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Hi there, Mauriciana here, founder of the Mindsight Academy, Eurocoach to Executives, Leaders, Enpreneurs, and a Neuroleadership Trainer using Insights from Neuroscience to help you deliver results by learning to work smarter, be in control of your brain, manage yours and other people's emotions, change behaviors, flourish and exceed expectations. I am so pleased to be back here with another episode of Lead to Excel podcast. If you haven't subscribed to this podcast yet, please subscribe. Use this opportunity and subscribe to it wherever you listen to it. Our topic today is the role of purpose in leadership. Oh gosh, I love this topic so much. Because as you'll find out, purpose is absolutely everything for you to be able to live a fulfilled life and lead at a high level. So let's start with this quote by Mark Twain. The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why. The role of purpose in leadership is an integral yet often taken for granted function of leadership. And when I talk about leadership, as usual, I talk about every single person being a leader. Whether you're leading yourself in terms of your career or whether you're leading a team, you are a leader. Gaining clarity of purpose requires greater attention if it is to be evident in both the corporate and the societal orientations of leaders in organizations. Outstanding leadership is about having vision, mission, shared goals, objectives, and plans to achieve lasting positive impact on an organization? They are all in some way implicitly associated with purpose. Some common questions are Are vision, mission, objectives, and goals the same as purpose? And we're going to answer those in this podcast. Do personal and social purposes have a role to play in leader-led relationships within the context of organizational life? And we'll also answer that question in this podcast. So let's get in by starting to define the difference between vision, mission, and purpose. So, what is vision? Vision describes what the world would look like in future if you or your organization are successful. It's answering the question where you as a company are headed or where you as a person want to be in the future. Vision is the essential ingredient for successful leadership, successful career, and a successful business. There's no substitute, absolutely none, because without it, influence would be difficult to achieve by anyone or any organization. This is especially true in business. Unless you as a leader have a clear picture of the destination where you want your team, your organization, or business to be, in let's say three to five years, you've got nothing that will inspire people to follow you. Leaders create things that didn't exist before. This is a quote by Seth Godin. And this is really important, especially in these times, because I've heard so many people say that, oh my god, I'm not doing any planning this year. Last year I planned and see what happened. This year I'm not planning. If you live your life without a plan and just go with the flow, what you're in essence doing is creating more uncertainty for yourself. And I will explain this. Our brain doesn't like uncertainty because it perceives uncertainty as a threat. There's a lot of uncertainty in the world which we have no control about. But the one control you have is yourself. So if you give your brain something to work with, what you're doing is creating control and certainty for your brain. Then you've got a focus. And for goodness sake, you can change your goals. Goals can be changed, goals are not fixed, which is, I think, the problem with so many people because a lot of people believe that once you set goals, that's it, it's done. No, when you set goals, if you need to change them, adjust them, it's okay, but you're still giving yourself giving your brain something to work with, which then enables it to find solutions for you, come up with different ideas because your brain will start wiring to come up with is to come up with a path for you to go on, and it will create ideas, create things that will enable you to take the right actions that will lead you to where you want to go and enable you achieve your goals. But as I explain a lot of times, even if you don't achieve your goal in that particular time you set, look back to where you started from. You will find out that you've grown, you've progressed, and you've learned so much, which is powerful. Let's carry on with the definition of vision. All leadership involves change to some extent, and your vision is a picture of what the world would look like when you have when you have accomplished that change. It's about the lasting impact that you plan to create for your community and the world. An example might be a world where all children can thrive, or a world where there's gender balance and female leaders thrive at work. That's my passion, I must tell you that. But since it's about the change that you're working towards, a vision cannot stand alone. You still need to describe how you plan on making that change occur or happen. There has to be a plan for what you're doing to make that vision a reality. That's where mission comes into play. And this is why I created the So Higher E Toolkit at the Mindsight Academy. Do check it out. It's a powerful e toolkit that takes you through all these steps, and purpose is in the first toolkit, which is self-discovery, and I'll talk about it a bit later. But check out the So Hire E Toolkit at the Mindsight Academy. So, what is mission? If your vision determines what change you aspire to create in the future, your mission, on the other hand, answers the