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S1E05| One Great Question: Shifting Focus - Aligning Daily Work with Meaning and Impact
25 Plays5 months ago
Burnout isn’t about working too hard, it’s about not knowing why your work matters.
In this episode, we dive into the power of asking the right question:
- “Does my job matter?” is a lazy question, it seeks reassurance.
- “Why does my job matter?” is a demanding question, it creates clarity, responsibility, and real meaning.
We’ll uncover how purpose shows up in everyday work, why money alone can’t fuel motivation, and how leaders often unintentionally disengage their teams by failing to link the smallest tasks to real-world impact. From freezing New England factories to flashy, but hollow—high-paying gigs in Las Vegas, we reveal how meaning is built, lost, and rebuilt.
If you’re ready to see your work, and your team’s work through a purpose-driven lens, this episode will change the way you think about why you do what you do.
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Transcript
Introduction: The Question of Job Significance
00:00:00
Speaker
Does my job matter is what you might call a lazy question. Why does my job matter is a great question because it forces an answer. I, as your employee, could ask you this question and you would have to give an answer. But you could also ask that question to me why does your job matter and in what ways and to whom does it matter and how does it matter? And could it matter more if I did it like this? Yeah. Because if I'm doing the job, again, we don't want the job to be our identity, but if you're giving some part of your life force to it, then there's some part of you that's going into it you go, well, does this not also in some way speak to my purpose and my need?
00:00:39
Speaker
and does it matter to me? And why does it matter And how does it matter to me? Because I'm the one doing if it matters to other people, it doesn't matter to me. Does it really matter? Well, why does my job matter?
00:00:53
Speaker
That's an interesting question. Why is it interesting to you? Well, because it's two different questions. Oh, how
Personal Purpose and Job Justification
00:01:00
Speaker
so? Well, does my job matter? That's the question that lots of people want to ask. um Does my job matter? And we want to sort of like...
00:01:08
Speaker
pander to our friends and colleagues and and oh you mean like the cocktail thing where we're trying to i'm at a party does what i do matter it's sound totally man like it's like an instagram meme like you're what you do matters we need you also is it a bit of a soft flex where it's like hey what do you do for a living and now it's like i need to in this moment say i approve right what i do is important has some value Yeah. Right. And it's so relative. Right. I've never seen much utility in what I do for a living. It's like it's like, well, I just write things and I just put words down on on paper. and And on one hand of the spectrum, it's like this is how humanity does not ah you know repeat mistakes from a thousand years ago. That's why we write things down. On the other hand.
00:01:54
Speaker
Like, are we like is it is it really working? yeah Yeah. Is this piece of work really pushing my needle towards that? Is that why i write business books? Yeah, is that why write Isn't that why we needed one more podcast?
00:02:07
Speaker
Right. yeah A couple of middle-aged white dudes. Yeah, yeah. Not enough of us doing that.
The Power of Questions in Personal Reflection
00:02:12
Speaker
But why does my job matter is a very different question from does my job matter. Because does my job matter is a binary yes, no.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yes, of course it does. Or no, it doesn't. And nobody wants to tell you, no, your job doesn't matter. ah Even your boss doesn't want to do that. When in reality, it might not. mean, that's a real potential outcome of that question, isn't it?
00:02:33
Speaker
I think it really is, but I think the beauty of the other side of that coin is, well, if it doesn't have a finite meaning, then you can insert meaning. Right, of course. And I think this is the value, you know, really overused word now is this idea of agency, which just means control. I need to have some sense of my input into the thing that I'm doing matters um and has some outcome, some output. And i think I think for me and maybe also the people listening, I'd love to know what do you think are the two questions there? so the one Does my job matter? And then why does my job matter? So does my job matter is a small question. It feels like a big question, but it's not big because according to what I understand about curiosity...
