What’s Your Purpose?
We yearn for purpose. Purpose drives our behaviors, actions, and underpins our self image. If we lack purpose we feel lost. So purpose occupies us either in its presence driving us toward a particular focus or its absence driving us to find one. Our chosen purpose is our calling and may lead to our vocation. Our purpose makes us relevant and underwrites our strategy to achieve relevance. We will get into that later.
Research suggests that people with a purpose in life live longer, have a better immune system and perform better when controlling for lifestyle, personality, and other longevity related factors. Not only do we yearn for purpose, it makes us healthier. It then behooves us to have a purpose. But, where does purpose come from?
From Where are You Drawing Your Purpose?
Purpose is personal to each individual. We each choose our own. However, some purposes are more common than others depending on the locus from which it is chosen. We either choose a purpose from either an external locus, an internal locus or a bit of both.
External Locus — Purpose can be assigned or adopted from an external entity such as a religion, a political, civil, military, academic, business, or medical vocation. Externally derived purpose has some positives and negatives. On the plus side, an externally derived purpose positions you on a well worn path with institutional support. Whether a tinker, tailor, soldier, spy or butcher, baker, candlestick maker, the assigned or adopted purpose operates within a structured framework and traditions that point the direction toward success and provide support in developing expertise.
On the downside, these externally derived purposes operate within a specific set of customs, conventions and rules. Should you deviate from institutional expectations you can expect anything from struggle to outright ostracism. Purpose derived from an external locus has an external reference. In other words, your success within that purpose will be at the behest of and dependent on the opinion of others operating within that purpose. For those that stray “too far” from the customs and conventions risk expulsion.
Internal Locus. — Purpose may also be derived from within. You can build your own purpose. You may have a calling that does not fit within any current paradigms. Having a purpose without a roadmap can be liberating and frightening. Internally derived purposes also have positives and negatives.
Those operating on an internally derived purpose are trail blazers. They often are objects of admiration. Think Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Einstein, and Martin Luther King. These people are driven in directions associated with no clear path. While these internally derived purposes may effectively operate within religious, political, civil and / or academic institutions, they remain independent, untied to institutional mores. They operate just as effectively, if not more so, in uncharted, unique directions driven by our own personal values and drivers. For those traveling a path charted by their own purpose there are no rules or anyone to answer to.
Internally driven purpose is challenged by a number of things. First, when you are traveling your own path you are operating without a net. If you are able to assemble a support structure it will be cobbled together from friends, coaches and mentors that will not have crisp, definitive guidance. How does one give crisp guidance for an uncharted path? Those around you will not fully understand your purpose, often reacting in ways ranging from apathy to hostility. But the greatest challenge is that you need to continuously self generate your own source of inspiration and revitalization. The rest of this article provides insights and recommendations for generating that source.
Mixed Loci — Most of us crystallize our purpose partially sourced from within ourselves and partially based on one or more external forces, which might be mutually supportive or cause some internal dissonance. Consider a religious scientist. A scientist’s primary purpose is discovery in service of pushing back the veil of our collective ignorance with new knowledge. It is based on the scientific method in which the scientist postulates how something works and then attempts to find evidence that either proves or disproves the hypothesis with facts. However, the scientist’s religion is based on and values faith, the belief in something that cannot be proven. In fact, having faith in something that cannot be proven is the whole point. From this complex mix emerges a purpose which pursues the discovery of the unknown that can be known and belief in that which cannot, by its nature, be known. This purpose is not in conflict with itself. Rather it is nuanced, segregating the realm of science from the realm of belief.
My Purpose
I did not ‘pick’ my purpose so to speak. Rather, after years of contemplating purpose and trying various purposes, my purpose revealed itself to me, much like bedrock exposes itself as the layers above it erode when exposed to the elements. My purpose, my foundational driver that gives me the juice to be in action and engage the world, is contribution, making a positive difference. It is a basic purpose which can be aimed in any direction and can operate in any situation. Further, my purpose has three clear conditions of satisfaction regardless of where or how I am contributing.
- I need to make a difference every day, preferably in every engagement, including in passing, casual conversations.
- I need to make a durable contribution, each engagement leaves a positive impact that remains useful and relevant long after I have departed.
- I need to enhance my own capacity and capabilities as I am making that contribution. This drive to grow forces the stakes of the game to ever increase, forcing me to expand myself to meet the demands of the difference I am making.
