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How well do your team members understand how their jobs contribute to the bottom line?

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Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 170,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: How well do your team members understand how their jobs contribute to the bottom line?

  • Well — they generally understand their role’s impact on profit: 39.21%
  • Somewhat — they know their work is important, but the link to profit is fuzzy: 27.57%
  • Extremely well — there’s a direct link between their role and our profit: 27.4%
  • Not at all — they have no understanding of how they contribute to our profit: 5.82%

So why am I doing this? We all want to contribute to something larger than ourselves. Giving people that clarity at work as to how their actions drive company performance will improve motivation and performance. If your teams aren’t clear how their actions and activities contribute, they’ll question their work more and be more likely to eventually leave for a more fulfilling role. Spend the time to explain where they fit in — they’ll appreciate it.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”