BetterUp CEO and co-founder Alexi Robichaux sat down with organizational psychologist, author, and BetterUp Science Board Member Adam Grant to discuss the role that purpose plays in building a future-ready workplace.
Here are the top 5 insights from their conversation:
Leaders need to help employees connect their roles to impact
Leaders often try to create purpose through meaningful mission statements, but most people struggle to connect their jobs and daily actions to them. When it comes to purpose, leaders need to help link individual roles to their impact on stakeholders and teammates. A key responsibility for managers is to work with their direct reports to determine how their role connects to broader organizational goals.
Adam Grant
“Look at all of the jobs your employees do and ask if each of those jobs didn’t exist, who would be worse off? The people that you come up with, their stories, their faces, their names, need to be known and shared in the organization. That’s where a lot of purpose comes from.”
The best managers are future-minded coaches
Frontline managers impact employee performance and well-being to a much greater degree than any other organizational factor. They now need to provide clarity and direction more frequently and adapt to rapidly changing priorities, challenges, and complexities in the workplace.
Two of the most vital behaviors? Listening and asking questions. Managers who practice active and empathetic listening, coupled with asking thoughtful and clarifying questions, empower team members to solve problems and innovate. By embracing the role of a future-minded coach, managers help their team members navigate the uncertainty of today’s workplace
