Helping Your Team Feel the Purpose in Their Work

 No one wants to be a nine-to-five robot. People want to feel inspired, find meaning, and see the impact their work has on others. And when they do, they're more engaged, innovative, and productive. That isn't a secret or a revelation. It's common sense.

没人愿意成为朝九晚五的机器人。人们希望获得灵感，找到存在的意义，期望看到自己的工作影响到他人。当员工看到工作的意义后，他们会更投入，更具创新性，更高效。这并非什么秘密或意外的发现，而是常识。

If you're a leader, helping others feel a sense of purpose can be a powerful tool. So, why then do so many leaders have trouble lighting up their employees?

如果你是一位领导者，帮助员工理解目标的真正意义便是让其高效工作的不二法门。那么，为何如此多的领导者无法成功鼓舞员工的士气？

The simple answer is it's extremely difficult to instill purpose in others. It takes more than motivational talks, lofty speeches, or mission statements to spread purpose. In fact, if overblown or insincere, those methods can backfire, triggering cynical reactions.

简单而言，原因在于将目标灌输给他人是一件非常困难的事情。传播目标需要的不止是激励性的谈话，高谈阔论或宣扬使命。实际上，如果过分夸大或者不够真诚，这些方法可能会适得其反。

Purpose is a grand word, but in the end, it's about helping people see their impact on others and helping them develop a story about why they love what they do. If you keep that in mind, and take a personal, authentic, and perpetual approach, you're likely to find success.

目标是一个很宏大的词语，但最终它要帮助人们了解自己对他人产生的影响，并帮助他们打造一个基于为梦想而拼搏的情怀故事。如果能够牢记这一点，并采取个性化、真实性且可持续性的方法，你很可能会取得成功。

Make it personal

个性化

First, purpose needs to be personal, and, because purpose is meant to elicit an emotional reaction, purpose needs to be felt. You can't just talk about purpose.

首先，目标必须个性化。同时，由于目标意味着引起情感反应，所以人们必须能够感受到目标，而不能只是泛泛而谈。

Imagine you're the head of a college fundraising effort to help fund scholarships for underprivileged kids. How would you motivate your volunteers? According to a study by Adam Grant, if you stood in front of the group and talked about the impact of their work, you probably wouldn't improve anyone's performance. But, if you invited a current scholarship recipient to share their personal story, that would be much more impactful. In fact, in Grant's study, after volunteers had listened to a scholarship recipient, they raised almost 400% more money than average.

设想大学里有一项为贫困儿童筹集奖学金的活动，而你是这项活动的负责人。你打算如何激励志愿者？根据亚当·格兰特（Adam Grant）的一项研究，如果你选择站在团队的最前面谈论他们的工作所能带来的影响，此举可能无法提高任何人的表现。但是，如果你邀请奖学金获得者分享他们的亲身故事，这将产生更大的影响力。实际上，在格兰特的研究中，在志愿者听取了奖学金获得者的分享后，筹集的资金额几乎是平均水平的四倍。

When I was telling some leaders from F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, about the fundraising study, one of them lit up and blurted out, “This just happened to us!”

当我向全球最大制药公司之一的霍夫曼·罗氏制药公司（F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG）的一些负责人介绍筹款研究时，其中一位兴奋地脱口而出：“这样的事刚刚发生在我们身上！”

She explained how her team worked in the medical-devices division. Her group was sometimes looked down upon by people in the organization who thought that chemistry was “more sexy” than engineering. Many people in the division were not fully engaged, and the morale of the team was pretty low. One day the leader arranged for a customer to tell the team her personal story.

她解释了自己的团队在医疗器械部门的工作情况。她的团队有时会遭到那些认为化学比工程学“更性感”的同事的鄙视。部门中的许多人没有全身心投入到工作中，团队的士气很低落。有一天，领导者安排一位客户向团队讲述她的亲身故事。

This customer had diabetes and had to test her blood daily to make sure her insulin dose was right. Unfortunately, this poor woman misunderstood how much blood was needed and was pricking her finger more than she needed to in order to get the blood. It not only hurt every day, so that it became something she dreaded, but she also was making a mess of her fingers. She would work her way down one finger from the tip to the knuckle, get it all inflamed and sometimes infected, before moving to the next finger. She said it got to the point where she would sit on her hand to hide the damage from others. She stopped going out to dinner because she was so embarrassed.

