Lead Where You Are - Making Greater Impact Through Purpose
WORK YOUR DAILY TASKS WITH MEANING AND PURPOSE EVEN IF THEY SEEM MENIAL TO YOU OR OTHERS.
While each of us has our tasks to do no matter where we are in an organization, deliver those tasks with a greater purpose. If things in your department are drifting, step up with a purpose to make a positive difference this week. Intervene in the drift with options and suggestions for improvement. Most importantly, get more in touch with what drives you from day to day. What energizes you? Is it connecting with others? Contributing to a team? Organizing company events? Whatever it is that energizes you, focus on doing more of that. Make it your task to achieve a purpose each day.
FIND PURPOSE IN THE TASKS YOU COMPLETE AND WATCH THE IMPACT YOU MAKE GROW.
In our book, Lead Where You Are, we explore how purpose creates meaning in our work and extends the impact we can create. We discuss how in today’s workplace performance environment, matching unique individual talents to unique opportunities creates an undeniable competitive advantage against those organizations who rely solely on title and position to delve out tasks. And we discuss how individuals can create purpose in an environment lacking of purpose.
Here’s an excerpt from the Leading With Purpose chapter:
MATCHING TALENT TO OPPORTUNITY
Creating a sense of purpose starts by connecting what you do to the impact you are having. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best. “If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
Our ability to match our talents with our opportunities and to create a lasting impact on our customers, co-workers and family energizes us and in return energizes those around us. Purpose inspires and it rouses us to be better today than we were yesterday and better tomorrow than we are today.