Last weekend, I gathered with classmates and cherished friends for our 50th college reunion. After revisiting time-worn stories and tired jokes, we began to reflect on our shared experience all those years ago.
At that time, we had arrived at our esteemed university with just our dreams, and a common goal of learning and growing to build our future. Our hard work, the dedication of our teachers, and the values
instilled by our families had produced the opportunity, but it was the commitment and values of the university that enabled us to make the most of it.
The alignment between our personal values and those of our alma mater nurtured a yearning to be part of something bigger than ourselves, motivating us to work hard and collaborate with our peers in hopes of making our future lives meaningful and fulfilling. Guided by those aligned values, the experience we shared shaped and bonded us; we supported and challenged one another, through times of joy, trial, and pain. We had each other’s backs.
These reflections helped us realize how the school’s culture had reinforced our personal values and strengthened our resolve to make a difference in our subsequent personal and professional lives. Having served as leaders, we asked ourselves if our work cultures had built on this foundation or diminished it. Our answers revealed these conclusions:
- Businesses are living organisms, communities of people, connected by their company’s culture; many of these people share this quest for purpose. In our experience, the most enduring ventures appreciate this basic human need, and seek to bond their people around the company’s purpose and core values that personify it. The satisfaction that arises from being appreciated, and making a difference for each other, customers, and the business improves results, validates the company’s culture, and boosts its sustainability.
- All of us together know more than any one of us. Leadership and culture that encourage curiosity, initiative, dialogue, collaboration, and shared accountability, create an effective and resilient response to the churn of change, thereby generating progress.
- And finally, it’s our emotions, paired with our experience and skills, that drive our actions. The bond of shared purpose provides the emotional trigger that sparks our curiosity, enables us to risk change in pursuit of improvement, and prompts us to explore new possibilities. Every successful endeavor can be traced back to someone who cared deeply.
Our college experience was satisfying and memorable because, in addition to gaining knowledge, the university’s culture enhanced our confidence, deepened our understanding of our values, and inspired us to pursue our old yearning. Reflecting on our early days together, and how we each leveraged what we learned, then and since, is what made our reunion meaningful.
How consistently does your leadership leverage your culture and purpose?