00:03:20
Speaker
that I've learned from you is the point of curiosity, the point of great questions is they keep a conversation going. They invite more questions. That's what a really great question does. You and I had series of conversations a few weeks ago where you just asked some expansive questions that took my world and just made it a bit bigger. I was thinking of my problem in my life and the stuff that I had to deal with like this. And you asked a couple of questions that kind of cracked that open. And now I'm thinking about it at a much larger scale. So it is kind of increased
00:03:54
Speaker
the possibility of a lot of things in my situation. And I think great questions do that. So ah does my job matter is what you might call a lazy question. Why does my job matter is a great question because it forces an answer. Yes.
00:04:11
Speaker
is It forces deep, thoughtful, provocative, interesting answer. And I say, you know, ah I, as your employee, could ask you this question and you would have to give an answer.
Identity, Transition, and Career Fulfillment
00:04:23
Speaker
But you could also ask that question to me as well. Why does your job matter?
00:04:28
Speaker
um So I think it's a great question in the sense that it's going to provoke other questions and it's going to incite deeper, more meaningful conversation. Why does my job matter? And in what ways? And to whom does it matter? And how does it matter? And could it matter more if I did it like this?
00:04:45
Speaker
And in that, there's this latent idea of, well, then, doesn't it also then include, well, why do I matter? Yeah. Because if I'm doing the job, again, we don't want the job to be our identity, but if you're giving some part of your life force to it, then there's some part of you that's going into that you go, well, does this not also in some way speak to my purpose and my meaning?
00:05:06
Speaker
And does it matter to me? And why does it matter to me? And how does it matter to me? Because I'm the one doing it. And if it matters to other people, if it doesn't matter to me, does it really matter? And you were actually the the person, you know, four or five years ago that helped me just very personally ask this question myself. So, you know, we go from this moment of me getting laid off and I, you know, drive up to Nashville. I'm sitting at your place and you very kindly cooked me a delicious chimichurri steak dinner.
00:05:34
Speaker
and a recipe to be found online by Jeff Goins. And, or is it? I know, you're not doing that. Okay, great. It's secret. You must ah go to Jeff's house and he will cook it for you and never give you the recipe.
00:05:47
Speaker
But we're doing this and we're hanging out and I'm just in this really low place where I just said, right, your job should not be your identity. But some part of this is just the reality of I was the made bread main breadwinner, the job is gone.
00:06:00
Speaker
And I'm just really at that point, I'm not really thinking about purpose. I'm just thinking about how do I survive? And I asked a well-intentioned but bad question, which to you, which was, what should I do next?
00:06:14
Speaker
And you very kindly, like, you you talked about me asking an expansive question. You asked me an expansive question all those years ago. And you said, you might be one of most curious people I know. And I think in this moment you're asking the wrong question.
00:06:25
Speaker
And what you told me was, I think the question you're actually interested in is what could I do? in this moment. And could is again, full of so much more possibility and purpose.
00:06:37
Speaker
And I mean, literally that one question changed the tra trajectory of my life because I started asking this question of, well, what could I do? And to me, it then morphed into one of my favorite questions now to ask myself in any season and ask friends and anybody who'll listen.
Embracing Change and New Possibilities
00:06:53
Speaker
It's a dangerous question. So I would tell people to be careful with this one. Don't operate it under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or ego. Ego being the most dangerous is.
00:07:03
Speaker
what could I do if I knew I wouldn't fail? And that's where your question took me. I was like, okay, right now I should be worried about making a living. Right now I should be ashamed of the way this thing fell apart. white Right now I should be thinking about what I should do next.
00:07:20
Speaker
And instead I'm going to take a pause, even if it's just for an hour, to imagine, well, what could I do if I knew I wouldn't fail? And in that moment I started thinking about Well, what I love doing is being with people and either telling story or developing people. That's what I'd been doing for the last 20 years in various versions of this job that I'd settled for.
00:07:38
Speaker
And that was the heartbreaking thing. It was a job that had become stale and stable, and it had been my settle thing. It wasn't the reach school, it was the community college that I said, okay, fine. And then even they kicked me out. right And so now i said, okay, well, let's pause, lick our wounds, and for an hour imagine, well, what would you do if you could do anything?
