Be More Resilient During Tough Times By Knowing Your Purpose
Are you struggling to stay resilient during this difficult time and concerned that it’s impacting your team?
There are five crucial qualities of a resilient leader that distinguishes successful senior executive leaders, as they (remotely) guide their team and organisation through this unprecedented challenge.
The fundamental qualities are knowing your purpose and core values. In this blog, we’ll guide you through finding out your purpose and core values, and how this will help you distinguish yourself as a successful, resilient leader.
Importance of purpose and core values to staying resilient.
In our 5-part resilient blog series, we aim to help guide you through this crisis and emerge more resilient on the other side. We discussed the first two building blocks, Mindset and Emotions, in our earlier blogs. The next building block of resilience, as laid out in our model below, is Meaning.
The core components of Meaning are purpose - knowing why you do what you do - and core values.
If you live your life in alignment with your purpose and values, you are much MORE likely to remain resilient during the tough times.
However, if you become unmoored from your purpose and values, then you are LESS likely to maintain performance during adversity and/or bounce back (or indeed forward) from setbacks.
Uncover your purpose
We have worked for years with senior executive leaders and businesses, supporting and challenging them to define their purpose and values - and it is really tricky.
It’s tricky because it is so personal and no one can give you the answer. It takes time and reflection and they may change as your life circumstances change.
Our CEO, Bill Lawry’s purpose and values have transformed from when he was 25 (pre children) to now at 50 (two teenagers).
The first question to finding out your purpose is asking yourself: Why do you do what you do?
The short answer for many is ‘because it pays the mortgage’, but this is rarely the real answer.
Steve Jobs’ answer was:
“I want to put a ding in the universe”
However, a purpose doesn’t have to be as over-arching as making the world a better place, though, in the current COVID-19 situation, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
To dig deeper, keep asking yourself:
Why do I do what I do?
Why is that important to me?
And why is that important?
And so on.
Bill’s sister works for the NHS and she wants to make other people’s lives better, that is what gets her out of bed in the morning and always has. Thank god for people like her at the moment!
Bill’s purpose is less altruistic, it consists of two primary drivers:
Firstly, he wants to continue getting a kick out of seeing talented people and teams make behavioural and mindset shifts to unlock that talent.
Secondly, he wants to challenge himself to see if he could build an international company.
It is those two things that get our CEO out of bed in the morning – usually pretty early depending on which time zone he is in!
Want to strategically increase your resilience? Get access to our resilience diagnostic tool to create your unique action plan!
Discover your core values
By core values, we mean the core bedrock of rules by which you live your life.
Often people don’t know what their or other people’s values are unless they are challenged in some way.
For instance, if ‘integrity’ is one of your personal values and someone accuses you of lacking integrity (or someone fails to show integrity) then how do you respond? Usually there is a pretty strong reaction – not always positive!
One of the most popular sections of our leadership development program is challenging people to boil down a list of 60 core values to just five! These five core values govern how they live their life.
We always think it is amazing how diverse and yet very similar the answers are, and how small differences in core values can significantly impact people’s lives. For example, if one leader chose ‘security’ and another leader chose ‘adventure’, but their other 4 values were exactly the same, just that one difference could mean they choose to lead completely different lives!
As we’ve indicated, it is not just about the definition of your five core values, it is about whether you are living these values and whether these values are showing up in the way you lead.
For example, if health and wellbeing is one of your values, is that showing up in the climate you create for your people? Do you role model and encourage work-life balance? Do you invest in stand up desks and encourage walking meetings instead of sit-down ones?
A key element of values, is if your values align with the values and culture of the organisation you are working for? If one of your core values is ‘fairness’ and you work in an environment that is patently unfair, how does that make you feel? Is it a sustainable environment for you to work in?
Staying resilient: Why knowing your purpose and core values is crucial
Awareness and alignment with your purpose and core values sustain and enhance resilience. This is because they reinforce your belief that you are doing what you want to do in your working and home environment, and you’re doing it in the way you want to do it.
If your resilience is faltering, ask yourself:
Do I know my purpose?
Do I know my five key core values?
If no, then figure them out by working through the questions we’ve outlined today.
If yes, ask yourself: are they reflected in the way I live my life and lead others?
Want to increase your resilience so you can reduce your struggle through this difficult time?