该客户患有糖尿病，必须每天采血以确保胰岛素的正确剂量。不幸的是，这位可怜的女士没有弄清楚需要采集多少血液。为了采集血量，她不得不多次刺破手指，所以采血让她恐惧不已，不仅因为事件本身的痛苦性，更糟的是让她的手指被扎得一团糟。她总是沿着一根手指的指尖一直刺到关节处，致使整个手指发炎，有时甚至感染，然后再去刺下一根手指。她说，她甚至到了要尽量少露出自己的手，以避免受到他人伤害的地步。因为感到太尴尬，她不再外出赴宴。

The diabetic then told the group how they had improved her life when they invented a little finger-pricking device. You put it on the end of your finger and click it. It takes the absolute minimum amount of blood, is almost painless and leaves almost no cut at all. She told how, because of this device, her hands have healed, and she can go out to dinner without feeling ashamed about herself. She told the group: “You people changed my life.”

接下来，这位糖尿病患者告诉研究小组，他们发明的一种小型的手指刺破设备如何改善了她的生活。你只需要将这个装置放在手指末端，然后按下按钮就能采集到血液。设备的采血量绝对是最少的，而且几乎无痛，也不会留有伤口。她说，正是由于这个设备，她的双手已经康复了。现在，她不再为自己感到羞愧，可以出去赴宴了。她告诉研究小组：“你们改变了我的生活。”

The Roche leader told us that the medical device team was really affected by this patient testimonial. She said that it was very emotional in the room during the meeting. And for months, people felt more purpose.

罗氏制药的负责人告诉我们，这位患者的亲身经历确实对医疗器械团队产生了很大的影响。她说，会议期间房间里的人员都深受感动。几个月以来，人们体会到了更多的目标感。

It doesn't matter what line of work you're in. If people see the cause and effect between their inputs and their team's progress, or understand the impact of a customer getting their product on time, or experience first-hand how their role is necessary to other people, they'll feel a sense of purpose.

一个人从事的工作类型并不重要。但如果人们看到自己的投入与团队的进步之间有因果联系，或者了解到客户因及时使用他们产品而给自己的生活带来积极的影响，或者亲身体验到他们的工作对别人来说必不可少，这就会让他们有种目标感。

Make it authentic

真实性

But here’s the thing. You need to believe what you’re saying and doing. This makes all the difference. If your attempts at creating purpose do not align with your other leadership behaviors, employees will view your tactics as manipulative rather than inspirational.

不过，有一点需要注意，你要相信自己的所言所行。这会产生截然不同的效果。如果你试图建立的目标与你的领导行为不一致，员工们就会认为，你使用这些策略就是为了操纵他们，而不是鼓舞他们。

Right after the woman at Roche shared her inspirational story, for example, a man raised his hand on the other side of the room and said, “Yeah, they tried that bullshit on us too.”

例如，刚才那位女士在分享了她的故事后，坐在房间另一侧的一位男士举起了手，说道：“是的，他们想对我们胡说八道。”

“I have this boss who has never talked about anything but quarterly profits and hitting shipping targets,” he continued. “Well, he must have come to London Business School and heard you talk about this study because one day he drags a patient in to our weekly meeting and makes her tell us this story of how the drugs saved her life. I mean, trying to exploit our emotions to make us work harder? Using a patient to manipulate us!? That’s pretty low.”

“我们的这位老板，除了为了实现季度利润和运输目标外，从未谈论过其他任何事情，”他继续说，“看来，他一定是在伦敦商学院听过你的故事了。因为有一天他拉着一位患者来参加我们的周例会，让她给我们讲故事，讲述我们的药品如何挽救了她的生命。我的意思是，他想利用我们的情感去激励我们更加努力工作吗？竟然利用病人来操纵我们！这种把戏也太拙劣了吧！”

We can learn so much through this exchange.

通过这次交流，我们可以学到很多东西。

If you’re a leader, and you’re trying to sell people on purpose but you haven’t acted consistent with that purpose in the past, your message will backfire. Humans are authenticity-detection machines: we’re attracted to sincerity and repulsed by lies and insincerity.

如果你是领导者，当你试图向员工兜售目标时，如果你过去的行为与该目标不一致，那么你的信息可能会适得其反。人类就是检测真实性的机器：真诚能够吸引我们，我们排斥谎言和伪善。

So tread lightly. If you’re personally inspired by listening to customers, and really believe in what you’re saying, then go for it. If you’re not, you might create more feelings of manipulation than inspiration.

所以，要谨慎对待。如果听取客户的意见确实让你受到启发，而且你确实相信自己所说的话，那就放手去做吧。否则的话，你给人的感受更多的是操纵，而非鼓励。

Make it perpetual

可持续性

Even if you make purpose personal and authentic, you can’t just do it once. Instead, you need to make it a routine.

即使你的目标具备个性化、真实性的特点，也不能只完成一次，你必须让其可持续性。

Dr. Dorothee Ritz, the General Manager of Microsoft in Austria, encourages her employees to go out in the field and experience the clients’ problems first hand. One small team spent a week out on the street with police officers, trying to understand when and where remote data could help them. Another team spent two days in a hospital to observe and understand what it would really mean to help it become paperless.

