PURPOSEFUL LEADERSHIP

Purpose is the destination of a vision.  It energizes the vision, it gives it force and drive, it should be positive and powerful, and serve the better angels of any organization.

As leaders, we must embed our own sense of purpose into the heart and soul of every follower or subordinate.  The purpose starts from the leader at the TOP, and through infectious, dynamic, passionate leadership, it is driven down throughout the organization.  Every follower has its own organizational purpose that should connect with the leader’s overall purpose. 

I once watched a TV documentary about the Empire State building (A Tourist attraction in the US).  For most of the hour, the documentary toured the Wonders of the building – its history and structure; how many elevators it had, how many people worked or visited the place, how many corporate offices it had, and how it was built.  But at the end, the story took a sharp turn.  The last scene showed a cavernous room in a sub-basement filled with hundreds of black trash bags, the building’s daily trash items.  Standing in front of the bags were five guys in work clothes.  Their job, their mission, their goal was to toss these bags into waiting trash trucks.

The camera focused on one of the men.  The narrator asked “what is your job?”   The answer, to everyone watching, was painfully obvious.  But the guy smiled and said to the camera “ our job is to make sure that tomorrow morning, when people from all over the world come to this Wonderful building, it shines, it’s clean and it looks great”.  His job was to drag bags, but he knew his purpose.  His work was vital, and this purpose blended into the purpose of the building’s most senior management, 80 floors above.

Their purpose was to make sure that this masterpiece of a building always welcomed and awed visitors, as it had done on opening day May 1, 1931.  The Building’s management can only achieve their purpose if everyone on the team believes in it as strongly as the smiling guy in the sub-basement.

Good leaders set vision, missions, and goals.  Great leaders inspire every follower at every level to internalize their purpose, and to understand that their purpose goes far beyond the mere details of their job.  When everyone is united in purpose, a positive purpose that services, not only the organization but also, hopefully, the world beyond it, you have a Winning Team.

Google’s corporate mission statement is identical with his purpose “To organize world information and make it universally accessible and useful”. 

 

Culled from “Life and Leadership”, by Collin Powell