00:07:56
Speaker
And in that moment, like the branding agency and then this consulting company called Curiosity was birthed out of that one question, all now deeply aligned with my purpose as a human, because it it helped me solidify in one sentence. If you're going to define like what brings you to life, what's the thing you would do if you could do anything, I would be on a rescue mission for Jeff's inner eight-year-old.
00:08:20
Speaker
Because outside of this moment of deep pain, what I'm typically doing in a conversation is going, whoever you are at the core, the the best version of you, the part that maybe you haven't even discovered yet, is most closely aligned to the eight-year-old version of you.
00:08:35
Speaker
when the world was full of endless wonders and possibility and friends you just haven't made yet and things you just haven't dreamed or built yet and, you know, ah places you haven't seen and things you haven't experienced. There's all of this wonder and amazement all wrapped around this one concept, curiosity.
00:08:54
Speaker
And so if I can help ask a brand a better question, hey, let's build around that idea. If I can ask a person or employee, let me ask them a better question. And they feel safer and they feel like they can move forward in their life. Now they're a little bit closer to the eight-year-old version of themselves. And in that moment, they're not going backwards. They're just discovering, oh, this is me unencumbered. This is actually the best version of me now living out as an adult. hol i mean, I jokingly tell people all the time,
00:09:20
Speaker
when I'm like, hey, let's go to dinner. And when we go to dinner, it's like, i you pick, I pay. I just want the experience of going, I want to experience what you like. I want to see what you enjoy. Because at this season of life, I get to have that fortunate weird combo of I'm an eight-year-old with a bank account.
00:09:37
Speaker
So I'm way more interested in finding the place you love and you pick, I pay. Like that's the arrangement that I like. And so I think for me, this question that you asked all those years ago was really around purpose.
Understanding Work Value to Prevent Burnout
00:09:50
Speaker
And why why my job matters also helps me understand, well, how is that connected to why I matter? This is like a whole field of psychological research. I you've heard about like the study of mattering.
00:10:05
Speaker
No. Which, I don't know. Like, on one level, I'm like... Come on. Like we are just making stuff up now. like I mean, you guys so really to go to Barnes and Noble, right? It's like, well, yeah, I mean, it's kind of. Where else are the new podcasts going to come from if we don't make new fields of psychology? I don't know. It's pretty funny. But I mean, it's a whole thing. Like it's a whole, it's like agency. It's like, we just keep making up words for the same old ideas, which is just like people want to matter. They want to feel like what, what they're doing. meaning of life. Yeah, they want to feel like what they're doing has purpose. They don't want to dig a hole and then, you know, fill it up at the end of every day. They want to know that it's leading towards some sort of measurable outcome that's going to create some sort of impact that hopefully will be positive. Mm-hmm. And what I see, whether it's a new field of science or not, in in the work you know of curiosity as a company, when we're with other companies, helping them build leaders and building culture and building teams, is one of the things that I'll hear from leaders all the time. And you can see this in marriages and friendships. and and like It's just this eventual burnout. Yeah.
00:11:11
Speaker
because they don't know how their input is actually affecting the output. And if you do this long enough, it's your exact analogy of like, I'm just digging a hole and a day later I fill it with dirt. And then I dig a hole and then I fill it with dirt. And going back to one of my favorite book series was this book series called The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, One of the punishments to this very fierce warrior culture is under a hot sun, they were supposed to just build mounds of dirt and then deconstruct it and build mounds of dirt. And and they were testing the mind of the warriors because these people could do anything. They could slay a hundred of their enemies. They could run a hundred miles. They could do anything physically, but they're like, can we break your mind by making you feel useless?
00:11:55
Speaker
And I think inside the workplace, inside cultures, one of the quickest ways to watch somebody disengage is to have them be disengaged from the value of the work.
00:12:06
Speaker
And so the question that we ask in the tool around why does my job matter is, do you understand what you're doing on a Tuesday at 10 a.m.? Do you understand how that creates and affects the eventual outcome? And if they don't, we've got to fix that.