I apply this purpose in every aspect of my life, using different approaches and skills to various aspects of my life. — work, communities, personal interests, family and friends. — and the situations that arise in those aspects. The condition of satisfaction requires me to take on ever more ambitious causes. Writing this and my other articles is part of upping my game for contribution.
Effective contribution has two major requirements. I need to ensure that my contribution is welcome, that my contribution is invited, wanted and expected in a particular arena. Additionally, I need to ensure that I have a contribution that provides a positive impact. If I want to give a friend advice, but they are not willing to hear it, no contribution is possible. If they are willing to hear out and take my advice, that advice better be relevant and helpful. This theme of being empowered to contribute and having a valuable contribution to provide flavors how I set up my purpose-support-net and where I focus my contributions.
Contribution is my chosen purpose. While it was not assigned to me from an external entity, it can fit well in any environment and with any institution. Even though those institutions provide support for contribution, that support has a narrow focus and clear boundaries that are for the benefit of the institution, the companies for which I’ve worked, the community mores in which I participate, the family culture in which I reside. Since that support is institution-specific I still need to develop my own support structure to refresh myself in pursuing my purpose. While my personal support safety net will lean on institutional support structures, a large part of it is my own personal structure that remains in place regardless of where or how I am participating.
Sourcing Our Purpose
Whether assigned, adopted or self-generated, our purpose requires support and nurturing. We need to refresh ourselves and grow our capacity to fulfill our purpose. That means we need to empower ourselves to action and live out our purpose, build our competence in applying our capabilities, and pursue the things that squeeze the juice from our passions. We also need to bring offerings that are relevant to the situation at hand.
A Caveat Regarding Self Empowerment
Before I continue to beat the drum of purpose and empowerment, I want to acknowledge my privilege. I am educated, well paid, well traveled, and, by virtue of my widely developed networks, have access to resource rich environments — safe, comfortable housing, vitamin and mineral rich foods, constant feeds of new information and experiences, and broad supporting communities. When I discuss personal purpose and fostering my ability to deliver on that purpose, I do so within the luxury of safety, security, and abundant resources at my fingertips. While those of us that are similarly resourced talk to each other so much that we might be lulled into the belief that most of the world is like us. In truth, we highly resourced individuals are an exception.
Let me frame this concept via Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s hierarchy is a motivational psychological theory comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid with physiological needs at the bottom and self actualization at the top. Here I am simplifying the levels to three key levels including:
- Survival — True existential considerations about simply staying alive and physically secure.
- Self Empowerment & Communal Acceptance — Operating as an empowered actor and being embraced by your community.
- Reaching Full Potential — Actively exerting power to fulfill your life’s purpose and passions. [Includes the two top tiers — Esteem and Self-Actualization tiers].
Per the theory, an individual cannot fully ascend to the next higher tier unless the bottom tiers are fully met. I am recognizing here that those in survival mode working on aspects of their own safety and security will not likely be able to focus much on self empowerment and communal acceptance. I acknowledge that to pursue my purpose and build my capabilities I must first sort out my survival. In survival mode, the central purpose is to survive. As someone in survival mode builds capacity from the guidance below, that capacity will be focused on survival, and survival alone.
Embracing Our Agency
Agency implies that we are able to exert power and take actions on our own behalf. It means that we self-empower to advocate for ourselves. Studies have shown that when upper middle and upper class children are taught from a young age to question authorities and engage experts as partners, they take charge of navigating their own health care, education and other life aspects. [By authorities I mean medical, legal, academic, and other expert practitioners or in engaging government authorities and bureaucracies.] These kids learn agency from earliest memory. On the other hand, lower middle class, working classand those in poverty are shaped to listen to those authorities and experts and follow their lead. My takeaway is that agency can be taught and developed. To develop that agency, as an empowered actor in the world, we need to focus on how we generate our agency.
The Empowered Actor Mindset
Empowerment is a mindset. I believe I can act on my own behalf, and perhaps the behalf of others, to achieve a result. Victimization is also a mindset, and the opposite of empowerment, establishing the belief that I am at the behest of external forces that I cannot adjust. In this framework, a victim is either subject to the actions of a perpetrator or beholden to a hero that steps in to take righteous action on the victim’s behalf.
