Leadership: ‘On Mission’
“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
Abraham Lincoln
When it comes to leadership, Abraham Lincoln’s advice is instructive: “Whatever you are, be a good one.”
Think about it. The opposite would read as: “Whatever you are, be the worst one.” It doesn’t make a lot of sense, yet around the world daily, some leaders often strive to be ‘alright’. Leadership is very much a mindset activity. What you think about you will bring about in your leadership and your team. Leadership is meant to be transformative in a positive way. At its core, leadership is intended to serve humanity by making a difference for the better locally. One critical aspect of leadership is its intimate connection with mission.
This article will focus primarily on the importance of an organization’s mission. This isn’t to say that the vision for the organization is not essential and doesn’t play an important function in guiding the leadership of an organization. It helps if everyone works from a commonly understood definition of ‘Mission’ and ‘Vision.’ In their excellent book “On Mission,” John Buford and Sean Georges offer this crystal-clear meaning of ‘Mission’ and ‘Vision,’ especially if you substitute the word ‘team’ with ‘organization.’
“Your team’s mission is, in essence, what your team was created to accomplish. The mission should capture the purpose for which the team was created. Without a clear and compelling mission, your team has no good reason to exist.” (Ch 14. p198-199 of 352).
“Vision is not a complex concept. As with the team’s mission, you should keep it simple. Leaders essentially take their teammates on a journey to a future state. To get to that place, every leader and every member of the team must be able to vividly see what that journey will require and clearly envision how that future state will look and feel. (Ch 14. p206 of 352).
Buford, John., Georges, Sean. (2022). On Mission (eBook). Austin: Texas. Greenleaf Book Group Press.
As mentioned, this article’s primary focus is mission and leadership. If there is a disconnect between the organization’s leadership and the mission, the staff and the customers will find themselves in a vortex of continual ‘angst,’ a shaking of the foundations of the organization. An example of this can often be seen when a Government changes after an election, especially if the previous Government had several terms in office. With the new Government comes new leadership, policies, and expectations. The reason why a department exists won’t necessarily change, but the way it goes about its business will. Where there is tension between the Minister or Secretary of a department and the permanent head, a problematic situation suddenly becomes more difficult. If the policy stance is too different from the department’s mission, then the new Government may change its name and merge it with other government agencies. Ideally, you want everyone, from the top of the organizational chart to the latest recruit, to be on point regarding the mission. Everyone must be singing from the same s on the same page. Everyone should be aiming for mission success.
Writing as a guest for Tom Peters on the blog page of his website, tompeters.com, James C. Collins was very explicit about the mission.
“To be blunt: If you feel the need to “wordsmith” your mission, then you don’t have a mission.
A true mission is a clear and compelling goal that focuses people’s efforts. It is tangible, specific, crisp, clear and engaging. It reaches out and grabs people in the gut.”
Collins, James, C.(1993). In Pursuit of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal at Blog on tompeters.com
Simply, the mission is the organization’s ‘raison d’être,’ the reason and purpose for the organization’s existence. Misunderstanding the mission of the organization can create discord between staff and customers. Getting across the organization’s mission should be a vital part of any induction process. If, for example, you have started working for a public works department whose mission is to be the ‘State’s Building and Infrastructure Authority,’ then this mission should be included in every training. If our new recruit is in the branch that writes the purchase orders to ensure resources for a building project arrive on time, then the training officer should highlight that. The conversation could be: “So Jo, we have a requisition for 100, 40mm White Button Head Wood Screws. We are ordering this for an important building project we are undertaking as the State’s Building and Infrastructure Authority.” At that moment, Jo has, as a recruit, an understanding that everything, no matter how small, connects back to the mission, in this case, to the Public Works Department they work for.
The biggest challenge of leadership is getting people to be absorbed and engaged in the mission. This is where Servant Leadership holds promise.
“Servant Leadership seeks to involve others in decision making, is strongly based in ethical and caring behavior, and enhances the growth of workers while improving the caring and quality of organizational life…ten characteristics of the servant leader are of critical importance. They are: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community.”
Spears, Larry, C. (2010) Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders in Journal of Virtues & Leadership (Issue: 1 Volume: 1 Year: 2010)
For more information on the ten characteristics of Servant Leadership, it is recommended that you click on the link and read this excellent research paper.
Leadership is meant to be transformative in a positive way.
Your leadership influences how people engage with the mission of the organization. Logically, this extends to how people engage with other parts of the organization and other teams as they engage with the mission. Servant leadership fundamentally requires leaders to empower their teams to be true collaborators in the organization’s work. The genius of Servant Leadership is that it lends itself to aligning everyone with the organization’s mission. This helps to mitigate against the often-lived reality that there will be a misalignment between staff and their engagement with the mission. Over time, this misalignment, through iteration processes, amplifies this misalignment to staff and customers alike. This means that people will start to look elsewhere for better alignment toward what they (the customers) are looking for. According to Craig Goodliffe, CEO & Founder of Cyberbacker, there are some things that you can do to reinforce this alignment to the mission.
