In their exhaustion they teeter on the verge of resignation. They’re not really enjoying their job that much, but they’re locked in by their long-term incentive plan. Many feel unable to leave because the “golden handcuffs” keep them living a life they never really chose for themselves.
If you ask them, “why do you do what you do”, most of them can’t answer. They may say: “I’m a businessperson, I’m here to make money”. We suggest: “making money is a side effect of being good at your job, it’s not WHY you do your job”. On reflection most leaders agree. But if making money isn’t their personal purpose their second guess is usually: “to provide for my family”.
We suggest: “of course, it’s good to provide for your family but isn’t that the purpose of men and women, rather than your personal purpose”. In desperation some leaders may ask: “is my purpose procreation?”. “No” we reply “that’s the purpose of a species”
The hard truth is that most leaders simply don’t know why they do what they do.
It is strange that most large organisations have spent serious money crafting their corporate purpose statement. Off-sites. Consultants. Brand agencies. Months of wordsmithing until “We exist to…” sounded inspiring enough for the annual report.
Purpose washing has become popular, but very few organisations invest in helping their leaders understand themselves and find their own personal purpose. Corporate purpose is usually the marketing spin you see on the wall. Personal purpose is what walks through the door every morning.
Many of the leaders signing off those corporate purpose statements have no idea what their own purpose is.
Our experience is backed up by the research which found that fewer than 20% of leaders have a strong sense of their own personal purpose. Even fewer can distill it into a concrete statement. Other global surveys found that less than half of leaders find their jobs purposeful. Given all the hours leaders put in, the air miles and the missed school plays, that’s a remarkably poor return on investment.
Others studies have reported better results, but that’s probably because many leaders confuse being busy with having a sense of purpose. This confusion may explain why Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found that while senior leaders report higher engagement than other employees, they’re also more likely to experience stress, anger, sadness and loneliness.
Engaged but lonely. Busy but sad. That isn’t a life lived on purpose.
When you talk quietly to leaders, most know something is missing. This is why nine out of ten workers say they’d give up 23% of their future lifetime earnings for more meaningful work.
Knowing Your Personal Purpose Changes Your Life.
Most leaders spend a considerable amount of time setting goals, driving performance, process re-engineering, organisational restructuring and debating strategy. All in the service of profitability. But few invest any time on deep self-reflection, or exploring questions of meaning. It’s hardly surprising then, that most leaders are unclear why they do what they do. We’ve seen that when we help leaders uncover their personal purpose it often changes their life for the better.
We like to summarise leaders’ reason for existence into two to five words, avoiding the clichés you see in organisational purpose-washing like “I’m passionate about delivering stakeholder value”. At its core your personal purpose requires you to very precisely identify the essential verb of you.
Knowing your purpose:
There are also massive health benefits. A 14-year study, of over 6,000 adults, showed that people who lived with a greater sense of purpose experienced significant reductions in mortality at every age. A meta-analysis of over 136,000 people found a strong sense of purpose was associated with roughly a 17% lower risk of death from all causes, and fewer cardiovascular events.
In Japan, people with no ikigai, no “reason for being”, had higher all-cause mortality. And people with low purpose were around 2.4 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
As an immunologist, who now helps leaders uncover their purpose, I was fascinated to read that white blood cells seem to be able to tell the difference between being happy and living on purpose. People with more purpose had lower pro-inflammatory gene expression. The study was challenged, but later replication broadly supported the purpose finding.
In other words, your white cells may have sensed your purpose long before you did.
Finding out why you exist is not an act of imagination, invention or visualisation. It’s an act of discovery. You have to uncover it. And this is best done in conversation with someone who knows how to get to the fundamental essence of who you really are. There are many clues that can help you on this journey. For example:
That last one surprises people. But whatever triggers your strongest reaction, positive or negative, often sits closest to your core. If your purpose is “I cut through”, being told you’re “all over the place” will sting more than almost any other criticism.
Joseph Campbell, Professor of comparative religion and the mythologist who inspired George Lucas to make Star Wars, called living your life on purpose: “following your bliss”. He believed discovering your personal purpose and letting it guide your life was the primary source of fulfilment.
When leaders finally articulate their purpose, it often feels as though they’ve “come home” or discovered the most fundamental truth about themselves.
Here’s something most of the purpose literature misses. Your purpose isn’t fixed. It’s less like a temporary tattoo and more like a core operating principle.
If you keep developing, throughout your life, so will your purpose. Every time we ‘level-up’ we literally see the world differently: we can understand more complexity, we can access more perspectives, we can better navigate the system we’re part of. As we grow up, our purpose grows up with us. Each new version should “transcend and include” our previous purpose.
A leader whose purpose was “I take charge” at 35 may find that, by 55, their purpose has matured to “I orchestrate change”. Same core. Bigger reach.
This is why leaders who found their purpose on a workshop a decade ago may need to look again. What were the turning points that fundamentally changed you? What do they reveal about earlier versions of your purpose? And what is this new version of you?
Purpose isn’t something you find once. It’s something that grows as you do.
Here’s an interesting challenge for your team. Ask everyone, including yourself, to state their personal purpose in five words or fewer. Not their job. Not their role. Not their family. Their core driver. The two to five words picked from the hundreds of thousands of words in the English language that capture the essence of who they are.
Start with “I”, then a verb, and then consider if that verb requires a qualifier or enhancer or more precision. What other words do you need?
Then share the answers. You’ll be surprised how much they explain.
A lot of the friction in leadership teams isn’t really about personality or politics. It’s a clash of purposes. Put someone whose purpose is “I cut through” in a meeting with someone whose purpose is “I bring people together” and tension is almost guaranteed. One wants to get to the answer. The other wants to facilitate interaction. Each experiences the other as an obstacle, and both usually misread the problem as a personality clash or, worse, bad intent. But with skilful guidance the combination can unleash magic.
Once team members knows each other’s purpose, that friction becomes understandable. Better still, it becomes useful. The team can deploy each purpose where it adds most value, rather than expecting everyone to contribute in the same way. Difference stops being a source of conflict and becomes a source of capability.
It also shows the CEO something important: whether the team has the range of purposes needed for the challenges ahead, or a room full of people who all do the same thing.
When every team member knows why they’re on the planet it can transform the power and cohesion of your team.
You may have spent millions defining why your company exists.
But how long have you spent on why you exist?
If you want to know your personal purpose contact us, we can help you find it.