We all have had horrible things happen to us. We have all been victims to perpetrations ranging from catastrophic — murder, assault, loss of a home due to arson, etc. — to microaggressions — comments and behaviors that make us uncomfortable. If I am on the receiving end of a perpetration, I have a choice to make. I can choose to empower myself and take action in whatever way I believe best serves that situation. Or, I can victimize myself, maintaining my grievances and waiting for someone else to resolve the situation.
For oppressed communities, people of color in the U.S. and Europe, Native Americans in the U.S., LGBT everywhere, etc., it is easy to develop tangible grievances. With such continuous, virulent messaging it is easy to feel powerless. Unfortunately, reacting to these incursions defensively or with like-incursions, is used by the perpetrators to ‘prove their point.’ At best, this reactiveness provides no power to change the situation and at worst gives permission for:
- Perpetrators to commit even more egregious perpetrations, and
- Us, as victims, to do horrible things, as justified by our victimization.
Today’s grievance politics justifies horrible behavior up to and including the oppression of targeted groups, overthrow of government institutions and murder of ‘othered’ people. No good will arise from this othering.
We can be oppressed without being victimized. I, as a transwoman, am a member of an ‘othered’ class. I am currently tracking hundreds of state bills that would, en masse, serve to erase my existence. In the face of so much hate I am tempted to roll up in a ball. However, that abdication of empowerment would not serve me or anyone I care for. Instead, I will stand as an example of what it is to be trans in my neighborhood, community and worklife. I will write articles that clarify the reality of being trans vs. the stories our detractors make up about us. I will rally those in my trans community to vote for trans supporters. These are things that I am both willing to and self empowered to do. So, the first step in embracing agency is to adopt a mindset of self empowerment. Instead of focusing on the unassailable wall of what perpetrators are doing to me I am focusing on what I can do to better our situation. However incremental that act might be, there is always something I can do.
Knowing Our Value
The most valuable thing that I have done for myself has been learning to love all of me, faults and all. I am a trans woman. I wish I could say that my self-love came together after I transitioned, but that would be a lie. First, I had to overcome my own internalized transphobia. I had heard only negative things about trans folks before I transitioned. As I was growing up, my media-enforced trans role models were sex workers, serial killers and a few tragic figures. I had no role model for a trans person as a parent, partner, tech industry leader, operations expert optimist, or anything else resembling a powerful actor in the world. I was operating off the map and had to build my own road, integrating my suppressed feminine aspects and working through my rage. I also, as a trans woman, accepted the love I thought I deserved, enduring mediocre relationships and one really horrible one before I stepped off of the relationship merry-go-round to learn how to love my own company. I spent several years not dating, learning to love myself. I had completely given up on having a romantic relationship when I met and eventually married my wife. During that interim I learned to really love myself and to be comfortable with my own company. It certainly made me a better spouse.
Without role models, I had to create my own path. Through therapy, self development work, incremental professional and personal successes, I learned my value step-by-step. I learned that my ‘otherness’ did not have to be in the way of my community contributions and worldly success. I am not going to lie, success came much easier when I was perceived as a young, ambitious white guy rather than the middle aged trans woman, with an acknowledged biracial background, that I became. But, success has still been possible despite the challenges. It has forced me to deeply understand and know my value.
I understand that people have complex reactions to me, positive and negative, based on nothing but my physical appearance and voice. I choose to spend zero time with others’ reactions, leaving it to them to process them on their own. I stay focused on my purpose, the commitments I have to that moment, and the value I intend to deliver. I stay focused on my value.
Grounding Ourselves in a Sense of Safety
We discussed safety above as foundational to the luxury of contemplating our purpose and empowering ourselves as actors in the world. So in discussing safety here, it is under the assumption that our general safety and security needs are met. We are focused here on grounding ourselves by continuously refreshing our sense of safety, in our already relatively safe circumstances.
Part of building your own agency is creating a personal safe-space as a way to remain grounded. For much of my life I have associated sanctuary with my home-space as a place to refresh and renew myself. My layout, cleanliness, and art pieces all reflect that sense of grounding and sanctuary. Unfortunately, a specific space is not always possible. If you are in a roommate situation, having a personal physical space may be limited to a room or even a bed. Creating that sanctuary may be only a temporary moment. My wife and I had a period of living apart, in temporary circumstances. When we were together during that period, my sanctuary lived largely in my head and was accessible only through meditation. That said, visiting that sanctuary often keeps me grounded. My sanctuary includes my own sense of peace, my family and close friends, and whatever personal space I can eke out at the moment.
