Establish A Shared Purpose: Part 3 of High Performance Teams

Establish A Shared Purpose is an awareness, understanding, and consistent reinforcement of why a company exists. Individually, it’s ultimately why an employee works for your organization. Your company’s WHY defines how your company contributes to other people’s experiences. Again, like your values, your company’s WHY needs to be consistently communicated and reflected in all aspects of the company’s operations, from posting, to recruiting, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, PD, promotions, and exits. This constant reiterating of your WHY is necessary for your employees to find value in their work, and acts as a catalyst for your clients to find meaning as well. 

But how do we go about crafting a WHY statement? The statement itself should not be about profits or money, but rather about how your company will contribute to the greater world. Every job, day after day, can become tiring or monotonous. Not every day at work is going to be exciting, even with ‘culture-creators’ like a ping pong table, beer fridges, or flexible work-from-home strategies. There will be mundane days where employees exhibit a lack of energy for their work and lack short-term motivation. This is where your WHY statement or shared purpose comes in as a very important tool. Understanding how we contribute to other people’s experiences is an important motivator, energizer, and catalyst for your employees. 

A WHY statement can be difficult sometimes for leaders to cultivate, but even just having preliminary conversations about this can help support morale in the office. Remember, your employees are an essential part of this process and including them also shows them that they are valued. To open up the discussion the leader may want to ask their employees questions like: 

Why do we exist? 

What problem, if we didn’t exist, would go unsolved?

What comes first here?

What do you want to get out of this experience? 

Why do you come to this building every day? 

The answers to these questions should be hard to measure and somewhat intangible. Also keep in mind an internal focus. Aka don’t compare the company to another. A lot of companies want to talk about being #1 in their industry, but this standard means very little to most employees as it does not attach itself to their values. Rather a timeless statement holds longevity for your employees and keeps them working towards a greater purpose. Instead of saying “We will be the best real estate brokerage”, a company might want to say, “We don’t sell houses, we find families homes”. Your brokerage might not always be the best, but your employees can and will stay motivated around the idea that they are helping a family find a home that they will be happy in. In addition, if your company does reach the #1 spot, then what is left to strive towards? A WHY statement should seek constant progress, not completion. Here are some great WHY statement as examples:

Fairmont Hotels → “Turning moments into memories”

NorthGroup Realty → “Experiences worth talking about”

Movember → “Changing the face of men’s health”

Adidas → “Impossible is Nothing”

Branded Cities → “Connecting iconic media with iconic destinations”

Without a statement, a workplace can become uninspired. In what is seen as a rudderless direction for the company, employees begin to work with a finite mindset, another example from Simon Sinek’s work. They become obsessed with rivalries and make decisions based on scarcity. This results in a lack of trust, cooperation, and innovation throughout the department and/or company—and since employees were focused on being the best in their industry, rather than on infinite success of the company they work at, they fail to react progressively to changes in the market.

While developing a WHY statement can take time, an easy and effective way to make your employees feel valued right now is to practice acts of gratitude. To practice this skill try contacting or aggregating your clients feedback on how much your product or service has impacted their business or lives. For example, a real estate brokerage might receive an email from a young couple, first-time home-buyers thanking them for helping them find their home. This message can be included in an all-staff to share with employees to remind them of the value their work offers to others’ lives. Making your employees feel positive emotions helps to drive positive behaviour and performance.