The Purpose Driven Leader: A Complete Guide
Sometimes we can feel stuck in our growth, and stagnant in our leadership. We feel a lack of purpose to our days, and a loss of direction in our lives. What if there was a better way forward? What if there was a clear path forward that would help organize your system of belief for a life of meaning and purpose.
Let’s be honest, everyone has felt lost at some point in their lives:
If you’ve felt lost and aimless, ineffective in your leadership, this is for you.
If you’ve felt overwhelmed and uncertain about the future, this is for you.
If you’ve felt a lack of fulfillment, purpose, and direction, this is for you.
Sometimes as leaders we try to do the right things but fail to see results. We lead with good intentions, but still feel disoriented. We try and lead with excellence, but don’t have the skills to push our teams over the top. The purpose driven leader is someone who leads drives consistent excellence over the long term. All of us aspire to make an impact with our lives, if you’ve ever felt inspired to lead differently, this is for you.
If you want to live a more meaningful life, if you want to live a more fulfilling life, a life with clear direction, and a well-defined aim, this is for you.
If you want to lead your team and build something special, this is for you.
If you want to be remembered for the content of your character and the quality of your contributions, this is for you.
WHY should YOU care about becoming a Purpose Driven Leader?
In life there are two kinds of people: those who are driven by purpose and those who aren’t. Ask yourself:
Which one are you? Which one do you want to be?
Now think to yourself, do I have the tools I need to reach my potential? To help my team reach its potential?
All high-performing leaders start with a clear purpose.
Let me say it again. The leaders who consistently produce the best results are the ones driven by purpose, NOT by external measure of failure and success.
The leaders driven by purpose have a hunger to make a lasting impact with their lives, they want to make their life count.
They are the type of people who care more about what is said at their eulogy than what is listed on their resume. They are the type of people who want to look back from their deathbed with no regrets.
Purpose driven leaders are passionate about excellence, they are focused, intentional, humble, and ruthless in the pursuit of their calling. Does that describe you?
So, back to the question: why should YOU care?
If you believe that you shouldn’t waste your life, this is for you.
If you believe that life is more about what you give and less about what you take, this is for you.
If you believe in living for a higher purpose in service to others, this is for you.
If you believe that mediocrity is unacceptable, this is for you.
If you believe that the quality of your leadership determines the quality of your outcomes, this is for you.
Purpose driven leaders drive long-term results by creating a culture of excellence, intentionality, and discipline. They set their teams and organizations on a trajectory that delivers real results time after time.
Purpose driven leaders are able to stay the course when others fall away. They create loyal team members and strong organizations. They have the ability to adapt to any environment while sustaining a high level of excellence.
Here’s how you can do it.
Lead Yourself
Purpose driven leaders are driven by a passion to change the world. But purpose driven leaders understand that in order to change others they must first lead themselves.
Our lives and leadership all tell a story about who we are, what we believe, and what we are on earth to do. We get to choose the type of story we want to tell with our lives. This choice is the single greatest consideration we have as leaders.
We have been given a unique mix of talent, background, experiences, personality, and perspective that we could share with the world. The problem for many leaders is we fail to “systemize” our good intentions into a coherent framework.
We become less effective in our leadership when our good intentions are not organized into a clear plan of attack. At a basic level, we believe that life, coaching, and leadership is about more than just getting results. But if we fail to develop the necessary structure to live meaningful lives of purpose our leadership becomes less impactful. Our desire is to live purposefully, but we simply don’t know HOW. The execution of our good intentions can limit our ability to learn, grow, and lead others — the road to mediocrity is always paved with good intentions.
The bottom line is this: we cannot lead our teams, our families, or our communities with effectiveness until we learn to lead ourselves.
Organize, Clarify, Regulate
Leading ourselves is one of the most difficult (but important) steps in our journey of leadership.
The first step in leading ourselves comes in the organization, clarification, and regulation of our desire to make a difference. The purpose driven leader is able to bring clarity to the direction of his leadership when he systemizes his beliefs into a framework of organized meaning.
This idea of organizing your beliefs into a “system” may come across as rigid and uninspired, in fact, just the opposite is true. The leaders who make the greatest impact are the ones who constantly return to a (well thought-out) system again and again and again.
The implementation of a system delivers great clarity and conviction to what you believe. It serves as a compass to help you navigate challenges, and gives you an anchor that keeps you grounded during life’s storms. Systems give us direction and stability, a foundation of meaning and a clear direction.
Find Your Beginning
Just as all good movies and books have a narrative structure that draws us in, captivates us, and brings us to a final resolution, all good leaders have a system of belief that allows them to communicate and live a compelling story.
The beginning of every great story starts with your core purpose. Your core purpose is why you get out of bed in the morning, the reason you exist, your fundamental belief about the reason for living. It is your calling and your reason WHY, and it drives everything you do.
Your core purpose can be religious in nature or not, but it always points to a bigger story outside of yourself. It is the story we tell others with how we choose to live.
Purpose tells us (and others) a story about two things: it provides meaning about who we are and it tells us where to go.
It gives us identity and direction, it is both an anchor and a compass. Purpose is a story that is written down in our own thoughts, but is confirmed through our daily habits and decisions. In the end, we all become the story we tell ourselves.
Find Your Middle
The middle of your story is found in how you construct, build, and select the values that define who you are. The pillars of purpose are carefully constructed principles of truth that govern who you are and what you do. As the architects of purpose, you build on your WHY when you decide on your WHAT.
You’re WHAT is the principles you believe in, the core values that define your habits.
The Pillars of Purpose are best expressed as a set of core values that become the guardrails to your decision-making. Principles are ways of understanding what is true about life and how we should operate in the world. They are the core values that give us stability through the storms of life and leadership; they keep us grounded, faithful, and committed to our purpose.
Find your End
The end of your story are the habits of purpose.
They are the natural activation of your core values in the world, they are the HOW that flows from your WHAT and you’re WHY.
Our core behaviors are the activation of our purpose in everyday life, they are the 24/7 manifesto of what we believe. There is a principle buried underneath each of our core values that we express as behaviors — what we believe doesn’t matter unless it changes what we do. Put more completely: our principles determine our core behavior and our core behaviors activate our values in the world.
This is the basic structure of the purpose driven leader: a beginning story of purpose, a bedrock of core values, and a set of consistent habits.
Where do you go from here?
Throughout past decade I’ve put together a system for leaders to organize their system of belief of a life of leadership. Ask yourself the following questions:
What do you believe?
Why do you believe it?
Could you describe it in a few sentences?
Do you have clarity and conviction about what you believe and how you lead?
In order to, LEAD you need to know what you BELIEVE.
This system is for the leaders don’t ever stop in their pursuit of excellence. For those who are more afraid of mediocrity than catastrophe, more terrified of purposelessness than the risk of failure. This is for the man or woman who is passionate about pursuing purpose because they understand there is only one life to live. This is for those who want to become purpose driven leaders.
The purpose driven leader never stops in their pursuit of excellence.
The purpose driven leader keeps building and pushing to be better than before.
The purpose driven leader never stops climbing.
This system is for the leader that never backs down, never settles, and never ever gives up.
Find Out More
The Purpose Driven Leader is a simple system that will change your life forever. It will help you:
- Build a system of belief for a life of purpose
- Find your WHY, your WHAT, and your HOW (The Purpose Pyramid)
- Give your life meaning and direction
- Clarify your identity
- Elevate your leadership
If you are passionate about growing into the leader you’re capable of becoming, this is for you. Follow the Link Below.
