The desire to find and obtain meaning in one’s life is a primary human driver. This premise, famously discussed in Viktor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning, has also been borne out in numerous employee engagement studies. “Meaningful work” or “Understanding how work contributes to the organization” is often among the key drivers of employee engagement. Despite our innate understanding of this and its subsequent validation through research, many leaders struggle to provide meaning.

Creating meaning isn’t just a great motivator for employees. Meaning is also the basis for decision making and action. Without meaning or purpose, data has little value.

It is for both of those reasons that I believe that creating meaning is one of the most important roles of a leader. In fact, I would argue that leaders who do not create meaning for those around them (whether higher or lower in the organization) are not adding unique value to the organization. In other words, if you are just a conduit through which information flows, then you are probably not needed.

What is meaning?

While Frankel never formally defines the word meaning, his intent comes out through the context and examples he provides. His definition of meaning is the purpose or reason for someone’s existence. I’d like to extend that definition slightly to move beyond people. Meaning is the purpose, implication, or conclusion of a set of past or future experiences, facts, or actions.

Meaning isn’t the experiences, facts, or actions. It is the synthesis of these things. This is where many leaders struggle. Many don’t rise above the experience, facts, or actions in their dialog and thought. Because of that, they do not find, nor can they communicate meaning. I see this most often when watching business leaders make presentations. Their slides are full of tables, graphs, and lists. A lot of time is spent on what those tables, graphs, and lists say. Little time is spent on what they mean.

I recently saw a slide that had a map of the US with six states shaded. The title of the slide was “Our competitor’s main growth is in six states”. That is a fact. It does not drive action or decisions. It just sits there. A better alternative would be a slide that talked about the implication of the competitor’s growth in those states. Are they states that the business cares about? Are they states where the business has traditionally been strong? Are they states where the business has had some organizational or operational issues? Any of those questions would have taken that simple fact and added meaning.

This was not an isolated example. I would estimate that 70% of the slides I see or of the content I hear in discussions are simply the exchanging of facts.

What gets in the way?

In talking with and observing leaders, I’ve found four obstacles to creating a culture that strives to achieve meaning: time, risk, understanding, and trust.

Time
Many leaders don’t believe that they have the time to think anymore. Many operate in what Stephen Covey called “Quadrant one” – those things that are urgent and important. I would argue that often the two get confused. Urgent becomes important whether it really is or not. In addition to a perceived lack of time to think, leaders are bombarded with information. There is just too much through which to sift. As a result, leaders’ time is spent grasping the next set of facts rather than thinking about them.

I believe that lack of time to think is a fallacy. Issues ultimately have to get thought through. The real challenge is deciding on whether to make time to think through them proactively or lose time thinking through them reactively once something has gone wrong (and they move into quadrant one). The best leaders that I’ve seen have learned to balance thinking and acting. They set aside time to reflect and ensure that they are doing the right things. Once they do so, they aggressively execute to get them done.

Risk and Understanding
Creating meaning involves taking a risk. It involves using your knowledge and experience. Therefore, it could be wrong. Many leaders don’t want to take the chance of being wrong, especially in front of others. Anyone can report facts or recall actions. Facts are safe. There is little risk in reporting a fact (other than the risk that others might not want to hear it). In organizations whose culture punishes those who have the wrong answer, facts become a safety net and asserting one’s understanding becomes a risk.

Understanding becomes an even bigger risk when leaders are uncertain of how well they “now their stuff”.

I’ve worked with many executives who admittedly don’t have the understanding of their business, their function, or their industry that they’d like. Often these individuals were promoted into their positions because of their ability to execute or to perform a role. Once they get to higher level positions, they realize that their old knowledge and skills are no longer sufficient.

As a result, they don’t always have the context or perspective to add insight to the facts and data that they are seeing. Worse yet, they have it but don’t know it.

When this occurs, two things happen that diminish an organizational culture of creating meaning. First, the leader regresses to communicating and focusing on facts and data. This sets the model and expectation for others in the organization. Second, when someone does attempt to focus more at a level of meaning and insight, the leader will often drag the dialog back to his or her comfort level with a discussion of facts.

Noel Tichy talks about leaders having a “teachable point of view”. A teachable point of view essentially is the unique meaning that you create from the same facts and data that everyone sees. In other words, taking the time to learn the business and being willing to take the risk of adding one’s own perspective is what differentiates a leader.

Trust
Trust, or more specifically lack of trust, is the final factor that erodes a culture of meaning. Leaders who require their people to walk them through all of the individual facts simply do not trust them. That’s a strong statement. But, why else would a leader need to see the discrete facts? Do they not think that their people came to the right conclusions? Do they think that their people would have missed something? Do they know that they have been withholding important information that would have helped put some perspective on those facts? Whatever the reason, it comes down to trust.

I’m not suggesting that leaders ignore due diligence and not challenge their people. In fact, that is the leader’s role. That is not the trust issue. The trust issue occurs when the leader makes an individual walk through each step of his or her process so that the leader can see if he or she comes to the same conclusion.

I’ve seen situations where four different people go through the same information four different times as the presentation works its way up the hierarchy. It’s like running a relay race where the first person runs a ¼ mile and then he backtracks 1/8 of a mile to hand-off to the next person.

Instead leaders should have their people start with the conclusion and work backward (as needed). This puts the leader in the role of challenging and extending rather than auditing. At each successive review, the presentation and conclusions will further advanced rather than reviewed.

How to create a culture of meaning

1. Leave the facts behind. Ask yourself “What is the implication of this fact” or “Why do we care about this” and drive your presentation or dialog from that point. This doesn’t mean to ignore the facts. They still need to be the basis of your conclusions. Move them to the appendix or pre-reads and spend your time on discussions of meaning.
2. Encourage your people to move beyond facts. Don’t accept slides or reports that are only full of charts, tables, and data. Have your people provide executive summaries. Encourage them to synthesize all of the facts into a few key headlines.
3. Push information down into your organization. To create meaning individuals need context and perspective. Make sure that you are passing information about company strategy, organizational and departmental goals, competitors, the market, business performance, etc. to your people. The more they understand about the business, the better positioned they are to create meaning. Another benefit is that the more meaning that your people can create, the more meaning (and thus engagement) they will find in their work.
4. Read Viktor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
5. Try these exercises to practice boiling facts down to their essence:

• Create a five line drawing of yourself. You can’t capture every detail. You’ll need to figure out your “essence”*
• Write a 50 word story. It must have 50 words exactly and must have a beginning, middle, and end.*
• Write a six word memoir** of your life. You only get six words to sum up your essence to date.

*From Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind

**From Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser’s Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure