You are more than your job.
To be truly happy and successful at work, you need to understand your own purpose, independent of your workplace or your role. Your organisation cannot 'give' you purpose.
I believe we can be happy at work. Not only is this the core of my job as a purpose coach, it’s based on my personal experience, because for much of my working life I have been happy at work.
This hasn’t been down to having great jobs that I’ve been passionate about. What’s made my working life happy has been a clear sense of how I’ve had a positive impact, having visible, tangible evidence that I’ve done something worthwhile and meaningful. At the time, much of this happiness seemed circumstantial, dependent on context and luck.
With the benefit of hindsight, those times where I’ve been happy at work have come down to me fulfilling my purpose.
Whether the organisation I’ve worked for has a clear sense of purpose or not has been irrelevant to my fulfillment or success. With both my own experience and observing my coaching clients, I've learned that organisational purpose on it’s own is not enough for employees to be fulfilled. However, the current conversation around purpose seems to advocate the opposite. That working for an organisation with a purpose is enough to make it’s employees fulfilled.
I’m really pleased that there are so many conversations happening now about the importance of purpose in business, whether in forums such as the World Economic Forum or publications like Harvard Business Review, to name a few. Whether you call it Conscious, Stakeholder or ESG Capitalism, the world needs more organisations that are genuinely committed to making a positive impact and delivering results for more than just shareholders. This is important and I’m all for it.
What I’m concerned about is the top-down nature of these conversations. There seems to be a belief that as long as an organisation has a purpose, that’s the job done. Organisations are seen as authorised to 'give' employees their purpose. Individual purpose isn’t part of the conversation.
Traditional ‘Shareholder’ capitalism, with its trickle down mentality, operates on a top-down way of thinking and acting. Treating organisational purpose as if it’s the be-all and end-all of purpose, is just more of the same.
I believe expecting organisations to ‘give’ people purpose is setting us up for failure. No matter how positive the purpose of an organisation, change is inevitable. Change will affect employees to varying degrees. Let’s consider common changes such as:
Leadership
Strategy
Restructure
Downturn
Industry disruption
If an organization ‘gives’ us our purpose, what happens in the event of those changes?
If we're ‘bestowed’ our purpose by an organisation, and we're let go from that organisation, does that mean we no longer have a purpose until another ‘gives’ us one through new employment?
If we find themselves at odds with the direction of our organisation, does this mean that we can no longer have confidence in our purpose, and must question our identity and value?
If our organisation changes leadership, does this mean that our purpose is now dependent on the new leader’s views of the organisation’s future?
And what about workers at organisations that don’t have a purpose other than profit? Does that mean these workers have no purpose?
I believe that the answer to each of these questions is ‘Of course not!’ But with the conversation so focused on top-down purpose the answer is not so clear.
We need organisations to focus less on 'giving' employees their purpose and more on empowering employees to know and fulfil their own purpose, in the service of achieving the organisation’s outcomes. Because there are so many benefits, for people and their workplaces, when we’re able to fulfill our own purposes alongside our organisation's.
Firstly, let’s remind ourselves that purpose is found in the convergence of the great things you do which you enjoy, and that others see, appreciate and acknowledge. It’s you at your best self, in the eyes of both yourself and others.
With that in mind, let’s look at the benefits to workplaces that empower employees to fulfill their own purpose:
Increases resilience: our own sense of purpose helps us know we’re more than our job. It reinforces our own sense of identity, confidence in ourselves and our value. This makes us more resilient in the face of uncertainty, restructures and job changes. When we’re not reliant on the workplace to give us purpose, we know we can survive without our workplaces. This is especially important for the foreseeable future when there is so much change ahead of us.
Reduces fear: When we’re confident and resilient, we’re less afraid. When we’re not afraid, we make better decisions, we’re more inclusive and less about protecting ‘our patch’. We’re also more likely to invest in ourselves and consider alternate futures and pathways.
Promotes participation, inclusion and collaboration: when we're confident and not afraid, when we’re not protecting our patch, we work better with each other. When we’re confident in our value, we’re more motivated and we’re more open-hearted. We’re more likely to open the door for others to achieve with us, rather than hold people down.
Resilient, fearless and collaborative people deliver better results and they’re nicer to work with. It’s not top-down organisational purpose (a sense of why an organisation exists), but personal purpose (a deep knowledge about how we make our greatest positive impact), that enables people to be at their resilient, fearless and collaborative best.
I’m all for purpose-driven organisations. I’m completely supportive of every organisation having a positive impact, more than profit, at the centre of what they do. I just don’t believe organisational purpose is a substitute for personal purpose when it comes to people being happy and successful at work.
Organisations must create an environment where employees can fulfill their own purpose, together, in the service of achieving the organisation’s purpose.
Whether you work for a purpose-driven organisation or not, how can you fulfill your own personal purpose? Here’s some tips to get you started:
Know your purpose: find a way that works for you, but take steps to get clarity on your purpose. You can get in touch to discuss how I can help.
Reflect on good times: think about times when you were happy at work. What were the circumstances? How can you do more of that? Make, and enact, a plan to do those things.
Reach out to your colleagues: have a conversation about how you can help each other be more successful and fulfilled. Commit to some small, achievable things you can do for each other.
Give yourself credit: every time you have a great day, take note of why it was great and congratulate yourself for your achievement. Take the time to do the same when you help a colleague, too.
People are more than their jobs. I am more than my job. Your employees are more than their jobs. You are more than your job. Each of us is a unique blend of experience and expertise, skills, thoughts, personality and perspectives that enable us to achieve great things in the right environment.
We all have a ‘best self’ that we can bring to the table.
And when given an opportunity to do this, we are the key to an organisation being able to achieve its outcomes. Our individual purpose, by its very nature, enables us to achieve fulfillment in the service of contributing to a collective positive impact.
I believe in purpose, not just because I coach in it, but because I know what the alternative is. I believe in people being happy at work, because I’ve seen and experienced it and helped others do the same. I believe that organisational purpose is important, but personal purpose is more important when it comes to enabling both fulfillment and collective success.
If you believe, or want to believe, that people can be happy at work then I invite you to take action to understand and fulfill your own purpose, and empower your colleagues and employees to do the same.