Focusing Our Attention
There is a world of things on which we can spend our time. Our interests and passions automatically narrow our horizon. However, we need to actively prune the focus of our attention.
What Do I Care About?
I have a bottle on my desk filled with wooden cut-outs of the word ‘FUCK’. That bottle represents for me all of the FUCKs I have to give in life. What I mean by that is that the bottle represents my capacity to truly care about various topics. Each of us has only so much of our attention to spread. For every new thing that comes my way I look at that bottle and ask myself, “Am I willing to give up one of my FUCKs for that new thing.” Most of the time, it’s a NO. I am not willing to give up one of my precious FUCKs for that new thing. This practice limits me from spreading myself too thin and diluting my focus.
What am I Going to Take Action On?
A step up from ‘Giving a fuck’ is being committed. When I make a commitment, it is concrete. For example, writing this article is a commitment that I made to positively add to the public conversation. I only make commitments for things that I intend on doing, and I hold myself to account on completing that commitment. That way, I trust myself to deliver on those things that are most dear to me. When I make commitments to others, they trust me. Being trusted is a leg of the agency stool. While I ‘give a fuck’ about lots of things, my commitments are surgical. At any one time I only have a handful of commitments, and keep it that way. Through commitment-making I stay focused and productive.
Maintaining Our Curiosity
I went on a date shortly after Trump was elected to office in 2016. We liberals were soul searching for how his ascendancy could have happened. My date was an attractive, bright middle aged optometrist. She spoke to me intelligently with well formed ideas. When our conversation veered into the MAGA movement, I asked what she thought was driving MAGA folks. Her reply was, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” Surprised, I followed up with, “If you don’t understand their motives, how will you persuade them differently?” She responded, “They need to get over themselves. I’ll wait.”
In my mind, her answer gave her a pass on any responsibility for making things better. She met intolerance with intolerance, a sure way to stop healthy engagement. To me, she was in essence saying, “Those people over there are wrong. They need to do the work to get themselves right and then come back to my way of thinking.” She effectively positioned herself as ‘right’ with no responsibility for the cleft between her side and their side. I guarantee that most of the MAGA constituents were doing the same about her position. Given the stasis she created with her dismissiveness, there was nowhere to go with those in opposition. She was completely incurious.
Don’t get me wrong,as a trans person, I find many of the MAGA positions abhorrent. However, most of the folks that hold positions that can likely harm me are not my enemy. They are my fellow citizens and opponents coming at social issues from a completely different perspective. Opponents are persuadable if I acknowledge what is important to them. That said, unless I try to understand the proponents of oppositional viewpoints from their perspective, our divide will continue to worsen. Rather than cut them off as the optometrist did, I set my judgments aside, and seek to understand where they are coming from via a couple of practices.
Adopting a ‘Beginner’s Mind’
For anyone practicing meditation or taking on spiritual practices rooted in Buddhism ‘beginner’s mind’ is a recognized fundamental in which we approach the world through a beginner’s eyes, taking in every engagement as if it is our first experience. Setting aside all of my previous knowledge and judgments, I approach each perspective as I engage them. I allow each voice, for at least that moment of consideration, to be my mentor so I can take in and fully examine what they are sharing. My practice, when asking questions, is to obtain a pure understanding of them and their drivers.
Providing Empathy
By empathy I do not mean sympathy, feeling bad for them. I mean I attempt to walk a mile in their shoes. If I was them, why does that point of view make sense? What are my drivers, my fears, my passions? How am I the hero of my own story, given that perspective? Again, I do not have to believe in or even agree with their point of view. I simply am seeking to understand it.
Growing Our Confidence
When mentoring more junior folks, in my professional capacity, I give them confidence-building assignments. The assignments are designed to stretch them from their comfort zone, yet lead to a successful conclusion. Once they complete the challenge I give them a larger, more complex assignment. Incrementally they grow their capabilities. It’s a great way to build confidence.
Unfortunately, life does not serve up challenges in bite sized digestible increments. While most days we are capable and experienced enough to navigate life’s challenges. Life will regularly serve up a challenge for which we do not have the skills, knowledge and / or experience to effectively navigate on our own. Early in my career I was the engineering manager for a biotech company responsible for a small team of engineers charged with improving manufacturing operations. The business that we supported was underperforming and under duress. Many of the business’s quality and delivery issues were caused by the manufacturing organization’s performance. I reported to the director of operations, who in turn reported to the vice president of the business. One morning I came into work to find the vice president sitting at my desk. He told me that the operations director had been let go. He congratulated me on my promotion to director and left me to pick up the pieces.
