Creating Meaningful Work - Strategies for Purpose-Driven Leadership with Mark Mears

What if you could lead with purpose and create a thriving community at your company?

Join us as we sit down with Mark Mears, founder and Chief Growth Officer of LEAF Growth Ventures. With 35+ years of experience, Mark shares his vision for transforming organizational culture into a true community.

Episode Highlights

1. Purpose-Driven Leadership
   • Leaders can align their purpose with the organization's mission to inspire and motivate employees
   • Purpose-driven leadership leads to higher levels of employee engagement and satisfaction.
2. Creating Meaningful Work Environments
   • Organizations can focus on creating environments where employees find meaning in their work
   • Meaningful work contributes to overall job satisfaction and higher productivity.
3. Aligning Personal and Organizational Purpose
   • Leaders must understand their own purpose and how it aligns with the organizational goals
   • This alignment helps in creating a cohesive and motivated team.
4. Strategies for Fostering a Culture of Purpose
   • Encourage open communication and transparency within the organization
   • Provide opportunities for employees to connect their work to the larger organizational mission
   • Recognize and celebrate achievements that align with the organizational purpose.
5. Impact on Performance
   • Historically - purpose-driven organizations tend to perform better financially and have lower employee turnover rates
   • Employees who feel connected to the organization's purpose go above and beyond in their assigned roles.
6. Leadership Development
   • Investing in leadership development programs that focus on purpose can yield significant benefits
   • Leaders who understand and embody the organization's purpose can effectively guide and inspire their teams.
7. Mark’s Experiences
   • Mark shares anecdotes from his career where purpose-driven leadership made a tangible difference in organizational outcomes.
   • He highlights the role of continuous learning and adaptation in maintaining a purpose-driven approach.

Tune in to learn how to create a nurturing environment and community of culture where every team member can flourish.

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Chapters

• 0:03 The Power of Purposeful Growth
• 12:21 Empowering Leadership Through Love
• 16:06 Leadership Mentorship and Encouragement

Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:03

Our guest today is Mark Mears, founder and chief growth officer of LEAF Growth Ventures. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Mark Mears : 0:13

My pleasure Will. It's great to be here.

William Gladhart: 0:15

Awesome. I thought we'd start off by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background and your organization your background and your organization.

Mark Mears : 0:27

Yeah, I've been blessed to have served in a variety of exciting roles over about 35 to six years in my career, literally from intern to CEO. 20 of those years were spent in the C-suite as either a CEO, chief Marketing Officer, chief Strategy Officer, chief Concept Officer and Chief growth officer. Now my goal is to pay it backward and I've put together a book called the Purposeful Growth Revolution Four Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder, and that helped me put together this consulting firm, which you so aptly titled Leaf Growth Ventures, which suggests there are four ways to grow with me. The book itself, which is now available on audiobook. I'm happy to report Keynote speaking, business consulting, and I'm working on a pretty cool e-learning platform to help people, through my self-assessment, meld their purpose in both life and work, and so that's pretty exciting and it helps me fill the goal of inspiring individuals, teams and organizations to find purpose in fulfilling their true growth potential. You might consider me a bit of a growth junkie.

William Gladhart: 1:35

Well, that's perfect. Well, we always love topics around growth, culture, performance, et cetera. So, just for our audience, we'll make sure that we include how to connect with Mark, but also the information about his book, as well as his purposeful self-assessment, as part of the podcast, so be looking for that. So we'll be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to start our conversation. Would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Mark Mears : 2:00

Well, it is critical, but, as you and I have discussed many times, I believe words matter.

Mark Mears : 2:06

And so I want to kind of flip the script a bit from culture to community. And a culture is great, but it may be a place someone feels merely a part of it's not bad, but a community is a place someone may feel they belong in, and that word belong and belonging is so powerful, specifically in today's new world of work. We talk a lot about DEI and it's great that diversity can get us in the door. Equity can give us an equal voice, inclusion can get us a seat at the table. All those things are great, but if we don't feel like we belong, we're likely not going to be vulnerable enough to give of our very best. And who really wins in that scenario?

Mark Mears : 2:48

To me, it is critical to form communities that are inclusive and equity building and certainly very diverse. And I look at diversity in two ways. That first is outward diversity, the way most of us probably grew up, defining diversity, where we come from and what we look like and sound like right. I feel equally, and if not more importantly, that inner diversity is how we think and what we contribute, based on where we come and our lived experiences, and that is what I call total diversity. And so, getting to total diversity, you have to create a safe space, a place where people feel like they belong to, where they'll feel comfortable sharing all that background information that is so important to really get to know someone on a human level than just a surface level of maybe the way they look, dress, talk, et cetera.

William Gladhart: 3:49

Absolutely. You know. What do you consider to be the biggest challenge leaders face when addressing cultural change within an organization, or was there a situation you specifically face in an organization you've worked for?

Mark Mears : 4:01

Well, a little of both, but they're both intertwined.

