What is Your Purpose?

Each of us has an incredible amount of potential inside and the secret to unlocking it in your life is by discovering your purpose. The question I have for you is more about your purpose, “Why do you do what you do?”

Having a vision for your life is vitally important as it’s your guiding star that will assist you as you make life’s decisions. Your purpose though, is how you journey through your life, how you interact with others and how you bring your unique “you” to the world around you.

Another way of viewing this is to think about your vision as being “what you’re doing” while your purpose is “why you are doing it”. It’s the why that is often the hardest to answer. For example, many of us can articulate the vision of the company we work for, but can we say anything about the why? It bears thinking a lot about.

For instance, I may have a vision to build a world leading domain company, but I may view my personal purpose is to help others become financially free. Yes, I’m building my company but I’m doing it by assisting partners get free from financial bondage. Nothing makes me happier than when I see a partner reach a personal financial milestone.

Another person in the organisation agrees with the vision of building a world leading domain company, but what gets them excited is writing awesome code that helps partners understand statistics. And yet another person may buy into the overarching vision but what they love is making sure that every “I” is dotted, and every “t” is crossed so partners are paid correctly.

If you want to unlock the full potential of those you lead, then let them express their personality and purpose towards the overall vision for the organisation. Too many companies provide grandiose vision statements, followed by a job description that is more about putting people in boxes rather than unleashing their full potential.

Why is it that in some organisations when the end of day comes the office becomes an instant ghost town while in other organisations people stay back late to help a colleague finish a project? The first organisation doesn’t have bad people working, they have bad leaders leading who care for those they lead. When a person’s personal purpose clicks with an organisation’s then you get potential going kinetic!

A key leadership task is to spend time with your team and to identify what really gets them excited. Great leaders then work out how to best unleash those unique passions in the direction of the organisation’s vision. Could you imagine working for a company that is genuinely interested in understanding that your paycheck is not the only reason why you chose to work for them?

Don’t get me wrong, paychecks ultimately pay the bills and put food on the table but they aren’t what keeps you working at 2am in the morning. The deep sense of satisfaction that comes from working in an organisation that desires to see your purpose fulfilled as much as the corporate targets is what makes all the difference.

I come back to the question I asked at the beginning of this article; Why do you do what you do? I would encourage you to take some time this weekend to consider one of life’s most perplexing questions.

Have a great weekend!
Michael