Nick Craig on Leading From Purpose

0:05 There are some people that make their work just another thing they have to do, and there are those that make their work something that they want to do. Welcome to Working on Purpose with your host Elise Cortez. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration from those people who have found deeper meaning and personal connection to their work life. It's beyond nine to five. It's working on Purpose. Now Here is your host, Elise Cortez. Welcome back to the Working on Purpose Show. Thanks for tuning in again this week. I'm your host, Elise Cortez, joining you live from Dallas, Texas, which is homebase for me. If you've been tuning in for a while, you know this program is all about helping people create more meaningful and productive personal and work lives and equipping leaders, insight organizations to cultivate meaning and purpose that elicits passion inspired contribution, innovation, and persevering performance. I talk with my guest to draw on their expertise and share my own experience consulting, speaking and developing workforces across the globe. Every week. In these conversations, I hope you walk away with something you can immediately put into use in your life and that you come alive with a possibility of living with passion, working on purpose, and are inspired to discover for yourself just how big and fulfilling your life, work and leadership can be. And if you do catch fire from anything you hear, reach out and tell me about it. Email me at a lease at least cortest dot com, or use the contact me feature on my website to message me. You might tell me how I can help you among some of these areas. Whether you want to join the introitution list to stay informities radio show topics, you want to see about joining a cash fire online inspiration,

1:38 accountability or mastermind community. You want information on my purpose driven leadership programs for individuals or companies, or you want to see about having me speak for your company or conference. At any rate, I'm gladwork connected, and thanks again for listening. Now on to this week's program with us today is Nick Craig, the author of the newly published book Leading from Purpose and the president of Core Leadership Institute, where Heat guides it was on the journey to discover and lead with purpose. He joined Disnay from Harvard, Massachusetts, where it's one degree under zero. Thank you very much. Welcome to Working on Purpose, Nick. Thank you. It's great to be in a nice, warm room as a Wow, I don't want to trade places with you. I'm in Dallas, it's fifty some degrees and I'm good with that. So I've read your book, Nick, and you are just brilliant and I am so happy to share you with my listeners. And I read the whole thing from cover to cover. So I had a lot of questions for you, and I thought we would start with I mean, I know that you've been in the leadership, consulting and coaching business for many, many years, but how did you end up doing this work around purpose? Yeah? So I think what's interesting is that purpose isn't something that you sort of go to college and say, you know, I want to do work on purpose. In some ways, what happens is it comes and grabs you and says, you know what, you're not going to ignore me, and here we go. You know. My version of that was a little over ten years ago. I was working with a colleg Bill George, who was at Harvard Business School, and we had created a model for authentic leadership and one of the topics that we knew we needed to cover was purpose. The problem is it was bombing

3:10 in the classroom, and so I get all I got all the hard pieces, so I got purpose and I had to go figure this thing out. In the process of doing that, we started doing some senior executed programs. In the first place we did it was ge and Crownville. They had a list, we had a list of topics and they said, well, we want this, this, and we want purposes. Is no, you don't want purpose. I was like, there's no, no, no, no, you do not want to do this. And they were like, no, you don't understand. You know, you don't have a choice. I was like, oh, that's how this works. What was interesting for me is that in the process of teaching the material, along with a lot of other pieces, the participants showed me how important this was to them. I mean, I got to hang out with a bunch of individuals. I got to work at was with g I did from two thousand and seven to two thousand and ten, so I got to go through the whole recession with them.

4:08 Fifty six Stock went from fifty six to six. Now it's not doing so good these days, but it's for different reasons. But back then. That was the first time they'd sort of hit that that stopped sign in their journey. And what was interesting was it as alumni came back in two thousand and ten when participants said, well, so, of all this stuff you did, what was the most useful to you during the most challenging moments of your leadership? And allows us a couple of years, these guys and gals would say purpose and I was like what. I was like, what are you talking about? I said, And then all of a suddenly at the point at media and they'd say, you know this guy is and I was like, oh, you know that thing we did. So what what I discovered is that purpose is the ultimate antidote to uncertainty. And for these leaders in the times of the greatest uncertainty, the one thing that was solid ground that they could stand on, and this is what they told me, was their purpose. Everything else that bonuses, the stock options, everything was being ripped away. And this one guy said, look, everything I'd given them was was was crumbling. And so I realized the only thing I had to stand on was my purpose, and my purpose is to be the whitewater raft guy that gets you safely to the other side. I remember that from your book that example. Wow, it isn't it great? I mean, now today, all these years later, Nick, can you believe that we're not talking about purpose? And how how you almost stumbled past it? Yeah?

