Contribution: Define the Tangible and Intangible Elements

The first part of the purpose equation is your contribution. Contribution is about the value you’re adding, the impact you’re having, and the difference you’re making. It’s best captured in the simple question: What is your highest and best use?

There are both tangible and intangible elements of your contribution. The tangible aspects are clearly delineated, metric-driven, and measurable. They can include your:

• TECHNICAL OR FUNCTIONAL EXPERTISE: These are areas where you have command of a set of knowledge, facts, answers, data, or skills. Often you are on a team or in a role so you can share and bring this technical or functional expertise to bear.
• DELIVERABLES: These are items you deliver to teams and the organization. They could include analyses, documents, memos, products, systems, and plans.
• RESULTS: Ultimately, the most tangible metrics track our results. All businesses and functions have these metrics captured in functional plans, scorecards, or dashboards. At the highest level of an organization, results are most often reflected in the P&L and the entity’s financial results.

The intangible aspects of contribution are less concrete, but they become increasingly important as you take on larger or more senior roles in an organization. They include:

• THOUGHT LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY: I’m not talking about just vision or strategy but your ability in any interaction or conversation to see the big picture, exercise business judgment, connect the dots, see around corners, lay out alternatives, articulate risks and trade-offs, or present organizing frameworks that help make the complex simpler.
• INFLUENCE: Most work today in organizational life requires working with many people and many different types of people. Leaders must be able to win the hearts and minds of others in order to drive and lead change. Influence includes the ability to articulate and paint a vision for others and know how to effectively enroll and bring others along. As one CEO shared with me, being a CEO isn’t about just making decisions and handing those down to others—it’s ultimately about influencing others to want to do those things with a lot of energy and motivation.
• PRESENCE: The ripple effect you have on the organization matters. As the leader you are the model for the entire team, and there’s no off switch for that. Recall how Kate was telegraphing stress, which was starting to impact others negatively. As a leader in her firm, her Leader B days carried greater ramifications than when she was less senior.
• VISIBILITY: The networks and people with whom we come in contact form another intangible contribution as we help spread the good word about our work throughout the organization, or perhaps externally to customers or other key stakeholders. This can include helping in sourcing efforts, board meetings, or recruiting. Additionally, you may have built a reputation, platform, or brand in the marketplace that connects or brings in key relationships for your organization.

Passion: Define What Stokes Your Fire

The second part of the purpose equation is your passion. While contribution is about action, passion is about the motivation, energy, and inspiration that fuels the action. If we think of contribution as our highest and best use, passion is our highest and best juice.

Simply put, passion is what brings you inspiration, enjoyment, and excitement in your work. It’s something you alone can assess and understand, and it’s a critical component of purpose. You know you’re passionate about something when you find yourself wanting to invest time and energy in it. It’s what stokes your fire. In 2014, a Deloitte study on workforce engagement found that “passionate workers are committed to continually achieving higher levels of performance.” They are the team members who “drive extreme and sustained performance improvement” and who help their organizations grow stronger throughout any market challenge or disruption.¹

Passionate people are inspired people, inherently motivated to go the extra mile. Psychologist and author Scott Barry Kaufman points out that inspiration “propels [us] from apathy to possibility, and transforms the way we perceive our own capabilities.” As a group, inspired people tend to be more open to new experiences, and they report more absorption in their tasks, a stronger drive to master their work, and a host of positive psychological resources, including a belief in their own abilities, self-esteem, and optimism.² Ask yourself if this is how you feel when you go to work.

Let’s return for a moment to Kate, who could hardly have felt less passionate or inspired about her work when we first met. To start getting her back into Leader A mode, we worked together on the purpose equation and used her answers to populate the contribution-passion table that follows. For Kate, the exercise brought some immediate relief: she found that she gained significant clarity in lifting out of the day-to-day grind of “chopping wood” and gaining a more aerial view of the key parts of her contributions—the “big rocks,” as she called them—as a new partner in the firm. Just as important was identifying which parts of this new job totally jazzed her. Kate and I plotted her answers as shown in table 2-1.

One key insight for Kate in this exercise was realizing that her contributions and passions hadn’t always looked like this—and they would continue to change. At an earlier stage of her career, her first column would have been populated with individual client projects rather than broader areas of oversight. She also recognized how at an earlier stage it was actually easier to see and gauge her direct impact. Now, as a partner, her intangible contributions were more about the behaviors she modeled and how she influenced others directly and indirectly. Likewise for passion, she used to get jazzed about solving client problems and nailing an analysis, but now she found herself increasingly drawn to mentoring colleagues at earlier stages of their careers. This kind of exercise is especially important to complete when taking on a larger role or more responsibility, and can be useful to do even once a year.

