How to Connect Your People to Purpose and Why It’s Vital

Studies show that when people believe that their work matters, they’re four times more likely to be engaged, are more motivated, learn faster, and are more fulfilled.
 
But do you know how to activate purpose and connect your people to it?
 

If you’re unsure, you have company.

79% of leaders think that connecting their people to an inspiring purpose is critical to success, but just 34% consider it a central guidepost for decision-making.
 

Closing the gap between the stimulating idea of purpose and its transformative practice to drive employee engagement, motivation, and fulfillment may be the most important task of modern
organizational leaders.

What Purpose Is and How Purpose Works to Drive Employee Fulfillment

Purpose generally means the reason for which something is done or created, the reason for its existence.

When applied to work, purpose is our usefulness and our contribution—the reason why what we’re doing exists in the world.

When people can clearly see how their work contributes to others and serves a greater reason for being, research shows they become better.

Why?

First, when purpose is embedded into an organization’s culture, it constantly reorients people to focus on contribution.

This is powerful because neuroscientists find that human beings are hard-wired for altruism.
Studies show that when we think about our impact on others or directly help someone else, we get a boost of the “happiness trifecta” of neurotransmitters: oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin.
Oxytocin supports empathy and social bonding. Dopamine plays a major role in motivation and movement. Serotonin regulates mood.

The results include individual and organizational outcomes like increased engagement, motivation, and fulfillment.

3 Ways to Connect Your People to Purpose

One of the most influential functions of a leader is the ability to infuse purpose into people’s work and enable positive meaning.

But it’s not enough to “have purpose.” Leaders must create a culture that promotes being purposeful.

Here are some research-backed ways to do it:

1. Regularly show people how their work benefits others
Connecting people to purpose starts regularly showing people how their work matters.

Here are some key practices for showing people how their work benefits others:

○ During onboarding, make sure people connect early and often to a beneficiary of the work – direct stories work best
○ When delegating or assigning anything, before you tell people what to do and how to do it, show them why it matters through a story
○ When giving positive feedback and recognition, don’t tell someone they “did a good job,” specifically show them the difference they made
○ Invite employees to tell stories of their impact on others and incorporate these stories in regular team touchpoints

2. Help people tie their everyday tasks to a bigger purpose worth committing to
As John F. Kennedy was about to give a speech to launch the Apollo missions, he walked past a janitor and asked, “What do you do here?”

The janitor replied, “I’m putting a man on the moon,” and went back to mopping the floor. This legendary and well-told story is inspiring, but how NASA’s leaders maintained a clear focus on this bigger purpose amongst a 300,000-person dispersed team is instructive for modern leaders.

In an archival study of organizational practices at NASA, researchers uncovered that each functional unit had a “ladder to the moon” – a tangible view of how each group’s tasks accomplished tangible objectives which would enable a moon landing.

Here are some key practices to connect people’s everyday tasks to the bigger purpose:

○ Ensure the organization has a clear, contribution-focused mission statement to harmonize energy.
○ Make sure each team has a “ladder to the purpose” and that every person and position can see how their core work tasks and processes meet measurable objectives that enable the purpose to be delivered.
○ Make the pathway to purpose a daily discussion.
○ Regularly assess whether employees can articulate the bigger contribution their core tasks enable.
○ Provide the space for each individual to build their own purpose statement and provide a clear path for how it connects to delivering the organization’s purpose.

3. Make contribution goals more important than achievement goals
What a culture rewards is typically what a culture becomes. Most organizations unintentionally reward for self-serving behaviors.

Cultivating a purposeful workforce means rethinking both the nature of the goals people set and what goals people are rewarded for achieving.

Here are some key practices to make contribution goals more important than achievement goals:

○ Review the goals set for employees, are more of them achievement-oriented or contribution-oriented?
○ Set organizational goals that are measured by their relative impact on others, not on organizational gain.
○ Encourage individual employees to set goals that result in a contribution to others.
○ Create a rewards structure – yes even financial – that reward for purposeful behavior.

Purpose in Work Isn’t A Trend, It’s an Expectation

To summarize, the search for purpose isn’t a trend, it’s a uniting trait of our species. That search doesn’t stop when someone clocks in.

Organizations that enable the experience of purpose in work inspire their people to be more engaged, motivated, and fulfilled.

By regularly showing people how their work benefits others, helping people tie their everyday tasks to a bigger purpose worth committing to, and making contribution goals more important than achievement goals, you can help people experience positive meaning in work.

Psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl wrote that “Striving to find meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force of man.”

Purposeful organizations unleash this force.

Author Bio

Zach Mercurio, Ph.D., (Contributor, Bonusly) is a purposeful leadership and meaningful work researcher, adjunct professor, and the bestselling author of The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose.