Needing More Than Just Purpose

For leadership to be truly inspirational, you’ll need some other ingredients, says best-selling author Dan Goleman.

Daniel Goleman is author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence and Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day. He is a regular contributor to Korn Ferry. 

Most leaders have a high drive to achieve – particularly in cultures where productivity and achievement are chief cultural values. At its worst, a high drive to achieve can lead to perfectionism, burnout, micromanaging and a dependence on command-and-control leadership. This is the toxic boss most people complain about: the one who they so easily feel oppressed by.

But at its best, a high drive to achieve can make for a truly inspirational leader – particularly when it’s paired with a clear sense of purpose.  This is the type of leader so many teams long for: one who doesn’t just push for results, but who rallies each person around a central mission. This leader’s energy for success is often infectious, uniting and uplifting teams to do their best and most meaningful work.

The Great Place to Work Institute (GPTW) recently highlighted stories of such leaders, citing some of the practices they rely on for connecting their employees to purpose. First on the list: using storytelling as a way to illustrate shared values, a practice that has been around for millennia. Here, GPTW cites AbbVie, the Global biotechnology company who developed five guiding principles with input from their employees. Once the principles were agreed upon, AbbVie asked employees and leaders to share a story that illustrated their personal connection to each principle and compiled them into a video series. AbbVie has over 26,000 employees – and a whopping 90% of them say they are proud to work for the company.

A second example of connecting employees to purpose is from Jackson Healthcare: on day one, new employees are asked how they want to give back and what might be a rewarding way for them to get involved. This is followed by a 1:1 with the VP of Community Impact, who asks each new hire to share their own story and consider how they might engage with something like an employee resource group. At Jackson, 96% of employees say they felt welcome when they joined the company and 95% say they feel good about the ways their company contributes to the community.

Inspirational leadership requires four things:

  • Focus on the group/organization and its larger mission, not just personal success
  • Walking the talk
  • Being trustworthy
  • Being able to think outside the box

These aren’t skills that depend on IQ as much as they are aspects of emotional intelligence. As most leaders have learned—sometimes the hard way—social and emotional competencies are key to turning an energy for achievement into something impactful and even empowering.

In addition to strong emotional intelligence, turning a drive to achieve into something meaningful and inspiring also depends on an ability to communicate. A study with the Harvard Business School showed that embracing purpose only led to the business outcomes organizations hoped for (lower employee turnover, higher engagement, stronger bottom line) when employees had clear direction from their leaders. In companies where employees reported that their work was meaningful and that leadership’s expectations were clear, stock market returns were 6.9% higher than the market average. The study came to call these Purpose-Clarity Organizations: companies where purpose doesn’t just create a sense of camaraderie, but where it dovetails with clear and communicative management.

If achievement-oriented leaders want to funnel their energy for success into something positive and effective—if they want to be the purpose-driven leader so many teams long for—a focus on emotional intelligence and clear communication is critical. Knowing what matters to you (self-awareness), knowing what matters to your team (empathy) and knowing who is capable of doing what (organizational awareness) are all part of getting the best out of a burning desire to win.  Co-written by Elizabeth Solomon