Employing Differences, Episode 181: Do we have a shared purpose?

[00:00:00] Karen: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:13] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:15] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:17] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, 'Do we have a shared purpose?' 

[00:00:26] Karen: So this is one of those questions that we think it's really important to be asking.

[00:00:31] Karen: And one of the things that we see a lot in our work and in the organizations that we're part of in our lives, Paul and I have been talking about. Is that there is an assumption of shared purpose, but not necessarily the work or the curiosity or the engagement to know that it's there. 

[00:00:49] Karen: And we want to draw attention to this because we think that the shared purpose is the absolute core of any kind of team or partnership.

[00:00:56] Karen: That in the absence of a shared purpose, you're likely to just have an awful lot of conflict and disconnect and not a very satisfying experience. And so we want to explore today about what does it mean to have a shared purpose? How do we know if we have it? What do we do about it, if we don't? That kind of thing.

[00:01:14] Paul: And I will caveat this slightly by saying 'purpose' might not be the word that you would use in this context. It might be 'mission'. It might be 'vision'. It might be a shared sense of what we're working on together. But the idea is that there is something that in a pair and a small group or in a larger group, there's something that we're striving towards.

[00:01:33] Paul: There's a direction we're going. There's a thing that we want to do. And that it's shared in the sense that that is meaningful to each of us in some way. And we have some degree of commitment towards that. So for example, one of the places that shared purpose shows up for me a lot.

[00:01:51] Paul: And this is relevant because I'm thinking about it because it's a class I'm teaching later this week. Is actually in the arena of feedback. So if I'm looking to give somebody feedback on something that they've done, I need to align the purpose for which I am giving the feedback to them.

[00:02:08] Paul: Like, are they looking for the same kind of thing for me that I'm looking to give them? So for example, if I'm someone, supervisor, in a work situation, I probably want to give them feedback because I want to help them do their job better in the future. 

[00:02:23] Paul: So that might be feedback about, 'Hey, this thing that you're doing, that's exactly what we need. Let's keep it up, do more of that.' Or it may be 'This thing that you did. This is a little off from where it is, right? So, let's figure out how to correct that.' 

[00:02:36] Paul: But if the other person isn't really interested in getting better at, or improving the way that they're working, that feedback isn't going to land. Because there isn't a shared purpose.

[00:02:46] Paul: So recognizing that the interactions we have around something are very much shaped by why each of us is sort of there. What we're looking to get out of it, what we're hoping will happen. And oftentimes those things can get misaligned without us even realizing it. 

[00:03:05] Karen: Yeah, and I love the feedback example because it's a small scale thing.

[00:03:09] Karen: It's a momentary. Like that might just be 'We need to align for the next 5 minutes.' As compared to 'We're all joining our organization and we need to align for the next 5 years or 5 months' or something like that. 

[00:03:21] Karen: But it's the same concept across all of those, which is 'Is there a shared concept that we both want to work for?' 'Are we on the same page in enough of a way that we can do something useful?' 

[00:03:35] Karen: And I think very often feedback goes astray when we're not in the same place. Where, if the person giving the feedback is wanting to change the performance. But the person receiving the feedback is really just looking for accolades because their self esteem needs a boost. Which is, by the way, completely legit. Nothing wrong with that. 

[00:03:55] Karen: But if the 'improvement focused feedback' is not going to land well, it's not going to have a good effect. So I think in feedback, likely, if the goals aren't aligned. Most of the time, the 'feedback giver' is the one who might need to shift. And I think this is really useful because if I'm in the role of giving feedback, I probably want to start by being curious and you know, what is it that you're looking for?

[00:04:20] Karen: If we go a little more macro, and we're now in the land of an organization, in the experience at the moment of joining a board. So that means you've got new members coming into an organization. It happens in churches. It happens in businesses. It happens all over the place that you bring in some new folks.

[00:04:38] Karen: Or you wish to bring in new folks. In the nonprofit world, there's a lot of 'We need more members.' 'We need more participation.' 'We want more people to join us.' What we often make the mistake of is to say, 'We want more people to join us exactly the way we are.' 

[00:04:55] Karen: And we don't always take into account that when you get new people in, that when you get a new team, even if only some of them are new, if anybody joins, you've got a new team, a new group, a new dynamic.

[00:05:08] Karen: And if we don't check for that alignment piece, we can really work at cross purposes and get very frustrated very quickly. And if you're in the nonprofit world, very likely what happens is that your potential volunteers that you were so excited about having, get frustrated and go away. 

[00:05:26] Paul: And I think that the cross purposes piece is a good clue that we actually probably don't have a shared purpose. That we don't have enough alignment around that. Because honestly, if the two of us are trying to do something together and you're doing something- or let's put it the other way, I'm doing something that seems to you like it is ineffective, that that doesn't make any sense.

[00:05:50] Paul: There's two things that are possibly going wrong. That we're not actually aiming towards the same thing. Or that, I'm just really bad at whatever it is that I'm trying to do. And more often than not, I actually find that the first explanation is the most likely one. 

[00:06:08] Paul: That actually, if it seems like I'm doing something that is not at all going to fulfill what you think our purpose is, it's probably because I'm not trying to do that! I'm trying to do something that's actually trying to fulfill what I think the purpose is. And that we have a misalignment around that. 

