Do you know your purpose? (I didn't)

It was 9am on Monday morning. In front of me was a blank sheet of paper upon which I was to write the answer to "what is my purpose?"

Two hours later, after much head scratching, the sheet of paper was still just as blank. It was becoming clear how important this question was to answer and how I was going to need help to answer it.

Let me rewind... I had just "come back" from our virtual sales kick off and was pumped full of inspiration for the year ahead. During the week I attended a deeply moving breakout session hosted by Kevin Delaney (LinkedIn's VP of L&D), I further indulged by watching Jeff Weiner's (LinkedIn's Executive Chairman) course on Leadership, and re-read a book recommended to me by Ollie Sharpe (SalesLoft's VP of Revenue).

• A Life Worth Living: Finding Your Purpose and Daring to Live the Life You've Imagined - Link to Kevin's book on Amazon
• On Leadership - Link to Jeff's course on LinkedIn Learning.
• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari - by Robin Sharma (recommended by Ollie)

One of the common themes between these courses was Purpose. The purpose of life being a life of purpose, the importance of really knowing your purpose, and the need to clearly articulate your purpose to other people. I then realised that I could not quite identify nor explain my purpose. In truth, I had become aware of this shortcoming when being pressed by David Nixon (LinkedIn's Global Head of SD) in a recent career coaching conversation about why ('really why') something was important to me.

My best friend used to say "life is not a dress rehearsal". He died age 25. I bought in completely to concept that "the purpose of life is a life of purpose". Yet I now realised that I was not quite sure of my own purpose. This had to change.

The remainder of this post explains how (after many hours of struggling) I was able to identify my purpose, mission, vision and values by using a step-by-step framework developed from the above courses and a couple of other sources mentioned below. This post is written for anyone who is ready and wanting to clarify their purpose... and would like a little help in doing so. My journey is not important; however I have included it to bring the framework to life.

"The purpose of life is a life of purpose"

Purpose

Two things that I found helpful upfront were to:

1. Acknowledge that a person's life has many purposes and in this context, we are focus on work purpose.
2. Be clear on the definition of purpose, "the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists".

As mentioned, I failed when I tried to answer straight off the bat "what is my purpose?"

So, I began with a question that I could answer of "what is my job?" Easy! I lead a sales team. Re-phrasing the question to "what is the purpose of my job?" brings out the why (the reason it exists) which also helps get more specific about the what. The purpose of my job is to grow our business by leading a sales team that creates value for our customers. (Note: At this level, purpose is more pre-determined than self-determined... the purpose was established by someone other than me)

Time to go up a level, "what is my career?"... or rather "what is the purpose of my career?" As we're still getting warmed up, the interpretation here is more about the generically expected outcomes that a career in Sales Leadership seeks to achieve (for what reasons does the career exist), rather than "for what purpose did I choose this career" (which we'll get to in moment). The purpose of my career is to grow salespeople, to grow companies and to grow customers. (Note: At this level purpose is somewhere between a pre-determined and self-determined... there are foundational purposes for a particular career but also wide scope for personal interpretation and focus)

Now I felt more prepared to answer, "what is my purpose?" or rather in our work context, "what is the purpose of my work?" The emphasis at this level is almost entirely self-determined, it's about: your why, what's your cause, what matters to you, what's the reason that you do the work that you do. It's actually quite difficult to shut out the noise: the purposes you should have, a recent focus, something topical etc.

In my case, when I thought back to "growing companies", it occurred to me I took little more than a fleeting interest in how companies that I had previously worked at were performing now. With regards to "growing customers" I am certainly very interested in our customers and how their business is performing, however I can't say that I look at how customers of old are performing. However, when I opened my diary, I realised there were a number of calls with people from my teams of the past who had reached out for some mentoring, coaching or other support. This clarified to me that the people in my teams is where my purpose lays. The purpose of my work is to build world-class sales teams in which people do their best work.

(If you're interested, 'build' is because I am drawn to a challenge and new things, 'world-class' comes from competitiveness and love the pursuit of a high standard, and "best work" noting that life is short and we spend much of it working so being engaged in work is so important to a fulfilling life.... by analogy building a team that performs like the All Blacks).

Purpose to Vision

Just as the waves of zen began flowing through my veins for having clarified my purpose... a couple thoughts hit me... is vision the same as purpose? Should I have a vision too? It was time for a new blank sheet of paper.

This wonderful article by David Burkus describes the following: Purpose is the why, Mission is the how, Vision is the what.

I'm confident that had I begun by trying to identify my vision before my purpose, then I would have struggled even more than I did with identifying my purpose. But by having taken first step (of 'the why') it became much easier to take the next two steps (of 'the how' and 'the what').

The purpose of my work is to build world-class sales teams in which people do their best work.

My mission is to grow world-class salespeople and create world-class team cultures.

My vision is to transform the careers and to improve the lives of every member of my teams.

I had three reactions to writing out my vision. The first, was that it was like seeing the wood from the trees for the first time. The second was a deep sense of resonance, I knew this was what I really cared about and have been working towards. But, thirdly, a feeling that for a sales leader it did not seem 'commercial' enough somehow... so it took me a short while to really get comfortable with my own vision.

Overlaying your vision against the vision of your company or that of a prospective employer is a great exercise. Where there is overlap, you'll be in a 'state of flow', where there is not an overlap work will feel more like work.

Taking my vision and LinkedIn's vision there is some overlap between "economic opportunity" and "career... improve the lives". However, there is some difference in the scale "every member of the global workforce" and "my teams". I rationalise the difference by the obvious gap in sphere of control but also that LinkedIn (as a professional social network) must always have Members First approach, whereas a Sales Leader my work (company agnostic) will have greatest focus on my people first.

On to Values

Writing down your values is much like writing down a list of people to attend your wedding - easy to write a long list, very difficult when you need to cut the list down! However, it is the best approach to take (to both). I don't have as much of a framework to share, however I do have a few tips in getting to your core values:

1. Start with your Personal Values
2. Accept there is going to be noise in your head (so write it all down)
3. Don't judge what you write down or don't write down (there is no right or wrong, it just needs to be YOUR values)
4. Re-write things in your own words
5. Take away the easy stuff (overlaps, words that stir less emotion when written down, buzz words, corporate speak etc)
6. Aim to get down to about as many values as your company.

When removing more values starts to get tough you know that you're making progress. Keep going. Having clarity on your core values provides a lens or a tool to help guide you when making difficult decisions or deciding which actions to take.

Once you have done this, write down your Leadership Values. These should complement or be an extension to or the same as your Personal Values. And then write down your Company's values.

The purpose of writing your personal, leadership and company's values out side-by-side is to see where there is crossover. The places where your personal values or leadership values intersect with your company's values are where authenticity lives. This is extremely important, for example, when communicating a company message but being able to do so through your own perspective, so that your words, tone of voice and body language are in alignment.

For bonus points (or to quote Banu Baykal, LinkedIn Learning's Head of Growth Markets, "if you really want to challenge yourself and get to your deepest-held values") then get your list of personal values down to fewer than three. That's Pro level. But worth it.

So what?

I'm just a couple of weeks in to codifying my purpose, vision and values. It's brought added energy, clarity and focus to my work every day. Some of the specific use cases I've uncovered so far include...

Thank you to my boss, Salwa Amar (LinkedIn's Head of Venture Markets) and Jonathan Logue (LinkedIn's Director of L&D EMEA) for encouraging me to write this post and share my journey. I hope that this post encourages and enables you to take the next steps on your journey.