Imagine your company without employees. What would happen? Unless you work in a completely automated business nothing would start, and certainly nothing would begin. Even in the dystopian world of complete automation adaptability to changing circumstances is highly unlikely.

So why is it that too many managers create a work environment that treats employees as a nuisance or distraction? Aren’t they themselves employees? Aren’t they themselves reliant on employees to show up and plug in? If employees didn’t show up, managers would have no purpose.

If managers have no purpose and employees didn’t show up, then there is no business.

But employees do show up. And managers orchestrate, effectively and dysfunctionally, employees and the work to be done. 

This happens day in and day out. You can set your clock to it.

What we need, though, are managers who understand that the heartbeat of their team are the employees, including themselves.

What we need are managers willing to step aside from the droning sound of busy work and see the humanity in which business is done. And treat the humanity as precious oxygen to the healthy heart. 

Employees are the heartbeat of your team. They are the heartbeat to your company. To conclude anything else is delusional.

Leadership is an honor we all have the opportunity to show. My good friend Susan Mazza says leadership is a verb. It’s when we are in action that we show the guts, sweat, and smiles in our leadership. 

Rarely do we take the time to reflect on what story our leadership tells

Rarely do we stop and look at the influences our leadership leaves on others. 

Rarely do we think what themes make up our leadership story.

Rarely do we purposely formulate who we are in our leadership story.

Rarely do we think through the outcomes we want our leadership to create.

As you prepare for this week, think about the story you want to craft through your leadership-in-action. Make it memorable. Leave people touched, moved, and inspired.

My serious nature has always pushed me to understand what I’m here to do. It’s not until this year that my Why became clear to me.

Having such clarity puts into focus what’s important and what’s a distraction. Why’s powerful pull shows us that a different world is possible. And when we look up long enough we realize the path suited to answer “why am I here” is one that serves others.

Knowing your Why is critical to every role you play in life: manager, leader, husband, partner, daughter.To answer Why is daunting. It’s one best explored with a series of successes and failures. It’s a humbling inquiry that can’t be answered by someone else.

Why do you lead? I assure you that leading cannot be sustained when it’s self-serving. It will breakdown. For most of us, myself included, that insight is one of the most humbling. It’s fraught with struggle. But the other side of the struggle brings you closer to answer what your leadership Why is.

In these dynamic times, I’m asking you to inquire into your leadership Why. We need you to be clear on your Why to better respond to the dynamic challenges your company faces. Your people need you to know this so you can help them discover meaning, purpose and passion in their work.

You leadership Why is an anchor that guides, inspires, awakens the mind and heart, and creates connectedness. I hope you start or continue to define and know your Why.

You cannot, however, let the dominating news stories mar your contributions as a leader. It’s easy to be seduced to believe unleashing the passions of others to do great work is a waste of time. It’s easy to be persuaded that the world and the hand basket found their way to hell.

You have an important role as a manager to lead your people to contribute their best work. You have an important role to create an environment of optimism so that employees believe or continue to believe that what they do has value.

I’m not saying create false realities. You may, however, need to act contrary to a reality that sucks joy out of the work environment.  What I’m advocating is that you lead your team so that they can pull meaning from their work and rediscover joy while doing so. To do anything else is to game your role as a leader. 

Is this hard? Hell yes it is!

The good news is you have a team of employees who are quietly waiting for things to improve. You can tap into that quiet hope. Imagine what will happen if you unleash it? Imagine what will happen if you don’t?

Begins with the bold belief that work can be a source of joy and created by an environment that enables employees to contribute their talents while satisfying personal and professional goals.

It may seem dreamlike to think work can be a source of joy. It may not be possible today where you work, but it is possible. Think of the possibility like Jim Collins’ BHAG (big, hairy audacious goal).

Workplace optimism is an important factor to achieving organizational and team goals. It’s important to engagement and satisfaction metrics, customer satisfaction metrics, attrition rates, for starters.

To be emboldened by such a possibility, or BHAG, requires a few shifts in your managerial worldview.  In a special series, I’ll share seven management beliefs important to creating workplace optimism.  This is the first belief.