While I had several years under my belt of managing small teams, I was in no way prepared to take over a complex, multifunctional organization of 120 people ranging from PhDs to hourly workers and managing relationships with pharmaceutical customers. The position would have been a difficult adjustment in good times. However, we were poised to undergo a multi-year transformation to shift the business from reagent grade to medical grade [injectable] products. It required a substantial increase in quality which required changes to our processes, radical increases in level of professionalism and expertise, and substantial improvements to manufacturing facilities. I had no idea what I was doing.
Suspend Self-Critique — This new situation required me to operate at a level far beyond my current abilities and experience. I had huge knowledge gaps. Mistakes were an inevitability. Rather than live in fear of the mistakes, I accepted up front that I would make them. Rather, I focused on being prepared to mitigate my screw up via quick recovery in order to not lose momentum. Suspending self-critique helps us to avoid decision making and action paralysis. Those around me were depending on my leadership. It would have been a disservice to my stakeholders to slow everything down so I could effectively grow into the position. Rather, I made decisions and took actions using the knowledge I had at hand and rapidly adjusted when it became clear that I had made a mistake, integrating the lessons on the fly. This approach helped develop my confidence in my ability to recover.
Lean Heavily on What You Do Know — Having spent a year as engineering manager, I understood the technology and general processes. I had established a broad network both within my organization and within R&D and the sales-marketing organizations. To effectively fulfill the requirements of the position I needed to deepen the external relationships and convert my peer relationships into my direct reports. I also had previous experience starting up and running operations for another company. I was able to leverage this knowledge as a place to start.
Generalize Other Experiences — I had plenty of design engineering experience as well as both engineering and operations management from previous roles in other companies. I also had 6 years of military experience leading in intense, rapidly shifting situations under my belt. None of those experiences directly helped me with this position. However, all of it could be generalized into some general learnings in people’s reactions and performance, technology development, level of effort in making big changes, that I could apply to my current situation.
Build a Support Team — No leader is an island. I have learned over the years that none of my good ideas became great without lots of scrutiny and development in the crucible of constructive critique. I did not have to know everything all at once. I wish that I had understood that better in those days.
It is important to surround yourself with those that bring out the best in you and can give you insights about your arena of responsibility.
- Coaches — Coaches focus on your personal and professional development and success. They will employ discovery tools that help you do discovery on key aspects of yourself and focus on areas for development.
- Mentors — Mentors are seasoned professionals that have traveled the path that you are on. They may not have your exact experience. But their counsel will help you chart your course. I have, during multiple parts of my career, mentored others giving them my counsel on how to problem solve complex challenges, how to approach big organizational problems, effective ways to navigate specific roles, and so on. Mentors can be invaluable for navigating unknown waters.
- Consultants — Consultants are experts in particular areas. They are expert guns-for-hire that provide their expertise for a fee. In my time as a consultant I’ve been hired to support enterprise transformation, lead enterprise program management, build PMOs, provide change management support, and build Strategy & Ops teams. Consultants give you a leg up in arenas that you need to build capabilities for which you have no internal expertise or augment enterprise efforts. For the transformation effort, since I had no experience at the time, I hired a consultant to facilitate building the strategy.
- Experts — We are surrounded by experts. We just need to tap into their knowledge and experience. At that time I had no experience with procurement, warehousing, or product scaling from small batch to large batch operations. But I was now responsible for them. Fortunately our procurement manager had deep expertise. Early in the effort we analyzed the greatest pain points and prioritized the areas to resolve. So I had the luxury of becoming an expert in areas one at a time.
- Execution Focused Teams — It’s likely that the work you are doing may go across functions, activities, and / or areas of expertise. So putting together a team that develops expertise in the effort provides both a way to execute and another lens for how to assess the work.
- Stakeholders — Stakeholders come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They include executive decision makers, customers, partners, users, employees, and so on. They may not be able to frame up what you need to do but they will tell you what is important to them. Prioritizing their wants and needs helps you to structure and prioitize the effort that you are undertaking.