5:40 And I you know, the bottom linze is I wasn't like I thought it was something worth focusing on. Okay. I thought it was this nice, fluffy thing that people did when I have extra time, right right? Well, okay, so the next thing that probably makes sense to talk about here and if I've heard lots of different definitions of purpose, but how do you define it? Yeah? You know, it's interesting I've bumped in early on. I tried out all the versions and only would all break on me and I'd be like, okay, so now how I'm going to put this thing back together for me? Purposes? At its core is that unique gifts that you bring to the world. I guess the best way I could put it is that if I replaced anyone who's listening to this with someone equally as skilled and capable as they are in their life, in their job, and then I was to interview everyone around that person three months later and say, what do you most miss the answer that question would be your purpose. You know, I did that exercise, Nick, and it was fantastic. It really was great, a great exercise. There's so many useful things in your book, and that was one of the things that I put right to you.

6:46 So I won't talk about what the results were for that, but then I'll be for another conversation. But mini perls Nick from that, Yeah, because I think that you know, for most of us, Look, we have our skills, we have capabilities, we have our roles, we have a lot of stuff, and we put a lot of stock in them. But they're all fragile in a sense that someone gives them to us, some of them take and take them away. And every day we open the newspaper read read about people and the consequence of that being the case, and in some sense, you know, what I see as purposes is it It is the one thing that no one can take away from you. And in some ways it's what you bring to a meeting of conversation, an experience that if you weren't there, it won't show up. Yeah. I got that so clearly from your book, and that just really really takes me back when I when I hear when I read that when I hear you say it again, because it shows up so powerfully in the room that way when you say it that way. And I get that, Yeah, because I think that you know, in some sense, if we look at you and you look at this this prodcast, there's something you bring to this dialogue that no one else is going to bring. And the more you know what it is, the more you can own it, and the more you can own it where you can lead from it right well, and to that end, I mean, you've already talked about how our purpose can really help in times of uncertainty, that just what you talked about during the recession is incredibly powerful. How to leaders access their purpose? Though? How do they find it? People ask me

8:16 that all the time. Yeah, I mean this was what my experience has been is that there's three major access points to purpose. Okay. I mean the first access point to purpose is there's most of us, no matter how tough our childhood was, you can identify some magical moments in our childhood. Once when we talk about I'm the curious kid inside of us sort of shows up and it just gets all energized. And in many of those experiences is the essence of how we see the world and what's the gift that we bring to it. That's one sort of access point. Another access point is some of our most challenging life experiences and how we dig ourselves out of that hell that we might have been in. Each of us does in a unique way, and in there I've found many of the insights about what's the gift somebody brings. The third place I've found that purpose can be found is that some of us have passions that transcend our They're not about money that we do them because they somehow speak to some deeper part of us. And in those passions is an access point to that place of purpose. So you know, for me, most of the time when I'm working with individuals, we're looking at those different access points and we're unpacking and discovering what is that version of the purpose that is them. Now, when I talk about purpose in the you know, a lot of people will come up with a set of words.

9:46 Whatever the words are that we come up with are are like a key to a room. What matters is what's inside the room itself, and that I think that for all of us there's a room a purpose that is so much bigger and more beautiful than any sort of world. As with my ears, I really get that. And I did see that that set of those those three access points in your book, and they're so clearly written about, and I do think they give us they give us a space to be able to discover from. So I found that useful as well. I want to go on to impact next. Nick. You've got a whole bunch of stuff there about impact, about how what purpose does in terms of our professional in our personal lives. And I don't know how many of these we can get through, but let's let's crack on them. The first one you talk about is clarity of focus. So how does purpose give us clarity and focus? You know, it's interesting because when I started doing the interviews for this book, well, that was not something that I would associate with purpose per se.

10:45 Well, what happened when I talk to people is is that time after time, everybody would say, you know, of all the things that I would miss if I didn't know my purpose, it would be the clarity and focus to make the hard decisions that I don't think I could obeatee otherwise. And there were basically decisions in a world in which there was no data or there was not enough data that it was ever going to help us to solve it. And so in some ways, what I found is that people feel a more of a sense of clarity and focus and being able to make those hard decisions. And in some ways it's independent of whether it's they're in a fog or they're they're actually in the sunlight. They feel it because their purpose speaks to them and says, listen, here's where you need to be, here's the job you should be taking. It doesn't make any sense, but this is what makes sense, or here's the choice that you need to make.