微软公司（奥地利）总经理多洛特·丽兹博士（Dorothee Ritz）鼓励员工去实地亲身体验客户们的问题。一个小团队与警察一起在街上度过了一周的时间，试图了解远程数据何时何地可以为他们提供帮助；另一个团队在医院待了两天，观察并了解帮助医院实现无纸化的真正含义。

Ritz said these immersion experiences were enlightening for people. She said they came back illuminated, and it was clear to her that employees’ personal experiences increased their sense of purpose, since they witnessed the why of their work. Ritz watched employees dive into their projects with more energy and enthusiasm after they had witnessed the clients' needs themselves.

丽兹说，这些沉浸式体验对人们很有启发。在她看来，员工的亲身经历明显增强了他们的目标感，因为他们亲眼目睹了自己工作存在的价值。丽兹看到，在亲身了解客户们的需求后，员工们在工作中投入了更多的活力和热情。

So after a year of experimenting with this initiative, Ritz put something more secure in place. She selected a set of key customers (whom she calls partners) across industries ranging from car manufacturing to retailers to hospitals. And then 15 people from Microsoft — a team ranging from senior leaders to associates — go on-site at each company and ask lots of people at lots of different levels: “What are your challenges?” They talked to people in IT, of course, but they also talked with business decision-makers across different functions.

因此，在尝试这种新方案一年以后，丽兹采取了更加安全的做法。她从各行各业中挑选了一组关键客户（她称之为合作伙伴），这里面既有汽车制造商，也有零售商和医院。然后，来自微软公司的15人（一个由高管和合伙人组成的团队）到每家公司实地走访，并询问许多不同级别的人：“你面临的挑战有哪些？”他们和IT领域以及不同职能部门的业务决策者都进行了交谈。

At Tesla, for example, Ritz told me how Microsoft employees at different levels got to practice a conversation that started with Tesla's needs instead of Microsoft's products. They focused on holes in the process that Tesla needed to address. At a major retailer, a Microsoft employee who was very close to the Xbox asked some very grounded questions about issues with the console. This led to a useful, practical discussion rather than high-level executive speak, which helped move the whole conversation toward practical solutions that the team could go back and work on. These Microsoft teams came away with a few new contacts. But Ritz said what was even more important, these teams understood the purpose of the projects based on witnessing the situation and hearing about the companies' issues first-hand.

比如在特斯拉（Tesla），微软不同级别的员工基于特斯拉的需求而不是微软的产品开始了一场对话。他们专注于特斯拉在流程中需要解决的一些漏洞。在一家大型零售店，一位非常熟悉Xbox游戏机的微软员工针对控制台询问了一些非常实际的问题，这引发了一场有用而实际的讨论，而不是高层管理人员发表讲话。这有助于推动整个对话朝着实际解决方案的方向发展，让整个团队在回到公司后可以继续开展工作。这个微软团队得到了一些截然不同的市场反馈渠道，但更重要的是，这些团队成员亲眼目睹了情况，亲耳听到了公司的问题，并在此基础上把握了项目的目标。

Ritz invested deeply in client experiences that allowed employees to witness the impact of their jobs first-hand, which helped them build emotional connections with the client and the work, and which helped Microsoft explore and learn as an organization.

丽兹在客户体验方面投入很多，让员工们可以亲眼看到自己的工作所产生的影响。这帮助他们与客户和工作建立情感联系，并且帮助微软作为一个组织进行探索和学习。

Purpose can be a powerful tool for leaders who want to inspire people to bring their best to work. But most leaders agree that employees do not “get” their organizations' purpose. This is because purpose is personal and emotional. It is often managed poorly by transactional leaders who deliver speeches about lofty societal goals rather than helping put employees in direct contact with the people they serve. Purpose can work wonders for employee contributions when leaders start with a personal, authentic, and perpetual approach.

对于希望激励员工发挥最大工作潜能的领导者来说，目标可以成为一个强大的工具。但是，大多数领导者都承认，员工们没有“弄清楚”组织的目标。这是因为目标是个性化的、情感性的。交易型领导者常常管理不善，因为他们只会对设定的目标发表高谈阔论，而不会帮助员工们直接接触他们的服务对象。当领导者开始采取个性化、真实性且可持续性的方式时，理解目标的真正含义就能让员工们创造业绩奇迹。

丹·凯布尔是伦敦商学院组织行为学教授，最近出版了《激活——如何使团队跑起来》(Alive at Work: The Neuroscienceof Helping Your People Love What They Do)一书。