The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
We speak often at Influence about the importance of clarifying corporate purpose. Meaningful corporate mission and vision statements are understandably keys to producing this clarity. But one thing that the great resignation – still underway – is teaching us is that employees do not feel their personal purposes are being recognized or acknowledged by the corporations they serve.
This was highlighted recently by a conversation with a CEO who indicated that, while frustrated by the corporate employee exodus, it had never occurred to him to ask anyone on his team what they actually wanted. Without this acknowledgement and at least a basic exploration of how their purposes might be realized within the corporation, many employees saw little reason to invest in the larger corporate vision.
One added complication to this new reality is that, while recent upheavals have raised employee interest in personal purpose, many simply don’t know what they want. This provides an opportunity; and recognizing this, savvy leaders can build engagement through coaching moments that demonstrate awareness, appreciation, and the clarifying value of powerful questions.
As a matter of fact, many definitions of effective leadership include this act of helping others discover and develop their sense of personal purpose.
What do these coaching questions look like? Here’s a few of them:
- What’s most important to you now?
- What do you see as your greatest contribution so far?
- What keeps you engaged?
- What are you eager to learn?
- What contribution is important for you to make in the future?
- What do you admire so much that you could say it’s the greatest thing you’d like to achieve?
- What might it take to get there?
- What happens if you don’t try?
Experts agree that helping employees develop their sense of purpose, and if possible, aligning that sense of purpose with corporate vision, produces engaged and motivated employees. And even when personal purposes don’t match corporate vision such that some employees do leave, these acts of acknowledgement and exploration build a broader culture of trust, increasing team engagement and productivity overall.
In conclusion, it’s worth considering that employees with purpose are more focused and assertive on things that matter, both personally and professionally. They are more likely to own their responsibilities, more apt to create value for the organization, and, when coached by organizational leaders, more likely to trust and recommend the organization to others.
So, if your intent is to create cultures of engagement, then coaching for clarity and purpose in your employees will be an active and ongoing initiative, and one that bears fruit both personal and corporate.