Working On Purpose

Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to choose between making money and making a difference. Salespeople who genuinely understand how they can make a difference to customers outsell those who only focus on internal targets and quotas. In an era where organizations often believe that money is the primary way to motivate salespeople, Selling with Noble Purpose offers and exciting and sustainable alternative.

Bob Chapman has had a series of arresting insights that have completely changed the way he builds his businesses and his approach to leadership. He’s come to realize there is a leadership crisis in the world that stems from not giving leaders the skills and courage to care for those they have the privilege to lead. It starts with helping leaders to see each team member as someone’s precious child and engaging them through the transformative power of empathetic listening. Contrast that view with the traditional approach taken in business to consider people as functions and objects to be used and manipulated to achieve owner and company goals. Today Bob stands to spread the message that the more we can combine work with caring, the more fulfilled we will be and the further we collectively advance.

Having studied and practiced leadership for 30 years, Jeff Lovejoy is on a mission to package and share everything he’s learned. And he’s doing so in digestible “bite-sized” or “jellybean-sized” chunks called “quips.” This episode surveys some of the more salient points he believes are especially important to lead and motivate people in today’s purpose economy and pandemic times.

Michael Oster has discovered a way to help high achievers “level up” in life. He’s created a framework that teaches people to harness competency-strengths combinations as “weapons of construction” to make progress on any issue in life. Being defined by competencies, and informed by strengths, we are able to accomplish our goals more efficiently. And happily, the more we accomplish, the greater our motivation to reach for more.

Companies spend a lot of time and budget recruiting new talent into their organization, adding headcount to grow and replacing that which moves on or retires. Often overlooked as a strategy to source talent is the alumni which already hold an affinity for the organization. This episode explores the opportunity of maintaining meaningful connection with alumni to power talent, marketing and community initiatives.

Living life fully takes energy and a choice toward a path to purpose. It also takes being authentically true to yourself, listening carefully to your own calling, despite what well-intentioned people direct you otherwise. Herb Sennett has earned several college, university, and seminary degrees even though his guidance counselor in high school told him he needed to go to trade school since he would never make it in college. And he’s poured more in a life of 75 years than most could pack in 125. Little wonder he’s come to be known as the Chief Encouragement Officer, authors the Living Life Fully blog, and champions happiness as a way of life.

Coronavirus has presented so many unique challenges to education. Moving education online at the drop of a hat, then figuring out how to continue to support students, how to support parents becoming teachers with no training, how to return to face to face education, and how to address the digital divide has been an incredible learning curve. There is no right answer, but without purpose, we cannot create meaningful learning in education in this digital divide. With all the struggles that we are facing around the world at the moment, education is at the heart of all of them, because education is what should develop the skill to listen, to engage, to question and to grow. Whether we are looking at addressing racism, creating equality, wearing masks, whether to take a vaccine, all of these things require thought, discussion and further consideration.

Imagine someone you love is standing at the precipice of their own death. They’re about to leave behind those they hold dear, and their passing will leave a hole in your life. How can you ease their pain and give them a way to leave something of themselves behind? The human voice is such a powerful relationship tool, and yet when people die, it’s gone. Unless there’s someone there to catch it. People ache to share their greatest hopes, dreams, disappointments, and learnings. And when they pass, loved ones miss the voice that came with the being and hearing what their lives represented. Barbara Altounyan, a 30-year BBC TV and radio veteran and her team live to capture the stories of those soon to depart - and do so with profound appreciation and outright revelry.

Many of us will spend a good portion of our lives getting over and recovering from the events of our childhood. It’s the steps we take, the work we do, and the grace we grant ourselves that can make all the difference as we work to unfold into our very best. It takes bravery, a strong dose of authenticity and sometimes a blind leap of faith. But the journey is oh so worth it. In this episode, Sherri shares her story of how she went from surviving her life to thriving.

There is a growing urgency, a hunger to experience more meaning and purpose in life and at work. Danny Gutknecht further asserts that the need to actualize is becoming a cultural phenomenon. Throughout history, there have been those who moved away from institutions and struggled to assume responsibility for their own meaning and tap the essence of who they are through various practices and inquiries. One by one, people are slipping off the chains, turning away from the cave wall, and crawling out into the sunlight to realize their true potentials for the first time. Join us as Danny illuminates how people individuate by differentiating themselves along the path of meaning and how organizations can help them along their journey.