Build a mission-driven culture.
If a company’s culture is built around its mission—with goals, accountability, recognition, and milestones all anchored to that mission—it can be a powerful tool for increasing motivation.
Provide ongoing feedback and recognition.
Leaders can also improve motivation by ensuring employees know their efforts are making a difference.
Nurture personal as well as professional goals.
Every investment in your employees’ growth—both personal and professional—is an investment in your company’s success.
Goodliffe, Craig. (2024). How To Keep Employees Motivated & Connected To Your Business’s Mission (in Forbes, 30 January, 2024).
The mission is the purpose of the organization and the reason for its existence. From the outset, the mission should, therefore, feature in all aspects of the organization. The job advertisement should be the first-place people become aware of the organization’s mission (along with its vision and values). The interview should seek alignment with the mission, and there should be questions that assess this. The onboarding process should see material around the mission, vision, and values being sent to the latest recruit so they can be aware of it. The induction phase is an opportunity to meet the senior leaders and hear the importance of the organization’s mission, vision, and values. Mentors could check how they integrate these things into their work and work life. Team meetings could regularly revisit how they support the organization’s mission, vision, and values. At retirement, the celebration could include how well the person retiring endorsed the organization’s mission, vision, and values throughout their time at the organization. This start-to-finish approach connects every aspect of the employment process to serving the organization’s mission. This alignment requires both parties to build a relationship of trust. One is when leaders accept that the people they have hired can be trusted with the purpose and mission of the organization. In turn, they trust that the leaders will empower and support them. Servant Leadership can foster the trust needed for a highly successful organization to emerge. Professor Paul J. Zak, writing in the Harvard Business Review Magazine, shows that research supports this connection between trust and being aligned with the mission.
“My team also found that those working in high-trust companies enjoyed their jobs 60% more, were 70% more aligned with their companies’ purpose.”
Zak, Paul, J. (2017). The Neuroscience of Trust, (Harvard Business Review Magazine). Boston, MA: Harvard Business Publishing.
It should be unsurprising to see that there is a link to having high levels of trust throughout the organization and alignment with the mission and purpose of the organization. It means being life-giving with your staff, growing and developing them. The mission is achieved by the individuals within the organization working collectively to serve others, notably the customers. When staff is working with a common purpose, and that common purpose is the mission of the organization, then they are ‘on a mission,’ shedding beams of light across the pathway they have followed. Others will find those pathways and join them ‘on a mission.’ This is the purpose of leadership. To gather everyone into one collective effort to achieve the organization’s mission. To do so, the leaders must see their leadership as transformative. They must empower their staff, grow and develop their talents, and build their capacity to achieve amazing things in pursuit of the mission. This is what Servant Leadership seeks to do. Tom Peters explains this well in his outstanding book, ‘The Excellence Dividend’.
“Passionate servant leaders, determined to create a legacy of earthshaking transformation in their domain (a 600-square foot retail space, a 4-person training department, an urban school, a rural school, whatever), must necessarily create organizations which are no less than cathedrals in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial Flair of diverse individuals is unleashed in passionate pursuit of a jointly perceived soaring purpose (e.g., worthy of bragging about 25 years from now to your grandkids) and personal and community and client service Excellence).”
Peters, Tom. (2018) The Excellence Dividend: Principles for Prospering in Turbulent Times from a Lifetime in Pursuit of Excellence (eBook). London, England: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. (Ch 7. p219 of 508).
Imagine what your organization would look like if you conceived it as a “Cathedral of Organizational Development,” as Tom Peters has outlined above. It means your teams would have more than just a prayer; they would sing from the same hymn book. They would see themselves as part of a significant community, gathered to focus on a singular purpose. They would be ‘on mission’. The power of this metaphor should not be underestimated. It helps if they see their leaders singing from the same hymn book as themselves. In the mind of Mark C. Crowley, being connected to the organization’s mission is also an essential element in people doing more than surviving at work; it allows them to thrive.
“Honoring, valuing, caring for, and developing people individually, making people feel connected to work, and its mission all create the sense of well-being that people need to thrive.”
Crowley, Mark. C. (2022). Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century (eBook). Carlsbad. California: Hay House, Inc. (Ch 1. p42 of 295).
The transformative power of leadership should be apparent, even to the casual observer, especially when harnessing ‘people first’ approaches to leadership, such as Servant Leadership. Leadership must always serve the mission, community, and, more broadly, humanity. In striving to thrive, leaders and staff alike are required to be ‘on a mission,’ and that requires, as Abraham Lincoln has reminded us, to be the best iteration of oneself daily.
“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
Abraham Lincoln
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