00:12:21
Speaker
We have to be able to draw a clear line between what they're doing and what happens for the client and the world. The highest paid, most meaningless speaking gig I ever gave was at an HR conference in Las Vegas. They paid me $15,500 for a keynote. That's amazing. And you haven't sent this contact on to me yet. Why? Well, come on. Why are you gatekeeping this topic?
00:12:44
Speaker
ah It was totally random. And I didn't know who was putting the event on. There were 15,000 people there. He was huge. Dr. Oz was there. Okay. He did the morning keynote. I did an afternoon. Pre or post politics for him. I don't know anything about that.
00:12:59
Speaker
ah um I was doing the afternoon workshop. So I, i you know, ah said that he was he was opening for me. Opening for you. Yeah. um It was some is the wildest bunch of people I have ever seen. Were HR people.
00:13:17
Speaker
Were HR people on a five-day vacation at a hotel in Las Vegas. Harding like it was 1999. Because these are the most buttoned up people at their company. Well, if you think about it, out like they hold everybody on secrets.
00:13:34
Speaker
Like it's got to be a depressing job. Yeah. Like you yeah you have to fire people. You're there when somebody gets fired. You're there when anybody has any sort of interpersonal conflict or sexual harassment claim, whatever. Like you're there for kind of the worst of it. Yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
So it's a heavy job and you've got a lot of baggage that you can't ever unload because you're like the in-house therapist yeah basically, right? Yeah, like who does the therapist go to? Right. know yeah And so they all went and i mean, they were wild.
00:14:03
Speaker
ah that That was the wildest party ever saw was every night at a Las Vegas hotel with a bunch of HR So ah ah h r people so i um I deliver a workshop about purpose, ah ah about vocation.
00:14:19
Speaker
And they were like falling asleep in their chairs and stuff. I mean, it was there was 2,500 people in my audience. It was a small session. Yeah. They flew me in, stayed at a hotel, ah walked down to where I was going to speak. They gave me the lectern, had somebody sort of like fumbling through my bio. They're like, all right, or Mr. Goins. And then I'm like,
00:14:42
Speaker
uh, standing in a very large hotel, ah you know, um, uh, conference conference room. Yeah. watching people fall asleep in front of me because they're hungover from the night before.
00:14:56
Speaker
and and then it just ends. And then they walk me to my book signing and I just stand there and people are like ah walking by. It's lunchtime. and They're like, do you need lunch? I was like, that'd be great. And they're like, give me a box with a sandwich in it. And that was it, you know? And the week before I'd been at a blogging conference that I was speaking out for like free and, you know, shaking hands and kissing babies and and k needing people. And it was such a weird thing. Like,
00:15:22
Speaker
I'm getting paid a lot of money for this. Nobody knows who I am. Nobody cares. And I'm a nobody here. I'm just a name. Like they just need, they had a hundred speakers, you know? um it was a multi, multi million dollar event, you know?
00:15:37
Speaker
And it was such a weird feeling. Like I was getting paid a lot of money and It didn't really matter. I couldn't. I went to a David Copperfield show that night and then like drank some wine and went to bed and went home. You know, it was so meaningless and empty for me.
00:15:54
Speaker
And I know people do that for a living and they just kind of, they just take it in stride. They do, you know, 20 $30,000 speaking gigs. They do a handful of them a month and they just kind of bam, bam, bam, bam. But I couldn't do it. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't for me. It wasn't my vibe.
00:16:09
Speaker
And I think this, you know, so contextually driven as well for each person, right? Because the beauty of purpose or meaning is in that moment, you know, okay, this didn't mean a lot because other things are ticking in your business and ah all those other spaces. And in another season, I've been like, the whole purpose was to get paid yeah and had the meaning of just that as the end goal.
Connecting Work with Broader Impacts
00:16:28
Speaker
yeah And I think the curiosity required, and I see this at a ton um when i I coach managers as well as executives, is they're meeting with people in their 90-day reviews.