Learn from Your Mistakes — Accept that you will make mistakes. Some of them will be big with horrible consequences. I have already talked about identifying mistakes quickly and pivoting toward a more healthy direction. It’s critical that we learn from those mistakes and adjust your approach. So formalizing an analysis on mistakes made can be incredibly helpful in soaking in the lesson. My approach to work and life is largely based on the learnings from the mistakes I have made. My successes have built my confidence but have not taught me much.
The transformation I led as director of operations at that biotech company delivered many personal and professional lessons. It stands as both one of my greatest successes and abject failures. The transformation itself was utterly successful. We turned around a flagging organization and gave it new life in the medical grade market. Unfortunately, my take no prisoners approach turned over most of the management team. Looking back on that effort, if I had handled things differently I could have developed many of those managers into the leaders that they needed to be. No matter what good I have done since, I have had to live with the guilt of my poor, hard nosed leadership style at the time.
Pursuing Our Passions
With my simple purpose, I can satisfy my three conditions of satisfaction in a lot of different ways and generally will adapt to whatever my current situation and work requires. That said, there are things that I love to do. There is nothing like injecting the juices of passion in my life to remind myself of the joy of my purpose.
Things that really energize me include tackling complex problems within complex systems, learning about and understanding new arenas, packaging up complex concepts in accessible, easy-to-understand treatments, writing, and adventures small and large. Engaging in these sorts of activities stirs my creative juices and energizes me.
Ideally, our purpose, our passions, and the day-to-day stuff we need to get done is one circle in which all three areas are in perfect parity. Ideally. This ideal might be achieved by a few, disciplined, singularly focused individuals that devote themselves to a purpose that is rooted in their passions and to the exclusion of all other efforts. However, most of us live in an imperfect world. No position I have ever held was devoid of tedious or boring tasks. And, as much as I thrive in a clean, well kept home, I have no love of cleaning. Work we have to do does not always align directly with our purpose. But it has to be done. The line I draw between contributing to make a difference and paying my bills is tortured. I can establish a relationship. However, that does not make me love paying bills.
I am passionate for well rendered stories whether written, told, or visualized in movies or series. I have favorite writers, directors, and actors who have performed nobly in service of the stories that they tell. However, this passion has very little to do with my purpose other than to inform my own writing style.
Often, our purpose, our passions and the work before us occupy separate arenas. However, occasionally we can find a sweet spot in which our purpose, our passions, and the work before us collide. Kismet. I seek out those sweet spots where I am on purpose, in passion, and productive. Writing these articles is one of my sweet spots. Whenever my energy and focus is ebbing, I try to find a passion to draw into my efforts. It immediately revitalizes me.
Being an Ambassador
Finally, to up your purpose game you can step into ambassadorship. An ambassador represents and promotes. In this case, you are promoting your purpose. Since my purpose is contribution I am an ambassador for service to causes greater than ourselves. I advocate for aligned, strategic efforts to provide for a communal good. For work it is the organization’s strategic goals. For life, it is my community’s larger causes.
Beyond advocating for these communal efforts I provide guidance and tools for bringing people together and aligning them to a mission. Additionally, I have developed a practical expertise in change management which focuses a set of tools and practices to inform, guide and align individuals to the mission at hand. Finding ways to be an ambassador forces you to truly understand your purpose and its implications.
Is Your Purpose Relevant?
Purpose is our North Star. It drives us in a direction and lets us know when we are off track. It is the catalyst for action and tracker of progress. While your purpose is critical to who you are, effectively applying that purpose in any particular moment requires that the expression of that purpose is relevant to that moment.
One of my purposes is as a parent. As a parent, my purpose is to support my child providing her the tools and experiences she needs to be a happy, satisfied, successful adult. How I apply and express that purpose changed as my daughter matured and developed her ability to navigate more substantial challenges. When my daughter was beginning her education I focused, in part, on her ability to effectively complete basic math functions — adding, subtracting, etc. When she got her first car in high school I taught her how to set up and maintain a simple budget, translating simple math functions into a necessary life skill. When she was young, fell down, got a boo boo, I would hold her, kiss the scrape, and put a bandaid on it to make it all better. As she got older I showed her how to treat her wounds so they wouldn’t get infected. The way that I parented changed to be relevant to the situation.
Extending that example, what happened to my parental purpose when she achieved adulthood? Did it end? Any parent can tell you, of course not. One does not cease being a parent when their offspring becomes an adult. However, what we have to offer as a parent to an adult has to change to an adult-to-adult relationship, or risks becoming irrelevant.