11:41 It almost feels to me nick like that purpose. It gives us a way to illuminate all those extraneous things that take us away from delivering on our purpose or living our purpose. They become, i don't know, too visible and easy just to knock out, like they just don't belong. Yeah, And I think the funny part that was I want to be honest, is it. You know, I spend most a lot of my time and most everybody else I know, running into all into all those other places hoping they're going to be great places to be and then we find ourselves getting kicked out and at some point we goo, okay, this is not working, and then we sort of say, well, if I was listening to my purpose, now what would I be doing? You know, at least is after there's lots of blood and bruises and everything else, and then you go, Okay, that's actually not so hard. Okay, now I get what that is.

12:30 And so I don't you know, I think that I just want to be humble and truthful for everyone who's listening. Is it as much as I would like purpose to be so crystal clear that you always make the choice the first time? Right up? My sense is that purpose is the is the background that's always there. It's the one that will always take care of you and always be there for you and never forget you even though you forget it, and it will be there always. Yes, And along those lines what you just narrated there, and Nick, I really want to say thank you also and appreciate you for how authentic you wrote your authentically you wrote your book because you did talk to us about how some of the things that you tried on didn't always work, and some of your experiences weren't always the best, and I really appreciate an applaud and I'm inspired by how you did that.

13:20 Yeah, well, purpose made me do that one, so purpose made me do it. Okay, I'm serious. There's times that I'm writing it's going okay, I don't think I actually want to print this, and my purpose says, no, you've got to print this thing. Stop, So I'm like, okay, well, just I'm not. I'm going to listen. I think it's gorgeous and it's very inspiring, really, so thank you. And that brings us probably to the next the next point about impact that maybe is related to that. It's growth and you talk about growth you can count on, and then there's also something you talk about with regarding the growth mindset with purpose. What do you mean by the two of those sets? So here's the good news is it worked with some individuals who, because of knowing their purpose, have been able to generate double digit growth in their businesses.

14:09 One of them was the CEO of Ben and Jerry's for the last eight years, and another one was a guy who got four hundred percent growth in a business in a third wald country that nobody ever thought was even worth anything. And there's a whole stream of people. And you know what purpose will do is Purpose will say, those wimpy goals you have, those are really useless. Let's give you something worth really jumping into. And they don't get you to go there. Now, you might not hit the mark of what you sort of sto shoot for, but you'll go way beyond what the normal numbers were that somebody said you should or shouldn't do, because you won't you don't like going to listen to that. So that's sort of the simple version.

14:50 But when I looked deeper underneath all of that to what made these individuals tick and what made them so successful, what I discovered was something that Carol Dwick had discovered when she looked at kids, which was something called a growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. So the way it works is is that if we if we look at kids, the fixed mindset is is that you think you're either good or bad at math or English, and then you spend the rest of your education reinforcing the fact that that's the truth. Okay, that's the fixed mindset. The growth mindset is no matter how bad you happen to have done on any of those things at any moment in time, if you really dedicate time and energy toward it, you can actually become really really good at it. Okay, that's the mindset, and the growth mindset comes from a deep place of curiosity and possibility. The fixed mindset is trying never to make, never to be seen as anything other than the way you'd like to be seen, which makes you fragile. And so my sense is that purposes the ultimate antidote to the fixed mindset, because purpose is always stretching us and saying, really, that's where you're going to stop, right, You're gonna be satisfied with that. Yes, Well, I really like how you generated that and brought that to life for us, Nick, because I do know Carol Dwek's work. And but the notion of being of standing when you're in a fixed mindset, of making sure that you try to be who you want to

16:22 be or be seen as who you want to be, is actually a very nice application that I haven't heard before. Oh God, I'm glad you appreciate it. Yeah. Absolutely, And on that note, Nick, let's grab our first break. I'm your host, Alice Cortez. We're are on the air with Nick Craig He has the author of the newly published book Leading from Purpose and the president of Core Leadership Institute, where he guides executives on the journey to discover and lead with purpose. He joined us a day from Harvard, Massachusetts. We've been talking about his new book. We're going to contiue the conversation after the break. Stay with us, We'll be right back.

17:12 Elise Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. If you're just joining us, my guest is Nick Craig.

