Reason is all about why the team exists in the first place.
The team needs to be crystal clear on their purpose before looking at anything else. Reason is often completely overlooked by teams and its impact is massively underestimated. It is one of the biggest obstacles to a team achieving high performance.
Many teams have no idea what the team purpose is beyond hitting a target. A compelling team reason does so much more than this:
- It acts as a guiding light during times of ambiguity and uncertainty.
- It helps align decision-making with the overall success of the team.
- It taps into every team member’s personal motivation for wanting work hard and achieve high performance.
This makes it the best starting place for your journey to high performance.
70% of people define their purpose through their work
(Mckinsey)
Raj Sisodra found that purpose led organisations outperformed the S&P500 between 1996 and 2011.
(Firms Of Endearment)
What makes a purpose compelling?
You can say that your team purpose is a compelling one if your team members can do the following:
- Clarity on their why. Do your team members have a laser-like focus on their reason? Can they explain their why to others? Can it be condensed to a single sentence and is that known by everyone?
- Buy-in. Does the reason connect to them as an individual? Do they consciously or subconsciously champion the overall team purpose in their day-to-day activities?
- Do they understand their role within the wider team reason? Even better, do they know the role that each team member plays in achieving their team purpose?
Opening the Dialogue
Treat this as the beginning of an ongoing conversation about purpose, meaning, and what your team wants from work. You can help people better identify and articulate their purpose, and even start finding ways to help them live it more fully at work. Not only will team performance improve, but so will organisational health.
We have a range of tools to support you and your team in articulating personal purpose and values and connecting them with the team or organisational purpose.
Get in touch with friendly experts
Whether you are looking for some expert perspective into your organisation, want to elevate your team performance but don’t know where to start, or want to know what we had for breakfast – get in touch, we would love to hear from you.
