The search for purpose.

If there’s one thing that rang loud and clear from our most recent Candidate Motivators Report it’s that people are looking for purpose in their work. In fact, 49% of respondents said a lack of purpose in their current roles motivated them to change employers (up from 30% the previous year).

In today’s ever-changing talent market, the rise of recession and ongoing layoffs, candidates have become savvier in their career choices, searching for certainty and stability. By helping your employees uncover their purpose you can fuel their passion, maintain their motivation and create more engaged and higher performing people. As more and more of us start working from home, it’s also important to help ease employee’s feelings of isolation and disconnection from the workplace.

Sure, opportunities for progression are great, but not everyone has their sights set on the traditional notion of climbing the career ladder - these days there’s a bit more to purpose than a prettier paycheck.

Heck, we think purpose is so important we recently held a webinar all about it - hosted by our very own Technology Director, Jacob Kenney, with very special guest speaker, Michelle Eagles, Founder of Creating Conscious Leaders.

To unlock your team’s talent, you need to understand what it takes to find personal purpose. Let’s dive a little deeper into some of the insights we uncovered during our webinar about how to discover your own purpose and, in turn, help your team find theirs.

The stepping stones in our search

When it comes to starting the search for our purpose the first key steps are reflection and understanding your differences.

Reflection

The very first, and important, step in searching for purpose, as Michelle explained to us, is taking some time for reflection.

“Sit down and write a list of what's really important to you and what you really value, what excites you, what gets you up in the morning … you can [even] sit down with a friend and ask each other questions.”

It’s important to create a space where you have no distractions and can simply sit and focus on connecting with what matters most to you.

Find yourself struggling with really articulating what your purpose is? Try something like a card game where you put a group of words in the middle of a table and pick out the ones that excite you and speak to you the most. Having the right language on hand can help make the task of finding purpose a little easier.

Understanding your differences

Every human being is different - we all like different foods, music and resonate with certain issues more than others. So what is it that sets you apart from everyone else?

Think about and reflect on what you care about most, what matters to you the most. Recognise your personal strengths and talents and imagine, if you were your best possible self, what would be your defining features?

Need a little inspiration? Look to people who you admire and consider what their strengths and differences are that you find the most appealing. Volunteering for a variety of causes and seeing which resonates with you the most is also a great option.

Is it purpose or passion?

We can often find ourselves using these terms interchangeably, but the truth is they’re actually quite distinctly different.

Passion is about your emotions - that feeling enthusiasm or excitement for something that really interests you. Passion can be a bit wild, all over the place and can come and go. Feelings of passion tend to be more inwardly focused and centred around us and what we want.

Having a purpose is about our why, our reason - having that sense of meaning and direction when you’re contributing to something that really matters to you. Purpose tends to be a bit more focused than our passion and is something we hold on to for longer. Purpose has a more outward focus, looking to the greater impact we can have on others and the world around us.

Having a career where you’re doing something you love and making a positive difference in the world allows you to align both your passion and purpose - when you do this, magical things can happen.

Alignment of purpose = better performance 

Aligning your passion and purpose is actually crucial to how you feel and how you perform in your career. When you experience alignment, you’re more likely to experience flow, which is the optimal state for engagement and creativity. You’re also likely to have higher levels of motivation, satisfaction and well-being (sounds pretty good to us).

As Michelle explained during our webinar, by aligning your passion and purpose you can find your way towards the life you want to create, including at work. This is also where understanding your values becomes important.

“Once you get really clear on your values, they will help you achieve what you want to achieve in a better way, rather than focusing on the outcome. Because the way you achieve them might not actually bring you happiness or it might not be fulfilling. But if you're aligned to your values, it will feel more fulfilling.”

How to uncover your purpose

We’ve talked a lot about why having purpose is important, so how do you actually go about finding it? There’s a few models/techniques you can use to help.

Ikigai

In a nutshell, this Japanese-inspired model is all about discovering what gets you excited to get up in the morning. Knowing what makes you excited about each and every day can lead you on the path to understanding your purpose, and have a ripple effect on those around you.

As Michelle explained, “think, how can I make someone's day-to-day, what good can I do? Because when you're doing good and you're helping other people, you feel good … that whole element of kindness and consciousness can just raise the energy of those around you”.

GROW Model

This is one of the more widely used and simple models. GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Will. It’s all about being able to put together a structured conversation that you can have with yourself or others to achieve your goals. With a specific goal in mind, assess your current situation and evaluate your options and the possible courses of action you could take to achieve this goal. From there, put together a detailed plan to commit to. Taking it step-by-step gives you time and space to think about why this is important to you (helping you find your purpose and passion) and makes things feel less overwhelming. When you’re less overwhelmed, you can actually get excited about your passions.

Co-Active Model

This model works well if you or the person you're helping is naturally more creative and resourceful. This model focuses on four main elements: fulfilment, balance, process and integration.

Fulfilment is about achieving what we talked about above, aligning your purpose, passion and values. Balance is about understanding and choosing a personal perspective that will empower you to achieve your goals. This couples with the third element, process, where the focus is on becoming more aware of your inner emotions and feelings (time to get rid of that negative self-talk). Lastly, integration is about taking all of these new understandings, connecting the dots between them, your passion and purpose and then taking action while applying these new learnings.

Positive Psychology Model

With this model, it’s all about identifying your strengths and virtues and learning how to harness these to achieve your goals. Backed by scientific studies around human flourishing and wellbeing, this model is all about cultivating positive relationships, engagements and interactions with those around you and utilising those to aid in your accomplishments and find meaning in life (purpose and passion).

Spiritual Model

For those particularly attuned into their spiritual selves, this model is a great option. The spiritual model isn’t focused around a particularly religious belief but instead focuses on our spiritual dimension, with the aim of helping us connect with our higher selves. By exploring and developing your spirituality, you can use this as a guide and/or resource to help with major life decisions and actions.

Let’s get excited about getting out of bed

As we reach the end of this article and the end of another eventful year, many of us will be starting to think a little more about what we want to achieve in the coming 12 months, what we want to prioritise and what will be important to us. After two huge years of growth in the market, we’ve been met with a significant downturn, plagued by redundancies and a streak of struggles for many businesses. Burnout rates have been at an all time high, and this New Year many of us will be wanting to realign ourselves and rediscover our purpose.

Finding purpose doesn’t always come instantly or easy. By taking some time out for yourself to sit and reflect, and maybe even use one of the models above, finding your values, your purpose, your passion, can help you create a life, both inside and outside of work, that you  get excited about getting up for in the morning. If you can uncover this, you can help your employees to do the same (we love a positive flow-on effect).