Emerging Leaders: The purpose gap

We need to discuss the purpose gap.

Purpose is an enduring, overarching sense of what matters in life. We experience purpose when striving toward something significant and meaningful.

Research has shown that people who connect purpose to their professional pursuits are more engaged in their work, less likely to quit and can even live longer, healthier lives.

Here’s some tough news: Not all of us are experiencing the same sense of purpose in our work. There’s a well-documented purpose gap.

One survey asked 1,000 U.S. employees: “Are you living your purpose in your day-to-day work?” Fully 85 percent of executives and upper management said yes. But only 15 percent of front-line managers and employees agreed. (If this doesn’t concern you, please check if you still have a pulse!)

This is not just an upper-management problem. Closing this purpose gap should be everyone’s business.

3 things to do

I like to think of the solution in terms of missed opportunities, and this should give you some hope that you can effect change in not only your life but others, too.

Here’s why: You don’t have to look outside your current role to find purpose. You can make strides by looking more deeply within what you’re already doing to surface your purpose.

To close your own purpose gap:

When someone did this for me, it was nothing short of life-changing.

Find your niche

At age 23, I was fired from my first job. In the years that followed, I flailed at first. But as I grew in confidence and tried out different things, I discovered my strengths lay in training and coaching.

Around that time, I noticed that the coaches and trainers I most admired were the ones who had found a niche, a focus, a specialty.

So I informed my own coach, Megan, that our goal was to find my niche. I was taken aback when Megan asked me to brainstorm a list of 50 areas I could specialize in. It was a tough assignment. Could I coach recruiters, HR managers, real estate agents? I honestly had no clue where this exercise might lead me.

Megan and I had narrowed the list down to my top five when she blurted out, “Jo, when you talk about coaching women in leadership, you sound 10 times more excited than everything else.”

I left our conversation with a clarity about my purpose and passion that has rarely wavered in the two decades since. Find yourself a Megan!

Helping others

You also can be someone’s Megan. To help others close their purpose gap:

Any time you can help others find greater meaning and purpose in their work, your impact will be enormous, and you will deepen your own sense of purpose. Everyone wins.

Jo Miller of Cedar Rapids is a women’s leadership expert, award-winning speaker, researcher, and author of “Woman of Influence: 9 Steps to Build Your Brand, Establish Your Legacy, and Thrive.” Contact: jomiller.com