18:12 He is the author of the newly published book Leading from Purpose and the president of the Core Leadership Institute, where he guides executives on the journey to discover and lead with purpose. He has worked with organizations including Ben and Jerry's Heineken, im G Bank, Lego, Unilever, and the United States Military Academic Academy at West Point. So, Nick, before the break, we were talking about some of the areas of impact that purpose has on our professional and personal lives. And the next one up I wanted to talk about, which is very near and durant to my heart because I've studied it for a long time, and that's identity. So what's the correlation, the connection between purpose and identity? You know, I think this is we I spent so much time with so many senior executives who don't have lost track of who they are.

18:59 They sit in front of me, they've been they've been promoted to the point where they no longer can use any of their expertise, skills or knowledge right and they are struggling to figure out what is it that they actually bring because they don't know. And what I discovered is that in the process of helping them uncover their purpose. They for the first time actually knew what is it that they brought That was their gift. It's their true identity, independent of the education, university, or whether their marketing or engineer or whatever the case may be, which is how they'd define their identity up until that point, which was also what was causing them to do the job of the people that worked for them, as opposed to doing the job they needed to do, which is going into the unknown territory that nobody had figured out yet.

19:49 And so I think that that's the real gifts that purpose brings for us, is it reveals that deeper sense of identity that is one that is only ours now really the that's the gift of purpose. And what I know that's so great, Nick, I love that what I know about identity is, among many other functions, it's a it's a behavior driver. So if we're actually behaving from from our from our identity of purpose and purpose, then that's that's a pretty strong path to come from. Yeah, And I just think that if I look at how many people so I uh, you know, I worked with a guy, A work with the guy Rodge, and you know he had been. He was on track to become a head of HR for a very large company, and everybody was telling him that he was going to get this big promotion, and when I mean, they're all everybody was telling him. And when the announcement came out out, there was somebody else's name on the announcement, and of course he was incredibly devastated. Now his purpose was lights, camera action. You know, we really you, and let's make it happen and personally do it, and came from him as a kid, and he loved sort of creating theater and being on stage as a kid and getting others on stage and writing plays and it was sort of his whole ethos and his orientation to his purpose was to always help everybody else step on stage. And what he realized is is that he had a choice. He

21:23 could go leave and be disgruntled and go work somewhere else and sort of protect his identity, or you could let go of that and realize that independent of the title and everything else, he could live his purpose. And he realized there was two people who were a couple of years below him who had been overlooked for a couple of promotions, and so he decided to spend the next year making sure that they got the promotions that they really deserved. Now, in the process of doing this, of course, he ends up with a great promotion himself. But it was only after he let go of his corporate identity that he was free to really step into and own his own What are you? What are you really really here to do? Well? And so I think for all of us, you know, the true identity is is not the one we think it is. It's after everything else is stripped away, what's left? Right? Oh, I do remember that story from your book. That's it's a It's an incredible story and a testament to what it is to step back and really stand from our purpose. So, oh, it's gorgeous stuff. Nick. So, how long have you been working in this purpose space a little Lizzie at this point, Oh, A good ten to twelve years. I've been and I've I've worked, We've worked with the group. We've probably worked with over fifteen thousand people. Now, wow, that's so great. Talk about impact and make a difference in the world, Nick, that's so great. Well, And on that note, the next thing I want to talk about is energy. As one of the impact pieces of purpose. And you talk about purpose as being really a true source of

22:55 energy, and I absolutely agree with that, and that leadership purpose promotes come the engagement. So this becomes really interesting because people say, Okay, how do you connect purpose with engagement? Yeah, so I think here's the less Wait. I know a lot of people who when I interact with them, they at some point finally admit the fact that they're exhausted and that what they're exhausted from mostly is trying to look like they're not exhausted and trying to act like everything's wonderful, and they're the energizer buzzy because everybody else is acting like the energizer buzzy buddy. Right. Yeah, And so I mean, one funny example, So I was at West Point teaching the program, and I have all these people who are very impressive military and professors and whatever. And what turns out was is that they all thought that somebody made a mistake in letting them in. Okay, every one of them thought that everybody else belonged in, but they didn't. And everybody else looked confident. But they were all in the room together are saying, well, we all look confident.