Transformational leadership casts a vision and empowers the team to realize it through inspired performance. Hugh Ballou works with non-profit and church leaders because he knows they often must work even harder to realize their vision, as they don’t have the power of the paycheck to push for performance. What keeps Hugh going is the profound difference those organizations make in our communities when they are led well and bring their vision into a reality. Don’t we all want to know we’ve made a difference, and when Hugh hears this from his clients, it melts his heart.

Entrepreneurs and innovators are a powerful force that have contributed tremendous value to the business world and communities they serve. Often fueled from great passion and emboldened by a team inspired by their vision, they have built great organizations and amassed impressive wealth. What these individuals do with all their money when they successfully exit their ventures has helped change the world. This episode showcases examples of people from across the Indian diaspora who amassed wealth and are making remarkable contributions to the world we live in. It also invites soon-to-exit entrepreneurs a path to channeling their energies and resources to leave meaningful legacies.

): Motivation is the driving force behind any action or lack thereof. And yet it is little understood beyond simple extrinsic and intrinsic types, and thus often lacking in opportunity to leverage inside many organizations. Imagine what would happen to your company’s results if you as a leader understood what detracts from each team member’s motivation and instead learned how to feed it. In this conversation, Motivation Factor Institute founder and I discuss their M Factor model which addresses one’s energy, needs, talents, and purpose.

Confronting change. Intentional growth and development. Gearing up for the next promotion. Transforming through crisis and the everyday. These are just some of the reasons people and organizations hire coaches. There are numerous approaches to developing people through coaching. In this episode, we discuss the narrative coaching approach in relation to integrative development to help create transformative encounters in the workplace.

The pursuit to purpose is the pursuit to matter. If you want to find out how to be motivated, ask why. If you want to find your purpose, ask who. Purpose is about solving a problem for someone, and answers: Who am I, and who am I supposed to help? This is part of the Purpose Factor formula to unlock and apply purpose. Who needs happiness when fulfillment is available by helping others and growing in the process of the service?

Upon receiving a terminal diagnosis for his newborn daughter, Christian Kromme the technologist set out to learn everything he could about biology and nature to look for some way to save her. That journey would ultimately set her on a path to thriving in health, usher in the understanding that social and technology evolution mirrors that of nature, and newly emerge as a futurist. His optimistic message is that humanity will advance toward a more meaningful future when our social and business systems evolve alongside technological innovation and allow us to more fully live with meaning and purpose.

Whether you’re an established business owner or just starting out on the journey, Patrick Bet-David has some pearls of advice he’s learned as a very successful entrepreneur. An immigrant from Iran, he enthusiastically embraces the capitalistic opportunity available in America to anyone willing to work to realize their dreams. His own experience of founding a financial services marketing company at age 29 with 66 agents in one office to growing it to more than 15,000 agents with 120 offices in 49 states and Puerto Rico in just over 10 years, along with a ferocious appetite for reading and learning from others has proven fertile ground to cultivate his astute perspective on business.

Mental health is in crisis in America. We are seeing double digit increases in anxiety, depression, and suicide. And yet available to us all is the opportunity for meaning and fulfillment through our work and being of service to others. Living our purpose releases positive chemicals that improve your physical health and your emotional outlook. But learning to tune into our own mental health can be a challenge. Joyages was created to help. By providing short two-minute videos and confidential self-assessments Joyages helps people develop skills and habits to find their purpose, master relationships, reduce stress, and improve their emotional health.

Emotions are “energy in motion” and much more of a potent force in our lives than most people understand. When we leave them unexpressed, stuffed, unacknowledged, or numb them out, emotions have to go somewhere so lie in wait, latent, for the opportunity while often growing bigger and more intense. And then they can unexpectedly erupt in our interactions with others or even make us sick. Learning where emotions originate in our body and how to use them to get present to what we feel and desire is a life-long, enriching opportunity. And when we get better at recognizing and addressing our own emotions and those in others, we become much more adept at communication and improve our overall health.

Work is at least one-third of our lives, if not more. And yet, only 16 percent of the global workforce is fulfilled in the work they do. That figure is at least partly so because the leaders inside many organizations do not see people as individual, wholly unique beings with special talents – but rather as “human resources” to be dispatched or engaged in a set of tasks. The tremendous opportunity that beckons is to first stop believing the lies we’ve come to accept as truths about work and how it gets done, and instead begin to focus on and prize each individual on the team and within the organization that uniquely powers its mission. Through this new lens, we can create a world where people love their work and bring their best.