Management involves handling complexity and rationality. Leadership, on the other hand, demands the ability to move people by speaking to their hearts and encouraging them to leap from the present into a greater future. The inspirational leader has a clear vision of the future and can tell a story about this vision in which everyone can see themselves. This is what Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream Speech is all about. Studies show that companies at the top of their game are driven by a true sense of mission and purpose, one that permeates their corporate culture and motivates employees at the ground level because their leadership has made disseminating and enhancing the vision a core priority.
Thirty years of Gallup surveys show that the most successful companies are ones whose employees feel they get to do what they do best every day. Team Concepts uses Appreciative Inquiry as a powerful tool for helping companies create and advance meaningful visions for the future at all levels. Developed by David Cooperrider –head of the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management – Appreciative Inquiry asks participants to reflect on, write about, and share aloud why their job and company matter. "There's a huge fusion of strengths, and every voice
becomes part of designing the future of the company's business," says Cooperrider.
The visioning process helped garage workers at Roadway Express find more than $1 million in cost savings. Research by Amy Wrzesniewski found that hospital janitors who were encouraged to reframe their menial jobs as possessing a higher calling—"helping patients heal"—put in more time and were more conscientious.
A 2009 Business Week article cited Adam Grant, associate professor of management at Wharton Business School, as noting that a culture of purpose doesn't just improve employee morale, but also has a significant effect on the bottom line. Grant’s research focuses on employees understanding the ultimate good their work does (at Team Concepts, we call this ennobling the effort). He found that when people meet face-to-face with a person who benefits from their work, their performance levels soar. In a recent study, Grant discovered that university fundraisers who spoke with a scholarship recipient about how the assistance had benefited him increased their number of weekly calls to potential donors by 200%, while the average amount of funds they brought in jumped 500%.
