How do you align with the mission or purpose of the organization you are working for? We generally distinguish mission statements for organizations and purpose statements for individuals. Having a mission or purpose is important.
A mission statement provides the fundamental reason for the company’s existence. Before deciding if you can align to an organization’s mission” you must build your purpose statement.
Don’t let a company set the terms of your purpose. It is vital first to KNOW YOURSELF, which allows you to reveal your unique purpose.
Your purpose may continue to unfold as you grow, educate your passions, and learn from accomplishments and failures. However, in any season of your career, you should create your own statement of purpose, and you must do some work first to know yourself.
Know yourself and take an accounting of your professional and personal inventory. Your professional inventory is your unique skills, competencies, and strengths that you will put into action to maximize your impact. Your personal inventory is the resources and rewards you may want or need.
Establish your unique core values. Your values are the beliefs, ideals, motivators, and characteristics uniquely essential to you. Your values are how you view the world and make decisions based on the level of importance you have placed upon them.
Create your purpose statement – grounded in positively impacting others using your talents, strengths, values, and an outcome you want as a legacy.
Only now can you consider the company’s stated mission versus the elements you should care about. Rather than taking on a company’s mission as your own, it is ok that you simply serve people well in your context according to your purpose. This is why we call this aligning your purpose to the company’s mission vs. adopting their mission outright.
You are not a lemming, but you can accomplish a portion of your purpose while aligning with the company’s mission. Work is around 23% of your time if you work full time. There are many ways to fulfill your purpose at work and away from work. The more you align or feel like your Work-Life Flow allows for your purpose, the easier the effort comes.
Always have this dialogue with your leadership. They will, or should, enjoy the proactive nature and the maturity of your wanting to work with purpose and align with the organization’s mission. You may ask, or they may suggest, projects or developmental assignments that highly interest you or are a step closer to aligning to your purpose.
This conversation is deep, well-thought-out, intentional, and authentic and likely shows you to be intelligent, thoughtful, strategic, and with high integrity. You own your career, continuously work to meet your purpose, and you are a leader.