24:00 But the truth is, we all think that everybody else belongs to be here, but not us, And you know that is enormously de energizing. Okay, And I think that in some sense, the beauty of purpose is it when you have your purpose, you're finally home. Yeah. I love how you say that in your book. That's so great. Yeah. And when you're finally home, then you actually have energy in a different way. And I think that the look, I think that knowing your purpose will put you in harms way more often than would be if you don't know your purpose. But you have energy in a different way because you're not trying to fake it anymore. You're you're pretty clear what it is you are in who you are.

24:44 And so from that place, the energy that you speak from and you operate from, is it a very different layer. Now, let's not to say that you don't spend a lot of time being exhausted and tired in all those things that happens as well, But I think that the deeper level of where the energy comes from, it's not coming from the external thing that you're excited about. It comes from the internal thing that is driving through you. Okay, So let's take that a little one step further if we can in terms of an organization, So thinking about how do we thread the energy of that one person, and we look toward creating more satisfied, fulfilled and energetic workforce. What's the threat force? Now? How does this purpose stuff work energetically inside organization to catalyze engagement? So what my experience has been is that it has a huge impact on shifting the whole engagement scenario. I think if we look at engagement scores and you're if you're in the HR organization and the engagement scores, are you willing in the wrong direction? But you have all the external events happening in the world that would suggest that there's nothing that you're going to do to change the external events and you're struggling to figure out what to do. The question then becomes as what levers do you really have?

25:59 From my experience is most of the organizations that bring us in bring us in because they they have lost that magic and they don't know how to get it back right. And when we start doing this work with people, when we reignite. The way I think about this is this purpose is only present if the curious little kid inside of your shows up right now. I can't think of anything more engaging and energizing and dynamic than the curious little kid inside of you and me. I know exactly what you mean. I just saw in the airport as I was traveling. It was so great. And so with that, the opportunity is is if you have that across an organization, you're going to have a very different level of engagement than if you don't. And in some ways that's what we're looking to access, is how do we get the whole system to wake up. I mean, I've got I've got an organization right now that's decided to roll this out to twenty five thousand people.

26:56 Wow. And the reason why is because it worked for the top five thousand and they got all energized, and everybody else said, whatever they got, I want some of that, And so it's it's it's you know, in some ways, it becomes infectious as to what happens when you start to see all these people who have something, what why are they so energize? What's going on? And so in some ways it is it is a virus that we all would like to have, which is level of energy. So the engagement shifts, and what happens is people start having more authentic conversations, more transparent conversations, and all of that generates very different effect. Yeah. And if we're if we're fueled from a sense of purpose and we feel united in that, all the more so. Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, if we look at organizational purpose that the challenge with the organizational purpose by itself is is that it is it's how do you connect to it? And if you know what your purpose is and what your connection is between your individual purpose and the organization's purpose, it gives you a whole different arc of why you're there. Absolutely. Yeah. Interestingly enough, Nick, I'm when I researched some people experience meeting and their work and listen to their identity and one of the modes of fifteen that I found was organizational mission alignment. And it's I kind of map it over to that. But and how what a space of you know, these guys are on fire when they're in that place. Absolutely so. One of the other things that you talked about in your book that

28:26 I love the way you write about this, Nick, It's just so crisp and clear and accessible. You talk about doing the hard right over the easy wrong as as an element of impact. What you say more about that? Yeah, I think you know. The hard right versus easy wrong comes from the crew at West Point, and it's from the Cadet Prayer, and it talks about doing the hard right versus easy wrong and going for the whole truth instead of just behalf. And look, what I've seen over and over again is that most of us are struggling. It's easy for all of us to know what easy wrong is in hindsight, and the challenges is in the moment, do we make the hard choice, and do we make that hard right choice that as a result of it is for the bigger cause or the bigger us? You know. One of the stories they ended up having that I have in the book is actually about a colleague I know from West Point who was on track to become a one star general. He was with Portray ust Or in the surge, and he decided that that wasn't what he wanted to do. He wanted to train leaders. He didn't want to be the leader, which in the military is kind of a weird thing to do. To make that shift, But he went back to school and he was in Boston, and he was running in the Boston Marathon in twenty thirteen with the blind colleague and he was at the finish line when the first of the bombs went off. Yeah, and he was He'd done a number of tours of duty, so for him, that was no different than being in Afghanistan. So

