Hey leaders! People already have meaning and purpose, you don’t need to come up with one.

We know that finding the work meaningful and feeling it serves a purpose is crucial for work engagement (yes, not just for gen X,Y,Z …).

Leaders, there’s good news. You don’t need to create meaning or purpose. Pfiuuu!

Every person already has meaning and a purpose, you just tap into that:

All you need to do as a leader is to correlate:

what the organization, product, team, and role already do and how they already do it

with

what each person already finds meaningful and to the purpose they already have.

This makes life a bit easier and a lot harder at the same time. Because instead of appealing to the creative visionary side of yourself as a leader you will need to spend time and attention to really know the people you’re leading.

How do you do this?

You connect what people already find meaningful and the purpose they already have with the:

• the activity of the company and its mission
• the activity of the function they are part of and its objectives
• the project/product they are working on
• the role they are occupying

You need to go through some steps and pay a lot of attention:

1. Know what is already meaningful for the people

This means really paying attention. Hear what people are saying, the actual words they are saying:

“Oh, I really like bringing order into chaos, and it feels really good when all these accounting papers are in their right place”

“I hate it when the suppliers don’t keep their word and have everyone wait on them to do their job”

These are just some random statements someone might make in a meeting or a casual conversation. Whenever you see people expressing an emotion about how something is done, they just tell you what matters to them.

Yes! It is that simple.

From the two statements above you can infer that “bringing order into chaos”, “things in their right place”, “keeping your word” and “don’t have people wait on you” are things that are valuable to the person in the example above.

What does that have to do with meaning? Let’s look at the word meaning.

Meaning is what is meant.

Origin of the word: meninge — “that which is intended to be expressed”; to intend, have in mind; mænan intend (to do something), plan; indicate (a certain object) or convey (a certain sense) when using a word,” from Proto-West Germanic *menjojanan (source also of Old Frisian mena “to signify,” Old Saxon menian “to intend, signify, make known,” Dutch menen, German meinen “think, suppose, be of the opinion”), from PIE *meino- “opinion, intent” (source also of Old Church Slavonic meniti “to think, have an opinion,” Old Irish mian “wish, desire,” Welsh mwyn “enjoyment”), perhaps from root *men- (1) “to think.”

Looking at the origin of the word we can say that meaning is about expressing, indicating, conveying, making known what is intended, what is significant, what is thought, what is the opinion, what is wished and desired, what is enjoyable. Putting it even more simply is to convey who you are through your actions.

So when we find meaning in something or when we feel something is meaningful, it just means (pun intended) that:

what I do is an expression of who I am or what I value.

*** Here is the how-to on tapping into meaning

2. Know what purpose people already have

Again, pay attention to the words people use. If you listen people really tell you everything.

Let’s clarify what purpose is so you’ll know what to look for:

Purpose is about what is purposed, proposed.

Origin of the word: c. 1300, purpus, “intention, aim, goal; object to be kept in view; proper function for which something exists,” from Anglo-French purpos, Old French porpos “an aim, intention” (12c.), from porposer “to put forth,” from por- “forth” (from a variant of Latin pro- “forth;” see pur-) + Old French poser “to put, place” (see pose (v.1)).

Etymologically it is equivalent to Latin propositium “a thing proposed or intended,” but evidently formed in French from the same elements. From mid-14c. as “theme of a discourse, subject matter of a narrative (as opposed to digressions), hence to the purpose “appropriate” (late 14c.). On purpose “by design, intentionally” is attested from 1580s; earlier of purpose (early 15c.).

Looking at the origin of the word we can say that purpose talks about the purpose of something, in our case a person, their intention or the proper function for which someone exists, the place the person has in this world, what their design (effort, skill, attitudes, personality) was created for, is appropriate for.

Finding someone’s purpose is about listening to them tell you “what for” they are how they are. What for they come to work every day, what for they studied what they studied, what for the care about what they care, and so on. Every person already has a purpose (or more than one), they do not find one when they have a job, they don’t change their purpose with every company.

People talk about their purpose all the time, even though most of the time they are not aware of it. They might say something like:

“I have to make sure everyone is safe and happy”

“I need to do this right so people will get good quality stuff”

“I listen because I care”

Listen to the “becauses” people use. They will tell you what they are existing for, putting in effort for, putting time for, growing skills for.

*** There is something arrogant in us when we say we give purpose and meaning when we lead

It might not be intentional, most of the time it isn’t, but when we tell people what the meaning or the purpose of a role is, we actually tell them who they have to be in that role. Meaning and Purpose are part of who someone already is and how they defined themselves through most of their lives not just for this job.

My favorite definition of engagement is “people bring their whole selves and their best selves in what they do”, it is about their selves, not ours as leaders, not the company’s, not the role, and definitely not the product or project.

Two people can do the same thing at the same performance level, with different purposes and different meanings

It is easier as a leader to bring your meaning to your team because you already know how to articulate that (a lifetime of experience), it is easier to bring your own purpose into the team as that is what comes naturally.

We do tend to suffer from projection bias where we assume that everyone functions like us and we do tend to be moralistic and to assume that our values are the most valuable and our purposes are the ones most worthy of pursuing, the problem is that:

People do things for their own reasons, for their own meaning and to their own purpose

Our job as leaders is to find their reasons, not just recycle ours.

Correlating the company, team, product, role with the already existing meaning and purpose:

Let’s take an example, let’s say NewShoes is the name of this fictitious company.

The product the company sells is shoes. The proposition of the company is Old shoes with New approach.

Their statement is: “Although shoes appeared 40.000 years ago, and they were a product of the available resources in the environment, we want to make them a product of each person’s needs. This is why we look at shoes through a new lens and we want to create the shoes for the foot without limits imposed by available materials”

Their mission might sound something like this: “We believe that every foot deserves its most personalized shoe, without limits”

For the people who value things like “personalized to needs”, “a new way of doing things”, “limitless”, it is easy. They might find that working in this company is an expression of what they already value and how they define themselves. If they crafted their skills to serve the purpose of seeing things from new perspectives, they know a lot about feet and, they feel feet are really important, or they crafted their own selves to serve others, then this company will feel meaningful, and working there might feel purposeful by default.

But, let’s say that we have someone from Accounting. They are really good accountants with no passion for feet. They like numbers, they value order and predictability, they like to put things in order and keep that order and their purpose is to make sure everything is covered, that there is nothing left unorganized. What do you do here?

This person will not create shoes, they will not even produce them, it is possible that the only time they interact with shoes is in the first-week onboarding and that's it. They don’t have a passion for new things. They don’t find “meeting needs” to be their function. What do you do then?

How can working in this company be meaningful for them? How they would serve their purpose while working in this company?

If you want to see the How-to for leaders: the mechanics of meaning click this link. For the How-to for leaders: the mechanics of purpose, stay tuned for future articles.

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