Hopefully last month’s column helped you lock in on, or at least get closer to, your own clear purpose for why you do what you do. Let’s build on that now, similar to how I did for everyone who will be working through Leading With A Clear Purpose when it’s released in February 2025. As I scoured through all sorts of resources while writing the book, I became even more convinced that working toward something truly meaningful offsets so much of what we hear today about burnout.
I frequently hear folks say, “When you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” What a bunch of crap! I’ve never had, nor have I ever seen, a role that only involves tasks we love. Cindy and I certainly don’t have that luxury today – and we run our own business. For what it’s worth, I’d bet nearly any business owner you ask would agree with that statement. Regardless of whether I enjoy every single task or not, I have grown quite fond eating real food (rather than foraging in the yard for bugs and bark) and sleeping inside so I push through. During my time in human resources, I heard so many people push back when asked to complete certain aspects of their jobs, saying they didn’t like doing that particular thing. All too often, their supervisor or manager appeased them to avoid a scene. We’ll dig into this more shortly, but have you ever experienced something like this when dealing with a child?
A stark reality we all face in our professional lives is that there are indeed tasks we’re responsible for completing that just plain suck. Suggesting it’s even remotely possible to love everything we do is a pipe dream. Not so long ago, though, I heard Marcus Buckingham share some statistics that provided me with a whole new perspective on how love fits into the equation. He cited a Mayo Clinic study showing that people performed best when they connected love to just 20% of what they did on a routine basis. He went on to emphasize that even when we don’t necessarily love doing a specific thing, we can still choose to do it lovingly.
Now, back to that question about appeasing a child to avoid a scene… With our children, or really in any personal relationship, we’ll never have the luxury of enjoying every situation. Life has a tendency to throw things at us. With the possible exception of during our kids’ teenage years, I believe we’d be able to easily identify at least 20% of the relationship that we do truly love. Aside from our children, I’d go so far as to question the validity of any relationship where we can’t love 20% – but that’s a fight for another day. What I’ll challenge you to consider in closing is how you can approach the things you don’t love but absolutely must do, to maintain a relationship or to keep receiving a paycheck, with a loving approach. When we can perform even the crappiest tasks lovingly, it will show through to anyone who’s impacted, and I’ll just bet you that completing it will suck a little less.
As I opened part one of Leading With A Clear Purpose, which will be released in early 2025, I asked that same question geared specifically at why each reader chose to accept a role with any level of leadership responsibility. In the workplace, it’s nearly always easier when we only have to worry about our own performance. Rarely will the perceived perks, or the slight increase in compensation, offset the headaches that come with overseeing a team of any size. If we’re being completely honest with ourselves, the same thing holds true for parenting. The biggest difference in raising kids is that the increased responsibility typically comes with a decrease in pay, or at least less money left over for ourselves even when our paychecks grow ever-so-slightly over time.
I’ve often heard it stand that fathering a child doesn’t make someone a dad. That holds just as true for the women involved in the equation. Just like choosing to effectively lead a team in any business, being a great mom or dad requires far more. For someone to consistently choose to carry to weight involved with truly leading (never to be confused with barking orders at the people depending on you for a paycheck), there had better be a clear and definite reason. Making the often selfless decisions involved in parenting, whether our kids are five or thirty-five, is no different!
When I accepted my first position off the shop floor in a manufacturing facility, I can’t say that I had any real interest in the initiative I would be responsible for helping roll out; I applied for the position for the sole purpose of gaining new experience that might someday help me move into a role with better pay and benefits. Feeding my family and paying the mortgage was far more important to me at the time than anything I would have to do in that role. It didn’t take long to realize that I’d need a better reason than that to push through what proved to be incredibly difficult, every single day. I had to keep the long-term goal in mind while coming up with something to push me through what I needed to achieve right then.
Like most young adults, I had a vastly different lifestyle before Cindy and I got married. I won’t incriminate myself by detailing any of my shenanigans here, but I remember a few very specific times when I made decisions to put those aside. I also remember exactly why I made those decisions. Without having those specific reasons driving my decisions, a purpose if you will, I don’t think for a minute that I would have been able to have stuck with them. Truth be told, most of those shenanigans (at least the ones I could remember) were more fun on any given day. But choosing to be the best dad I knew how to be at the time has been rewarding ever since.
With that in mind, can you point to why you do what you do as a parent? What makes the sacrifice worth it for you? Next time we’ll look at something I learned from Marcus Buckingham about building love into the process…
