Purpose

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose. It’s a recurring theme and in many ways, the underlying motivation behind this entire blog.

Do we know what we want out of life and are we pursuing it? If we don’t know, are we taking steps toward finding it? And wherever we are on our journey, are we making the most of each day?

It’s timely to revisit now for a few reasons. I recently returned from nearly two weeks in Greece where I relaxed on vacation. Epicly amazing. I intentionally did not bring any deep thinking books (although I did get sucked into Bad Blood, the story of biotech company Theranos). But anytime I’m at the beach with a clear mind, I assess my life and if I am leading it in a meaningful way. With purpose.

After vacation, in the past week we celebrated my niece’s high school graduation and my son’s graduation from 8^th grade. For the graduates, how incredible that you have a full life ahead to craft. For those of us supporters, it’s a moment to reflect. Is my life on track? Am I living the hopes and dreams I had as a graduate?

All deep thoughts. And the whole notion of purpose can be this intangible, and daunting dream.

Luckily, there’s a Harvard Business Review book summary on the topic! I love the HBR reviews. They’re like cliff notes from Harvard. Months ago I read the HBR summary on Purpose, Meaning + Passion. For this blog, I reviewed my highlighted notes (nerd I am, as always) from the various articles to create an even more concise cliff note version for you.

Why Purpose Matters

It may seem obvious, but ultimately, purpose to me is the ultimate driver of how and why you live your life. At the end of your days, is your life well spent? Knowing your purpose will help you answer this question affirmatively.

There is a famous quote that resonates with me,

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain

Purpose can come from many places – for some its family, for some its community, for some its work, for others its exploring the world and enjoying life.

Because most of us will have a traditional job in our lives and with the recent graduates in mind, I soaked up the HBR articles on purpose in the workplace. Why does this matter?

Because most of us will spend some 80,000 hours during our career at work. 80,000 hours!! And a 2017 Gallup poll found that only one-third of US employees feel engaged at work, which means only one in three workers bring a consistently high level of initiative, commitment, passion and productivity to their job. Particularly for millennials and the younger generations, surveys confirm meaning is the top thing they want from a job. Yet, less than 50% of people see their work as a calling. This leads to anxiety, frustration, and dissatisfaction – even for those with good jobs and careers. How to balance this hunger for working with purpose and meaning with the realities of life? And how do we enjoy where we’re at while striving for more?

If that’s not enough to make you ponder, people who demonstrate a sense of purpose in their lives have a 15% lower risk of death. So there’s that. If you know your purpose, you live longer!

Finding Your Purpose

The Harvard authors shared some good advice on these topics. Here are my favorite ideas – some of them seem somewhat obvious, but worth repeating – others are reassuring, because they reinforce that pursuing purpose can be a lifelong journey, can and should evolve, and all of us can have multiple purposes at once.

1. Know Your “Why”. Simon Sinek wrote a famous book called “Start with Why”. He explains that anyone that builds and sustains movements, finds meaning – or purpose – can only be successful if you lead with your personal “why”. From Martin Luther King Jr. to Apple, people follow you, buy from you, and believe in you, when you believe in yourself. Knowing what matters to you is the first step. It’s important to assess what you want out of your work at this point in your life. How can you make your work, work for you? You need to know your personal hierarchy of needs (Is it a promotion? Work life balance? A certain type of work?). Respect that it may evolve. But always know it. Determine what you care about now, what drives you, what you’re passionate about, what truly motivates you – and build from there.
2. Purpose is a thing you build, not a thing you find. Often it takes working for years, trying new things, living life and taking some risks to identify your purpose. What you love. What makes you tick. It’s a mistake to think you should just know what your purpose is – it often takes life experience and self-reflection to find it.
3. Purpose can be created. In achieving professional purpose, most of us have to focus as much on making our work meaningful as taking meaning from it. The reality is most of us are not curing cancer every day. But there is value in finding meaning and purpose in what we do. And most of us have the opportunity to craft our jobs into something we love. Even if you can’t get excited about your company’s mission, you can still adopt a service mindset by thinking about how your work helps those you love. I love the famous story about JFK visiting NASA in the height of space exploration. JFK asked a janitor what he did for NASA. His answer? “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” Amazing. The janitor connected his daily contributions with the organization’s greater mission. Research shows most jobs lend themselves to helping others in some way, enabling achievement, and bringing meaning to our lives. I was reminded of this at Costco (which I typically hate) last Saturday morning (which is the worst time to go. It’s like Frogger with humans and oversized shopping carts). As I was checking out, distracted by the crowds and wanting nothing more than to get the heck out of there, the man bagging groceries gave me a big smile and said, “What do you call a married hippie?…. Miss-issippi!!” Now, I love a dumb joke and I totally cracked up. That man’s purpose may be to make people laugh. Purpose succeeded. People who see their work as a form of giving consistently rank their jobs as more meaningful. This means you can find meaning in nearly any role. The key is to become conscious about the service you’re providing. The days I spend time mentoring others, bringing smiles to a room, and pushing people to deliver unexpectedly great work are purposeful days for me.
4. Purpose is likely not a single thing. Most of us will have multiple sources of purpose in our lives. Isn’t that great? You don’t have to choose just one! It’s not purpose, but purposes, we are looking for: multiple sources of meaning that help us find value in our work and lives. Often our work isn’t central to our purpose but a conduit to helping others, including our families and communities. Acknowledging there are multiple sources of purpose takes the pressure off finding the one single thing to give our lives meaning.
5. Purpose will evolve. Most of us will experience personal phases in which our sources of meaning change. Just as we find meaning in multiple places, the sources of that meaning can and do change over time. For me, over the last decades, certainly family has become a source of purpose. Finding meaning in my various jobs has also been a source of purpose. Most recently, I see the opportunity for this blog and the ideas I have to grow it as a source of purpose. I love the idea that embracing multiple purposes over the course of your life is expected, will drive ongoing personal growth, and ultimately deliver meaning.
6. Calling your Purpose. Rather than waiting for your purpose to appear in front of you, declaring your purpose (or your best guess for now) will help you focus on it. A declaration of purpose is a simple statement about how you will decide to live each and every day. The HBR folks suggest that your purpose is succinct, specific and expressive. It is yours and yours alone. It should highlight your strengths, interests and core ambitions. Life is short. You deserve to work in a role where your personal purpose shines. But you cannot leave it up to your organization, your boss or your team to define it, know it, or encourage it if you are not clear. You must define and enact your own purpose. This was a fun little exercise. For me, my professional purpose focused on: “I strive to accomplish big impact through creative, inspiring, and curious work; where I can enjoy camaraderie with others.” It’s not perfect. But it’s a good guiding light for now. I’m also led by a favorite quote I heard on a podcast about the Joy of Doing:  “Every person you touch is your legacy.” Through that lens, I can have a meaningful impact every single day.
7. Ignite your passion outside of work. Not only will you spend time doing something you love, inspirational endeavors often have a spill-over effect – giving you energy and inspiration to craft your job or reengage with parts of it you like. This blog largely started out of this desire. I was writing less for work and missed the creative outlet. Then I realized I didn’t have to write just for professional gain. I could write for myself. It has brought me joy, inspired creativity that I bring into the workplace and ignited a love of learning that has helped me grow as a leader.