29:59 he started doing triage and he was actually he saved six people's lives, and the EMTs were like overwhelmed. They and they'd never seen anything like this, And he was teaching them in real time what to do to stop the bleeding in certain situations, and what you had to do to make create the tension. And you know, in some ways he had spent the six months before that wondering whether he'd made the biggest mistake in his life getting off of the general career track, you know. But after that event, he realized why he was. One of the reasons that he was there was so he could be there in that moment. So it was a hard right versus the easy wrong. We never know what it is until in hindsight. Okay, Now, purpose in some ways always knows, Okay, very rarely doesn't let us know why. But if we do follow it, we tend to find ourselves accessing and operating from those choices that end up being more the hard right versus easy wrong. You know, Nick, I totally get that because I left a perfectly good consulting job, you know, to jump off a cliff and go do this purpose stuff. A boy was that, you know, the hard right over the easy wrong. I really get it. Yeah, exactly.

31:08 It's that tough you know, and don't make it easy, girl. It's like, this is a really tough thing, and I just sometimes and humble, I say, I say, oh my gosh, it's like, there's so many other things that would be so much easier for me to do than in the purpose. So I'm like, God right here when writing the book for me was the hard right, because I resisted writing the book for about five years, and my purpose finally said, listen, I'm not gonna let you start. You're gonna I'm gonna you know, he's just gonna do this thing. So it's like, oh my god. Yeah, So anyway, I got that, and that's how I actually finally birthed my first draft of my first book. I promised myself i'd do it by the end of last year, and I did do it, Nick, So you're right, it does work, this purpose stuff. So all right, let's grab our last break here. I'm Elise Cortez, I'm your host. We are on the air with Nick Craig. He is the author of the newly published book Leading from Purpose and the president of Core Leadership Institute, where he guides executives on the journey to discover and lead with purpose. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Alise Cortez is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst.

32:34 She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elise Cortez dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortez. To reach our program today, send an email to Elise ali Se at Elise Cortez dot com.

33:17 Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on purpose if you're just tuning in. My guest is Nick Craig. He is the author of the newly published book Leading from Purpose and the president of the Core Leadership Institute, where he guides executives on the journey to discover and lead with purpose. He has worked with organizations including Ben and Jerry's Heineken, IMG Bank, Lego, inn A Lever, and the United States Military Academy at West Point. I'm your host, Elise Cortez. So for this last segment here, Nick, we don't have much time here, but I definitely want to hit a couple of high points that I think are hopelessly fascinating. Hopelessly, yes, I find it fascinating, so hopefully somebody else in the audience will too. But we're still talking about impact from purpose, and one of the things that you distinguish in your book is fulfillment versus happiness. Say more about that. Oh yeah, so look, it turns out that purpose and happiness are not directly connected to each other. Everyone thinks that if you have much, if you're clear on your purpose, that your life you'll be much happier and so forth. And actually it's an interesting reality is that for many of the people I know, is that they have been willing to postpone instantane is happiness for purpose. That purpose will have us be willing to persevere and do the tough stuff much much longer than we would be

34:51 otherwise, and in some ways postpone the happiness piece. Mean, there's a lot of research around being a parent, okay, and it turns out that if you have one kid, it has a little bit of impact negatively on your happiness. But if you have two kids, it's like it's really clearly has an impact. And the challenges is that none of us would give up having our kids because of the meaning that it brings to us. Right, So I think that when we look at there's a deeper fulfillment the purpose's purpose brings to us and satisfaction. Happiness is. I have a benefit of working with Ben and Jerry's and Heineken. If I give you Ben and Jerry's and Heineken, and you know you have enough of it, you'll be very happy for a small for a period of time. Now there's a hangover that comes from both of those. Oh yeah, it's just going to say what a great thing. Ice cream and beer works for me, I was actually working with Ben and Jerry's once and I saw the Heineken truck pull up, and so I finally have gotten both of these guys in the same place at the same time. Now that I'm working with Lego, I'm trying to see if we can get all three of them together and see if we come up with a whole new product suite. So anyway, will love it all the innovation that can come from working on a purpose too. Right. Well, So another part of your book that I think is quite interesting, the whole piece of saving yourself and saving the world. You talk about how saving the world is very different from leading a life of purpose, because even the guys selling

