To Find Your Purpose, Start with Your Role

We’ve talked in this space about the incredible energy and focus you can feel once you understand your purpose. But we also recognize that finding your purpose can take weeks, years, decades, or even a lifetime. A faster route to finding your purpose is identifying your role and letting that evolve.

At a previous company, we had a gentleman who folded and taped the boxes we used to package our products. I regularly visited him and others around the company to ask about their work and life. He loved to go fishing with his family. When I asked how work was going, he said he loved his role in helping to nourish a world in nutritional crisis, which was our company’s mission. I had no reason, then, to think he was feeding me a line. And I still don’t. You can’t fake positive energy.

Even though he didn't know his own personal purpose, he had adopted our mission and connected it to his role of building and taping boxes.

 I know a CEO named Andrew who founded a great company. He didn’t know his purpose either, at first. But he knew his role. “I am a true entrepreneur who pushes the limits, expands the container, and allows people to go forward and make big changes in themselves,” he said. Eventually, he landed on his purpose, which was to “make it easy to be healthy in the world.”

 In an ideal world, your role will grow out of your zone of genius—that thing you love to do and do so well. I love to inspire, vision, align and coach to fulfill my purpose of helping leaders scale impact. And the energy this gives me also energized the shipping box builder and many others there.

 As you learn to define your role, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump away to asking yourself the bigger question: why do I exist? What do I care deeply about? Politics? Climate? Family? Nutrition? Look for the space where your role might point to a way you can use your business to make a difference in the world. Your energy and purpose will radiate and enable others to connect the dots between their own roles and a larger purpose that supports the company’s purpose.

 Take the first hop. Define your role, and you will soon discover your purpose. To get started, use the Find Your Purpose workbook we developed at ScalePassion. We are here to help.