00:16:38
Speaker
And the first thing the managers always talk about is what? Money. Hey, how do I talk about raises? Or we're down this year, so it's probably not going to happen. And I tell them all the time, i This is what I call the used car principle or the new car principle rather.
00:16:53
Speaker
If you have a new car, it costs real money, you've made a real investment, maybe you're really excited about it, you picked out the paint and the trim and the model and all that stuff. And after about 90 days, the new car smell kind of wears off, it's gotten its first ding, you know, in the grocery store parking lot. And you think more now about the payment than you do the newness of the car.
00:17:14
Speaker
And so now you feel entitled and obligated to this thing. It's very similar to that in raises where if somebody comes and asks for a raise at a 90 day, you better believe if you give it to them, the effect and the goodwill of that raise less about another 90 days until the newness of this thing wears off.
00:17:32
Speaker
And this is why I'm always encouraging people, like you have to talk about the value of the work that they're doing because they'll feel that conversation every single day. You won't feel the money the same way. Like you got the 15 grand. And then it went to a bill and another bill, and then now it's just a speech that didn't mean anything. Whereas at the other conference, it was like, oh, I got to have conversation after conversation after interaction after connection. yeah And so if we as leaders can like insert, inject, imbue, whatever of favorite word you want,
00:18:00
Speaker
this sense of this connection between here's the problem in the world, here is you as a unique so solution that intersect with that, and now here's how you like reorg that in a new direction to a new result that would only happen because you existed.
00:18:15
Speaker
So, you know, I even think about your example of the speech. Had one person come up afterwards and been like, I like that thing changed my trajectory. All of a sudden, this is the greatest talk you've ever given. I made 15 grand. I was in Vegas. I made this connection with this person. It changed their trajectory. There was value, meaning, purpose, whatever we want to describe to that. Now, all of a sudden, it's a different story in your narrative in that nostalgia.
00:18:39
Speaker
And the beauty of this is we can engineer it as leaders, as managers, as people around somebody else, even as a colleague, I don't have to even lead somebody. If I come with my own sense of purpose to the work because I've gone, again, there's there's three parts to this.
00:18:54
Speaker
What's the problem we want to solve? What's the unique way? i have a solution for that. And then what's the result I'm hoping to create in the world? All of a sudden, every Monday, i can wake up and go, oh, I'm solving this problem. i was telling you the story of you know a mutual friend.
00:19:10
Speaker
who he manages these boiler makers in New England. And he was having some purpose alignment. People were feeling a little burnt out. And I said, let's tell them the story of why it matters. And he's like, no, they they're wanting to talk about money and shifts. And I was like, we'll get to that. We need to make sure they're getting market rate and getting paid what they're due. People need to make a living wage. That's only fair.
00:19:29
Speaker
We need to also get them the resources they need to be able to do that job. That's basic. But burnout is sustained weight. They've already carried the weight of that for a long time. Now we're ascribing, oh, it's a money thing, or that and it might be. But at the core of long-term burnout, um a piece of the mechanism getting worn out, that's because they don't know why it's valuable, what the purpose is. So we have to ask the question, why does that particular task on that Tuesday matter?
00:19:55
Speaker
And then go all the way down the line. Well, if he doesn't turn the wrench on this boiler and this home in New England in November, and then this thing breaks in December, then everybody's off on a holiday and can't fix it and they've got a newborn. Now, all of a sudden, this young family with a newborn child in the dead of winter in Boston, somebody could die.
00:20:18
Speaker
oh, I thought I was just turning a wrench on a Tuesday at this dead-end manual job. Right. Oh, no, what I'm actually doing is creating safety for an infant. I'm much more attached to that work on a Tuesday than I am turning the wrench.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, especially if the choice is is before you. and know Most people, I think, if somebody is in dire need in front of them, you know, the good this American guy, you're going to help if you can. You're not gonna walk across the street to avoid somebody dying you know and in front of you You're gonna try to help.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah. So why does my job matter? There are three questions. Is that what they were? Yeah. So there there's, you know we use this shape inside the tool, this Pentagon. And at the top of the Pentagon, it's what's your role, your title, and your responsibilities. And then that kind of forms the top of the house of this Pentagon. And the Pentagon has these really four questions. What is the problem I'm here to solve?
