Why Some Teams Show Up While Others Just Sign In

What turns a mission on the wall into one people feel

Photo by Omar Ramadan on Unsplash

I started tearing up within a few seconds.

It was ten minutes of a World Cup match this summer. I don’t remember who was playing. I don’t remember if a goal was scored.

All I remember was the wave of emotion.

It was mesmerizing to watch the fans cheer on their countrymen. The singing, the chanting, the ferocity of pride. I couldn’t help but be swept away.

Only when I stepped away to grab a glass of water did I pause to reflect.

What was I doing? A middle-aged woman who isn’t a fan of the game or from the countries represented. What was causing such a swell in my heart?

It was something that I had felt before. At town gatherings. In places of worship. At company meetings rallying the team.

The feeling of being seen, valued, and worthy as a group. The power of unity.

That is the magic of shared purpose.

Having a goal isn’t enough. People need to feel it.

The people happiest in their jobs feel connected — to the people they work with and to what binds them together.

It’s not the money.

It’s not the industry.

It’s not a title or a logo.

It’s a commitment to something bigger than their individual goals. A sense that you matter in the greater scheme of things. A vision of what could be if everyone pulls their weight.

This is what distinguishes workplaces where people sign in from those where they show up. They might both require hard work and long hours, but one burns you down while the other lights you up.

Places that demand you sign in attract people who are checking boxes and going through motions. Places that inspire you to show up attract people ready to engage, solve problems, and get dirty doing so.

I have worked in both environments.

In one company — a big, prestigious brand, the people who clocked in never wanted to put in more than what was necessary. They drew bright lines around what they were responsible for and stayed away from everything else. It wasn’t just that they stuck to their job description, it was that they didn’t want to be there, and weren’t going to spend a minute longer on anything that could keep them at work longer than absolutely necessary.

Contrast that with another company—a small, bootstrapped startup. We had little funding and never enough people to do the work. And yet teammates proactively volunteered to help each other. They shared ideas, and they shared the workload.

Both organizations had ambitious goals but where one had a mission that it posted on walls, the other had one people lived and breathed every day. One had money. The other had heart. One had people who needed to be there. The other had people who chose to be there.

In the second one, the team was inspired by the mission. It meant something to them beyond the paycheck. They were there to achieve something great and they knew they could only get there together. Their collective ambition made them willing to go harder and travel farther to get there.

Meanwhile, in the first organization, I’m sure there were also people who cared about the mission. But too many had lost their motivation. Even with annual goals and quarterly targets, being an employee at this company felt like being stuck on a piece of driftwood out at sea. You could try to swim or push forward, but what was the point? The organization felt like it was without direction and without a destination.

Shared purpose requires direction and goals, but those alone are insufficient. Shared purpose is only truly achieved when your team feels a connection to your organization and its work that feels visceral and valuable to their life experience.

Shared purpose works only when it aligns with personal values.

For most workers, the first and most critical question about work is what’s in it for them? How will it pay the bills, develop their skills, and propel their career forward?

My first full-time job was the first and last time I followed those principles. Choosing prestige and a path defined by others led me to serious health issues that took me two years to fully recover from.

When you go after something you don’t actually want, it takes triple the effort. You don’t just work hard doing the work. You have to work against your resistance as well. And the part that most people forget is that you also have to work to pretend that you want it. It’s no wonder I was completely depleted, physically, mentally and emotionally.

From that moment forward, I decided to carve a career path using a different lens.

I focused first and foremost on finding people with whom I shared common values. Things like how we viewed ambition, what created a healthy business, how priorities are set, and how we treated people.

What I didn’t realize was that I was filtering for what would become the foundation of shared purpose. Shared values are what enable people in an organization with the same goal to have a common approach. It means that what matters to them personally overlaps with what matters professionally. That’s the depth of alignment needed for complex businesses with big ambitions. Anything less means falling short of their full potential.

As a leader, this cuts both ways. Your values are what the right people will be filtering for when they decide whether to join you.

Shared purpose is the foundation of accountability and resilience.

Too many organizations suffer from a passing-the-buck culture: It’s not my problem. Someone else should solve it.