question, how? As in, how are you going to make that vision a reality? How am I as a person going to behave or how are we as an organization going to behave? How are we going to win? How do we define the objectives to measure whether we are making progress? The point is that mission sits inside vision and describes the plan of action. Your mission is what impact will be observed when you've achieved your mission. With vision and mission, we have the what and the how respectively, but we still need to answer the why. That's where purpose comes in. So purpose now is why you do what you do. Some describe it as why you exist. It pushes you to focus on action rather than linger in the inspirational. From an organizational point of view, purpose works best when it articulates your why as an organization, which in turn helps your employees and stakeholders connect their personal purpose to yours. It explains why your organization began in the first place and why it's on the journey that it's on. It explains what legacy you want to live or what opportunity you're seeking to leverage. So now you can see how these three elements nest inside each other. We have the vision, which is the what, we have the mission, which is the how, and then we have the purpose, which is the why. Purpose, which is what we're talking about specifically in this podcast, keeps you focused on why you do what you do. Vision aligns you with your goal, and mission empowers you to accomplish it. So, how do we speak purpose? You're asking the question, why do we exist? Then the mission is how would we act on our purpose? And then the vision is what will the world look like when we've completed our mission. A recent Gallup report says that millennials don't just work for a paycheck, they want a purpose. For millennials, work must have meaning. They want to work for organizations with a mission and a purpose. The quality of the purpose underpins the achievement of the desired goals and results. All highly effective leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Angela Markle, Jacinda Arden, and Richard Branson all have a clear sense of purpose. A leader with purpose is concerned to align their own personal values with their definition of success and achieve a sense of meaning and well-being in attaining their goals. Built to Last by Collins and Poras explains that an enduring sense of purpose is the most significant reason why just a few organizations are able to sustain outstanding performance over a long period. So a person will only feel fulfilled and gain a sense of well-being and purposefulness if they take actions that maximize their potential. So understanding how leaders with purpose define success and how they use this as a means to guiding their approach and against which they rate their progress is fundamental to any leader's ability to truly make significant impact. So, as I said previously, leader with purpose is concerned to align their own personal values with their definition of success and achieve a sense of meaning and well-being in attaining their goals. So let's look at the importance of purpose in leadership performance and impact. A sense of purpose, not a specific set of characteristics, is the key to successful leadership. However, behavior patterns and emotional intelligence can act as barriers or facilitators to purpose. Facilitators and barriers exist both within and outside the person. Facilitators and barriers exist both within, that is with that is inside the brain, so your thoughts, your beliefs, your values, and all that, and also outside, which are the external barriers that you encounter that are arising due to the pandemic and the economy. The key internal facilitators is mainly to do with the leader style. So that is their behavior patterns, their thought processes and emotions. And this is why emotional intelligence is vital to being able to be effective as a leader, and understanding your purpose is one of the main tools or first tools I would say in creating self-awareness. So leadership style only acts as a moderator of success and not as a direct predictor of it. So those that focus specifically on leadership style will definitely limit your ability and effectiveness as a leader. Being purposeful is not the same as leading with purpose. And that's worth remembering and actually worth noting. Leading with purpose means the leader is self-aware, which enables such a leader to own their criteria for success and gives them a focus on objectives beyond the task, goal, job role, or immediate business needs. Leaders with purpose define success as leaving a legacy which goes beyond business and financial objectives. A sense of purpose develops from life experiences and is determined from a person's values, goals, and identity. This gives clarity and meaning of one's purpose as they often arise from overcoming life's challenges or the influence from other people, from society, from life, and also from careers. Doctors have even found that people with a clear purpose in their lives are less prone to disease. And the question is why? I explain this in more detail in the Saw Higher The Self-Discovery Part 1 of the e toolkit. Purpose is increasingly being touted as the key to navigating the complex, volatile, ambiguous world that we face today, where strategy is ever changing and a few decisions are obviously right or wrong. Fewer than 20% of leaders, it has been discovered, have a strong sense of their own individual purpose, which is a big shame indeed. As a result of this, they limit their aspirations and often fail to achieve their most ambitious professional and personal goals, and a lot of this is down to fear of failing, fear of