On his way to work, Chris listened to a podcast about purpose-driven leadership. He was inspired. If he could help his people feel a greater sense of purpose at work, they (and he) would reap both the business and psychological benefits. Research shows the purpose-driven employees are more emotionally engaged, innovative, productive, and even more compliant on company policy.
Today was the day; Chris was going to up his leadership game. He was going to bring more purpose and meaning into their work at the lab. But when he walked into the building, Chris was hit with the news that crucial equipment was throwing an error message. Two techs called in sick. His boss was texting him about an urgent matter. Chris jumped in. He spent the day managing challenges, changing priorities, and responding as fast as he could to every request.
Finally, on his way home, he remembered…. He was supposed to be inspiring his team today! Now, the whole day was gone. “Tomorrow, I’ll do that.” he told himself, vowing that it would be different.
In the face of ongoing operations, leadership aspirations often take a back seat. The drumbeat of targets, to-dos, and unanticipated fire drills can monopolize the brain of even the most well-intended leaders, like Chris.
In our work with leaders around the world, we hear some version of the same lament: “I want to be a noble purpose leader, but the demands of my job seem like they’re working against me.”
We work with senior leaders, frontline managers, and entry-level teammates around the world. We find that no matter what level they are in the organization, they face a similar challenge: they want work to be meaningful, but the daily grind chips away their sense of purpose.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are three simple things leaders (formal and informal) can do to infuse greater meaning and purpose into daily work. Instead of trying to find time to be inspiring (and finding that the day gets away from you), use these three hacks to insert inspiration into the regular flow of work. The first two take less than three minutes, and the third should actually save you some time.
1. Create meaning by describing the ripple effect of your work
We often don’t see the full impact of our own work. Our deliverables are passed to another teammate, location, or organization before our impact comes to fruition. This leaves us feeling disconnected from any sense of purpose. You can help your team see how important their work is by articulating the ripple effect of the tasks they’re charged with.
For example, if you have a tech on your team who is running a quality check on a large variety of samples, you can articulate the ripple effect of that task by describing who will be on the receiving end of the samples. Take a minute to articulate why the samples exist in the first place and what’s at stake if an error is missed. It only takes a sentence or two to transform a seemingly meaningless repetitive task into something that makes a difference.
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2. Describe the human impact of achieving your targets
In a lab environment, numbers are crucially important. Miscalculations, missed targets, and other errors can have lifelong implications. When everyone’s sightline is toward the accuracy of the numbers, sometimes it’s easy to forget what the numbers actually mean.
As a leader, you can infuse meaning and urgency in your team by framing your most important numbers. For example, if you are measuring turnaround time, describe to the team why that number matters. Saying, “Our target is to achieve a 72-hour turnaround, which can mean doctors can get results the same week they send their samples in. We’re saving them and their patients anxious wait time.”
3. Invest in top performers first
When we ask leaders, “Who do you coach?” Their answer is almost unanimous: they typically spend the most time with the people who are performing the worst. Yet, in the same conversation, they lament that despite their sizeable coaching investment, the poor performers show marginal improvement at best.
In your heart, you probably want to be a good boss to everyone. When you’re stretched thin, it’s tempting to spend your coaching time on the people causing you problems. But the result is that you feel frustrated, the gains are minimal, and your best performers—the people who could benefit the most—don’t get coaching.
Instead of spending your too-limited time on problem people, calibrate your efforts to your high performers and high potentials. Ask yourself: Who is the most coachable? Who learns quickly? Who has the most at stake?
For underperformers, you can provide access to on-demand courses, peer coaching, group coaching, and other online resources. This provides team members who want to improve with the resources to do so, and they now have ownership of their development. When we work with leaders who use this strategy, some underperformers take the reins and improve, while others make it clear they’re not willing to make the effort. In which case, you’ve saved yourself from overinvesting in people who weren’t going to improve anyway.
Each of these strategies (articulating the ripple effect, describing the human impact of your numbers, and investing in top performers) enables you to play the long game by creating a team who makes better decisions in your absence, tries harder, and, in a rough moment, knows that your heart is in the right place.