Mark Mears : 4:04

I'd say in general what we're faced with today is, as I mentioned before, a new world of work. Covid gave us all a bit of a time out to reflect deeply on not only what but who matters most in our lives. Covid gave us all that time out and it really also gave us a chance to take a look and really understand who am I and what's my purpose, and how do I maybe fulfill my purpose in both life and work. I mean think about 24-hour span of our given day as adults. We sleep about a third, we work about a third and we live about a third. Wouldn't it be great to at least two thirds of the time that we are awake, to feel like we're living and working on purpose?

Mark Mears : 4:51

That means so much for me and I think what's hard is there's this dynamic tension that leaders face who grew up in an old command and control style to now see the world of work changing as younger age, millennials and now Gen Z coming in behind them, have a very different expectation of what work means to them. It's kind of flipped the script from work-life balance, or a myth of whether that really ever can be attainable, to this of life, work purpose. They're much more interested on the life part than they are the work part, but they're not. They can work really hard. They've got tremendous skills, tremendous ideas, and so I think the idea of senior managers unlearning behaviors that no longer serve their younger team members takes humility, and not many are willing to do the work because they feel like I've reached a certain level, I've worked hard, I've played by the rules, I've climbed the ladder. Well, the rules have changed and if you don't change with them, you'll find you'll quickly become a dinosaur.

Mark Mears : 6:03

I think about younger team members today.

Mark Mears : 6:06

They don't want to be managed and required, they want to feel led, inspired, right, and so, if you think about this idea of management, many of us who went to business school went to a school of management. We learned how to manage, and when we get into the workforce, we start off as team members, right, and then we move because we're a good doer, maybe. And we move into the workforce. We start off as team members, right, and then we move because we're a good doer, maybe, and we move into management. Well, now, all of a sudden, in terms of what our role has changed into, we don't just manage projects and timelines and budgets and resources to get results.

Mark Mears : 6:41

We have to manage people, and that's not always trained and so, learning on the job, you find some of your leaders are indeed leaders, and some are bosses, and they really haven't figured out how to build relationships that make people want to follow them, and, kind of, what we're going to talk about next is what's next after leadership, but I think that's really the essence of what I'm finding out. There is, everybody wants this idea of purpose. At the end of the day, though, we've got to manage results, and, if we take our eye off the ball, to do some of the soft skill building that's necessary to build relationships that turn into cultures, that turn then into communities where people feel like they belong, is someone willing to put in the time, the effort necessary, while juggling the day-to-day swirl of the pursuit of business results.

William Gladhart: 7:34

Yeah, I appreciate that you touch on community because you know, I think those of us sometimes in the culture space don't always consider the business or the leader part of a true community. That is the subset of that business and you know, yes, we talk about purpose, we talk about values, and those may mean very different things for a multi-generational workforce, as you pointed out, where you have four generations now working together, communicating differently. There may be an amazing task manager that moves into a management leadership role, but they're phenomenal at tasks, they're not phenomenal at people and, as you said, you know, and you and I've had the discussion too of, we didn't come to the table as leaders or as mentors of others with those skill sets. They had to be learned and grown and developed upon to be able to help others see those pieces and that purpose. So what do you think that leaders can do to address the challenges they're facing, or what specifically have you done?

Mark Mears : 8:33

Yeah, I think sometimes people can be a bit bullheaded and they need to see facts, and so I've done a lot of research on this, which is all in my book, but I want to just give you a quick excerpt because I think it's really important to understand the power of purpose and why it is important, for not only individuals and teams but for the organizations themselves. This research came from a group called the Science of Purpose and they say that individuals with a connection to their purpose experience these things, these benefits 63% increase in wealth, leadership, effectiveness and fulfillment. They learn twice as much, they're four times more engaged and get this 175% more productive, and that's almost two people worth. Now flip the script and the companies with a connection to their purpose experience these benefits Higher margins, as purposeful firms are 30% more innovative. 73% of customers said they will switch to higher purpose brands and pay more. They derive higher levels of retention and tenure, which is so important today in this world of the great resignation or quiet quitting and 54% more fulfilling relationships at work, which Gatlinf told us for years is an important measure of engagement that leads to profitability as part of their Q12. There is a case for it on a human level, their Q12. There is a case for it on a human level. But then when you look at several brands that have embraced purpose across all of their stakeholders, their team members, their customers, their business partners and their communities are more profitable than those that are not. So it's not a question of purpose or profit I got to pick one or the other. No, it's indeed purpose and profit. So it's educating leaders that they don't have to give up their pursuit of their financial goals. Just the opposite their pursuit of financial goals can now be enhanced and enriched and amplified by a workforce of aligned team members, all rallying around a purpose they believe in very strongly.

Mark Mears : 10:42

That's really what we need to do, though. We need to put the human back in human resources, and I think it's simple. All we need is love, and love is a model that I've created, which stands for listen, observe, value and empower. If you listen to your team members and you get to know them, back to this whole idea of inner and outer diversity, leading to total diversity you listen to what they're saying, but also what they're not saying. It may be that they're going through something at home, maybe they're caring for an elderly parent, maybe they're having relationship issues with a spouse or God forbid a child has to go to surgery, and they're distracted, but if you're a leader and you're asking these questions, you're probing deeper, they're going to start to trust you and we know that trust is the foundation on any good relationship.

