A sense of purpose can drive success

WHILE visiting NASA space centre in 1962, President John F. Kennedy was reported to have struck up a conversation with a janitor there.

Kennedy asked the janitor what he was doing, and to his surprise, the janitor replied “Mr President, I am helping put a man on the moon.”

The main job of the janitor was keeping the place clean, no doubt, but when everyone in an organisation has such a strong sense of purpose and is so aligned to the overall mission, truly great things can happen.

Morten Hansen, the management professor at University of California, Berkeley, performed research that focused on understanding the relationship between passion, purpose and performance.

Within the scope of jobs and careers, passion can be defined as the feeling of excitement and enthusiasm that we have towards our work while purpose is the sense that our work has a broader meaning and that it positively contributes to others.

Hansen was curious to which has more impact on job performance. He studied the job performance of a group of employees who varied on their level of passion and sense of purpose.

Those who have both high sense of purpose and high levels of passion were the absolute stars of their organisations, and were ranked by their superiors, on average, at the 80th percentile.

This is not at all surprising.

On the other end, those with low sense of purpose and low levels of passion exhibited inferior performance and were rated, on average, at the 10th percentile.

Here again, there is no surprise. When individuals lack the sense of meaning and are not enthusiastic about their jobs, it is rather difficult to overachieve.

The question now is if employees are strong only on one attribute, passion or purpose, which group will perform better?

Results showed that those with low sense of purpose and high levels of passion were rated at the 20th percentile only.

The real surprise was those with high sense of purpose were able to exhibit solid performance, rated at the 64th percentile, even though they had low levels of passion.

The findings are clear: purpose trumps passion when it comes to performance.

Passion is often an individual trait, it invigorates but has the potential to isolate as well, especially when people within a team do not develop the same passion.

On the other hand, it is easier to share purpose (such as putting a man on the moon). This can bring a group of people closer together.

The importance of having a clear sense of purpose goes well beyond career success and work performance.

The work of Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, and other leading psychologists are conclusive – having a sense of meaning and life purpose is an essential ingredient for mental health, happiness and wellbeing.

Yale professor Amy Wrzesniewski studied how people make meaning of their work and her findings are truly fascinating and empowering. Her work points in the direction that purpose is not something that is out there waiting to be discovered, but rather it is something that needs to be developed and cultivated.

Now, if a sense of purpose is necessary for wellbeing and career success, and if it can and should be cultivated, what should educational institutions, employers and policy-makers do about that?

At Heriot-Watt University, we developed the “Empower Programme”, a four-level structured programme that is designed to future-proof our graduates, unleash their potential, and prepare them to stand out and have an impact in a highly uncertain world.

The first level of the programme is a year-long course, that every undergraduate student is required to complete in their first year at the university. This course is aimed at developing successful, resilient and emotionally intelligent graduates.

The course has multiple personal and professional components, but a key component is the development of an “Impact Statement”.

This statement outlines the sense of purpose that students are cultivating through their studies and how they plan to translate this into a true impact that will make the world a better place.

Self-exploration endeavours, well-structured experiential activities and workshops are lined up to assist students author their “Impact Statements”.

We call this “Impact Based Education”.

In a time where technology and automation threaten to take over our jobs, we need to help our youth to not only develop their technical and academic skills, but also their sense of purpose and impact so that they can deal effectively with change and disruption and remain resilient, relevant and in control of technology rather than being at its mercy.

Mark Twain said: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Let us make education a process of cultivating of this why.

PROF MUSHTAK AL-ATABI Provost and CEO Heriot-Watt University Malaysia

The importance of having a clear sense of purpose goes well beyond career success and work performance.