Next, we need to understand how much this will help us lead our teams…

A Clear Purpose Helps Uphold the Laws…

If we’re going to lead with a clear purpose, providing the oh-so-necessary clarity for the team members who are counting on us, having a firm grasp on a purpose of our own that truly is rewarding can be the difference maker when we need to push through the tough times - and there will most definitely be tough times for every leader! If we’re being honest with ourselves, having our own clear purpose that we’re working to achieve daily is a huge part of what we must do if there’s any chance of providing the same for our teams. For perspective on that, let’s consider just a few of John’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - since he suggests that following these laws will result in our teams following us…

In setting the tone for “The Law of Navigation,” John says that “anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course.” Charting that course is all about defining a clear purpose; for ourselves and for every individual we lead. We’ll take a big-picture look at providing this for our teams next, and later on we’ll dig into that in very specific detail, but right now I’ll just emphasize that there’s little chance of us providing that clarity for anyone else if we don’t have our own.

In “The Law of Buy-In,” Maxwell tells us that “people buy into the leader, then the vision.” The fact of the matter is that few people will ever rally around even the clearest purpose we provide them unless we’ve first earned their buy-in with us. I could go as far as asking if we’re really leading anyone if we haven’t earned that buy-in, but I guess that would be a bit rhetorical… All said, having our own crystal-clear purpose will often be what helps us fight through the daily battles involved in earning that buy-in.

Finally, John defines “The Law of the Picture” by simply sharing that “people do what people see.” Cindy frequently reminds me of that when our grandkids are with us, to which I respond that the joy of having grandkids is repaying our kids for some of the nonsense they did! I’m joking about that, kinda… The reality in leading our teams is that being locked in on our own clear purpose will provide us with the foundation we need to live out the picture we want our team to follow. Without that clarity, it would be like shooting a basketball but having no backboard or rim to aim for; we’d never know if we’re even close! Clarity around our own purpose provides a map for our behaviors and those behaviors are what our people see! 

We’ll soon work through a step-by-step approach to defining the kind of clear purpose that’s rewarding to us as leaders, then we’ll work through an equally detailed process for how we can do the same for our teams. Before we do though, let’s take a high level look at why our teams really do perform better when they have a clear purpose. Stay tuned…