What Does Your Job Teach Your Kids?

In case you need more motivation to make purpose a priority in your work today, a recent study from the University of Michigan provides one of the most compelling arguments yet. Your approach to work will most likely be inherited by your children. They won’t necessarily adopt your career, but they are much more likely to approach work with a priority put on making their work meaningful.

When I learned about this piece of research, I reflected on my own experience. Everyone in my family approaches work as a calling, as something they do for more than just a paycheck or for recognition. I then began asking people I know, folks who approach their work as a calling, about their families. Nearly everyone stated that both their parents had a calling orientation.

That means that by making the hard but rewarding effort to infuse purpose into your work, you are not only improving your own well-being, but also that of your children. By likely extension, you are impacting their children and their children’s children (you get the pattern). And there, you have a pretty compelling purpose for working with purpose.

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Aaron Hurst is an Ashoka Fellow, award-winning entrepreneur and globally recognized leader in fields of purpose at work and social innovation. He is the CEO of Imperative and founder of the Taproot Foundation which he led for a dozen years. Aaron is the author of the Purpose Economy and has written for or been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg TV and is the author of the Fast Company Purposeful CEO series.