00:21:13
Speaker
How does that problem get worse if I don't solve it? So kind of like, I need to turn the wrench. Well, if I don't turn the wrench, well, it's winter in New England, things could get really bad. Oh, here's now my, what's my solution? How am I uniquely gifted in this moment to do this?
00:21:30
Speaker
um And this also plays a little bit into this Japanese concept of Ikigai, right? You and I have talked about, which is there's four parts to purpose. It's what am I good at? What can I get paid for? What does the world need? And what am I passionate or like to do? Well, in this moment, it's like, well, what am I uniquely good at? Well, I went to school. I learned how to become a Boilermaker. I'm good at this thing. Okay. You're uniquely intersecting with that problem. And then lastly, what is the result I'm hoping to get here?
00:21:55
Speaker
If you can find the way that your particular responsibilities are tied to all four of those parts of the house, all of a sudden you have a structure. This thing has a foundation and you know four walls and a roof that you can really live under. um Because in this moment now you're going, okay, my role is as a Boilermaker, my responsibility, turn the wrench. Okay, well, this is the problem, it's attached to that. if it If I don't, the problem gets worse. Oh, I'm uniquely gifted to do that. Oh, and by the way, this is the result that we'll create for this family when I turn the wrench. If you can have those five parts connected with those five questions, what is my responsibility? What's the problem?
00:22:31
Speaker
How did that get worse? What's my particular solution and what's the result? All of a sudden, almost anybody can find a solution to burnout. Most of us have burnout because we go, this flew to Vegas and did it and it didn't matter. And again, all of a sudden, if I said, well, there's a result you didn't see. Or, hey, man, you're so uniquely gifted in this thing of telling that story on that stage. Regardless of the outcome, you got to really hone and practice that gifting of yours. And so your solution to the rest of the world grew even by, you know, James Clear definition, just 1% better. And so that will help other people. It may not have helped in that room, which you don't even know, but it could have helped, you know, hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of people after that.
00:23:14
Speaker
So somebody's asking, why does what I do matter? Why does my job matter? What is the next step? like is that Is it to ask those five questions? like If I'm literally sitting here with with um existential vocational angst, should I stay? Should I go? Should I dig deeper? Should I reinvent myself?
00:23:37
Speaker
what is the next right step once you're asking that question? That's a great question. The first thing that I see most confusion around is they just don't know what they're responsible for. So, so does, why does what I do matter, uh, sort of requires the next question, which is, well, what is actually your response to that? Yeah. Like, what do I actually do? Right. What are you asking me to do?
00:24:01
Speaker
Every single company I've ever worked for, from startups all the way to you know the places that make your wife's favorite leggings with tens of thousands of people, they all have the same problem, which is a lot of the time people don't know in the org chart, what are my responsibilities? Because it's changing so often. So even as a manager, as a leader, if you can just say, hey, we're just going to create this document.
00:24:23
Speaker
over and over and over again, and it's living and say, this is what you're responsible for. Let's have a conversation around that. What do you want to be on there? What do you want to come off there? What do you need to do these things? Well, then all of a sudden you've got the top of the house. Like it's very clear, hey, this is our address. This is where we live. There's the signpost.
00:24:39
Speaker
Now, once you go, so what do I do here? Oh, you do these things. Okay, great. My role and my responsibility are now set. Now I can have clarity on how is that fixing the problem that the company's attached to?
00:24:50
Speaker
How could that problem get worse? How am I uniquely gifted to do that? And what result am I trying to create? Still little stuck on you, bringing up my wife's legs. I could just start get you get my wife's legs out of it. Well, it wasn't her legs. It was her leggings, yeah her favorite leggings.