Recognize That Purpose Is Dynamic and Ever-Evolving

Kate discovered that purpose isn’t static and permanent, but rather dynamic and ever-evolving. This is a crucial concept—one that comes as a surprise to many folks. As much as we may like it to be, purpose isn’t a single, permanent mandate the lucky few discover or have presented to them. It is a dynamic, ever-changing sense of being in alignment with your current highest and best use (contribution) as well as your current highest and best juice (passion).

Sometimes, our natural desire for a single, simple answer to the question of our purpose can actually hinder our ability to find the very thing we’re seeking. But rather than a static, fixed thing that’s somewhere “out there,” waiting to be discovered, the more helpful and generative way to think about purpose is as an inner certitude that evolves over time and in response to different contexts and circumstances. And quite practically speaking, as a leader you simply can’t operate in the same way you once did as you take on expanded and increasingly complex roles.

One former client, who is now the CEO of a health-care company, said if he had to identify one key element of his career success, it was realizing early on that every new role in his career carried its own particular purpose. Whether the new role came from a promotion or from a move to a different organization, his first task was always to get very clear on the mandate for the new role. He put it this way: “What is the reason I exist in this particular job?” Ironically, some of the most successful, capable people in the world find themselves mired in Leader B mode after they receive a promotion—not unlike what happened to Kate. Often, this is because they’re still trying to live and work from their former purpose, when what’s needed is revised purpose for their current role.

In his commencement address to the 2017 graduating class of his alma mater, Harvard University, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dispelled the idea that we must have a stable, once-and-for-all answer to the question of our purpose. Instead, he explained, purpose reveals itself to us gradually as we regularly engage with the things that both spark our inspiration (passion) and channel the impact (contribution) we hope to make in the world. The expectation that somehow we discover our purpose in “a single eureka moment,” said Zuckerberg, “is a dangerous lie.” Instead, he assured the grads, “ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them.”³ Likewise, it may take a little effort to become acquainted with your new purpose at each new stage of your career development, but with the purpose equation, you’ll always have an anchor.

Quadrant I: Prioritize

Quadrant II: Tolerate

Quadrant III: Elevate

Quadrant IV: Delegate, Hire, or Eliminate

What it is: This quadrant is about chopping wood. Quadrant IV is where we get caught up in the churn of activities that are lower value and don’t produce energy, leaving us on the way to burnout.

What it feels like: This is a funny quadrant because on the one hand, like Kate in our opening example, it can create a temporary sense of relief to cross easy things off the list. Over time, however, it drains our energy because on some level, we know the “big rocks” and important things aren’t being attended to. We know that we’re ultimately not making the difference we hope to make, and we’re not enjoying what we’re doing.

Key action: Where possible, delegate or outsource these activities or make the case for a new hire. The ideal scenario is that your Quadrant IV is someone else’s Quadrant I (see chapter 4 on people for more on this). If a resource just isn’t possible at this time, be careful attending to these items during key windows of time where your highest energy is better spent on critical-path QI items, in which case you should deprioritize them.

QIV, however, is a good quadrant to pay attention to because the items you list in QIV can give you clues as to what is wrong in your job, and more insight into what to do about it. One professional, Jorge, loved his job, but lately was feeling stressed and less motivated than before. One project in particular became the focus of his thoughts at work and at home, and it seemed to cast a dark cloud over his entire work experience—even though his other projects were going well. I asked him to use the 2×2 to track and compare this project that felt so draining against another one that was going particularly well.

What he found was that with the current project, many of the tasks he was assigned were in Quadrant IV: he didn’t like doing them, and he didn’t feel like he was adding the value he hoped to. There were so many people on the team, it was hard to find a lane that was his to own.

With greater clarity around what was wrong, Jorge decided to take two actions. First, he spoke to his project lead about how he could find ways to increase his tangible contribution to the team. And he realized that rather than just focusing on finding what “more” he could do (and risk falling into the I’ll Just Do More Pitfall), he also wanted to think about his intangible contributions and perhaps derive more passion by mentoring some of the more junior members of the team. The 2×2 helped him zero in on what was actually wrong, which gave him a way to articulate his concerns and a set of actions to take.

EXERCISE

What’s in Your Quadrants?

