Your Employees Don't Need More Goals. They Need Purpose.

What does it really mean to have a "life purpose" and how is that different from just having goals or dreams?

This question keeps surfacing in my conversations with HR leaders. I hear people use the terms interchangeably, but they're fundamentally different in how they function and what they enable. Understanding that difference matters, especially if you're designing leadership development programs or trying to build cultures where people actually want to join and stay.

When I introduce myself at the start of workshops I facilitate, I share my life purpose: to make well-being at work a globally accepted basic human right. Sometimes the response is subtle: a nod or smile that shifts the atmosphere in the room. Other times, a client seeks me out at the first break, wanting to talk about how that connects to their own work. What's happening in those moments isn't people responding to a goal I've set. They're recognizing values they share and seeing a way to apply those values themselves. That's the distinction worth understanding.

Dreams Inspire, Goals Measure, Purpose Guides

Dreams pull us forward with possibility and emotion. They activate motivation. But you can hold a dream without pursuing it, without letting it shape your decisions. Dreams provide inspiration, but they don't require embodiment.

Goals, on the other hand, are practical. They give us milestones, metrics, clear endpoints. When you achieve a goal, you feel satisfaction, maybe relief, and then you set another one. Goals are about measurable action within a timeframe. You can check them off. They provide direction and accountability, but once you reach them, they're history.

Life purpose operates differently. It's an expression of how you want to put your values into action – what you embody in the way you work, make decisions, and relate to others. Purpose functions independently of whether you hit specific targets or achieve particular outcomes. It's how you show up regardless of circumstances.

Purpose as Applied Values

Life purpose is fundamentally your values lived out, ideally in service of making positive impact beyond yourself. And here's what makes purpose powerful: it needs to be bigger than what you can accomplish alone, bigger even than what you might accomplish in your lifetime.

That might sound daunting, but it's actually the source of purpose's strength. When a leader says their purpose is "to be the best manager in my department," that's too small. It's essentially a goal dressed up as purpose. But when someone says, "My purpose is making talent development honest, fair, and available to all," that invites connection. Others who share those values see a way to contribute. They're not joining you out of obligation, they're joining because your purpose offers them a meaningful way to live their own values.

Consider how Unilever's former COO, Harish Manwani, tells his origin story. On his first day in 1976, his boss asked why he was there. "To sell more soap," Manwani answered. His boss corrected him: "You're here to change people's lives."

He recalled how absurd it seemed that a company selling soap and soup could be changing lives. But then Manwani learned that five million children do not reach their fifth birthday due to infections that can be prevented by handwashing with soap. Around that time, Unilever launched what was said to be the world’s largest handwashing campaign, reaching 500 million people. As Manwani puts it, “Small acts can make a big difference.” That is purpose at scale. It is bigger than any individual, bigger than quarterly earnings, and it transformed how he showed up to work every day.

This isn't just aspirational thinking. Adam Grant's research demonstrates that prosocial motivation (contributing to something beyond yourself) combined with intrinsic motivation leads to higher performance and well-being than either one alone. Purpose at scale doesn't become irrelevant when you face setbacks or when specific initiatives don't work out. It continues to energize you because you're contributing to something that matters, something that will continue beyond you.

What This Means for How We Develop People

Here's the critical question for HR and organizational development leaders: Are you helping people connect to their life purpose, or are you just adding more goals to their performance plans?

I see this play out regularly. Organizations invest heavily in goal-setting frameworks, OKRs, performance management systems. Goals do matter, so these aren't wrong. But they're incomplete. When someone hits their quarterly targets but feels empty about the work, that's not a goal-setting problem. That's a purpose problem.

The organizations that will thrive won't necessarily be the ones with the most sophisticated goal-tracking systems. They'll be the ones where people can answer a fundamental question: Why does my work matter beyond the metrics?

Consider what happens in leadership development programs that focus solely on competencies and goals versus those that help leaders articulate and embody their purpose. In the first, you might develop better project managers. In the second, you develop leaders who inspire others, who weather setbacks without burning out, who make decisions aligned with their values even when it's difficult.

Making This Practical

If you're building employee engagement strategies or leadership programs, here's what integrating this distinction looks like in practice:
Start by helping people identify their core values. Not the corporate values on the wall, but what actually matters to them. Then explore how those values show up (or don't) in their daily work. Where's the gap? Where's the alignment?

Help them articulate a purpose statement that's genuinely about service to something bigger. Not "I want to be promoted to director," but "I want to transform how our industry thinks about customer experience" or "I want to eliminate infant mortality."

Then create space – in leadership programs, team meetings, even one-on-ones – for people to share how their individual purpose connects to the organization's purpose. Not forced sharing, but genuine invitation. When someone says, "I care about workplace well-being, and that connects to our mission of creating a sustainable world because healthy people are essential for a healthy planet," and their colleague says, "I care about environmental justice, which also connects to that same mission," they've just discovered common ground. They're not just coworkers executing against the same OKRs. They're like-minded people working toward something that matters to each of them. That psychological shift is what makes collaboration feel less like coordination and more like partnership.

Encourage these conversations to happen naturally beyond the training room. When people understand what truly matters to their colleagues, it creates cohesion. Even for routine tasks, knowing "Rachel really cares about equity in talent development and sees this project as serving that" makes it easier to work together.

Purpose isn't a replacement for goals. It's what makes goals meaningful. It's what keeps people engaged when goals get harder, when the path isn't clear, when the metrics don't immediately reward the right behaviors.

When individuals can connect their daily work to a deeper sense of life purpose, when they see their values in action through what they do, you get sustained engagement and resilience that goal achievement alone simply can't provide.

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