Your purpose is your reason for doing what you do and how you do it. It’s the ‘why’ you do what you say you will do, your ‘why’ for striving to achieve what you want to achieve.

In simple terms, it’s your reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

For a lot of people, the reason they get out of bed is to earn money so they can pay the bills and put food on the table. For others, it’s to go to school or university to get an education.

Some actually don’t know why they get out of bed and so spend the rest of the day in a state of despair and annoyance.

These people are unmotivated and disengaged with what they are doing, spending most of the day on autopilot and wishing they were somewhere else.

In fact, they are so unmotivated that getting out of bed is quite possibly the hardest thing they have to do during the day.

It’s safe to say that these people rank low on the scale of effectiveness. Unfortunately, they are not alone.

In fact, they have many friends. A Galllup Poll in 2017 in the USA suggested that at any one point up to 85% of employees are disengaged at work (The Engaged Institute, 2017).

This means that if you walk into any office at any time of the workday,

Five out of every six staff in the building are not engaged with the work they are doing.

They are procrastinating, doing something other than the task at hand, deliberately avoiding work, gossiping, or they are distracted with other things.

The cost of this loss of productivity to the US economy is estimated at US$550 billion per year.

Disengagement at work usually happens when an employee is not aligned with the company’s core values.

There is conflict between what the employee believes in and wants, and what the company believes in and wants.

It behooves the company, therefore, to get to know its employees and understand what they believe in or want during their employment, and vice versa.

It would also benefit each employee to know why they continue to get up and go to work, day in, day out, even for their own well-being and happiness.

Carrot & Stick

For centuries leaders and managers have devised ways to motivate their subordinates and get the most out of them. More often than not, they’ve used the carrot or the stick.

The carrots have usually been one or more of the seven factors we’ve just been discussing: money, training, promotional opportunities, leadership roles, project responsibilities, and so forth.

Lately, work-life balance, flexible hours, remote work, health insurance, and increased holidays have been used to entice staff to an organisation or retain their employment.

The sticks, on the other hand, have usually been some sort of punishment, or the threat of some kind of recrimination.

For instance, the Roman military used a disciplinary measure known as ‘decimation’, which is derived from the Latin term ‘decimatio’, and refers to the removal of a tenth.

This involved the execution of every tenth member within a given group.

Senior commanders resorted to this practice to address serious transgressions committed by their units, such as acts of cowardice, mutiny, desertion, and insubordination.

Additionally, it was used as a means of quelling unrest among rebellious legions.

Knowing Your Mission

This is an extreme example of how to manage large numbers of people and motivate them to perform as they’ve been asked.

Today, leaders are more likely to use threats of dismissal, financial penalties, demotion, reassignment, and even legal action as means of managing and controlling their team.

But bribery and coercion can only work so far. External inducements and threats of punishment have limitations and do not last.

Someone else or some other organisation can always offer a bigger carrot. People will always rise up and rebel against ongoing threats or perceived injustice.

A more long-term solution is to get to the hearts and minds of those you wish to motivate.

This requires inspiration. People must feel inspired to give their time and devotion to a cause. They must feel inspired to work for something greater than themselves.

Winston Churchill knew this. His grit and his determination to ‘never, never, never surrender’ galvanised the whole of the United Kingdom to withstand the Nazi invasion and eventually triumph over them.

John F. Kennedy inspired his country to become the first nation to reach the moon when he gave his famous ‘We Choose to Go to the Moon’ speech in 1962 and set the mission for the USA to send a man to the moon and return him home safely before the end of the decade.

Your Mission Statement

Today, businesses, institutions, organisations, and corporations are using similar mission-like statements to galvanise their staff and motivate them to work for a greater cause.

For instance, the United Nations charter states that its purpose is to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and serve as a centre for harmonising the actions of nations.

Even the TV and movie industry knows about the power of having a clear mission.

In the TV series and movies of Star Trek, the mission of Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise is:

To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilisations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Famous individuals too have made known and implemented their personal mission during their time here on Earth:

• • • Maya Angelou: “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style.”
    • Oprah Winfrey: “To be a teacher. And to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be.”
    • Mahatma Gandhi: “I shall not fear anyone on Earth. I shall fear only God. I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.”
    • Walt Disney: “To make people happy.”

Clarifying Your Mission

One of the most inspiring mission statements I’ve found is the mission statement of SpaceX: “To revolutionise space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”

In other words:

To help humanity become an interplanetary species.

I mean, wow! Sign me up!

Can you imagine going to work every day and your job is to help humanity become an interplanetary species?

How much motivation would you need to do your job?

I’d be jumping out of bed at the crack of dawn every morning and racing out the door to get to work.

Even if my job was to clean the toilets and mop the floors, I’d know that I was doing my bit to help humanity boldly go where it had never gone before. I couldn’t think of anything more inspiring or more fulfilling.

That’s the role of leadership, to inspire and motivate others with clear vision and purpose.

When a leader can give her people—staff, team, community, nation, family—a clear vision of what she wants to achieve and where she wants to go, then she will get buy-in from those people because they will know the ‘why’ of what they are being asked to do and they will be driven and motivated to help her achieve that vision.

That’s also your role, to inspire and motivate yourself with clear vision and purpose.

When you as a self-leader can give yourself a clear vision of who you want to be, what you want to achieve, and where you want to go, you will ‘buy in’ to your vision because you will know the ‘why’ of what you are here to do in this lifetime and you will be driven and motivated to achieve that vision.

That vision is also best kept as simplified as possible. The less complicated the better.

A precise, 1-sentence mission statement is far more effective and has far more impact than an overly complicated and vaguely written one.