Community Support and Personal Growth
00:25:08
Speaker
Um, you know, and I don't know, maybe it's not her favorite leggings, but most suburban women are running to Lulu. So whether you're at a startup or at Lululemon, everybody's kind of asking this question like,
00:25:20
Speaker
Hold on, what am I supposed to do here? Like, what are my day-to-day tasks? Like very simple things. And so even in that, we created something called the three-document exercise to help companies just get clear on the day-to-day responsibilities. And then we combine that with the branding exercise to go, hey, how this is what the thing you do at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, this is how it's connected to the brand the problem that this brand wants to fix in the world.
00:25:44
Speaker
I do like the question, um like what could you do? What would you do if you couldn't fail? Oh, such a good one. um Because what's fun about that question is um You find out like what like what is their sort of, what is a person's sphere of possibility, right? Like what what even is failure? And when you when you brought that up earlier, I thought of, i was leading a writer's workshop years ago, small little thing with maybe a dozen people there I'll sit around ah a table.
00:26:17
Speaker
And we were, I don't know, we were going around and and sharing like what we could do if we could do anything, you know like what's your dream, something like that. I can't remember what it was like day two of a three day workshop. We were kind of into it. And there was this woman who was probably, you know, early 40s.
00:26:32
Speaker
ah She had had children young. So she kind of raised a family at this point. And she was kind of had teenagers and kicking kids out into the world at this point.
00:26:43
Speaker
and um she she She said, you know, I am embarrassed to say what I really, really want because it feels so ridiculous. So just like I can't even talk about it.
00:26:58
Speaker
Now, she was like blogging and like writing ah novels and stuff. And she was like, I just I can't. I'm just I'm i'm too scared to even talk about She like built it up, built it up. Like, I just I'm too embarrassed to even talk about it. we're Like.
00:27:12
Speaker
Like, what is it? Like, what like what like what is your dream? It just felt like this must be this. And she was like, I want to write, I want to write musicals and have them performed on stage on like, you know, Broadway. Yeah. And we were all like,
00:27:31
Speaker
Oh, that's it? Uh-huh. I mean, yeah, like, sure, that's probably yeah that's a big dream, of course. But we were like... Yeah, maybe you're staring at Hamilton going, this is a work of unparalleled genius I'm crushed by it. Or you're looking at, like, they turned Cat in the Hat into a musical. Like, you can do this. like like Yeah, she was like, i just you know, i want to I want to write stage plays. You know, i want to... i want to That's what I want to do. um And and it was it was really beautiful because um a couple of things happened. you know One, we saw just this like internal angst of like i'm so like, everybody's going to shoot this down and say this is stupid. And and then when she shared it, we were all just like...
00:28:12
Speaker
ah we kind of laughed, you know, we weren't laughing at her. We were like laughing at her own rejection of a version of herself that we thought was totally accessible. And it's like, well, of course, you know, like that seems reasonable for you.
00:28:29
Speaker
And it was such a beautiful sort of honestly affirming space. You know, sometimes people are like, oh, i want to like, you know, go to the moon or something. You know, I want to be, I want to create the world's first something.
00:28:43
Speaker
And it was, oh, you can totally do that. It wasn't i wasn't pandering. We were all like, that seems totally reasonable. yeah And if that's your big dream, you should totally go for it because you have a shot of doing that.
00:28:54
Speaker
Anyway, last I talked to her, she was she was working on a screenplay and working on a musical. That's incredible. One of the things I love in your story is it gives me this picture of, you know, if you see him like Harry Potter, where they do ah a, a bogot that comes out of the closet. Right. it's this really scary thing that is like, I'm terrified of this thing. And they cast a certain spell in the presence of their friends.