Take a stab at setting up your own purpose quadrants. To do so, refer back to the definitions of contribution and passion in the previous section, or you can use the following questions to guide you.

1. First, create a list of your tangible and intangible contributions for the x axis. You can ask yourself questions such as:

– What is my highest and best use?

– What would my boss say is my highest and best use?

– What would my direct reports say?

– What would my peers say?

– What would customers/clients say?

Contribution must be considered thoughtfully. It includes your own definition of the difference you want to make, what value you add, and the impact you intend to have, but it also includes the viewpoints of others. Often, we underestimate what our highest contribution really is. So how would your boss, peers, direct reports, executive team, customers, or board describe the difference you are making, the value you are adding, and the impact you’re having? If you don’t feel you have a good read on what others believe and perceive about you, don’t be shy about asking them directly for this input. You can do this at the start of the year or during a one-on-one, or have a leadership coach solicit this kind of information during a 360-review process. Be on the lookout for times when there is a disconnect between your own view of your best and highest use and that of your colleagues, especially your boss.

2. Create a second list for the y axis of the purpose quadrants that captures the items you feel the most intrinsic motivation and energy toward in your current role. These are the things that inspire you or excite you most, the things you really look forward to doing. You can ask yourself the following questions:

– What is my highest and best juice?

– Where do I want to spend time and invest emotional energy?

– What is it I want to be learning?

– What stokes my fire now?

– What gives me energy, motivation, and inspiration?

3. Now, look at both lists you’ve created and put a star next to anything that shows up on both.

4. Look at all your starred items and transfer them into Q1 in figure 2-2.

5. Look at your non-starred items from your contributions list and transfer them into Q2.

6. Look at your non-starred items from your passion list and transfer them into Q3.

7. Now, write down any other activities or tasks from your current role that are not on any of your lists into Q4.

8. As you look at your quadrants, how does this information help you better understand your current level of motivation and energy?

9. What actions or changes will you make as a result of this information?

Watch Out for the Boredom Signal

Boredom is a very important warning sign that you’ve started to outgrow your role. You know you are still contributing and making the impact your organization wants you to make, but you don’t have any passion. You spend a lot of time on Quadrant II tasks. You find yourself bored and restless and starting to stagnate.

One of my clients realized it was time to look for new roles or even a new job because as he mapped out his 2 × 2, he found that almost everything in his existing role was in the lower-right quadrant, QII. He was stunned to find that he was merely tolerating 90 percent of his current role! He also discovered he was taking on tasks that his boss said weren’t in his lane or weren’t important, and he was starting to spend more time in QIII as a result.

He realized from looking at his purpose quadrants that it was time to start having conversations with his boss to see about future roles or new projects that might reignite his passion and boost his interest level. He was ready for something new and interesting and, in many ways, had simply outgrown his current job. The 2 × 2 exercise revealed it was time to make changes.

Watch Out for the Misalignment Signal

In Quadrant III, you might recognize there are things you’re still doing that you enjoy but no longer fit your highest and best use. Or perhaps you’ve been trying to get your boss or team to see the value in a new idea you’re passionate about, and you realize that your ideas are falling on deaf ears and you’ll never get the chance to make your vision a reality.

Either way, this quadrant signals that there is a growing disconnect between what keeps you motivated and what your organization values. Ultimately, if this continues to happen, it may be time to move on. Christine Day, in a 2014 interview with Fortune, said she knew it was time to leave Lululemon as CEO when her vision for the company no longer matched the founder’s. “You have to take control of your own life and say, ‘This isn’t working for me,’ ” she said. In her next leadership role, she teamed up with a health food company because she was “captured by the mission.”⁴ She found alignment between her passions and the organization’s mission and values.

Sift Your Yesses and Nos through the Contribution and Passion Filter

Every day we’re bombarded with meeting invites, requests from other people, and the overall barrage of logistics and activity. Before automatically saying yes or no to any requests, hit the pause button and keep your upper-right quadrant (Quadrant I) in mind.

Meeting Requests. One of the challenges I know almost every leader grapples with is the litany of meetings we find ourselves in—surely one of the hallmarks of today’s organizational life. We’ve all had days when every hour is taken up in back-to-back meetings, with absolutely no white space on the calendar. Granted, there is some portion of this that may not be in your control, but when I’ve pushed clients to really question the necessity of some of these meetings, or the timing or urgency of them because of someone else’s need or anxiety, far more often than not we’ve been able to recover some space on their calendars.