[00:06:27] Paul: So one of the things that I often try to do when I notice that in an organization, or in a group, or in a whatever, is when it seems like somebody is doing something super unskillfully, I actually step back and go 'What is it that they might be trying to accomplish that they would actually be doing a good job of doing, as opposed to what I think they should be trying to accomplish that they appear to be doing a bad job of doing.' 

[00:06:52] Karen: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think it's one of those cases where, even if we're aligned on big purpose for the group, our overall mission, the long term thing, you know, we want our organization to be successful and get houses built or something.

[00:07:09] Karen: That the path to get there, the shorter term goals, that kind of thing, can be misaligned. So this alignment of purpose is both big picture and small. Like, what's the next thing we're trying to get done? What's the next priority, even? Even a prioritization of purposes can be different and create challenges.

[00:07:28] Karen: So I think often when we get the sense of misalignment, we do the thing we do in our relationships all the time. We go to judgment, we go to blame, we go to frustration, we 'Ah, it's just never going to work.' And if instead we can do that curiosity thing, we might discover that we don't have as much alignment as we thought.

[00:07:45] Karen: And that's sad. And maybe that means we're going to invest differently and not be committed in the same way. 

[00:07:51] Karen: We might discover that we had two different ideas. And that actually either of them could work, there's nothing wrong with either one, it's just trying to do both at once isn't working. 

[00:08:02] Karen: Or it might even be that, 'You know, I think the next thing is x and you think the next thing is y. I'm going to work on x and you're going to work on y, and that will get us in parallel.'

[00:08:12] Karen: So there's a lot of ways that can play out, but if we want to keep people committed and invested in whatever we're doing, we need to be on the lookout for signs that alignment is not there. And conflict, dissatisfaction, frustration are all signs that we're in some way lacking alignment. 

[00:08:31] Paul: Yeah, it's often my go to of the first thing that I want to ask about. I once, and this was not, again, not necessarily my most skillful moment. But I had someone who was trying to give me some feedback. It was kind of a, like they were leading the witness is really what was going on here. And kind of, through questions, suggesting that I might do a few different things. And I just kind of stopped at one point and I said, 'What problem do you think I have?' 

[00:08:56] Paul: And what was useful, you know, helped that I had a very good working relationship with this person. Where they were able to say, 'Oh, I see this as being, 'you know, you're not handling this thing well.' And I said 'Oh, interesting!' 

[00:09:08] Paul: What it allowed us to do is to sort of step back and go, 'You're right. I haven't been trying to do that at all! Like, ' That's not what I'm trying to do. Maybe I should be open to influence in that moment of being able to say 'That might be something that I'm overlooking.' Like, 'You're right. I wasn't thinking about it. Do I need to be thinking about it? We could have that conversation.' 

[00:09:27] Paul: And then we could align on whether or not we wanted to address that. It's like, 'Oh, actually, you think that's a big deal. I don't think it's a big deal. Let's figure that out.' 

[00:09:35] Paul: But took us out of the realm of 'This person giving me feedback about things I needed to do differently, where we clearly didn't have an alignment on that sort of medium level purpose.' It got us into the space of having the conversation about like, 'Is that a thing I even need to be worrying about it at all?'

[00:09:51] Paul: Because then once we agreed on yes or no, we could align on tactics to move towards that. 

[00:09:58] Karen: So, I think what we're saying here is, is that paying attention to whether there is a shared purpose, whether there is alignment of mission, whatever words you want to use for that, turns out to be really essential to maintaining commitment and making progress.

[00:10:13] Karen: And that's true on a very small level of, you know, 5 minutes of feedback or possibly 5 minutes of another kind of conversation. That in that sort of momentary, 'What's going on in this moment? Are we aligned?' 'Are we both trying to get to the same place?' All the way to the biggest things of, you know, the overall group mission and prioritization of different goals and all that kind of thing. That if we don't have enough alignment, we won't get the commitment that we want.

[00:10:40] Karen: And so when we find ourselves in conflict, when we find ourselves frustrated with each other, those are indications that we should be asking, 'Are we trying to do the same thing?' 

[00:10:51] Karen: Because sometimes we're trying to do different things and we don't know it. And it feels like somebody is not being skillful. Or somebody, you know, doesn't care about me and is headed off in the wrong direction. 

[00:11:02] Karen: When really they just don't realize, as I don't realize, nobody realizes, that we are trying to do different things.

[00:11:09] Karen: And if we can talk about it, we can then correct it. Either by saying, 'Okay, we're not trying to do the same thing. We are not going to expect each other to be good partners in this because we know we're not doing the same thing.' 

[00:11:19] Karen: Or to say, 'We're doing different things. Let's pick one of them.' and go ahead. Or to say, 'Yep, different priorities, but they both serve the same purpose. We can do this in our two different ways and still be fine.' 

[00:11:32] Karen: Lots of different ways it can come out, but so important to have the joint awareness of, 'Are we aligned? How much are we aligned?' And 'Where are we not aligned?' 

[00:11:43] Paul: Well, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:11:47] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. And this has been Employing Differences.