Applying my purpose with relevance looks different when applied to different aspects of my life. My contribution to my family will have a different feel than my contribution to my neighborhood. The structure of my contribution will be different for my professional work than it will be when I am volunteering. Effectively applying my purpose requires that my engagement be appropriate to the circumstance. Circumstance changes both with the arena of focus and over time. So must our approach to manifesting our purpose.
We have no power to manifest our purpose if it is not relevant. Just as we yearn for purpose, we also strive for relevance, or risk being disenfranchised. My daughter is a graphic artist. One of her purposes is to deliver novel, aesthetically compelling expressions of art into the world. Her boyfriend is a Bioengineering PhD candidate. When his laboratory has social gatherings, imagine how irrelevant she feels given very little of her purpose is relevant to biomolecular musings and complaints about academic politics.
Purpose is the Nucleus of Leadership
You may have noticed that most of my examples in this article have been situations in which I was either in a corporate or parental leadership position. That is not an accident. Taking on a purpose is part and parcel to leadership, even if the only thing you want to lead is yourself. There is no ‘leadership’ without purpose. Conversely, purpose demands leadership, in manifesting the qualities within yourself that are required to meet your purpose. In my case, I have always been fascinated with leadership qualities and applications. I have made professional career decisions that have forced me to develop leadership qualities and experiment with what and what does not work in expressing that leadership. Regardless of the situation, chosen leadership style, or the stakes involved, whether you rule, guide, or inspire, leadership starts and ends with purpose. As you develop your leadership style make sure that it aligns with your purpose.
Takeaways
Our purpose is our choice. Whether you generate your purpose based on your internal values and desires, or you adopt your purpose from an external source — your religion, your country, your community, — or your purpose is a bit of both, you choose your purpose and your relationship to it. Regardless, of its source your purpose becomes your north star with a narrative that is specific to your purpose.
Sourcing Our Purpose
Our purpose requires support and nurturing. We need to refresh ourselves and grow our capacity to fulfill our purpose. That means we need to empower ourselves to our purpose, build our competence in applying our capabilities, and pursue the things that squeeze the juice from our passions. Things that we can do to crystalize our purpose and ensure that it thrives include:
Embracing Our Agency — The first step in embracing agency is to adopt a mindset of self empowerment. Instead of focusing on the unassailable wall of things that we cannot do anything about, focus on what we can do to better our situation. See the thing that can be changed for the better and change it. No matter how small that change is, it is progress.
Focusing Our Attention — Limit what we care about. Limit even more what we will take action on. Let go of the rest as it is just noise. Develop a muscle for committing to action and holding yourself to meeting that commitment. This muscle teaches us to trust ourselves to move the needle on things we want to change.
Maintaining Our Curiosity — If life gives us anything to do it is learning new things. Take in every engagement as if it is our first experience seeing it through new eyes. This exercise allows you to learn new things even when operating within familiar circumstances. Attempt to walk a mile in the shoes of those with which you engage, even if you do not like them. Walking in those shoes will teach you about their drivers and values. Maintaining our curiosity helps to shed new light on old issues and may give you a new path.
Growing Our Confidence — Life will pitch us circumstances for which we are not prepared to navigate. During the course of normal life we can build our capacities incrementally by taking on more and more challenging efforts to build our confidence. However, when faced with challenges for which we do not have all the necessary capabilities, suspend self-critique, lean on what we know, generalize other experiences, and build a support team made up of coaches, mentors, consultants, experts and stakeholders. Finally, we will make mistakes. Learn from them and move on.
Pursuing Our Passions — Ensure that we inject our purpose with passion. While our passions largely be different from our purpose, there is an overlap. It is not cheating to include things we love to do in the discharge of our purpose. It is like throwing fast burning wood into the fire. The flame blossoms and roars with pretty colored flames. It brings us joy. Most certainly we will also have to progress with the non-passionate parts, but we will have the juice of passion flowing through us.
Ensuring We are Relevant — To meet the situation, the expression of our purpose must be calibrated to the situation in order to be relevant. Relevance is critical to our ability to make a difference with our purpose.
There is no ‘leadership’ without purpose. Conversely, purpose demands leadership, in manifesting the qualities within yourself that are required to meet your purpose. Regardless of the situation, chosen leadership style, or the stakes involved, whether you rule, guide, or inspire, leadership starts and ends with purpose.
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