Make it Purposeful

What’s the point?

There was a period last year where my work felt pointless. There was lots to do. There were good and valid reasons for all of it. But it felt pointless. I talked to a mentor about it, because at its worst it felt like dragging an anchor chain up a hill. He reconnected me to Purpose - At its best my work makes a difference. I’m all about raising people’s capacity to lead, and raise the capacity of others. When I lost sight of purpose everything felt like hard labour. With purpose in view, doing the same work makes sense and feels compelling.

Over the past few weeks I have been working with leaders who are mired in a huge volume of work. Many are dealing with the impact of COVID on rostering and service standards. For my clients in aged care, disability support and emergency response there are serious and severe consequences when teams are compromised.

Several have described exactly what I was feeling last year. Their work feels wearing and endless, with little sense of connection to purpose. For each of them, taking a bit of time to reestablish clarity of purpose and link the current transactional grind to it has added a boost to energy and brought a sense of joy back to the work.

How’s your work/purpose connection looking right now?