Are you laying bricks or building a cathedral?

There's an old parable about purpose, often attributed to 17th century architect Christopher Wren, that goes something like this:

One day long ago, an architect visited the worksite of his project and saw three bricklayers busy at work. He asked each of them what they were doing. The first worker brusquely replied, “I’m working. I’m laying bricks.”

The second coolly answered, “I’m building a wall.”

The architect turned to the last bricklayer, who was the most productive of the bunch. The worker smiled, stood tall, and said, “I’m building a great cathedral.”

Each bricklayer was doing the same work, but they saw it differently – and that made all the difference.  Framing matters.

I wrote about this framing, about the difference between inspired and directed communication, for the latest issue of Toastmasters International Magazine, give it a read it here. (And while you're at it, check out my last article for them, about kindness, in their May issue here!)

Here's an excerpt:

Inspired messaging speaks to goals, ambitions, and shared values. We inspire our team by speaking of whatever our version of a “cathedral” is—Google doesn’t make a search engine; it organizes the world’s information, and Coca-Cola doesn’t make beverages; it refreshes the world.

When pitching big ideas, use your camera lens to zoom out. It’s not about the task. It’s about the goal.

Psychologists have found that our most difficult goals can elicit our highest levels of effort and performance. These lofty ambitions outperform vague “do your best” instructions, partly because our best is subjective and we don’t even know what it is. We know when the cathedral is built, but do we know if we really did our “best” in laying bricks? The inspired goal organizes our efforts around something we can all agree on.

This is not to say that directed messaging has no purpose in our work. You wouldn’t tell a cab driver to “follow their heart” when driving you home, and you need to document specific requirements with suppliers. We’ve all been in situations where we’re frustrated by the lack of direction from a higher-up. Leadership calls for more inspired messaging, but management calls for more directed messaging.

This distinction maps closely to something you learn in sales: the difference between features and benefits. People don’t buy features, they buy benefits—how does this thing make life better? Theodore Levitt, a former Harvard Business School professor, best summarized this idea when he said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”

Big thanks again to the whole Toastmasters team for having me back!