It’s not how great teams work.

At the startup, no one hesitated to contribute to what I call black-hole projects — ones that consume infinite energy and don’t sit in any one department. If it was important to the organization, it was important to them.

When people actually care, they aren’t nitpicky about who is doing the work. They are more concerned that the work gets done and that it gets done well. People feel pride in their work and a desire to show up with their colleagues because they trust each other to carry the burden together.

In an organization with a strong sense of shared purpose, people celebrate each other’s progress. They are willing to stick their necks out to give each other feedback. They know that each of them needs to be growing, contributing, and getting something out of the experience. Everyone is so talented that if they aren’t getting enough from the experience, they will leave, which would hurt the whole organization’s ability to reach its goals.

It’s not the fear that drives them. It’s the sense of possibility. And it’s the collective ambition to realize it. That’s what makes them resilient and able to sustain the difficult moments.

In a world where the pace of change and the level of uncertainty is only growing, this is what will separate the organizations that attract and retain the best talent from those that fizzle out.

Take Action.

Creating shared purpose is a full-contact sport. It’s not an overnight project. But there are some essential elements.

Start with what matters to you.

Your personal values are your compass. The purpose your team feels will be shaped by what you model, reward, and tolerate, whether you name it or not. When you don’t know what guides you, you won’t be able to build it into your team on purpose.

If you’re not sure where to start, use these questions to guide you:

1. Priorities - How do you determine what matters most?

2. Focus & Investment - How do you think about where to invest your time, money and attention?

3. People - How do you treat people, when and why?

4. Problem Solving - How do you identify issues? How do you address them?

You don’t have to answer all of the questions at once, but they can form the basis for your personal value system.

Get crystal clear on your mission and why.

A great litmus test is could a 6th grader explain it. If they can’t, it’s too complicated, too long, or just not clear. When it’s simple and clear, your team will be able to digest it and live it. Anything more complicated leads to misunderstanding and ultimately, misalignment.

As someone who loves context and caveats, this is not my forte. I have had to rely upon colleagues who challenge me to cut, to edit, to find the core essence and let go of the rest. Because when you can’t be crisp, you can’t be clear.

Don’t assume everyone is aligned.

Take the time to survey your team on the core parts of your business. Do they have the same definition for your target customer? Do they understand how your business functions and where the sticking points are?

I recently ran an organization through a Strategic Planning process. The leadership team had been at odds with each other for months, several were ready to quit. Once I surveyed them and their individual assessments of the operations, the source of the friction became clear.

Everyone was talking past each other. When one person talked about risk, they were referring to revenue. Meanwhile, another was concerned about brand. Everyone was bought into the mission, but no one shared the same picture of what was actually happening and what needed to change.

Shared purpose isn’t just about the direction you’re heading in, it’s about how you get there as well. Just like the World Cup teams, even if you know you have to get the ball into the goal, if you aren’t running the same play, it’ll just be a mess of players on the field. That’s what was happening to this leadership team.

The solution was to take the time to align on a common understanding of how they operated and why. If you’re facing the same challenge, don’t treat it as a deficiency. Use it as an opportunity to involve the leadership team, the Board, and other key stakeholders, including members of your team.

Weave it into how you operate.

Once you have sufficient alignment, then it’s time to weave it into your day-to-day operations and culture.

How do you embody it as a leader?
Do you mention it in your team meetings?
Is it part of your annual strategic planning and goal-setting process?
Would everyone on your team be able to name it?
Do you reward people for perpetuating it?

The most important question is: Do people feel it?

When people feel it, that’s when you know it’s fully integrated. You can’t manufacture the feeling. The trust, the emotion, the meaning. It only happens when the people in the organization live it.

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I didn’t know a single player on that field. I still felt it.

Think back to the version of you at an inflection point in your career. The one still figuring out what mattered, choosing between the prestigious path and the one that fit.

What kind of place would that person have wanted to walk into? Where would they have signed in, and where would they have shown up?

You get to build that place now.

Someone out there is looking for it.

May you lead without limits,

Kathy

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