00:29:18
Speaker
And this thing becomes, instead of like this really scary thing, a ridiculous thing that would make you laugh. Right. And then your laughter makes it kind of explode sort of thing. It lets the air out. Yeah, let the air out of fear. And I love this idea that, you know, this is kind of an aside to purpose. If you're having difficulty, you know, like you've had or I've had, we've been in the presence of it. And then just a friend to laugh at the thing that we're afraid of. Yeah, right. Reduces all the fear of that. Cause like, oh it it's not laughing at the person. now It is laughing at the fear to the point where the other person goes, oh, you're not afraid of that thing, so I don't have to be either. And now the power of this community helps me find the purpose. Right. Yeah. I mean, you're laughing at the problem, not at the person. 100%. And it's this idea that I think community is required around this conversation and purpose to move from should to would. Right.
00:30:09
Speaker
Because the conversation around should is like, oh, I shouldn't do that because the musical is too big. To I would do it if I thought I could. And should is wrapped up in shame. yeah Oh, I've always been a mom.
00:30:22
Speaker
Nobody's going to listen to me. Why should I do that? I can't do that. too old. Yes. And you get around a new community who believes in the possibility. They're not they're not looking at the inevitability. Oh, this will absolutely happen. You're going, this is an interesting possibility. Nobody knows that, but I'm willing to laugh at your fear so it will undo the shame of this thing. So then you can move into that. Because again, one of the most powerful questions that you helped reorg for me is stop asking should.
00:30:50
Speaker
and asked us, what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail? And in that moment, it it moved from shame to possibility. And this is the value of purpose, even inside the workplace.
Purpose-Driven Workplace Culture
00:31:02
Speaker
It's going, my favorite question, and sometimes it really unnerves companies, is I say in 90-day reviews, I like to ask, what would you do if you could do anything here or anywhere else? Right.
00:31:15
Speaker
And they're like, ah, wait, that's too much latitude. And I'm like, no, no. People will like peel back like an onion and you'll be like, oh, i didn't I didn't realize you could do this. I didn't realize you had this in you. And your next great leaders, your next great execs are on the other side of that question.
00:31:31
Speaker
And your fear of just even engaging in the conversation is what's holding you back from your next generation of great leaders at the company, because you're afraid that, well, what if if I ask that, they'll want me to do that. And I was like, no, these are adults. You can say, hey, I don't have a lot of power to do things, but as your colleague, as your friend, as somebody you know leading you, I would love to know, what would you do if you could do anything at the company or somewhere else?
00:31:57
Speaker
And what it'll help you do as well around purpose is purpose you know leads to burnout when you don't have it. When you have burned out people, I've used this now for 20 years. And in 20 years, I've transitioned probably over 40 people. I've fired three.
00:32:13
Speaker
Right. And the reason that I have such a high ratio of, and when I say transition, that's not code for fired. Like they literally chose to leave. Yeah. Was because in these meetings, I'd like, if you could do anything, what would you do? or if you you wanted to.
00:32:27
Speaker
And i was like, I don't know if I can help with that, but I know some people I can make a phone call. I'll do whatever you need. And then they kind of slowly realized, oh, I'm doing less and less work here because I'm just not interested in fixing that problem anymore.
00:32:40
Speaker
And so they self-selected out and I helped them find another job. And it didn't damage the culture as they exited because I was interested in their purpose, not just in the company, but as a human And if we can find spaces and ways to do that as a community, by the way, not as a family, your company is not a family. We've got to stop using that word. But as a community, I just want to care for you as a fellow human on the journey.
00:33:04
Speaker
Like, what would you do if you could do anything? You know? So I think this is one of the things I see inside companies is if they can start having more purpose conversations that they're not afraid of, people would burn out less and quit less and stop living on LinkedIn, applying to other jobs because they don't really want to do the thing that they're a part of. Not because the thing they're doing isn't worth doing. They just don't understand why it's worth doing. And that's why the question is so important.
00:33:30
Speaker
Why does my job matter? And if we can start answering that better, people stay longer, they're more productive, and we don't have people just jumping every two years for the money, which is fine. If you need to do that, do that by all means.
00:33:44
Speaker
But I think we could create more interesting companies that people are flocking to us and going, I'll be here for ages because I love what I'm a part of. It's a great question. It's a good one.
00:33:55
Speaker
Well, until the next question.