The Power of Shared Purpose in Leadership

Inspiring Your Team to Make a Difference

Jen and Sue (not their real names) work in the same industry and manage their own teams. Their work requires them to meet with customers and handle their issues. While the nature and scope of their work have some similarities, their mindsets are very different.

Meeting with customers is stressful for Jen. They often have demands (sometimes unreasonable) that sap her time and energy. What makes it worse is her team refers the most “difficult” customers to her. Dealing with these customers’ demands reduces her time for other essential matters. She told me that her team is overwhelmed handling customer demands.

Sue also found dealing with customers challenging, especially the occasional demanding or unreasonable ones. However, she saw handling customers as fulfilling a meaningful task. She said that customers approach her team because they have unmet needs and some face challenges that could affect their lives. Sue believes that her team has the opportunity to make life better for those customers by finding solutions that could meet their needs. While handling these customers takes time, the team has learned to take it in their stride.

The Problem with Focusing on Tasks and Goals

In today’s fast-paced work environment, it’s easy for managers and their teams to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks, deadlines, and metrics and lose sight of the bigger picture. Not that those tasks or deadlines are unimportant, but focusing on them can cause tunnel vision and lead to frustration, discouragement, and overwhelm.

Both Jen and Sue’s teams handle customers. However, their different perspectives on their work caused them to have almost opposite responses to their situations.

Tasks and deadlines are never-ending; it is worse if the tasks are mundane! When the team is caught up in this rat race, team members’ work can quickly feel meaningless, and they become disengaged. Gallup’s ongoing studies showed that team engagement is consistently related to performance outcomes, with less engaged teams achieving 20% lower profit than engaged teams! ¹

The Power of Shared Purpose

One cornerstone trait of a highly effective, high-performance team is having a shared purpose.

A Deloitte survey revealed that employees in “purpose-driven” companies are 50% more likely to report being engaged than those in companies without clear purposes! ²  Being engaged translates into performance!

Authentic leadership is about people and purpose. A leader’s job is not primarily to accomplish goals but to inspire and empower team members to work collaboratively towards a shared purpose and goals, leading to a better future. Leaders need to rally their people around a shared purpose to lead well!

Your team’s purpose is not the same as your mission or goals. Your mission describes “what you do”, and your goals clarify the team’s specific deliverables. A shared purpose answers the “why” behind all the team’s efforts.

An articulated and compelling shared purpose

• gives meaning to the team’s work,
• fosters a higher level of engagement,
• increases ownership and accountability,
• enhances cohesion and collaboration,
• helps empower the team to innovate,
• boosts resilience in the face of challenges,
• increases employee retention, etc.

“A shared purpose answers the ‘why’ behind all the team’s efforts. It is about the greater good the team aims to achieve and the positive impact it wants to make in society or the world.”

Discovering and Articulating Your Team’s Shared Purpose

A shared purpose does not happen by chance. It requires deliberate thoughts, reflection, and engagement with the team. A shared purpose is one that the team knows, understands, identifies with, can articulate, and owns. Being “Shared” means the entire team owns it. In other words, the whole team needs to discover and articulate the purpose together.

The shared purpose goes beyond your team’s tasks, profit margins, or market share. It is about the greater good the team aims to achieve and the positive impact it wants to make in society or the world.

Here are some steps to get you started:

1. Start by understanding your organisation’s purpose (if articulated), mission, values, beliefs, goals, and the positive impact it aims to make in the world. Then, reflect on how these relate to your team.
    
2. Then, consider the positive impact your team needs to have on the organisation for it to fulfil its purpose. Articulate the team’s unique contributions in the context of the organisation’s purpose.
    
3. Some questions to help your team articulate its purpose:
    
   • Why does the team exist?
   • What results do you hope to achieve by doing what you do?
   • Who are your stakeholders, and how would those results impact each?
   • Conversely, if you don’t achieve the results, what impact would that have on each of your stakeholders?
   • Beyond the immediate stakeholders, what impact do you bring to the world (e.g., community, society, country, region, etc.)?
   • What are your team’s unique contributions to the organisation, society, or world?
   • What unique strengths and capabilities does your team bring to the equation?

Once your team has distilled the above, you can work together to craft a concise and compelling purpose statement that captures the essence of why your team exists. The team’s purpose does not have to be earth-shattering or mountain-moving, but it does have to be compelling for the team.

To complement the purpose statement, you might also consider telling a compelling story that describes the team’s impact.

Towards Purpose-Driven Leadership

When you lead with a clear, compelling purpose, you are no longer just a supervisor or manager; you are a leader of people!

When your team has a shared purpose, it is no longer just a group of people who happen to work together; it becomes an engaged team. It has taken the first step towards becoming an effective, high-performing team!

What about you and your team?

What is your team’s shared purpose? Can your team members articulate it?

How can you get started on discovering and articulating your team’s shared purpose?

References:

1  Harter, Jim. “World’s Largest Ongoing Study of the Employee Experience.” Gallup, September 2024. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/649487/world-largest-ongoing-study-employee-experience.aspx.

2  Vaccaro, Adam. “How a Sense of Purpose Boosts Engagement.” Inc.com, April 2014. https://www.inc.com/adam-vaccaro/purpose-employee-engagement.html.