A Clear Purpose for Achieving Exceptional Results

If you’re a leader with this final primary behavioral style, I have no doubt whatsoever that you’ve developed complete clarity around how each task you perform ties to your purpose and why all the other junk you deal with through the process shouldn’t bog you down. But developing that clarity and keeping it in front of you during the toughest times are often two VERY different things! We’ll dig into some steps any leader can take to keep their purpose top of mind soon enough. For now, let’s consider some of the traits this final group has that will help them lead well and some things that may be extremely taxing - making that strong, clear purpose even more critical…

This particular group only represents about 25 percent of the population as a whole but it’s fairly safe to assume that any time we see an organization producing high quality results on a consistent basis, someone with leadership responsibility is extremely conscientious! As leaders, they contemplate nearly every possible outcome and consider all the ways something could go wrong before jumping in with either foot. Like the Reserved and People-Oriented group we just looked at, a Reserved and Task-Oriented leader won’t generally seek the spotlight. The biggest difference we’ll see in them will be in how methodical they are, building logical systems and procedures anywhere they can, as opposed to being focused on instilling peace and harmony throughout the team around them.

One challenge these leaders will need to work through, which can quickly become quite frustrating for them, will be moving forward through uncharted territory without having all the details they’d like to sift through to make a calculated decision. In most cases, they’ll also be dealing with many more Outgoing and Faster-Paced people on their teams who will likely be chomping at the bit to take any action they can. This can drain the energy from a more cautious leader if they lose sight of how maintaining an achievable level of precision in everything they do feeds their most meaningful purpose.

I haven’t shared any of this to suggest that any of the four primary styles are better than another. In fact, each of us have our own unique blend of them all. My intent has been to provide some foundational perspective for understanding how to connect your approach directly to your purpose for accepting a leadership role to begin with. Next, we’ll work through a few practical ways we can create systems that support our strengths and compliment our blind spots, all while continuing to feed our clear purpose.