Leaders Are Meaning Makers

I have been doing a lot of thinking about leadership lately.

I have never been a manager in a classic sense. Especially when it comes to project lists or processes. I like outcomes, finish lines, and launching off points for new ideas, strategies & plans.

There is a certain amount of day-to-day management that comes with any leadership position. If you can’t help people set goals, determine priorities, deal with complexities, and help them develop over time, you will not be an effective leader.??

I embrace this aspect of “management” because it has a coaching element to it.?Setting yourself and your team up for success means being focused and clear about what winning looks like, the outcomes you expect, and how you will measure success.

But what I just described above is not the real job of being a leader. The real job is to help your team imagine possibilities which are endless and to have hope with renewed focus, even in the toughest of times.

Leadership is helping people understand and create meaning in their working lives.

Leaders are meaning makers.?

So, let’s break this down.?How do you become a meaning maker?

Declare Your Intention

The search for meaning in your career is not only about being driven; it also requires taking responsibility for your career and, by extension, your life. There are generally 3 sources of meaning across the human experience:?

1. In Work - doing something significant
2. In Love - caring for another
3. In Courage - doing something in difficult times

It is a mistake to think these are discrete and never touch or collide across work and life. Integrating all three into your work as a leader, helps you become a more powerful meaning maker.

When you declare your intention to make work significant, caring, and courageous, it opens up a view of what is possible that changes the game for people and extends the limits of what they think is possible. I really appreciate it when people stop me at a conference or event from Publicis Groupe and tell me they valued their time working for me and the teams I led at SMG, Providence Equity, or Double Verify. Most everyone combines it with the message that it wasn’t easy (and I know that!), but they appreciated having had the chance to be part of something special, and they realize that meaning doesn’t come along that often as the years go by.

Declaring intention is the first step to becoming a meaning maker. Why? Because it begins the journey towards meaning. Leaders often fail here. They simply do not declare intention for greatness or meaning enough. The temptation is to play it safe.

I’ve found Job 1 is to bring focus to what people & the team are here to do and whether they want to do something meaningful. If you and your team are willing to lean into declaring intention, you have a great start to eventually do meaningful work.

Communicate Like a Warrior

This is without a doubt a big difference from my earlier days as a CEO at Publicis Groupe to my days of being CEO at Smartly today. To be a meaning maker, you have to be a communication warrior across your teams, the company, your clients, partners, and to everyone in between.??

I spend twice as much time on this today as I did before (and I spent a lot of time then). It’s the right investment in the company, in our teams, and on Smartly’s mission of transforming advertising experience for brands and their consumers. The #1 priority is to share your mission & your value proposition to your clients, partners, and colleagues with passion x purpose x frequency. Great company missions can stand the test of time. They can maintain their meaning after countless repetition, whether it be with a frequency of 5x, 50x or 500x.

That’s because great missions should actually mean something—to change the company, the industry you are in, or sometimes, even the world with your vision, ideas and inventions.

Communicating the reason people should care about meaning is Job 2. To communicate and inspire effectively is such a large part of being a meaning maker today.?

The Courage to Care

A meaning maker shows they care: at all times, through good and bad times.?

How many times have you had an experience where your biggest takeaway was not the data or the outcome, but that your leader cares about you and the team? Or, when you have a tough meeting with an industry partner, they signal they will take the short-term bump in the road to value the long journey ahead, no matter if the times are good or bad right now?

Partnership and teamwork at any level means you have to have the Courage to Care:?There is no meaning without genuine and authentic care.?

It doesn’t always have to be rainbows, rose-colored glasses, or unicorns. But it must be real concern and real talk so everyone can see the same truths, challenges, and opportunities together. Meaning and seeing a unified view of the business builds teams and knits them together. It creates trust.?

It’s one thing to know your meaning and purpose. It’s way more powerful to have others share meaning and purpose with you. That’s community. Job 3 of a leader is to build a community of people who care together.?When you care enough to get everyone on the bus, in the right seat, focused on the right outcomes, meaning grows exponentially across the team and with each person. That’s when a community that cares can move mountains and make real change.

You can’t have meaning or greatness without declaring that’s what you are here for, communicating why it matters, and caring that your team and community of warriors have what they need to make it happen.

If you can combine progress & achievement with meaning, you will really have something as a leader. ?And while outcomes, finish lines, and winning are satisfying, I have found that over time, the journey that focuses on meaning is far more powerful.