Image by Joshua Woroniecki from Pixabay
Do you have a good sense of your leadership purpose? If you are not sure what I mean and want to see your leadership career progress, there is a good reason to read on. According to Korn Ferry, leaders with a clear purpose not only reach more challenging roles but also achieve greater leadership tenure (average being 18 years). Below I share other benefits of being clear about your leadership purpose, provide an example with my own purposes, and also provide a step by step guide to help you determine yours.
The importance of meaning
Employees are increasingly looking for meaning and purpose in their work and they are right to do so – not only because it provides fulfilment and motivation but because research shows that employees who find their jobs highly meaningful are more likely to have received a pay-rise in the past year, and are also more likely to have received a promotion in the past six months. Interestingly, if you are a leader, the research also shows that employees who place a higher value on meaningful work occupy more senior positions and stay longer in organisations.
One of the key ways to find meaning is to be clear on your leadership purpose which also has a personal benefit to you – Biomedical research confirms that having a purpose allows you to live longer, and live better—and thus, be your best self at work. In relation to your career, your purpose enables you to know your ‘true north’ when making career decisions as well as then being able to share with key career decision makers which can help them to act as sponsors and advocates for you.
Clarifying your leadership purpose
Follow the steps below to explore and clarify your own leadership purpose:
- Values that underpin – Understanding the fundamental values that drive us and principles that guide us helps us to know what really matters to us as a foundation to our purpose. If you don’t already know what your values are, a values elicitation exercise if the first step. Your values help you make decisions and guide your actions. They will shape how you enact your leadership purpose.
- Value you BRING – what is the unique combination of a few key personal strengths and attributes that enable you to add value while, at the same time, fulfil you, enabling you to feel engaged in what you are doing?
- Value you ADD – when you use the above characteristics, who or what are you positively impacting and how, whether that is an individual, a situation, or the world?
- Value accelerating ENVIRONMENT – In what situations, environments, or with what context are you best able to bring your unique characteristics to add value?
Once you’ve explored these questions, your purpose will be able to be captured in a sentence that sits in the overlap of each of the above. You can now test it by considering if it is strong enough and specific enough to help you know your next right career move.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
An example
As an example, my purpose is to free others up to lead in their careers, businesses and lives.
This is shaped in part by my values, including freedom, ease, growth, responsibility and achievement. My unique combination of strengths and characteristics that enable me to add value while being engaged include caring, listening, striving for quality, empathy, enabling insight. The value I add through being guided by my values and using my combination of strengths and characteristics is to positively impact individuals (who then positively impact who they have relationships with) and teams (and ultimately organisations) is to provide thinking space, structure, attention and validation to enable them to grow and to achieve goals. The context and environment where I can best do this is for people working in a business environment who care about their career, results and lives.
Purpose is not just about performance
My experience of working on purpose with leaders as part of their career development means it is worth me pointing out that your purpose is NOT likely to be just related to performance which can be a leader’s first thought. Performance and purpose are related, but they are not interchangeable. Performance is WHAT you achieve, but your purpose is WHY you are inspired achieve it.
I enable others to achieve/perform (individuals, teams, organisations) .. that’s good performance for me, the WHAT. The WHY for me (what inspires me to do it) is that I want as many people as possible to be able to lead rich, fulfilling lives and I know that I have the ability to help them understand what that looks like for them and to help them overcome blockers to get there.
Finally, if you’d like some support to clarify your own leadership purpose, do get in touch… and if you do follow the above steps and are able to define your purpose, I’d love for you to share it.
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