Your purposeful people plan

Why Purposeful People Plans Matter

Every year, Five&Co. asks our clients about the teams they lead. Are their people leading themselves and others in a helpful way? Are they doing well for the business and feeling well too?

We often spend time exploring each person’s contribution. This helps us build a coherent and compelling people plan for the year ahead.

The Challenge of Modern Leadership

In the busyness of modern work, one-to-ones and performance reviews can lose continuity. They easily become dominated by conversations about what we are doing. As a result, the how and the why are often lost in a never-ending list of “things to do”.

To lead well, you need a clear plan for each person you manage. Purposeful planning helps you connect day-to-day performance with long-term growth.

Seeing the Whole Picture

What often goes missing is recognition of how someone has added value to the business. How have their effort, experience, and expertise contributed more than the sum of their parts?

When you take a more holistic view of individual performance, you can weave a “red thread” through your conversations. This thread connects achievement, learning, and meaning — giving momentum and purpose to your leadership.

Purpose at Work: What the Research Says

This approach isn’t just a nice-to-have — it matters. Over 70% of people surveyed by McKinsey in 2020 said their sense of purpose is defined by their work. A 2017 Ernst & Young study found that 96% of leaders view purpose as key to job satisfaction. Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s Purpose at Work Report (2016) showed that 90% of people believe work should bring a sense of purpose to life.

Therefore, helping your people find and connect with the meaning in their work can improve retention, boost motivation, and, according to some studies, even enhance business performance.

A Moment to Reflect

The end of the calendar year is an ideal time to pause and reflect. Look at how each team member has added value in the past year — and how they can build on that in the year ahead.

Do this not only by reviewing goals, but also by exploring how their purpose aligns with the organisation’s mission. When you connect personal purpose with business purpose, you strengthen engagement, accountability, and resilience.

Preparing for Conversations

Before you meet with your team, prepare specific examples that show where purpose has made an impact. Invite each individual to explore how their personal purpose links to their actions and achievements.

Ask yourself how each person has:

• Aligned to priorities: Have they kept a clear line of sight to organisational goals and given feedback as strategies evolved or major changes began?
• Built better processes: Have they balanced efficiency with customer experience and your company values — the beliefs you move towards through your actions?
• Communicated meaning: Have they shared clarity around goals, keeping the mission fresh and relevant to the task at hand? Remember, meaning lives in people, not things.
• Shown curiosity and care: Have they gone beyond expertise to demonstrate emotional intelligence, humility, and care — without losing focus on delivery?

From Preparation to Purpose

As the saying goes, “Do not prepare the road for your team. Prepare your team for the road.” Helping each member of your team connect their personal, team, and organisational purpose builds “change-fit” people.

These are individuals who know why who they are matters — and understand that how they show up is just as important as what they do.

Interested in learning more about our approach to building purposeful teams: https://fiveandco.com/what-we-do/for-teams/