“Why do you work?”

It is one of my favourite ques­tions to ask em­ploy­ees dur­ing pro­fes­sion­al en­rich­ment ses­sions. The typ­i­cal re­sponse is, “I work to pay bills.”

My an­swer is al­ways the same: “Then you’re work­ing for your bills, aren’t you?”

What fol­lows is of­ten a live­ly, and some­times life-chang­ing, dis­cus­sion about whether “work­ing to pay bills” be­longs at the cen­tre of a men­tal mod­el in­tend­ed to cre­ate mean­ing and ful­fil­ment in a per­son’s life.

One of the most grat­i­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ences in my work is en­coun­ter­ing busi­ness­es that ac­tive­ly in­vest in help­ing em­ploy­ees build mean­ing­ful lives. That was the case re­cent­ly when a client en­gaged more than 300 em­ploy­ees in pro­fes­sion­al brand en­rich­ment ses­sions that I fa­cil­i­tat­ed. The ob­jec­tive was sim­ple but pow­er­ful: equip key em­ploy­ees with the tools to ac­cel­er­ate their pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment and, ul­ti­mate­ly, en­hance their lives.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the ques­tion, “Why do you work?” be­came a cen­tre­piece of the con­ver­sa­tion.

When em­ploy­ees are en­cour­aged to de­vel­op a grand vi­sion for their lives, work ceas­es to be mere­ly a means of pay­ing bills and be­comes em­ploy­ment with pur­pose. Pur­pose pro­vides a frame­work for de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Ac­tiv­i­ties be­gin to ei­ther align with that pur­pose or fall away. Ef­fort be­comes in­ten­tion­al. De­ci­sions be­come more de­lib­er­ate. Over time, less en­er­gy is wast­ed on ac­tions that de­liv­er di­min­ish­ing re­turns.

Em­ploy­ees who de­vel­op them­selves in­to brands that cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant val­ue con­tribute far more mean­ing­ful­ly than those who sim­ply work to meet fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions. One mind­set gen­er­ates mo­men­tum and growth. The oth­er of­ten leads to stag­na­tion, frus­tra­tion and dis­en­gage­ment.

Un­leash­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers must be­come a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty for every or­gan­i­sa­tion that in­tends to thrive in an era of con­stant dis­rup­tion and rapid change. Sup­port­ing em­ploy­ees in their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment should there­fore be viewed as an in­vest­ment rather than an ex­pense. In re­al­i­ty, it is a per­for­mance-en­hance­ment strat­e­gy.

When em­ploy­ees as­sume own­er­ship of their growth, their com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence in­creas­es and their ex­e­cu­tion be­comes more fo­cused and ef­fec­tive.

Equal­ly im­por­tant is en­sur­ing that busi­ness­es cul­ti­vate the right type of lead­ers. We al­ready have enough lead­ers who are op­er­a­tional­ly ef­fi­cient but de­fi­cient in hu­man-cen­tred lead­er­ship. To­day’s man­date is not sim­ply to pro­duce more lead­ers, but to de­vel­op lead­ers ca­pa­ble of meet­ing the needs of in­creas­ing­ly di­verse, multi­gen­er­a­tional and rapid­ly evolv­ing work­forces.

The fu­ture does not be­long to lead­ers dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by sta­tus, recog­ni­tion or ego. It be­longs to lead­ers who un­der­stand the im­por­tance of men­tal well-be­ing, mean­ing­ful work and the emo­tion­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty of em­ploy­ees, while still de­liv­er­ing ex­cep­tion­al busi­ness re­sults.

This is un­doubt­ed­ly a tall or­der, but it is one that should not be post­poned un­til the next plan­ning cy­cle or de­ferred un­til or­gan­i­sa­tion­al chal­lenges be­come crises. Our client recog­nised the need and chose to act be­fore cir­cum­stances de­mand­ed it.

The jour­ney to­wards tal­ent com­pet­i­tive­ness has al­ready be­gun. Tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise and dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ties re­main im­por­tant, but they are no longer enough. Or­gan­i­sa­tions that want to at­tract and re­tain ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent must move be­yond tra­di­tion­al job-dri­ven em­ploy­ment mod­els and em­brace pur­pose-dri­ven em­ploy­ment pipelines.

These pipelines serve as lead­er­ship in­cu­ba­tors. They de­vel­op fu­ture lead­ers, strength­en suc­ces­sion plan­ning and cre­ate busi­ness en­vi­ron­ments ca­pa­ble of with­stand­ing ex­ter­nal shocks and un­cer­tain­ty.

The more an or­gan­i­sa­tion is en­trust­ed to lead­ers who em­brace pur­pose-dri­ven think­ing, the less trans­ac­tion­al that or­gan­i­sa­tion be­comes. This is the true func­tion of a lead­er­ship in­cu­ba­tor. In such en­vi­ron­ments, lead­ers are no longer con­sumed by ti­tles or hi­er­ar­chy. In­stead, they be­come com­mit­ted to cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment ex­pe­ri­ences that tran­scend sur­vival mode and trans­form jobs in­to mean­ing­ful jour­neys of growth and con­tri­bu­tion.

A sig­nif­i­cant shift is un­der­way. Busi­ness­es are mov­ing from a sin­gu­lar fo­cus on cre­at­ing wealth to a broad­er com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing mean­ing along­side wealth.

Mean­ing and re­sults are not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive. In fact, the most sus­tain­able or­gan­i­sa­tions recog­nise that they must co­ex­ist.

As a re­sult, lead­ers must evolve in­to ar­chi­tects of mean­ing. They must see them­selves not mere­ly as man­agers of re­sources or dri­vers of rev­enue, but as cus­to­di­ans of a larg­er pur­pose that in­spires peo­ple and el­e­vates per­for­mance.

Lead­ers can on­ly lead from the depth of their own knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence and men­tal mod­els. Giv­en the pace of change con­fronting or­gan­i­sa­tions to­day, there is an ur­gent need to ac­cel­er­ate their jour­ney to­wards be­com­ing ar­chi­tects of mean­ing.

The or­gan­i­sa­tions that em­brace this shift will not on­ly build stronger lead­ers. They will build stronger cul­tures, stronger teams and ul­ti­mate­ly, stronger busi­ness­es.