36:22 Jiffy peanut butter needs purpose. So what do you mean? So one of the biggest places if I look at most of the people I've worked with, when they get clear on what their purposes, they quickly go running out of the room and they go impact all the people around them, And it is incredible to watch. The real impact that these individuals have is they now know why they're here. But what happens over time is that when I see them about two or three years later, it's like it looks like somebody threw them in the lake and they're like just coming out and they're like a little bit whatever, and I go, so let's go up with you. Well, it turns out that they forgot to do one critical thing that if they don't do then it's not going to work for a long term. Is they forgot to apply their purpose to themselves. And so, as I talked about this particular case in the book, I had a woman who ended up working as head of HR for the World Food Program and she was literally saving women's lives, and her purpose was about helping women, helping the women inside of us, and we all have that that isn't taken care of, and helping take care of that part of us. And she was doing this in refugee camps and everywhere else and dealing with all kinds of amazing turnarounds and things. But the challenge was is that her physical body was falling apart. Wow. And what we realized was is that she was applying her purpose to every person on

37:52 the planet but herself. The other fun example I have is I had a woman, another lady, who was of sustainability for a big company and she was physically falling apart, I said, well, how sustainable is that? Okay? And it's just it just goes to reinforce the fact that the most important and powerful area of congruency for each of us is to apply our purpose not just to the rest of the world, but also to ourselves. And it's the reason why most of us don't do that is because we don't think we deserve it. It's funny you say this, Nick. I'm out speaking here in about three weeks through a group of women who are in healthcare, and part of the message is, hey, look, don't forget to take care of yourself as you're out there caring for everyone else. I don't know why. I don't know if you feel the same way, but it seems like women are even more inclined to to to do that where they're caring for others at the expense of themselves. Do you agree with that or my way off? No. I think that if we take it outside of the physical form and we take it into the like the sense of masculine versus versus more feminine, the healer or archetype is more of a feminine architype you could argue, and I think with that it is one that tends to cause the healer is the last person to get healed. And I definitely think that, you

39:22 know, I know a lot of people, a lot of women who are just so humbled by trying to take care of everybody else. Yes, and it's a friend of mine refers to it as the big little one. They were always the more adult one in the system, even when they were a kid, and they never learned how to be taken care of. Okay, I have Well, my wife is a nurse and she's the worst person when she's sick. Oh, I just got access to something for myself. Or that I am the oldest of four and I just came back from burying my mother or she was cremated, and it it didn't even occur to me not to take the helm of all that and just run with it. And so you just gave me something. Thank you, Nick, I'm so welcome.

40:08 I mean, I think that the you know, we see purpose and we see it as something that we can go change the world with. But I truly believe that the world that has to be changed versus the one that's inside us. And when we are healed ourselves, we heal other people without actually having to heal them. So then we have to put all this effort into it. We have to make all this noise and all this it has to be such a big show, and then we feel exhausted at the end of it. I'm like, Okay, well, you know that's not very saying. It's distainable. If we look at the planet and we look at climate change, and we look at everything at some level, at the its essence, it's our own inability to honor ourselves that causes us not to honor this planet that we sit on. So it's I've had evening sessions with people where we really go and look at where are we leading from our purpose and where are we not in our life and our ourselves. And I have gotten more grown men who have never cried in their life to be in tears as they finally look at the consequence of not having taken care of themselves in the ways that they need to. Oh my gosh, how beautiful, Nick, that you can do work in a way that gives me an access to something like that. I always find it amazing, And I don't know why we're so hard as society on men so that they feel like they can't cry. But if you can get them to cry and get that access, Nick, that's amazing work. I am the magic at making people cry. I've gotten better and I just I just talk right through it that you know, my masscre

41:40 is running down my face and I might be sobbing a little bit, but I can get right through it. I think here's the thing. I think it a beautiful thing about. Let's talk about crying for a one second. You know, outside of being an actor or an actress, for the rest of us, probably one of the few emotions that truly are impossible to fake is when we cry. Yeah, and it crying is usually because something really touches us and it has such a really impact. And I think that in some ways purpose is right there, okay, And so I just think that it's when people end up crying around me is is I know that that's a sacred place and it's a place in which something authentic has shown up. And for the person they always say to me, you know, I never I never cry, And I'm like, that's good. Then this must be really a good moment because then let's go find out what's on the other side of that, you know, Nick, I so appreciate the word you use, their sacred. Yes, I just did a program on Friday with some women and all of us, of course shed tears, and it is it's sacred.

