The Importance of Purpose

Do you find purpose in your work?  Of course, there are other sources of purpose in life such as family, serving non-profit organizations, and helping others in your personal life, but more and more studies are showing the importance of purpose in work as a way of ensuring employee engagement and the resulting customer loyalty.

Meaningful Work

As we read about the continuation of the Great Resignation and the Quiet Quit, the introspection that the pandemic caused – especially among remote workers – has caused more employees to question whether their work provides meaning to their lives beyond a paycheck.  In a recent email message from Korn Ferry, two thought leaders – David Goleman (author of the best-seller, Emotional Intelligence) and David Rock (CEO of NeuroLeadership Institute) added their thoughts to this topic.  Goleman cites recent research that shows that meaningful work can occur both inside and outside helping professions, such as healthcare and education.  Apparently, meaning is very personal and not necessarily predictable. “Forty-four percent of the jobs that were listed as being meaningful by one participant were listed by at least one other participant (of the 245 total participants) as lacking meaning.  Similarly, 55% of the jobs that were listed as meaningless by one participant were listed as meaningful by someone else.”

Meaningful Work and a Connection to Something Bigger Than Ourselves

Multiple studies have also shown what David Rock refers to as “the ladder of construal,” which describes how the brain connects our actions to something bigger, and the often-cited example of a janitor at NASA who, in sweeping the floors, understands that he is part of putting a person on the moon.  Many of the leaders we interviewed for our book, Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way: How World-Class Leaders Align Their Organizations to Deliver Exceptional Results, cited how important it was to align their organizations horizontally connecting senior leaders in a common set of business goals and then vertically translating those goals in a line of sight down throughout departments’, teams’, and individuals’ goals.

The Importance, Also, of Relationships

Prior to the pandemic, many people found meaning in their work through relationships with their managers, their peers, many times even with customers or stakeholders.  But remote work created a disruption in those relationships that has been hard to replicate in remote settings and even hard to recover when we are back together in person.

One article I read recently suggested that the practice of leader rounding, common in healthcare and gaining traction in other settings, should be amended to include new questions aimed at understanding personal motivation in deriving meaning at work.  Instead of focusing on exit interviews, which are notoriously unreliable as people seek to avoid “burning bridges” with former employers, the article suggested adding questions such as, “What brings you joy at work?”  “What energizes you at work, and what drains your energy?” “What could I and the other senior leaders do to personally make a difference for you?”  “Why do you stay?” And, of course, the real key is to listen without judgment or interruption, to try to connect with the person who is willing to share their inner self with you.

More Wisdom and Insights

If this approach doesn’t feel natural or comfortable to you – and I’ll admit that it’s tough for me as an introvert – I can’t think of a better resource than Tom Peters’ Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism.  Written in extremely short, bite-size chunks, you can find multiple approaches to putting people first, and some will surely resonate with you.  Help your employees find or re-find meaning in their work. Your entire organization and your customers will benefit from it.

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