(E15) Leading with purpose
Do you know the why behind what you’re doing as a leader? I don’t mean the organisational why, but your personal why. Your purpose.
In this episode of the leaders with impact podcast we explore the importance of having clarity in your purpose, how that helps organisational performance and what you can do to make sure yours has maximum impact.
So often people will tell you their job title, they’ll explain what’s in their portfolio or what functions they’re accountable for, and they’ll go into detail of the practical delivery side of things - but rarely do they explain why.
Our comfort can be found in describing the hows and whats of our work. But connection comes through the whys.
Having clarity in your purpose is an important first step if you’re trying to make a greater impact as a leader. As it is in this that we start to find the golden thread that goes through everything you do as a leader. It becomes the north star to guide your decisions and actions. It underpins your narrative. And it just makes everything else a whole lot easier.
In episode six we talked about why you need your own personal leadership strategy and the benefits that brings to you and your organisation. In this episode we will hone in one element discussed, which is the purpose piece. Because that’s the starting point of everything you do as a leader.
Why does this matter to the organisation you work for?
Research shows that employees working with a leader who they feel has clarity in their purpose is 70% more satisfied and 56% more engaged with their work.
More satisfied and engaged staff, we know, means better performance, greater productivity and delivery, higher morale, better customer satisfaction, improved reputation with stakeholders. The ripple effects go far.
When we’re talking about defining your purpose, we mean getting to the heart of what is the unique perspective or approach you are bringing to your role. If you were to leave tomorrow, what is the gap others will notice isn’t being filled. It’s the thing that’s so innate to you, you’ve probably struggled to articulate it before now. But once you do, it’ll feel like one of those cryptic puzzles where everything suddenly slips into place. It will help you with decision making. It will help guide you in the next role you do and the one after that. Because your purpose is unique to you as a person, not your organisation.
And as your purpose is unique to you, so is the way in which you express it. You’re not looking for a word-perfect statement of intent, but instead think of it as a proclamation of what people are going to get from you and what you’re going to get yourself.
How do you tap into your purpose - do we even all need to have a clear purpose? To answer the second question - yes, we do. It might not be ground-breaking, and that’s ok. It just needs to really mean something to us. We need to know why it’s our purpose and why it’s unique to us rather than something that any leader on the exec corridor would say.
But tapping into your purpose is trickier. It’s like finding the perfect pair of jeans, you have to try different styes, different sizes, understand how you’re going to be wearing them and does it fit with your lifestyle, you might have to ask a few trusted people how they look, you might wear them with the label on for a bit to decide if the fits right.
It can take a long time to land on your purpose. And finding it starts with your stories - moments that have impacted you in your life or career:
things that happened when you were growing up, when you felt the most content or connected
challenges that you’ve had to deal with in the past, experiences that have really tested you
the interests or activities that really light you up, stuff that you’re passionate about
it may be asking others about their stories of you, when you have been at your most unique self.
And from these stories - write them down - what you thought, how you felt, evoke all your senses and make note of the words that come to mind as you think back to those times. And if it’s other people’s stories, write words and statements that resonate to you.
What you should start to see are themes and patterns. There might be specific words or feelings evoked by words that stand out as meaningful to you.
Capture everything in whatever way helps you to process your thinking.
And what you’ll have at the end are perhaps a handful of words from which you can start pulling together your own purpose statement.
And this is a work in progress. Like a strategy it’s not something you write to file away and forget. It’s something you revisit and might tweak and change over time. As you learn more about yourself and the person and leader you are becoming.
Knowing and leading from your purpose will help you to:
grow as a leader - because it provides a direction and encouragement to do the hard things
show the real you - we often talk about authentic leadership, but that can be focussed on style rather than substance, your purpose allows others to understand what makes you tick and allows you to adapt your style to make things happen aligned with your purpose
be grounded as a leader - the circumstances and context in which you operate will always change, and when we don’t lead in a way connected to our purpose we can let these situations run away with us. Our purpose provides a foundation to the way we operate, it helps us not to compete with others, as we understand the unique role we play - whether that’s at work or home or socially.
change the way you communicate and connect with others. They see the cause rather than the task. And will believe in you more as the leader that will make change happen.
So, if you’ve not really spent anytime considering your personal strategy before, if you’ve struggled to answer the question when someone asks why you do what you do, if you’re finding it hard to articulate the change you’re trying to make in your team or organisation - maybe you think you have clarity, but you’re failing to take other people with you - start working through what your purpose is.
It’s going to help with your personal leadership strategy. It’s going to define your leadership brand. It’s going to help you understand what you need from a self-leadership point of view. It’s going to help give you a voice to what you’re striving to achieve.
Think of those ripple effects again.
And if you’re responsible in any way for identifying or developing leaders, help them to make a better impact by share why leading with purpose makes a difference. Support them to explore and clarify for themselves what they’re all about.
I find in a lot of the coaching work I’m doing at the moment - particularly at the moment, when the organisational challenges have only increased post pandemic - bringing our conversations back to purpose has provided the aha moments and thrown up different thinking that feels right. Whether it’s someone worrying about how they are going to take challenging Board members with them through a change programme OR someone becoming more ruthless with their day-to-day self-management so that they have time and space to work on the things that they can only do (instead of working in the weeds and disempowering others).
Bringing it back to purpose provides a new lens in which you can start to make the impact you want to make as a leader.
Resources and helpful links
If you want breakthroughs like this, my coaching packages provide that safe space to explore and test different ways in which you want to show up as a leader. And if you want to get clarity on your purpose and strategy, a VIP intensive day could be the answer. Drop me an email lwi@sundayskies.com or book a free call.