42:45 It is a beautiful thing to be able to get to live and be on that level with someone and get access and open something with someone so they can be there for themselves, they can let those tears come down their face. Absolutely exactly. Well, we're getting close to the to the end of the show already, and I wish I could have more time with you, because I love what you're up to and how you go about it. But I have at least a couple more questions I want to ask you. One. This is kind of a burning question for me. You warn't us somewhere in your book or forget where to be careful to not let our strengths get in the way of our purpose. What what do you mean by this? How would our strengths be detrimental to our purpose? Yeah? I didn't particularly like this chapter, and so you know, here's that what I've discovered is, look, well there's a lot there's a lot of narrative around you know, focus on your strengths and so forth. You know, Purpose is bigger than our strengths are, and in some sense we will use our strengths in spite of our purpose. And I think that some sence, Purpose is going to have uscpe places that our strengths might not have us go, and may have us work on things that, for the most part, we don't even think as a strength. But in some sense a purpose doesn't care about that.

44:04 I mean, I have certain strengths, and you know, one of the stories I tell is about I raised two girls, and I'm really great at being on stage and running around teaching all this stuff, and being at home and being just slapping the kids around was never a strength for me, right, And so I went and did all my strengths. And the problem was that then at some point the girls we had one of those evenings in which everything went wrong. The girls are yelling and screaming at me because I picked them up too early, and then I'm yelling and screaming at them and everyone, and it's just so awful. And the next day they say, you know, Dad, we don't want to come so we don't want to spend any more time with you. Now I'm divorced, so this is a slight dilemma here. I am teaching programs on purpose and my two girls are like, Dad, we don't want to hang out with you. And you know, in that moment, and I realized, you know, if I was going to live my purpose, it wasn't about well my you know, focusing on my strength wasn't going to get me where I needed to go.

45:08 Well, I think you say it really beautifully in the book. If I'm sure I'll busher this, you can, you can fix it for me. But you say that really purposes the foundation on which we can then use or work and add leverage our purpose, our values something like that. Yes. Yeah, And in some sense it's at that place that you know, all these other things we can develop, that purpose is the one thing that is always there. Okay, I love that. So I think this is probably gonna be one of our last questions here, Nick, And this one is very, very very important too. It's it's the mastery question. So, once we have found our purpose, how do we continue to master it and live from it across all parts of our lives? How do we make sure it doesn't go away? Yeah? And so I think this is the way the challenge about your living your purpose is that you mostly when you're living in your purpose, you don't notice that it's only when you throw it when you were not, and it starts to really get to be awfully painful that you realize that you're not and you step back in. So it's a cycle.

46:15 Now when you know what your purpose is is the cycle takes a lot less time and you iterate through it. And you know, I've had a number of executives that I've worked with in leaders where helping them see where are they leading from purpose and where were they not and how would they bring it into that situation was the biggest transformation in their lives. And one of the stories I told in the book was of a guy who was a senior who ran a business. It was very successful. He was a high flyer and he was great at being in front of a room or one on one, but when he was managing his team, he would answer the questions before anybody would even know what the question was. Wow. And you know what he realized was that if he was going to live his purpose, he really had to bite his time and allow others to really give their gift. And it was a It was an incredible insight for him to see how this pattern fe feels around the discipline and the rigor required to learn this process of being this deeper fuller Wiser bought part of his his purpose. Said to him, that's great that you, But if you really want to master purpose, here's the tears, the dark place you have to go through. Wow, us do the hard stuff that we wouldn't do otherwise, all right, and that is a beautiful way for us to finish. Nick, I really want to thank you

47:45 so much for taking time out of your crazy busy schedule to join us for this conversation. I was so looking forward to sharing it with with my listeners across the globe. So thank you for being on working on Purpose. Well, it's wonderful being on this call with you. I just love your level of energy and what you bring to this dialogue about purpose. So at least, thank you so much for allowing me to participate with you on this journey. Thank you, Nick, it's it's it is a great journey, one well worth going after. So if you want to learn more about Nick Craig, his book Leading from Purpose, or the work Keen his team are doing to help leaders discover and lead from their purpose. Visit their website. It's core Leader dot com again chord leader dot com. If you miss last week's show, you can always catch a recorded podcast. We were on the air with Max Hanson of White Scouts. They are a recruiting firm that focuses on placing executives with purpose. Next week, we'll be on the air with Rona Zia about talking about her book Your Hidden Light, a personal guide to creating your desired life. See you then, remember that work is at least one third of our life, so let's work on purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune in to Working on Purpose, featuring your host, Alice Cortez, each week on the Voice America Empowerment Channel.

49:05 This week, find your life's purpose at work.