Leadership: The Why Behind You

Why should people follow your organization or you? Why do people work for your organization and your leaders? If you, your leaders, or your organization cannot clearly articulate with fervor why you do; who are your followers?

Listening to a brilliant man speak this morning, I was moved by his ability to captivate myself and the rest of the audience with his reflection on Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why. He spoke of how great organizations motivate through why they do what they do. It’s a trickle effect.

If an organization leads with the purposeful why they are in existence, it inspires leaders to join and step up in your organization. When your employees are being lead by passionate leaders able to articulate what gets them out of bed in the morning and excited about work, you have an engaged and motivated employees. Employees whom are able to clearly articulate with fervor the reason why your company is the best at what they do, they will help to create an innovative culture and give you the best desired results.

The why must be based on good, solid principles and not be an epilogue about what you do or how you do it:

Ineffective Why: “We provide excellent customer service.”

Effective Why: “We believe in improving the industrious world by authentically connecting with our customers through extraordinary customer service and challenging the status quo.”

When you can properly articulate the why you do what you do, inspired talent and consumers are drawn to you. I have personally worked in non-profit organizations in for over 10 years in 3 different states and I am always so humbled and inspired by those in the field. At different points throughout my career, we were faced with industry-wide pay cuts as legislation extracted funding, yet minimal employees were lost.

What I heard most at employee outreach meetings were often words of care and concern for the elderly and disabled individuals that these, now minimum-wage, workers served because they truly believed in what they did. In contrast, in the private business world, I have seen highly paid executives bounce from company to company chasing a bigger paycheck only to leave a wake of unsolved issues behind. When you motivate with why you are doing what you are doing and you employ those who believe in your mission, it is amazing what you can do and who you get to do it with.

If you don’t know why you are doing something, don’t do it. Embrace the challenge of knowing the why behind a task as an individual, leader, and organization when you’re expending your precious time and effort or someone else’s.

Watch the growth and abounding opportunity with a purposeful Why!