PURPOSEFUL LEADERSHIP

 

 

Purpose is the destination of a vision. It energizes the vision, gives it force and drive, and should be positive and powerful, serving 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. Purpose starts from the leader at the top and, through infectious, dynamic, passionate leadership, is driven down throughout the organization. Every follower has their 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 housed, 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. 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 ensure 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 visions, missions, and goals. Great leaders inspire every follower at every level to internalize their purpose and understand that their purpose goes far beyond the mere details of their job. When everyone is united in purpose, a positive purpose that serves not only the organization but also, hopefully, the world beyond it, you have a winning team.

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

 

 

 

 

Culled from “Life and Leadership”, by Collin Powell

Comments

  1. funwakinmade15 March 2025 at 13:48

    This is my takeaway... "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"
    BOOM!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

QUIET LEADERSHIP

It’s a reflection of Carlo’s time in football and his thoughts and philosophies on what it takes to be a leader in this profession as a football coach/leader.   Values like resect, loyalty, value of money and hard work and the importance of relationship and family. Quite Leadership There is power in being calm and measured, in building trust and making decisions coolly, in rising using influence and persuasion and being professional in your approach .   It is born out of the idea that a leader should not need to rant or rage with iron fist, but rather, their power should be implicit .   It should be crystal clear who is in charge, and their authority must result from respect and trust and value creation, rather than fear.   You earn the respect you are shown, partly through a successful career of delivering trophies (value creation) for players, clubs, but perhaps more importantly because of the fact that I respect those I also work with (building r...
Read more

BOLD: HOW TO BE BOLD IN BUSINESS AND WIN – The Story of “Virgin Galactic”

The future belongs to the Bold .  The world is so crowded that only those who have a significant and dramatically different story to tell will grab the attention of customers. In a world and age when we have come to expect good level of service and product as given, only an exceptional and memorable experience will earn customer loyalty. Different breed of organizations are now emerging, they succeed because they have courage, confidence or just sheer chutzpah to pursue a purpose beyond profit :  to engage, entertain and educate their audiences, who see their customers and employees as members of a like minded community, who create and administer cult-like following among their brand – both within and outside their organizations – who are not just different, but dramatically different and who push to the extreme the consequences of their dreaded positioning and strategy.  Virgin Galactic is one of the bold brands. Virgin Galactic Virgin has long been thought ...
Read more

TAKE THE LEAD BY BETSY MYERS

Image
    TAKE THE LEAD      (Motivate, Inspire, and Bring out the best in yourself and Everyone around you) Author: BETSY MYERS Who is Betsy Myers? I cannot possibly do a comprehensive review of this book without first giving you an insight into the life and background of the author. Betsy Myers served as chief operating officer and senior adviser to Barack Obama’s 2007- 2008 presidential campaign and chaired the women for Obama organization. A senior official in the Clinton administration, she was the first director of the White house Office for Women’s initiative and Outreach. Before joining the Obama Campaign, she was executive director of Harvard’s center for public Leadership, and she currently serves as founding director of the Center for Women in Business at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Question1. ”Why is it that some people challenge us and motivate us to rise to our best abilities, while others seem to drain our ene...
Read more