How Getting Clear on Your Personal Purpose Changes How You Lead

Most successful leaders know that it is essential to understand the power of having a clear Team Purpose. A team that knows its Purpose can work together more effectively and achieve more success.

As an organisation, we talk about helping leaders to build a high-performance culture with their teams by activating their people's potential. During the Alignment (1st) module of WoW, we help clarify the Team Purpose, which we'll talk about in a couple of weeks.

As humans, we don't just have a Team Purpose though. To be most effective, we need clarity and alignment on a series of Purpose statements that incorporate our Personal, Role/Job, Team, and Organisational Purposes. At JBL we use a model to talk about Purpose called the Purpose Pyramid. Much like a pyramid, you need a strong base to build from, or things can get a bit shaky later on. Team Purpose is a few layers up. The base and first level is Personal Purpose.

Why Personal Purpose Comes First

In order to achieve this alignment across all the purposes, you need a Personal Purpose first. Many people haven't got any clarity of theirs. When employees can see how all the Purposes link together, true performance really starts to unfold.

According to McKinsey, people who find their individual Purpose to be consistent with their jobs tend to get more meaning from their roles, making them more productive and more likely to outperform their peers. It's like they suddenly start being 'in the zone'. We have found it super meaningful to help leaders support and encourage their team members to find their Personal Purpose.

For the left-brainers, McKinsey's research also proved a positive correlation between the Purposefulness of employees and their company's EBITDA margin. So there's a clear commercial benefit to finding and hiring people who are clear on, and driven by, an aligned Personal Purpose to your team.

Purpose Is More Than Intention

Have you ever stopped to think about doing something on purpose? Most of us hear that phrase and think about being intentional. There is more to it than that, especially when you are trying to build a team that performs because it knows why it exists.

For me, purpose and authenticity turned out to be the same thing. I spent over twenty years not leading on purpose. I was good at the job, I climbed, and I still could not have told you why I was doing any of it. Finding my own purpose was a long piece of self-discovery, and until I did, I was constantly grappling with who I was and what I was actually for.

The Plan That Looked Like Purpose

It started when I left the military and travelled through Asia. I had always wanted to make a difference, and I decided the way to do it was to become the CEO of a large company. If you are in charge, I reasoned, you have the greatest influence over an organisation and its people.

So I spent a decade working my way up, and eventually landed a role as a General Manager, on track for the executive team. From the outside it looked like success. Inside, each day I put on a suit of armour and went into battle, never quite feeling I was being true to myself. I worked hard and still struggled to get the results I wanted, and the work brought me little joy.

By 2017 I was deeply unhappy despite having all the trappings of success. The waterfront house, the cars, the toys. I was running on willpower, close to burnout, and the harder I pushed the less I seemed to achieve. I had also realised something that shook my plan.

Even the CEO is not really in charge of the organisation. The purpose I had built my identity around was gone, and I had not yet found the real one.

Going Back to Basics

So I made a dramatic change. I left the GM role, packed up, and went back to basics to work out how I could make a difference with the experience I had. It was painful to let go of the things that had become my identity. It was also the moment the real work started.

During that reflection I realised my purpose was to make a difference, but not from the corner office. Twelve months later, while travelling through Latin America, some organisations I knew asked me to help them build leadership programmes and run workshops. My background in neuroleadership, facilitation, my MBA and my time as a corporate GM made me a good fit, and that is when I started supporting leaders seriously.

What I Found in Every Team

What I found was consistent. Team after team was falling short of its potential, and the barrier was rarely skill. It was a lack of trust and connection. The patterns I saw again and again were:

• Teams shielding themselves from each other
• New leaders who had inherited groups they did not yet understand
• Strategies that had shifted with no shared clarity on direction
• Uncertainty about who did what, despite huge collective ambition

The ambition was huge and the performance was flat. That question, what if I could show these teams how to have the conversations that actually change how they work together, became my purpose and my business. Lower the stress, rebuild the trust, and the performance follows.

Exploring Personal Purpose

A team is made up of people. Each of those people plays a different role in the team, bringing unique perspectives and inputs. Each role, even if identical on the org chart, employs an individual. That individual chose that role because of some reason.

I wanted to share a story about Charles, whose Personal Purpose, and the effects it had on his life, blew me away. He became one of the triggers for us to start creating a Personal Purpose tool to support the WoW programme.

Charles's Story

We met Charles* in one of our early WoW workshops. Charles grew up, the son of immigrants, in a household with five siblings, where money was always a challenge. There wasn't enough to go around and spending on big dinners out at restaurants was out of reach. Charles's parents were both working full time and his dad had two jobs, driving a cab at night to bring in some extra money.

When we asked him about his Personal Purpose and what had led him to it, we heard amazing detail of the moments in his childhood that had formed it. The stories of hardship they felt as a family, and injustices he felt needed resolving in the world.

