Purpose and Your Path Forward

Yesterday I attended another weekly zoom huddle of Institute of Coaching Fellows. A colleague and new friend, Rolf Pfeffer, led the discussion, crafted around a recent Manfred Kets de Vries article in Harvard Business Review, on “Finding Direction When You’re Feeling Lost.” The author identified five focal points for finding one's direction: purpose, belonging, competence, control and transcendence.

Though breakout rooms were encouraged to discuss any of the five elements, every group discussed purpose. Conversations in every group, as reported out in the briefest of summaries, seemed to be totally energizing and engaged, relevant at personal and professional levels. Here are some snapshots:

·      purpose provides context, direction and navigation. It seems to be connected to and fueled by our values.

·      It provides meaning, regardless of the age of the person; in fact, it may change over time. Though generated or chosen by the person, it is influenced by many factors.

·      It provides a basis for identity formation and selection of the stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are, what we are up to and why.

·      It can work together with transcendence to shift our purpose from being about self to including self for the sake of a larger, community-affirming reason (moving from me to we to world).

Fascinating stuff. Purpose is larger and more open-ended than any goals we might set. It is the foundation for making meaning of one’s life. But not necessarily easy to get at. It turns out that when directly asked what one’s purpose is, many people can only muster silence and a blank stare. A more fruitful approach is to ask questions about what’s important and why, the direction that makes sense and gives energy and even joy, and when one has experienced flow states. Gentle probing, drawing inferences and testing hypotheses often yield insightful successive approximations to what we are about.

Research suggests that as we are connected to our purpose and that purpose becomes transcendent, our long-term felt sense of happiness and meaningfulness, as well as our impact, expand as well. For example, see Aaron Hurst’s The Purpose Economy. My late friend and colleague Roger Kaufman spent more than four decades researching and writing about this “mega” perspective, strategically planning for the impact of performance improvement efforts on the larger society. Bob Dunham, Founder of the Institute for Generative Leadership, has written about this developmental expansion extensively.

What are you about? What mark do you want to make on the world? how does your purpose inform you and shape your choices, stories and identity? Upon reflection, what (new) perspective do you have about this central topic? Do share. I think we all have lots to learn from each other.

#selfleadership #designyourlife #purpose