Mark Mears : 11:32

And then observing them in real time. Think about Andy Reed, the coach at the Kansas City Chiefs. He wouldn't wait till the end of the season to coach. No, it's every day on the practice field, in the film room, in the team rooms, before the games, during the games and after the game, observing a team member and coaching, encouraging them in real time and then valuing them as a whole person. And not only recognizing and rewarding the value they bring to the team based on results generated, but seeing them as not just a person but also an asset to be grown and nourished by giving them growth, opportunities to learn and grow. And that leads to this whole idea that I think is so powerful. We think about listening, observing and valuing. That's great, but if we don't empower people to be their very best, we're only doing part of the job.

Mark Mears : 12:21

And I think back to a day I remember when I learned how to ride a bike. I got the bike, but it had training wheels on it, and that was great for a while, but at some point we want to be free. We want to ride like all of our friends down the neighborhood. And so the day the training wheels come off, you're kind of like a frisky colt getting born right, you don't have the guardrails or the training wheels. And so maybe a parent I can't remember if my mom or my dad, because it's been several years ago but pushed me down a sidewalk, gave me all the verbal instructions, but then held on to me and then let go, and I wobbled and fell a few times and was discouraged, but they were very encouraging and they said no, let's get back up. You were doing great. Here's all the things you were doing well, but here's some things you want to now work on.

Mark Mears : 13:05

And then, finally, when they released me and I was able to pedal on my own, stop on my own, start on my own, all of a sudden my world got bigger, my neighborhood got bigger. But the whole idea is I felt a sense of freedom, this idea of really feeling I could do this, I could be empowered to grow into my very best. So bringing love into the workplace makes it more relational versus transactional, and then ultimately more transformational as we seek to grow managers into leaders that people want to follow, but now legacy builders that they want to emulate. So, all of a sudden, now you're multiplying, or a ripple effect whatever metaphor works for you of changing the paradigm from command and control that no longer serves us to this more humanistic, loving style of leadership that others want to emulate and create their own following.

William Gladhart: 14:04

As the Beatles said, as you referred to, all you need is love, and so this is a great you know as a musician. This is a great tie in, I think, something that leaders can think about in terms of that humanistic aspect, also incorporating that legacy and community aspect into their business. That, again, like culture, it doesn't take a huge lift, but it's consistent and timely, and then communicating that back in the organization. So I really appreciate those thoughts you've shared. Is there anything else you'd like to add today, mark?

Mark Mears : 14:35

Let me give you a practical example, because I think sometimes things can come across conceptual and they sound good in the moment and kind of like chocolate that make us feel good but they're not sustaining for the health of our bodies. The idea of mentoring comes to mind when you think about this approach of listen, observe, value and empower. I was blessed to have a tremendous leader in David Novak as the head of marketing at Pizza Hut when I was a young pup growing up. I remember one time I was in Chicago doing focus groups. I was catching a late flight back to Wichita where we were located at the time, and the next morning I had to present the results to David and the team. Well, lo and behold, I see boarding that plane from Chicago to Wichita is David and his wife Wendy, who are coming back from Italy as part of a PepsiCo kind of executive summit. They look like they've been traveling for 24 hours.

Mark Mears : 15:29

I'm sure David wanted nothing more than to catch a few winks and maybe rest up to hit the ground running when he got back into work the next day. But about 20 minutes into the flight, all of a sudden my light's the only one on in the dark cabin and I get a tap on my shoulder. It's David. He said can I sit down? And I had a seat next to me. I said well, sure, he proceeds to take out a yellow pad and writes down two columns. Hey, mark, are you open to some coaching? And I said sure he goes. Here are three things that I think you do really well and I want you to keep doing them. And he listed them.

Mark Mears : 16:00

He said here are three things that I think you can do better and I think it would help you as a leader of your team. And he wrote those down and we talked a little bit longer and he said I look forward to hearing your report in the morning I don't know how we ever landed the plane because I was on cloud nine that he would take the time out in that moment to give me some words of mentorship. That he easily could have waited until the next day or the next week or whenever, but he chose to observe and coach and encourage me in real time and I'll never forget that and I've always tried to emulate his leadership approach. I'll never be as good as him, but all I know is I had a wonderful mentor who took time out years ago before what I'm talking about is even in vogue to demonstrate the power of love in coaching and encouraging a team member of his to be their very best, and I'll never forget that.

William Gladhart: 16:51

Yeah, so that, Mark. It's a really powerful story. I think there's a lot of leaders that could take some insight from that and wrap that into their own practice of mentoring other leaders that they identify in their business. So I've enjoyed having you on our Leadership Lovers podcast. Thank you so much for your time and your insights.

Mark Mears : 17:09

My pleasure Will Thank you.