Does this work even matter? Why am I doing this job?
If thoughts like these ever cross your mind, it may be because your organization hasn’t identified its invisible leader, according to Zach Mercurio, researcher and author of The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose. The term “invisible leader” was coined by Mary Parker Follett, the “mother of management,” and describes a shared organizational vision or purpose.
Mercurio shared with HR Brew how the findings discussed in his 2017 book can help companies identify their invisible leader and teach managers to lead with purpose.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the main takeaways from your book?
Motivation, both on the individual level and the organizational level, is the animating force of human behavior. So, it’s almost impossible for anything to matter to someone who doesn’t first believe that they and what they’re doing matters…[Make] sure that leaders have the skills to let the bigger purpose take over…to make sure that you are connecting people’s uniqueness to their unique impact…Ensure the environment makes it possible for people to live and act purposefully. Our environment and our systems in our organizations, they either make behavior possible or they make behavior impossible.
How can employees see the common purpose within a company?
One of the things that purposeful leaders tend to do is…illuminate potential. And potential is defined as latent qualities that, if nurtured, can produce future results. The word latent means hidden. So, one of [a] leader’s roles is to unearth these hidden gifts…Where it becomes purpose[ful] is where someone’s unique gifts makes a unique difference. So, being able to not only unearth and illuminate those gifts, but then show them how they make a unique difference to something bigger.
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There are four major gifts that people bring. People bring their strengths, what they love to do and what they’re good at. People bring their own purpose, the impact that they want to make on the people around them. People bring their perspective, and people bring their wisdom. So, leaders knowing, naming, and nurturing those things, and then connecting it to a bigger purpose is how you make this invisible leader, which is the common contribution, really come to life in an organization.
What are skills and examples of a purpose-driven leader?
One skill is connecting people to the downstream impact of their work…We tend to focus just on the task…Leaders, who connect people to purpose, tend to connect the downstream impact of the work back to the work. One example of that is through collecting and telling stories of significance.
I worked with a leader at the National Park Service, and he was responsible for a park and all its facilities and maintenance crews…There are tons of facilities in remote places that are really hard to clean and maintain, and this group had higher turnover, and they had lower morale…But one practice that he had [was] he would walk the park, and he would take pictures of projects that the facilities team worked on…Every Friday, he would send the facilities team a photo of…a bridge that was just repaired, and visitors walking over that bridge, and he would say, “Hey, look at what I saw. You made this possible”...He had a practice of collecting and documenting, and then telling back those stories of significance.