This session in the IRG100 program works on the leader rather than the business. Two hours run from a visualization, through exploring personal values, to revisiting purpose and confirming alignment with the organization’s values.
Key findings
- The bulk of the session is the values work: forty-five minutes on exploring values, of which twenty-five are spent sorting them individually.
- Thirty values are sorted into three tiers, important, more important and most important, and the exercise ends at three.
- Naming a value is not enough. Participants have to define what each of their top three actually means to them.
- Purpose is worked through the Ikigai frame: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
- Almost every step is paired. Two twenty minute pair shares and a five minute individual reflection carry the personal work.
Where the cohort stood on stakeholders
The session opened on poll results covering three statements. Whether the leader makes a conscious effort in strategic decision making to balance the needs of colleagues, customers, communities and shareholders. Whether the organization’s leadership sufficiently understands the needs of each stakeholder. And whether the growth strategy sufficiently addresses them.
The answers were recorded on a five point agreement scale running from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The distributions differ noticeably between the personal statement and the two about the organization.
The values sort
Participants worked from a list of thirty values covering very different registers: authenticity, achievement, commitment, family, faith, kindness, security, responsibility, impact, loyalty and humility among them, alongside power, winning, humor, harmony, gratitude and justice.
The sort runs for twenty-five minutes and pushes toward a decision: three tiers, then a top three, then a written definition of what each of those three means to the person who chose it. A twenty minute pair share follows, so the definitions have to survive being said out loud.
Purpose through four lenses
Purpose is examined with Ikigai, which sets four questions against each other: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. The overlaps are labeled passion, mission, vocation and profession.
The session closes back on the organization. Participants confirm alignment between their own values and their employer’s, and prepare a purpose challenge, personal or corporate, to take into their breakout team.
Further material was pointed at through the IRG community forum, including Eckhart Tolle on living your true purpose, Bob Chapman on the privilege of leadership, and Gijs Pothof on leadership journeys.
Scope and limitations
The poll results are a snapshot of one cohort’s self-assessment, taken at the start of a session, and the deck reports the distributions without a respondent count.
Source
This page summarises Personal Passion and Purpose, by Institute for Real Growth, January 2021.