Connected through purpose – part 2

As a follow up to Part 1 – “Want to improve performance and retention: start with purpose, focus on connection” – below are 8 ways you can do just that:

1. If your organization doesn’t yet have a clearly articulated purpose that employees are aware of and can recite, start with this. See our previous article for our definition of purpose and why it is important. We also like this model for organizational purpose discovery. Starting with senior leaders and select stakeholders, unpack the model, soliciting contributions to identify what the people truly feel drives the organization’s existence.
2. If you are a leader and haven’t discovered and clearly articulated your own individual purpose, that’s step #2. Here’s a simple framework to consider your own purpose and go back to your ABCs by answering a few of these questions to dig a bit deeper.
3. Depending upon the order in which the above have been determined, next step is to share your organizational and leadership purpose. Share it with your peers, ask them about their purpose, encourage them to go through the same process. Share it with your direct reports. Ask for their feedback on how you could apply your purpose better in your interactions with them. You’ll connect through the nature of the conversations themselves and more deeply due to the content being discussed. Consider these 7 characteristics as a benchmark for a purpose-driven leader.
4. Engage your department / team / direct reports in a shared purpose discovery process. Workshops that look at the connection between the organization, individual and team offer a really inspiring, interactive and insightful approach that serves the experiential benefit of sparking new connections, building cohesion and trust; while identifying a shared (unifying) purpose everyone buys into and can define their contribution towards. This results in a series of specific commitments each member can make to both advance forward objectives and support their peers in showing up at their best. Here’s the three questions we ask across a series of workshops.
5. Consider exploring each individual leader and team member’s contribution style. What is their natural energy to get things done, how can they make the most positive impact on the organization, under what conditions, with whom? We use an individual impact assessment for this which is a brilliant tool that can be applied at the organization, team or individual level. This enables leaders and team members to connect the dots from strength to strength, through shared language and by increasing their understanding of how they perform optimally both individually and as a group.
6. Off the back of 3, 4 & 5 above, identify areas where leaders and managers would benefit from training to improve their relational and coaching skills, by considering how comfortable and confident they are:
   1. In asking questions such as “how are you feeling this week?” “What are some challenges you are facing?”, “How can I help”.
   2. Blending candor with care, as part of difficult conversations.
   3. Integrating relational content into feedback conversations and reviews, so feedback isn’t just about results (the what) but how and why – how one teammate supported another, how they demonstrated kindness, how they exhibited a core value or organizational principle. These things have to be part of how things are around here – part of the language, conversations and behaviors for them to be integrated into the culture.
   4. Infusing personal (i.e. not direct work) content into 121s and team meetings by using activities such as Magic Moments, or Driving Force. Remember ‘show and tell’ on Monday mornings at kindergarten? Connect these experiences to people’s purpose – as that’s the primary bridge between the personal and professional lives. It makes it relevant and connects to others. By sharing these anecdotes and experiences as a leader, you should your own vulnerability and humanity, and others will follow. Transparency and trust build as a result.
7. Offering opportunities for employees to connect outside of formally scheduled video calls, whether by coordinating (and co-designing) their own time together in the office, asking them to set up informal huddles at cafes / coffee shops around specific projects or just specifically to discuss how they are putting their purpose into practice. This could also include non-work activities, such as team sports, creative pursuits, bike rides, kids play time. They key is – what type of connection and engagement do your employees value?
8. Bottling up and intentionally releasing positive energy. When coaching kids, I’m always trying to “catch the positive” and to be a “positive energy giver”. This isn’t about being naive to challenges or soft in demeanor, it’s about encouraging what works, building upon success, intentionally looking to highlight good behavior relating to values, principles, focus, purpose and results. Everyone likes a bit of positivity, so how can you sprinkle it around naturally and encourage people to share? Tie it back to purpose and values. Use that language. How? Ask your people for their ideas? What would they like to see? What works for them? They’ll come up with all sorts of things both formal and informal, and collaboratively they can test, refine and embed.

At PurposeFused we are 100% focused on using purpose to unlock people’s potential. If you are able to do this consistently, you will continue to attract, develop, challenge and retain your best talent. We work with you to design and deliver transformational coaching, workshop facilitation and development programs that realize priority objectives by solving your most critical people challenges. From facilitating organizational purpose discovery workshops and assessing purpose-performance and impact at every level; to coaching senior leaders to Live and Lead with Purpose and inspiring team performance and inter-group collaboration; everything we deliver is for your people, on purpose.

Please get in touch so we can learn more about how we may be able to work with you to transform your people experience and retain your best talent.