THE MEANING REVOLUTION

The vice president of leadership at LinkedIn claims that the biggest driver of motivation is the chance to serve a larger purpose beyond our careers and ourselves, rather than salary, benefits, bonuses, or other material incentives; companies that are able to successfully focus their people, their teams, and their culture around meaning outperform their competition.

Fred Kofman's approach to leadership has little to do with the standard practices taught in business school and traditional books. Bringing together economics and business theory, communications and conflict resolution, family counseling and mindfulness mediation, Kofman argues in The Meaning Revolution that our most deep-seated, unspoken, and universal anxiety stems from our fear that our life is being wasted--that the end of life will overtake us when our song is still unsung. Material incentives--salary and benefits--account for perhaps 15 percent of employees' motivation at work. The other 85 percent is driven by a need to belong, a feeling that what we do day in and day out makes a difference, that how we spend our time on earth serves a larger purpose beyond just ourselves.

Kofman claims that transcendental leaders, wherever they are in the hierarchy, are able to put aside their self-interests and help others to feel connected with others on a team or in an organization on a great mission and part of an ennobling purpose. He argues that every organization involved in work that is nonviolent and non addictive has what he calls an "immortality project" at its core. And the challenge for leaders is to identify and expand on that core, to inspire all stakeholders to take part.

FRED KOFMAN is the vice president of executive development and leadership philosopher at LinkedIn, where he works with the top CEO's and executives around the world. Born in Argentina, Kofman came to the United States as a graduate student, where he earned his PhD in advanced economic theory at U.C. Berkeley. He taught management accounting and finance at MIT for six years before forming his own consulting company, Axialent, and teaching leadership workshops for corporations such as General Motors, Chrysler, Shell, Microsoft, and Citibank. Sheryl Sandberg writes about him in her bookLean In,claiming Kofman "will transform the way you live and work." Kofman's first book,Conscious Business, published by a small press in 2006, has sold more than 100,000 copies through bookstores, corporate buys, and back of the room sales, and has been lauded by Peter Senge and Ken Wilber.