Use Purpose to Gain A Competitive Advantage
I recently had the opportunity in a coaching session to discuss the power of purpose. We’ve come through a challenging time of survival, and it seems to me that we need to return to purpose. This means communicating why we do what we do and what it means to the consumers of our work product.
Organizations that understand this can use the power of purpose to gain a competitive advantage. This is because we are operating at a time when finding people is very difficult to do, not to mention motivating those people to be excellent. Many employees need a change as they have been dragged through the knothole of working short staffed. Others may have had some incentive to sit on the sidelines. Either way it’s time to differentiate by telling prospective employees (not to mention current ones), that we understand what they have endured in “survival mode” the past 1-2 years.
Here is a winning communication formula to attract, motivate & retain people during these strange hiring times
A) Invest in Them – Tell them of your commitment to invest in their professional development. This is guaranteed to get the prospective (or current) employee’s attention. Take some of the resources that weren’t expended in the past and fund development or on the job training. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount of money, but it needs to be there.
Stop saying “no.” This is a huge hiring and retention key!
B) Listen to Them – Don’t wait for the typical annual engagement survey. Gain a thorough understanding now by soliciting input at minimum every 6 months and preferably once a quarter. What is their perspective of success drivers? What potential opportunities for improvement? Which star employees are you saving from walking out the door because you are not listening?
Another huge retention key!
C) Work thru Them – Act on what you hear. If it is something that can be done right away – do it! If it can’t, queue it up and communicate the rationale for its priority. Ditch the command and control operating system, especially with generations Z and Y. Partner with them. Communicate that you are working thru them on purpose for a purpose.
This is a huge strategic key!
Doing things on purpose and for a purpose involves marshalling four very important characteristics of success.
These are energy, motivation, clarity, and focus.
1) Energy – Nothing happens unless some energy is expended. What kind of energy and how it’s expended is a subsequent discussion. The point is somebody has to have some mojo to do something. From the leadership perspective this means instilling the mindset of expending energy consistently for a stated vision or purpose. It takes energy seek out and find employees with the compatible “on purpose” profile that will make the organization go.
2) Motivation – Once compatible employees are correctly onboarded, how do we maintain their motivation? How do we consistently capture their discretionary effort? I believe this is a function of their direct reporting relationship. Even if I work for a marginal organization, but have a great leader it makes all the difference. It is likely that I will stick around as an employee. In exit interviews we often hear the top reasons that employees turnover are: a) “I was never trained properly and struggled with my performance”, or b) “My boss never connected with me or valued my efforts.”
3) Clarity – Which brings us to the point of clarity. Some energy is expended to make something happen and they may even be highly motivated to do a good job, however without clarity this energy is quickly dissipated by confusion or mixed messages. Most employees would rather understand and disagree with their boss, than not know what their marching orders are. Even in my own experience, people didn’t necessarily agree with me, but they understood why we were doing what we were doing. Be clear about what you are trying to accomplish. Communicate what your leadership plan is even in the face of unknowns. If you don’t, “noise” will eradicate your team’s energy and motivation.
4) Focus – Communicate why we do what we do and what it means to the end user. This is probably the single best piece of advice that can be given to all employees regardless of their level. We expend energy. We bring enthusiasm and motivation to our roles. We seek to communicate with clarity the path that we believe people should be on in order to achieve our stated purpose. And leadership’s job is to focus our collective work efforts on what it means to the end user of our work product. The end users alone assigns the final meaning and its impact.
Remember tapping the power of purpose requires energy, motivation, clarity, and focus. I am 100% certain that if we provide staff and colleagues of all levels with energetic leadership that is itself motivated, provides clarity of direction and focuses on our mutual purpose, we can’t help but succeed on purpose!
#Energy, #Motivation, #Clarity, #Focus,
