When Serving Others Feeds Our Purpose

If we’re in a leadership role and have this third primary behavioral style, where we’re more Reserved and People-Oriented, we’re part of the largest group across the population as a whole. That said, I haven’t personally seen nearly as many folks who are wired this way...

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How Weā€™re Wired Impacts How We Pursue Our Purpose

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Leadership is HARD! I’m not suggesting that it’s complicated or difficult, just that it nearly always brings a heavy mental and emotional burden. Fulfilling our own responsibilities is often a complicated task in itself but...

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Connecting with Our Childhood Dreams

Finding clarity in a purpose that fulfills us through even the toughest issues we deal with as leaders will require a definite answer to the question Why do you do what you do? Like the vast majority of people I know, the field I ended up in for the bulk of my adult life had very little to do...

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Providing a Clear Purpose for Each Team Member

Leading with a clear purpose, whether that’s drawing from the power of having a clear purpose for why and how we lead the team members who are counting on us or through how we provide that same kind of clear purpose for each individual on the team, is often some of the most important work...

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Simple Steps for Providing a Clear Purpose

If we’re going to earn the kind of buy-in that yields the 57 percent increase in discretionary effort and 20 percent improvement in individual performance detailed in the Harvard Business Review article I referenced multiple times throughout What’s Killing Your Profitability?,...

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The Simplicity of Developing a Clear Purpose

As we looked at how the power of having a clear purpose can help leaders navigate some of the toughests scenarios they’ll face, I suggested that they’ll also need to provide at least as much specificity for the team members they lead and shared how my son accepted a position for five...

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A Clear Purpose Helps Uphold the Lawsā€¦

If we’re going to lead with a clear purpose, providing the oh-so-necessary clarity for the team members who are counting on us, having a firm grasp on a purpose of our own that truly is rewarding can be the difference maker when we need to push through the tough times - and there will most...

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Why Our Organization Needs a Clear Purposeā€¦

Just for the sake of setting a foundation, let’s assume we - as the leader of our team - have an incredibly clear purpose that gets us out of bed each morning, ready to charge hell with a water pistol! Let’s also assume that having that kind of clarity personally allows us to be able...

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Why EVERYONE Needs a Clear Purposeā€¦

If someone as driven as the friend I mentioned before can lose some motivation or feel burnout when they don’t feel like they’re making a meaningful impact, I’m convinced anyone with any level of leadership responsibility will too - sooner or later! And if business owners and...

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Why Leaders Need a Clear Purposeā€¦

If you really think about the challenge my friend shared with me in running one of his businesses, I’m betting you can relate! To that end, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve all felt that way at some point regardless of the role we’re in. In chapter eight of What’s...

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Should the Type of Organization Determine How We Lead?

If we think back to how we started this look at Leadership Misunderstood, the biggest myths we’ve taken aim at here were few but extremely common:

  • People automatically follow a business owner, executive, manager (or whatever other title you want to insert here) because their paycheck...
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Influence > Position or Title!

As we started down this path, I shared a piece of John Maxwell’s story about how he learned that influence was far more important than a title or position when it came to getting anyone to follow you. And let’s be honest: if no one is following, we ain’t leading!

To provide a...

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