Define/redefine Your Personal Leadership Brand

Your leadership development is not only something put on a shelf, or certificate placed on a wall, or letters placed after your name. It’s an intentional and unintentional, evolving, non-linear exploration of who you are and how you inspire people to be great in their work.

This belief isn’t new. It’s been thrust forward in importance given what we’re learning leading knowledge workers, changes in what employees want from their manager and employers, even organizational responses to dynamic market conditions to remain competitive.

The complexity of how work gets done and why people do it are best addressed by

• A leader who knows her personal values,
• A leader who can articulate the “selfless why” driving her work,
• A leader’s willingness to adapt her style but never compromise her values and ethics, and
• A leader who is willing to invest the time to develop her own craft, evolving her worldview.

These are elements essential to defining/redefining your personal leadership brand. At the core is the belief that to help others be great, you have to commit to continuously develop your leadership capacity. And when you can help others be great, workplace optimism begins to emerge. It takes more than defining your leadership brand. We’ll explore the “more”  throughout this week and next.

Final Note: The challenges businesses face today are best met by leaders who commit to knowing themselves better in order to help each employee be great. It’s a game changing move. It’s a selfless leadership move. It’s one that helps create workplace optimism.

What mark does your leadership leave?

Simon Sinek translates this question into this: The things you do or say are symbols of who we are.

In your actions are you helping your employees to pull meaning from their work?
In your actions do you show how you care about their success?
Do your words reflect what you do?
Do your actions and words create an environment of optimism?
How are you showing your employees what they do ties into your team’s bigger purpose? To the company’s?

What does your leadership symbolize?

Is it what your employees, business need from you right now?

But what about you? Ultimately it’s the employees choice to derive meaning in their work. There needs to be, however, an environment that enables this to occur. You hold much of the responsibility to foster an environment that lets employees apply their strengths to challenging work, act autonomously, and view their effort and the reward favorably.

The following three items are major inputs to creating an environment that helps employees pull meaning from their work.

Purpose Driven
Why are you a manager? What fuels you to lead your team to achieve results? Why do you want to help the company and your team succeed? These are big questions with an answer that typically changes overtime and with experience.

Invest the time and diligence to identify your personal values. Identify what meaningful work means to you. Write it down. I have a single sheet of paper that lists 2-5 work projects that are meaningful to me. They support my purpose. It’s on my desk reminding me everyday to take action on them.

There is no short cut with this one. You must be willing to know and tap into your passions, strengths, and experiences. Mine them and direct them into your role as manager and leader.

This clarity will help you be clear on priorities. It will help you know when your purpose is at odds with the company’s and manage through it.

All this to say when you’re clear on your purpose, it comes through in you actions. You’re intentional. You’re clear. You’re consistent, more often. This influences the work environment. People will pick-up on it.

Political Navigation
Not everyone in your company will agree that work needs to be meaningful. In fact your boss may be one of them. As such, you may need to maneuver through some office politics.

Navigating politics is a separate post for another day. I encourage you to read Gwyn Teatro’s recent post on this topic.

In the meantime, you may need to prove the value of your leadership approach to help employees pull meaning from their work. I learned somewhere along the way this tip: keep an unpublished spreadsheet that tracks the projects your employees work on, the time they spent, and the project’s measurable outcomes. You’re looking to support your leadership approach if ever questioned.

Creating Vision
This is another big topic. Simply stated, what is the vision for your team? Do they know it? How often is it reviewed? Did they help create it? Do your newer employees know the vision?

If you don’t have one, spend time with your team creating one. Plan with the team how you will revisit it and track progress towards achieving it.

A team’s vision can change over time. A few basics about vision statements:

• They don’t include “how” the vision will be achieved
• The statement reflects “what” is possible
• Some statements are time sensitive
• Plan for team’s wordsmithing to-death the vision statement
• Navigate the trap of spending too much time crafting a vision statement thereby reducing the time spent executing to achieve it.
• Let it simmer in people’s minds for a short period