Honing Our Purpose

While accepting similar positions with different companies wasn’t necessarily moving me toward a fulfilling purpose, working just nine or ten hours daily in those companies provided something I hadn’t experienced in years: time to pursue the things we had gotten that glimpse of purpose and fulfillment from previously! I mentioned before that Cindy and I both started digging into any resource we could get our hands on that would provide us with tools we could apply as we worked to gain influence with our coworkers; the ones we needed help from to achieve the results required in our roles but had no positional authority over to mandate that help… I can’t remember the first things we read or studied but I distinctly remember the first time I read John Maxwell’s book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and worked through the accompanying audio course (on cassette tape). That was late 2000, just a few months after we were married. I also remember being angry that nothing like this had ever been mentioned at any time while I was in high school (at least not while I was awake) or in any of the community college classes I sat through. Not only could I absorb the information John was sharing, I could understand how to apply it in my role. We certainly worked through other material, but John’s resources became a staple from that point on.

Not long after parting ways with the manufacturing company, the nudge Cindy gave me was to get officially licensed to use John Maxwell’s content. The change from being in my office for twelve to fourteen hours each day and taking calls until I passed out each night to working a normal day and not carrying it home with me was almost like working part time so I jumped at the chance! I had been sharing what I learned through his books and audio lessons with the folks I worked with for years; that certification just gave me the option to charge for it - not that I had any significant aspirations of doing so…

I wasn’t sure what to expect through the certification process, but I couldn’t imagine that it would be all that involved since I had been studying John’s work so closely for almost a decade and a half. I was wrong! While there was no hard and fast requirement to dive in at the level I did, that Driven behavioral style I refer to frequently took me all-in from the day one. From mid May 2015, right after I completed the prep course and exam for the human resource credential I still hold, until early Aug that same year, I invested three to four hours each day into the resources that were suggested for me prior to arriving in Orlando to complete the process. That made my days very similar to what I had been doing in manufacturing, with one major difference: I was beginning to hone the purpose I was working toward!

The investments we had made into developing ourselves so we could get results in our jobs opened door after door to better roles in our careers. As we worked through those roles, making ongoing investments into that growth process helped us move, ever so slightly, toward our clear purpose. While each position we held didn’t always tie directly to achieving that purpose, I’m convinced that all of them helped us hone in on what that purpose really was - which created an even bigger need.

New Opportunities Required More Growth

After nearly two decades with the same company, and most of that in one facility, I knew just about everyone I worked with daily on a first name basis. I also knew many of their family members and a fair amount about what the majority of them enjoyed doing during the little bit of time they had off. While much of the work I did in the full time positions I held after leaving that company was very similar, I had to buckle down from day one in each new role to begin building rapport with my new teammates. Like each job I had prior to that point, I needed their support to achieve results but had no direct authority over any of them. Doing that put all the skills I had worked to develop personally to the test. It also pushed me to grow even more as I realized that I could have a bigger positive impact in a smaller company than I could have hoped to have in a global corporation.

Although much of my responsibility in each new position was similar to what I had done in manufacturing, I also got to put on a few additional hats. The first job away from manufacturing included doing payroll for the entire company. I handled time and attendance for around forty percent of the manufacturing facility so learning the payroll system wasn’t a big deal. In the next position, I had complete responsibility for all aspects of human resources and safety. While neither were a huge stretch, that was significantly more tied to compliance than I had ever dealt with on an everyday basis.

Earlier, I referenced believing that making the change from behavior-based safety to human resources would provide me with opportunities to work more in what I had started seeing as a clear and definite purpose - by developing the human resources I was working with. In each role after moving away from that behavior-based safety process though, I seemed to move farther away from what I had been doing to pursue meaning and more toward complying with rules and regulations. And that provided even more incentive to dig into the Maxwell licensing process Cindy had been nudging me on. At least during the time I was focused on that, I felt somewhat connected to what I had come to see as a purpose that energized me.

Please don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not complaining about any of the jobs I held after leaving the behavior-based safety role. Each of them provided adequate wages and benefits. And in complete transparency, none were all that difficult - including the one that required such long hours. Even though very little of time in those roles was dedicated to the purpose I wanted to chase, each provided me with more and more clarity around how I need to work to achieve that purpose. With that clarity, I realized that I’d need to become more focused on growth than I had ever been and that would require more investment than we had even made (at least at any one time). Even with that clarity, some of the steps along the way sucked…

Roadblocks While Working Toward Our Purpose

Getting a taste for what it was like to work toward a clear purpose offered a feeling I hadn’t really experienced elsewhere in my work life. Seeing the direct impact I could have on someone else’s career, and how that impacted their entire life, by sharing things I had learned that helped me and Cindy may have been as close as I’ve been to the pull of an addiction. The challenge was that all the new job opportunities seemed to be taking me in a completely different direction.

I wasn’t looking for a different job, but what ended up being my last full time role kinda found me. I was content where I was but this next role was a growth opportunity and back in the construction field. While it didn’t require me to put my tool belt back on, I will say that I was definitely attracted to working in the sector I started out in as a young teenager. During the job interview, I was very open with the owner of the company that I had recently started my own business - although what I had started then barely resembles what we do today - and that we didn’t need to move forward if that created any concerns for him. I promised that it wouldn’t interfere with the position he was interviewing me for; I’d always give him what he was paying for and more. He was good with it all so away we went.

The job was fine. I’m still not sure if it was heavier on compliance than I anticipated or if I was that much more pulled toward our purpose; likely the latter. Regardless, even fumbling through the things I was doing to develop others through my little business gave me exponentially more fulfillment than what I did to fill open positions and keep OSHA from screaming at the company I worked for. Over the next year or so, that makeshift business continued to gain momentum. Cindy was working in what started off as a dream job during that same time, earning more than the two of us combined just a year or two prior. The dream rapidly became a nightmare so by the fall of 2016, barely a year after forming Dove Development & Consulting, I encouraged her to resign and move into (now) our business full time. I’m forever grateful, but it was extremely hard for her at the moment.

Twelve months after Cindy stepped away from full time employment, I made the decision that I couldn’t pursue our purpose with everything I had and do all I felt needed to be done in the full time role I held. I provided the owner of the company I was working for two months (not weeks) notice so I could help him identify a viable replacement, and I helped intermittently for another month after that to help my successor get up to speed. I’d love to tell you that things took off like a rocket from there. I’ve been extremely transparent with you to this point so there’s no point in sugarcoating anything now… Not only does working with your spouse come with different challenges than just being married, we had to navigate self employment, no employer-paid health insurance, and a freaking global pandemic that prevented us from doing the bulk of the work that actually generated revenue for almost a year - and that’s only listing a few of the roadblocks we had to navigate.

This is clearly just an overview of some highs and lows covering several years, but hopefully it provides some perspective of how even some of the best doors of opportunity can get stuck at times. Thankfully though, having our clear purpose helped us yank those doors open, or find an even better door that would open. Keeping that purpose in front of us kept the tough times from pulling us down. It’s also allowed us to increase the impact we’re able to make so we’ll dig into that soon…