To Motivate Your Team, Instill Purpose
Why purpose matters and 3 leaders who communicate it well.
When was the last time you reminded your team of its purpose? The last time you explicitly communicated the reason for the team and its members to exist beyond just for the sake of generating a profit?
Research from LinkedIn indicates that “leading with purpose encourages stronger performance across brands, talent, and organizational agility.”
The result? “Measurable business impact.”
Leading with purpose is all about connecting the work your team does to something that matters. But expecting your team members to connect the dots themselves about why their work matters is not enough. Instead, leaders should talk clearly and frequently about the impact the team’s work has.
Reid Hoffman, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of LinkedIn, highlighted the difference doing so could make when he asked:
“Imagine if everyone in your workplace felt that what your company does really mattered — to the world, their colleagues and themselves.
How much more successful would you collectively be?”
As team leaders, we are uniquely positioned to build and maintain a purpose-driven culture by articulating these three things to our teams early and often:
- Positive impact on others
- Personal growth
- Delivery through relationships
Below are three examples of how leaders I have worked with in the past communicated these elements of purpose exceptionally well.
Positive impact on others
How do you make the world a better place?
I previously worked for a developer in the multifamily housing industry. One Executive leader was particularly adept at communicating the positive impact our work had and how it made the world a better place.
“We develop homes that people build their lives around and raise their families in.”
When stressful deadlines were on the horizon or morale was low, that statement served as a reminder of why we were there, and why what we did mattered.
It was a guiding light, motivating team members to persevere through the tough times and celebrate the wins.
Personal growth
What opportunities exist for your personal growth?
The fast-casual restaurant industry is typically known as having a ‘trial by fire’ training method. But a client of mine wanted to offer their employees a better experience. They aimed to offer team members more than a job. They wanted to design a robust training program to elevate employees’ understanding of the fast-casual industry and set them up for promotion from within.
The client used Trainual, an online platform specializing in helping small business owners grow and train their teams, to cross-train all team members in both front and back-of-house operations before ever stepping behind a POS or food line.
The proof is in the pudding, they say. And their internal promotion rates speak for themselves with several former line employees now in management positions.
Delivery through relationships
How can you achieve success through relationships at work?
Faced with how to foster relationships between his small but growing team virtually during the pandemic, a client in the analytics space implemented a weekly ‘Freestyle Friday’ meeting.
Each week a rotating team member was responsible for leading the call and teaching the entire team about a topic he/she was interested in or passionate about.
The topics were never business-related. Instead, they were used as a mechanism for the group to get to know one another so that they could leverage those authentic relationships to work together more effectively.
Purpose-driven leaders achieve better results for their companies at every single stage of the employee lifecycle.
But perhaps the more compelling result is the impact purpose-driven work has on people.
According to LinkedIn’s research, purpose-driven professionals are 30% more likely to be high performers and 50% more likely to advance into leadership positions.
Purpose matters. It matters to your company’s performance and it matters to your people. Use your platform as a leader to connect your team's work to something that matters, too.
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