Meaning Making Leadership Determinant 1: Purpose

Over the next few weeks I will post the 8 key building blocks of meaning making that all leaders should be familiar with and comfortable employing in their planning and actions. These key elements should be a part of the leader's own character, and what the leader strives to deliver to individuals and the organization as a whole. The first building block is Purpose.

Purpose: Baumeister (1991) states that “a first need is for purpose. People want their lives to have a purpose”. Both humans and lower-based animals demonstrate a goal orientation that may be the primary motivator for purpose. Baumeister suggests that in the context of meaning making, purpose has at least three components: “First, the goal or state is imagined and conceptualized. Second, current behavior options are analyzed and evaluated according to whether they will help bring about this desired goal state. Third, the person makes choices so as to achieve the goal.". It is not as important that goals are necessarily obtained for meaning to be made, but that current actions may lead to potential desired outcomes. In some cases, the more difficult or even impossible the goal, the higher meaning derived in the pursuit of that goal.

Early in humankind’s existence, we stumbled upon several meaning making determinants that appeared most productive and that led to the creation of systems and processes to support the nearly constant human pursuit of meaning. According to Steger, Oishi, and Kashdan (2009) these include self-purpose, self-value, self-efficacy and self-worth. The systems, processes, and institutions that have supported human meaning making over the millennia have enjoyed casual acceptance and only iterative changes until the 17th century. Even through the revolutionary changes in meaning making through the Industrial Revolution and the advent of the Information Age, these values appear to hold constant. Meaning itself may shift because life offers the opportunity of constructive and or objective second thought, but the guiding values of the process do not appear to shift or change.
We find at the root of meaning making values: things we care about and that have proven to lead to meaning in the past. It appears, certain combinations may provide more meaning than others, but the evidence is only provided by anecdotal accounts, not by rigorous scientific study. Benjamin Franklin’s thoughts on values add clarifying insight:

We stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. Each choice is made in the context of whatever value system we’ve selected to govern our lives. In selecting that value system, we are, in a very real way, making the most important choice we will ever make.

John Dewey famously wrote in the context of meaning in an external setting, “Values: Things that matter, objects one desires or holds dear. The term may have a social or cultural meaning, referring to values held in common. There is no genuine social unity without values (valued objects) held in common” . The modern workplace plays a primary role in creating these valued meaning making experiences.

Next week we will begin to look more closely at the key meaning making principles that leaders must not only understand, but practice.

Values and Principles

Principles are external natural laws, that is, “laws whose content are set by nature and that therefore have validity everywhere” (Natural Law, 2010, para. 1). Stephen Covey (2010) suggests, principles are “universal and timeless,” (para. 3) applying to everyone, everywhere, all the time. The word “values” is often used interchangeably with principles. They are, however very different. Values are defined as “Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit… a quality considered worthwhile or desirable” (2010, para. 1). In the context of this paper, values are “…internal and subjective. Covey proclaims that values govern people’s behavior, but principles ultimately determine the consequences” (2010, para. 3). There may be social input components to values, but values are ultimately personal.

That we are meaning driven beings is less in dispute than why we are meaning focused, even meaning obsessed at times. Frankl noted that “meaning differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour” (as cited in Viktor Frankl: A Man’s Search for Meaning, 2010, para. 15). Whatever the origins of the human desire for obtaining meaning, it is clear that the desire exists. We must, however, be clear that we don’t jump to conclusion and enthusiastically toss all motivations and desires into the search for meaning basket. As Frankl and others point out, the desire to live a “worthwhile” life is not the same thing as striving for a “meaningful” life. However varied and unique the desire for meaning in life, there are other driving interests of fulfillment. This is important to recognize as we attempt to define the key principles of meaning making. And thus “knowing that meaningfulness analytically concerns a variable and gradient final good in a person's life that is conceptually distinct from happiness, rightness, and worthwhileness [among other motivators and goals] provides a certain amount of common ground” (Meaning of Life, 2007, para. 13) for the discovery of guiding principles.

