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How meaning and purpose drives wellness, motivation, and performance.

Do you want to get the most out of your employees while giving them the best environment to thrive?

If your employees know why they are here they will work harder, longer, manage stress better and are less likely to get sick.

The world is going through challenging times. Companies must find a way to motivate their employees to navigate through some very tough terrain and un-explored territory by grounding their work in purpose.

Inspirational mission statements will not suffice. Management must resolve the critical questions that underlie their statements.

What is your firm doing? And why?

You must work to identify and know your purpose. Then you need close the knowing-doing gap by figuring out how your organization can deliver on its purpose in its everyday activities. Most importantly there should be clear alignment between employee purpose and organizational purpose.

This is brought about by having the conversation, identifying purpose, clearly articulating it, and then acting on it.

How will your organization keep thriving today?

It’s safe to say we all want our people and employees to be motivated and healthy

1. Motivation

Purpose is key to motivation, and motivated employees are the key to realizing the organization’s purpose. Get this relationship right, and your organization will thrive.

When employees understand, embrace and embody your organization’s purpose they will be inspired to do work that is great. They will work harder and longer and are less likely to suffer the negative effects of stressful environment.

Your purpose is your promise to customers

In evaluating whether your firm has effectively articulated and communicated its reason for being, consider the following questions:

Is your stated purpose relevant to your existing and potential customers? Is it clear who’s lives you are improving and in what way?

Is your purpose unique? What gap in the market will be left if you disappeared?

Do you own your purpose? Do you live it? Can you fulfil it more effectively and excel at it? Can you do it better than your competition and why?

Re-thinking purpose can be immeasurably beneficial for the synergistic goals of the company, employee motivation and their mental and physical health.


2. Health


Research increasingly suggests that meaning and purpose is important for health and well-being.

People who score high on meaning, those who have purpose in life is linked to a number of positive health outcomes:

• Better sleep
• Lower risk for CVD and diabetes
• Lower risk for neuro-degenerative disease – dementia
• Lower risk for disability
• Lower risk for premature death
• More likely to embrace preventative health care services and utilize resources at their disposal


If employees don’t know what the higher order benefit it is that they bring to the world, their customers, they are not tapping into this potential resource that DOING good has to offer. This is why it’s so important to articulate and act on the organizations purpose. Employees need to know how their day-to-day activities are serving the organization’s purpose and how that is DOING good to their customers and the world at large.

The key to a healthier, motivated, productive, and more fulfilling life isn’t knowing the meaning of life — it’s building meaning into your life. One day at a time.


So what?

Be clear on your organization’s meaning and purpose. Become clear on what the higher ideals are. How is your organization improving people’s lives? What is the meaning and purpose of the organization and how is the organization contributing value to its direct environment (employees) and the extended environment (clients and outside world).

Know it, speak it, live it.

Have clear goals around this and help employees see how their personal goals are connected to the organization’s goals and larger purpose.

Help employees see the bigger picture and how their roles and daily activities are contributing value to the organization’s higher ideals. Help employees see their work as a calling.

Healthy organisations are made up of healthy, motivated individuals.

Wellness and performance are two sides of the same coin. These functions are interdependent in that enhanced wellness predisposes to enhanced performance
While the gratification of enhanced performance impacts positively on wellness


References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5645055/)

https://hbr.org/2019/11/why-are-we-here

https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11148302

https://faculty.som.yale.edu/amywrzesniewski/

Reinhard Korb

Reinhard Korb

Keep Thriving

As the founder of Keep Thriving he has equipped and helped organisations and individuals actualize their potential and achieve optimal health, performance and well-being. Reinhard is a thought leader in the application of the various disciplines to affect increased resilience, unlocking of potential and fostering an enhanced capacity to engage with the world. He enjoys adventure and is an avid rock-climber. It’s his pursuit of thriving that led him to the study of excellence and human potential itself.

As an adventurer he is always exploring new territory, be it physical or mental terrain that is yet to be discovered.

He qualified as a licensed Meta-Coach (ACMC) in Belgium with the International society of Neuro-Semantics (ISNS) under the direct tutelage of Dr. L Michael Hall, the developer of Neuro-Semantics.