April Sabral is an executive leadership coach, author of "The Positive Effect" and founder of retailu.ca. | April Sabral Leadership.
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"What is my purpose?" may be one of the most common Google searches globally. Why is this question so common? I believe it is because most of us want to live a more fulfilling, happier and more meaningful life. If we were not striving for this prior to the pandemic because we were buried in work and responsibilities, it's become much more apparent post-pandemic. For example, with the term "quiet quitting" becoming a new trend in the workplace, it seems being happy and taking care of your mental health are not "trends" that are going away; if anything, they are going to continue to grow.
What does this have to do with leadership and the corporate world?
The search for purpose is fundamental to the human quest to find joy, freedom, inner peace and happiness. And unlike some out there, I genuinely believe you do not need to travel the world, quit your job and sit on a mountain in India to find your purpose. I do not believe the answer is to up and change everything in our life to find purpose; I am of the thought that we can make our work much more purposeful, and when we do, it can change work culture and overall employee experience, which in turn has a direct impact on how customers feel and how they spend their hard-earned money.
As we face shortages in the workforce across multiple industries, leaders should be asking themselves how to infuse meaning into the workspace and make work more purposeful, along with how to help their employees feel more joy, inner peace and freedom in their lives.
The workforce has evolved over the past three years, and employees' tolerance for a boss who does not respect the need for these three core feelings to be felt by their workforce can no longer be ignored.
So how do you, as a leader, create a workspace that infuses joy, freedom and inner peace? It is difficult but not impossible.
First, it starts with a level of self-awareness within your own leadership—this means how you interact with, impact and inspire your team. Helping them find purpose can sometimes be as simple as praising them for the small things they accomplish and telling them how much it means to you and the organization. Share why what they are doing is making a difference versus just driving a key performance indicator (KPI). For example, a manager's purpose could be to build a positive work culture that inspires greatness; this sounds so much better than a manager's job is solely to deliver profits. Can you feel the difference?
Joy
Joy is a feeling, and as much as we don't like talking about feelings at work, there are ways to illicit the emotion of joy. For example, ask your team to recall something that makes them feel happy at the beginning of a meeting or video call. You could also start a "joy journal" and challenge them to do the same: Write down three things that make you feel happy this week, and then share them in next week's team meeting. I love buying new pieces of clothing and playing the piano; I know how this makes me feel, so I plan my week and enjoy those joyful moments. How about at work? Finding joy through helping a peer, coaching a team member or removing an obstacle could be just as joyful. To feel joy, we must also feel purpose. Volunteering as a team could be an excellent way to create more good energy in your office. This then requires communication celebrating these moments, versus just the results.
Freedom
Let's look at the Oxford Learner's Dictionary definition of freedom: "the power or right to do or say what you want without anyone stopping you." This is challenging, as it requires us to remove bias and judgment and encourage our employees to share their voices. I don't think this means that you can show up and say what you want without a lack of professionalism, but I do believe that creating a space where team members can share openly and honestly when they are not feeling good is essential for freedom at work. Creating options for anonymous feedback loops and offering safe spaces to chat in open forums could be helpful. Holding a skip-level round table may benefit you and your team. Also, work-from-home schedules have driven the need for flexibility and removed the structures of the 9-5. This has many benefits; however, many of us also struggle with this, so finding a balance is critical.
Inner Peace
You may think this is a stretch; after all, how can you create inner peace for your employees? You can't create inner peace; inner peace comes from within. However, you can remove obstacles keeping your employees from finding inner peace. This could mean you remove tasks and processes that make their jobs more challenging. Inner peace is created by showing gratitude, meditation, spending time in nature, practicing acceptance and contentment and decluttering, as a few examples. Looking at this list, what can you do as a leader to encourage inner peace? Could you start meetings with gratitude? Could you take a walk in the park while holding a meeting to touch base? Could you demonstrate being more accepting of your team? Could you ask your team what is causing them anxiety at work? What could help them feel better? Inner peace is the opposite of anxiety, so help them identify what stresses trigger anxiety around specific tasks and duties.
While attending a meditation retreat this year, I surveyed the 78 people who were at the retreat and asked them why they were there. Over 50% shared they wanted to feel less stressed at work and find more inner peace.
The bottom line is that the importance of purposeful work is not going away, and the more you address it, the better your team will feel. If we all did our part to make work more meaningful, creating more purpose-driven initiatives, I believe turnover would slow down—if not entirely stop.
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