The following is a guest blog post from John McCarthy, Founder/CEO, The Purpose Promise, President, AGI Hospitality, Recruiting & Operations Manager, At Work On Purpose.

The Purpose Promise is a company (and movement) dedicated to helping people leave unfulfilling work behind and guiding them as they seek and step into employment that is fulfilling, purposeful, and best aligned with their personal life.

The most recent labor market reports cited how 4.5 million people left the labor market—they left their jobs—in November  2021. That's 3% of the workforce, and that’s shattering records.

This is called the “Great Resignation” and it's happening because  people are saying, “I don't think I want to work like this anymore.”  However, the reality is they don't know what they want.  

They just know what they don't want.

Said another way, the new constructs of the labor market are leading to most employees not knowing what they want in life and in work.

The opportunity for the adaptable leader and for the purpose-driven organization is to help their employee go through a process to determine what they want out of life and how they can integrate that life with their work-life.

If you want to take steps to help your team members analyze the life they want to live, these 4 areas are essential:

1. Help team members to identity their true gifts.

Their gifts are an intersection of their passions (what they are fired up about), their skills (what they have learned to do well), and their talents (inborn abilities).

What would they love to be a part of solving in life? What gets them up and fired up in the morning? This first piece is really helping people analyze and helping them to be able to communicate their true gifts. If you can help them identify and use their gifts, then they will have a higher propensity to enjoy work.  

2. Help team members to recognize more about their relational impact.

You can help your team members better understand who it is in life that they treasure the most, and how they can then impact them.

This analysis offers team members the ability to build intentionality and boundaries around their work life, and that can ensure that they can invest in the people and in the way that they can have most impact relationally.

An example of where we see this coming into play is with people who were able to work virtually due to COVID-19. After two years of working virtually, in some examples where those employers are having people come back into the physical office, employees are saying, “No way, I'm out. I'm going to find a company that can allow me to do the balance of life at home, where I can build into my kids and family—and work.”

3. Help team members become more self-aware about healthy needs and wants. 

Many leaders think that money is the top motivator—and it is, until it meets team members’ needs. When it exceeds their needs, its motivational capacity greatly reduces. But what people usually dictate is their “need” is either their current standard of living or what society tells them. So when we do this analysis with people, you can better decipher: what are healthy needs and healthy wants and what are unhealthy needs and unhealthy wants?

Once your team members do that analysis, then they have their own view of what their material needs and wants actually are as opposed to the society’s standards or their current earnings be a driver for them.

4. Help team members become more self-aware of their motivations.  

We tend to adopt our view of success either from the world standards or our family of origin. When a leader can help their employees really navigate through what it looks like to learn for themselves about what motivates them—not adopting the view of success from others—then that team member has a better and truer view of what success really looks like to them. That’s an important piece to recognize and be aware of to drive purpose and fulfillment in any role.  

All in all, all 4 of these are great areas to explore in order to drive home purpose for team members in an organization.

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