At the start of the week or day, look at the meeting invites on your calendar and use the following questions to sift your yes or no. The aim is to ensure that you get at least one component of purpose fulfilled by attending each meeting.

• CONTRIBUTION: Is this a meeting I will add value to if I attend?
• PASSION: Is this a meeting I will derive value from by attending?
• IMPACT: What is the impact if I go or don’t go?
• POSSIBLE ACTION: Is there someone else who can go in my place?

One leader shared with me how liberating it was to respectfully move meetings, push them out, or even decline them altogether without the consequences he thought it would bring. In fact, he was surprised when a few of his colleagues said they were happy to get some “bonus free time” back, too. This leader also found over the long run that his yesses to attend a meeting meant more. His new definition of a yes became: he truly felt he should be there, he would add and derive value, and he would be 100 percent present.

Extracurricular Requests. As you gain more influence, you might receive an increasing number of requests to attend dinners, join boards, speak at events, or be a mentor. All these activities are great and can feel flattering, but they take time and energy. Consider each request against your purpose (contribution + passion), as opposed to obligation or guilt.

• CONTRIBUTION: Is this something where I can uniquely add value?
• PASSION: Is this something I will derive value from by attending or joining?
• IMPACT: How does this align with my larger purpose and vision?

The reality is you can’t do it all. Often, you will be asked to attend an event or join a cause, but it’s not the right time to take it on. One working parent shared with me how she felt conflicted about joining the board of her son’s school. She wanted to be involved in supporting his education, and moreover, she felt a sense of obligation because it seemed like all her colleagues sat on their children’s school boards. The position also brought a certain level of prestige in her community. The more we explored the issue, however, the more it became clear that taking on this role felt like work; she had a full-time job that required lots of planning and leadership skills, and understandably, she wanted a break when she wasn’t working.

Ultimately, she made the decision not to join the board. Instead, she chose to reserve her time and energy for high-interaction activities with her son where she felt she could make the kind of difference she wanted to and that brought her the most energy. She carved out time to be a chaperone for some of his school trips, when she was actually with him. She didn’t let a “should” or a “it sounds good on paper” cause her to fall into the I’ll Just Do More Pitfall. Instead, she was honest with herself and got really clear on what was important to her and what worked best for her family.

Work Requests. Obviously at work, you have less latitude on yesses and nos, but even then, don’t let the habit of saying yes automatically guide your decisions. Instead, organize your yesses into three buckets:

• THE STRATEGIC YES: Some requests are of high strategic importance and excite you, so they squarely fit in your Quadrant I. These are strategic yesses. Sometimes, however, you may find that a strategic yes also lives in Quadrant II—you recognize that someone of higher authority, influence, or power is asking and that you don’t have the leeway to say no. It requires some political savvy to read the tea leaves for these situations. In these cases, it’s about saying yes, and then optimizing how you carry out the tasks without getting drained.
• THE PARTIAL YES: These are requests that have some importance, and you determine you want to be involved in some way. But you also recognize that you don’t have to sign up for the whole thing and that there is room to negotiate. The best-case scenario occurs when you seize the opportunity to be the trusted advisor or thought partner on a request. This is especially important because often your boss or your client may ask for something in a way that makes you feel like you have to jump through hoops immediately and fall into the I’ll Just Do More or I’ll Just Do It Now Pitfalls. However, if what they are asking for doesn’t make strategic sense or you think there is a better way to do it, then have a conversation that acknowledges their need but helps get to a better solution.
• IT’S NOT ACTUALLY MY YES: Watch out for those requests or situations that are not actually “yours to own” or that don’t need to become your responsibility. Look for places where you might be enabling others because you always take care of others or rescue others. In these cases, help redirect them to the right person or resource. (See chapter 4 on people to understand more about upgrading your boundaries and rules of engagement with others.)

Work Products. You can sift for contribution and passion even down to the work-product level. If you find yourself working on a deliverable that isn’t super high in contribution or passion but you’re putting in a high amount of effort and energy, ask yourself if your quest to be perfect is worth it.

Places to watch out for include spending inordinate time on presentations, crossing every i and dotting every t, overengineering a process, or staying in the weeds on a task or initiative too long—all at the expense of the higher-order contribution on a given deliverable. As your leadership role grows, it’s likely you won’t have the bandwidth to spend so much time and energy at a granular level. Your expanded role likely requires that you think at a more strategic level, or spend time engaging in important conversations with others on the topic or issue at hand.