Meaning Making Leadership

Over the course of the next few blogs, we will touch on the concept of Meaning Making Leadership. In pursuit of sustainability and profitability, companies create change through downsizing, attempting to do more with less, demand deciphering and implementation of new technologies, and introduce a host of other stressor and destabilizers. Employees at all levels of the enterprise attempt to “make sense” of these challenges and changes in their pursuit of meaning and meaning’s precipitates including higher productivity, better decision making, claiming responsibility for actions, happiness, understanding, and acceptance. Leadership’s principle purpose is to make meaning and to guide others to make meaning for themselves. This and future posts will provide a list of principles and meaning determinants that, if employed in the workplace, will stimulate increased meaning, more productive employees, and the foundation for a high performance organization.

Robert Richer in his Doctoral Dissertation, Meaning-Making by Involuntarily Reassigned Employees http://dspace.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/120/5/dissertation.pdf noted, “Meaning making or sensemaking is what employees do as they navigate through reassignment activities as organizations balance workforce and business demands” (p.1) such as profitability and sustainability. “In this knowledge era both individual and collective meaning making have been identified as important to the success of organizations” (p.2). Although meaning appears to be a critical factor in business success, the key factor of meaning is rarely if ever mentioned or considered in making either strategic or day-to-day decisions. This may be because meaning appears too “fluffy,” too hard to measure, not critical to success, or is simply rejected outright as not important. Alternate metrics (e.g. productivity, sick leave levels, clicks on a website) appear to deliver sufficient understanding of success that it becomes a rational business decision to avoid the meaning quagmire. In response, MyKnowledgeCoach identifies probable meaning making principles and determinants at the leader’s disposal and which are key to the leader’s reach and ability to guide the organization to long-term success. In the next blog we will begin discussing what some of these meaning making tools are.

Greatness and Humility

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

This quote has found its way into Nelson Mandela's 1994 Inaugural address, the Akeelah and the Bee movie, and countless blogs. It was originally written penned by Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love

There are days when leaders may feel themselves shrinking as the thought suggests, but there are other days when they feel just plain inadequate--no shrinking, no fear of greatness, just frustration at not being what they know they can be. I know I fit in this picture at times. I have accomplished some exciting things in my life, I have some amazing friends and associates, I am well traveled..., well you get the picture. But I believe this is all so very relative to what is really important. Some of the greatest people I have known are barely literate, or have had to work as a maid in a foreign country to keep her family fed at home, or have sacrificed their life for their child. They know the secret of overcoming this fear of success or the fear of failure is humility. We all know the celeb names--and nothing against them, but I hope we can also celebrate the quiet champions of greatness that overcome the world everyday in their unique ways.

The companion thought to Williamson's words of counsel might be Kazuro Okakura's observation:

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.

So when we are trying to let our light shine for the right reason-- to liberate others, let's not forget that our light is merely a reflection of a higher light--not of our making and that we should celebrate the light of others--knowing its true source.

Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all. ~William Temple In releasing ourselves from that self thinking, we are able to give the one thing we can truely give. With humility comes the secret of all successful leaders: meekness. Consulting Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, 2nd College Edition, we find that the word "meek" can be defined as being pliant or gentle. It can also be defined as: being too submissive; easily imposed upon; spineless; spiritless. spinelessness - the quality of lacking a strong character; an irresolute disposition. Obviously not qualities of good leaders. A more exacting definition of meekness is provided by Harold B. Lee, business and religious leader:

A meek man is defined as one who is not easily provoked or irritated and forbearing under injury or annoyance. Meekness is not synonymous with weakness. The meek man is the strong, the mighty, the man of complete self-mastery. He is the one who has the courage of his moral convictions, despite pressure. In controversy his judgment is the court of last resort, and his sobered counsel quells the rashness of the mob. He is humble minded; he does not bluster. He is a natural leader and is the chosen of army and navy, business and church to lead where other men follow. He is the ‘salt’ of the earth and shall inherit it.

All the leadership virtues trumpeted in the many books, courses, websites, and presentations depend on meekness for their accomplishment. Meekness is often the initiator, facilitator, and consolidator of what makes leaders great.

That is how to let our leadership light shine, show greatness by being humble and teachable.