Interestingly, during our research, we saw a strong correlation between people's sense of Purpose, what they felt was right and wrong, and their values. Many other people's Purpose was also strongly informed by an experience of pain or hardship that they believe needed to be addressed. Or positively influenced by a real example of something they valued or cherished.

Charles spoke about the moments when his stomach grumbled from hunger when he went to school without breakfast. Or the underwhelm that came from eating the same dish every night for a week,

"Because that was all there was."

He grew up without ever having eaten out just for enjoyment. He didn't complain when he said this. It was very matter-of-fact.

One event that he attached great significance to was his sixteenth birthday when his mother came to him in tears, apologising that she simply couldn't afford to buy him a cake, but that she had baked a pie for family dinner and put his name and the number 16 in pastry letters on top.

"It was better than any cake because she did it for me!" he said with a beaming smile.

Charles recognised how much his Mum would try with the little money they had. He saw her budgeting hard and feeding everyone as well as she could. He saw the personal touches during moments like the "pie/cake" event and he remembered them. They became part of his identity and energised him.

He also recognised that the values of hard work and generosity were key to succeeding in life. He promised himself that his Purpose was to make things different for his family and anyone who he interacted with.

From Childhood Hardship to a Multi-Six-Figure Business

Charles grew up with a dream of creating completely personal moments where he could see the light in people's eyes as he unveiled his latest creation just for them, just like he had experienced all those years ago with a few letters and a number on a pie. Eventually, he became an event planner and then an event director. Charles now runs a multi-six-figure corporate hospitality business catering to global and national events.

When we asked him to describe his Purpose and the way he approaches work, he was instant in his response,

"It's about making every person feel like I thought about them personally, and went the extra mile for them to have a great time, no matter whether I am working or not."

He elaborated,

"I didn't have the best upbringing and I missed out on a lot of things other kids had, but I never forgot that Mum went the extra mile every time to make moments special for us and even though we didn't have 2 cents, we were rich in love and effort towards each other. You can't teach that."

How Charles Leads His Team

Now Charles focusses on hiring people into his business who have a similar outlook. He doesn't require them to have come from a poor background but he specifically seeks out people who have a Purpose related to service and the satisfaction of others. He wants people who know WHY they are going the extra mile because hospitality is a tough business and you have to love what you do.

For Charles, the Purpose doesn't just extend to his customers. It is for his staff as well.

"We have a staff house support plan to help people save bit by bit for a deposit and we match it dollar for dollar. We ensure all our staff get to eat the same meal before our guests do at events so they can talk to guests about the menu and they also have full bellies to work, because a lot of them are struggling to make ends meet for their families. We recognise anniversaries, personal events like weddings and births with personal touches, and try to make everyone feel like we care about them in the same way my mum did about me."

Identity and Impact: The Two Key Factors

When we started the research on Purpose, we asked why it is important to know your personal Purpose, the Purpose of your job, the Purpose of your team and the Purpose your business. We landed on two significant factors: identity and impact.

As we saw, the way Charles was brought up significantly affected and continues to be part of his identity. He is who he is and the choices and way he lives his life are based on these experiences and his desire to identify as being someone who helps others. This is his Personal Purpose.

The job he does and the team he runs are part of his impact and the way he feels he is making a difference in the world. We will explore impact in future blogs.

What This Means for the Leaders You Lead

My twenty years of drift were not caused by a lack of ability. They were caused by chasing a purpose that was not mine. The same thing is almost certainly happening to some of your managers right now. Capable people, working hard, unclear on why, quietly heading for the same wall I hit.

You cannot hand someone their purpose. You can create the conditions where they find it, and you can notice the ones running on willpower before they burn out. That is not a soft nicety. It is how you keep your best leaders, and how you turn flat performance into a team that moves because it knows what it is for.

This suggests that employees are more likely to choose a company that aligns with their Purpose, and it also means that the exercise of finding and discussing personal Purpose with your employees is extremely valuable, because the landscape has shifted for many since they joined teams.

Action Tips: Starting the Conversation

Discussing a Personal Purpose takes work but is also a fantastic way to build trust and alignment. Try these conversations to uncover the Personal Purpose of your team members:

• If you are onboarding new people, discuss and understand what their personal Purpose is. What's their personal why? What are their values? And if they can't articulate them, help them to uncover them.
• Have 1:1s with your team members and ask them about their upbringing and the part of their life that they feel has created who they are today.
• Ensure you carve out some time to identify what your own personal Purpose is, and share that with your team too. They will feel more connected to you when they know why you do what you do and what led you to being who you are today.
• Watch for the people on your team who are working hard but getting little joy from it. They may be chasing a purpose that is not truly theirs. A direct conversation about what energises them, and what they feel they are actually for, can shift things quickly.

Next week we'll be exploring the concept of Job Purpose and why people do the jobs they do and their contributions to the team. We'll also help to explain one of the key purposes of your role as a leader to help you create a high-performance culture.

Want to see how this works with your managers? Here is how I work with GMs.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.

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