Individual and organizational purpose go hand in hand. One needs the other to flourish. Most of today’s organizations are primarily concerned with self-preservation and the bottom line, hardly a good setting for people to explore their calling. In such a setting, employees also view work in terms of self-preservation – as a way to get a paycheck that pays the bills. In contrast, when colleagues are invited to listen in to their organization’s purpose, they are likely to wonder about their personal calling too: Does the organization’s purpose resonate with me? Is this a place I fell called to work? What do I really feel called to do at this moment in my life? Will this place allow me to express my selfhood? Will it help me grow and develop?
When the individual and organizational purpose enter into resonance and reinforce each other, extraordinary things can happen. When work meets vocation – an encounter that theologian Frederick Buechner described as “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger” – we often feel overcome with grace. It feels like we have grown wings. Working from our strenghts, evrything feels effortless and we feel productive like rarely before.
Recruitment, training, and appraisal discussion are times that lend themselves naturally to exploring the junction of individual and collective purpose. Take recruitmen. Here are some questions that can be weaved into the recruitment discussions:
- What is your sense of your life trajectory? How could working here fit with what you sense you are called to be and to do in the world?
- What aspect of the organizational purpose resonates with you?
- What unique talents and gifts could you contribute to organization’s journey?
Ultimately, both parties are trying to answer one simple, fundamental question: Do we sense we are meant to journey toghether?
The discussion triggered by these questions can reach substantial depth and help both the prospective candidate and the organization learn more about themselves; recruitment becomes a process of self-enquiry as much as a process of mutual assessment. Accept to grow more slowly, keeping a posting open until you find a person that fits not only the job opening but also the organization and its purpose.
Questions that came up in the recruitment process can be explored again during annual performance discussions.
Questions about our purpose and calling are simple to ask but can be difficult to answer. Organizations can support individuals in their self-reflection through individual coaching or workshops that can tap into techniques like storytelling or guided visualization to help them discern what their path in life may be.
Most organizations today feel that they are in business to get stuff done, not to help people figure out their calling (and in these soulless organizations, many people would be reluctant to explore subjects as intimate as one’s personal calling). Yet individual and organizational purpose go hand in hand. It’s at the juncture where organizational purpose and individual calling start to resonate with and reinforce each other that truly extraordinary things happen. The more clarity there is around what the organization is called to do, the more people can enter into resonance with it. And the more people know about their calling, the more they can contribute to the organization’s energy to do its work in the world.
Toni Andrei este Chief Operating Officer pentru THE TRAINERS
The Trainers – prima platformă ce conectează companiile cu experți în training
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