Page 15 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

PREFACE

This brings us to the issue of the audience for this book:
leaders. Whether talking to executives of global companies
or therapy clients who struggle with loss and grief, we have
found the search for meaning to be universal. It affects rich
and poor; young and old; American, African, European, and
Asian; those in big and small organizations, publicly traded
firms and public agencies; employees close to retirement
and employees just entering the workforce; those who volun-
teer in community organizations and those who lead large
conglomerates; those who are unemployed and those who
put in 80-hour weeks. Given our professional interests, we
could have written to individuals at large, to employees, or
to HR professionals (who generally accept the importance of
meaning making and who build HR systems to sustain it).
We decided to write to leaders.
Leaders are meaning makers: they set direction that others
aspire to; they help others participate in doing good work and
good works; they communicate ideas and invest in practices
that shape how people think, act, and feel. As organizations
become an increasing part of the individual’s sense of iden-
tity and purpose, leaders play an increasing role in helping
people shape the meaning of their lives. Too many leaders
focus on where they are going and how to get there, with-
out paying much attention to how it feels to those on the
journey with them. When leaders make work meaningful,
they help create abundant organizations where employees
operate on a value proposition based on meaning as well as
money. Meaning becomes a multiplier of employee compe-
tence and commitment, a lead indicator of customer share, a
source of investor confidence, and a factor in ensuring social
responsibility in the broader community. We find that even
the hardest-nosed leaders become interested in meaning

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