As you think about your purpose at work, here are a few handy questions the HBR crew suggests you ask yourself:

• What are you good at doing?
• What do you enjoy?
• What feels most useful?
• What creates a sense of forward momentum?
• How do you relate to others?

The experts agree you should not ask yourself how to find your purpose. Instead, look to endow everything you do with purpose, allow for multiple sources of meaning that will naturally develop in your life, and to be comfortable with those sources changing over time.

Leading with Purpose

Because it’s Harvard, they also provided some handy guidance for leaders. I’ve been a manager and leader for many years and I still love learning about how to be a better leader. As we see every day, some of our world’s most powerful leaders would benefit from more training😊

Articulating your purpose and finding the courage to live it, is the single most developmental task you can undertake as a leader. Your leadership purpose is who you are and what makes you distinctive. Your purpose is your brand, what you’re driven to achieve, the magic that makes you tick. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do your job and why – the strengths you bring to the table no matter where you are seated. It’s what everyone close to you recognizes as uniquely you and would miss most if you were gone. Now that is a fun exercise too. How do I want to be remembered? It’s similar to the What is Your Story? exercise I wrote about recently.

As a leader, here are some handy tips on how to lead with purpose.

1. Empower teams to have meaningful work. The experts say there are four key ways that most people find meaning at work: learning, prestige, social rewards, and autonomy. Leaders who help create meaningful work for their teams will find their teams report better health, more well-being, and a clearer sense of teamwork and engagement. They are more likely to thrive and grow. A few more details on each:
   • Self-realization comes through learning. Personal growth is meaningful. Work is also a place to accomplish things and be recognized, which leads to greater satisfaction, confidence, and self-worth.
   • Prestige is another reason many work. A high-status organization confers respect, recognition, and a sense of worth. This can be meaningful for some. Power is another reason many work and why many stay at companies as they grow their career. For those drawn to power, work provides an arena for acquiring and exercising power.
   • Social rewards. For many of us belonging to a community is meaningful. People crave a place where they can forge friendships, and experience a sense of community. Employees also experience meaning at work when what they do actually matters for the organization, when their ideas are listened to and when they see that their contributions have an impact on how the place performs. A sense of real involvement gives people meaning.
   • For others, autonomy is king. The freedom to do your work on your own time gives many people meaning, particularly entrepreneurs.
2. Embrace leadership traits that lead to meaningful work. Leaders who create meaningful work tend to be curious and inquisitive, challenging and relentless (death to inertia!), they hire for values and cultural fit, they are able to trust people, and don’t micro-manage.
3. Celebrate the Small Wins. Also known as the “progress principle”, HBR finds that “of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. The more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run. Everyday progress – even small wins – can make all the difference in how people feel and perform.” Setting clear goals, allowing autonomy, providing sufficient resources and time, helping with the work, openly learning from problems and successes, and allowing a free exchange of ideas are catalysts to delivering small wins. Interpersonal support, respect and recognition, encouragement, emotional comfort, and opportunities for affiliation are nourishing activities that help celebrate them.
4. Remember the trenches. Harkening back to the janitor at NASA, it’s important for leaders to imbue this sense of purpose with all employees. Even the best strategies will fail if managers ignore the people working in the trenches to execute it.
5. Know your leadership purpose. In the same way you have personal purpose/s, so do leaders have leadership purpose. Whether you recognize it or not. Your leadership purpose is evident everyday in how you show up. It springs from your identity; the essence of who you are. So make sure your leadership purpose reflects the best of who you are.

I could write endlessly about this topic. A related blog focused on living a meaningful life. I am inspired that this quest for purpose can, and should be, a lifelong endeavor.