rejection, and all the fears that go along with it. Gaining clarity on your leadership purpose and putting it to use is key to achieving your personal and professional goal. Self-discovery, of which purpose is the key element, is the cornerstone of our new program at the Mindsight Academy, which I mentioned previously called Sow Higher E Toolkit, because self-discovery is the key for leaders to accelerate growth and deepen their impact in both your personal and professional life. Indeed, the single most important initial task for every leader to undertake is to be able to articulate your purpose and develop the courage to live it. Your leadership purpose is who you are and what makes you distinctive. This quote by Oliver Wendelholm sums it up. It says, Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us unplayed. Please don't be the one that has unplayed music at the end of your time on this earth. Whether you're a startup entrepreneur, a leader in an organization, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a pharmaceutical sales rep, a product specialist in asset management, your purpose is basically your brand. It's what drives you to excel in life. It's not what you do, it's how you do your job and why. That is the strengths and passions that you bring to your role or your business. At its core, your leadership purpose springs from your identity, the essence of who you are. When you have a clear sense of who you are, everything else follows naturally. What happens when the thing is done or the career is over? This is a question I get a lot from mainly people who are coming up to retiring age, or even people who've lost their jobs, want to change careers or lost their business. Does that mean the person no longer has a purpose? I faced this when I had to close my business years ago. I thought that that was it, that was the purpose, that was what I was meant to be doing. But what I had missed was that yes, the purpose hadn't necessarily changed, but the way to get to it was what had changed. But I just did not understand that at the time. The question is when you get to this stage, are these people then expendable from life either because their career is over or because they've lost the job or their business? Purpose is the natural flow of our gifts as they serve those we touch. Sometimes we may inhibit or ignore this flow, but it's always there seeking expression. How it manifests depends on our ability to open up to it and the particular circumstances we may be facing at the time. Purpose is constant. The manifestation of purpose is always changing to serve this situation. And this is where I would really encourage you to be open to that manifestation, to be open to change. Life changes, life is not constant as we've seen, as we've experienced. But understanding your purpose is really important, and being able to really work and be flexible to the changing situation, but still focused on what you want to achieve is extremely important. Purpose releases energy, the higher the purpose, the greater the energy. Purpose also frees us. The more profound the purpose, the greater the sense of freedom. Purpose opens up possibilities. So some questions for you to start asking yourself to help you really define and have clarity on your purpose are why am I here? What is my story? Who do I need? What is at stake? What problem do I want to solve? How can I help? You cannot change your past, but you can create a better future. Make a conscious decision today to stop defining yourself by what you are not. Today is a new day with new opportunities, so start living a better story. Be accountable to your future self. Live with a deeper sense of responsibility with the amazing talents, genius, and strengths that you have been given. Clarity of purpose gives you clarity in decision making. So if you want to know more about understanding your purpose, head to the Mindsites Academy. I'm going to leave a link below. Enroll on the first mini course, which is self-discovery. Or you can buy the bundle. In fact, when you get the bundle, you get the four different mini courses for the price of three, which is absolutely a fantastic deal. And these are affordable. I've made these affordable because every single person needs this. Self-discovery helps us to identify our abilities, but also how we can leverage and develop them. In the end, if you don't participate in self-discovery, your goals, core beliefs, and values will be dictated by those whom you associate with or by society in general. It's for this reason and the reasons mentioned above why self-discovery is so important, of which purpose is one of them. I'm going to end with this quote by Richard Branson. He says, if you are building a business without purpose, not only are you missing the point, but you are most likely missing out on the journey, the excitement, and the profit, too. So I really hope that this podcast has helped you and actually given you a deeper understanding of why it's important to have a purpose and to plan and to set goals. Thank you once again for tuning in. And remember that if you haven't subscribed to this podcast, click on the button wherever you listen to it so that you don't miss an episode. And I would really appreciate you leaving a review as well or even a comment on the podcast or ideas of topics that you want me to talk about in future. I've got some exciting episodes coming up with some interesting guests that you really wouldn't want to miss. So, in this climate, wherever you are, do remember to keep safe, look after yourself, and I truly wish you perfect health. Stay limitless, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye for now.