Finding Purpose: How to find your purpose (w/ Master Fixer Molly Graham) | from Fixable

**Modupe Akinola** (0:00)
Hi, listeners, it's Modupe, the host of TED Business. On this show, we talk about the business of business and the why of it all.
A sense of purpose is often at the heart of successful, impactful work. And these are the big questions that we're constantly asking on TED Business. How do you seek out meaningful work? How do you locate meaning in your work? What does the word purpose even mean? Well, I'm not the only one in the extended TED family asking these questions. Over on the podcast Fixable, leadership coaches Frances Fry and Anne Morris have done a four-part series on Finding Purpose, and I'm sharing each part of it with you today. I just know you guys are going to love it. So without further ado, Frances and Anne are going to take it from here.

**Molly Graham** (0:56)
I think that I spent a lot of my early career fighting to be remembered, like fighting to do work that was so important, it would be in a history book or written down or something like that. And I had to confront, no one's going to remember you, like no one gives a shit about you, like the work you do is for you, not for other people.

**Anne Morris** (1:23)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Fixable, a show where we take the problems at work that feel unfixable and prove that they are not. I'm Anne Morris.

**Frances Frey** (1:33)
And I'm Frances Frey.

**Anne Morris** (1:34)
This month, we're going deep on this very powerful variable in work and life, Frances, which is purpose.
We see a hunger for purpose everywhere we go. We see it from young people just starting out in their careers, but also from people reinventing themselves and embracing purpose at work in new ways. So in this series, we're going to ask all the hard questions. How do you find purpose? How do you create it? What do you do if you've lost it? What do you do if you've never had it at all?

**Frances Frey** (2:05)
You know, people often think purpose is a soft idea, and maybe there are soft contours to it. But we should be clear, it can provide incredible advantage in the workplace. It's a source of resilience, it's a source of ambition, it's a source of focus.
And teams and organizations with a clear purpose go further faster.

**Anne Morris** (2:27)
Oh, absolutely, we see it all the time. It can be a bit slippery as a concept. So the practical definition of purpose that we're gonna use in these conversations is simply the why behind the choices we make.

**Frances Frey** (2:39)
And I can't wait. We have some really terrific guests lined up.

**Anne Morris** (2:43)
Oh, they're amazing. Thinkers, leaders, builders, people who have done the hard work of figuring out this purpose thing, sometimes after spectacular detours. Our goal with this series is to help you, our listeners, build a roadmap to finding and unleashing your own purpose at work. So today on the show, to kick off this series is a guest who is a very familiar face and voice here at TED. Her TED Talk has over a million and a half views. She's the new host of the WorkLife podcast. It's the wildly talented, multi-faceted Molly Graham. Before Molly became what she describes as a company and community builder, she worked at tech companies like Google and Facebook, where she became an expert in scaling.
She also has a sub-stack called Lessons and is the co-founder of a leadership peer group called The Glue Club.

**Frances Frey** (3:35)
And what I appreciate most about the wildly talented, multi-faceted Molly Graham is that she takes the multi and knits it together so that one plus one plus one is way more than three. And I learned so much from her privately, and I'm really looking forward to our listeners learning from her collectively.

**Anne Morris** (3:55)
She is a Renaissance woman for the digital age, and I'm really looking forward to this discussion. Molly Graham, welcome to Fixable.

**Molly Graham** (4:07)
Thanks for having me, Anne. I'm happy to be here.

**Anne Morris** (4:10)
We're thrilled to have you on the show. Frances is devastated to miss this conversation, so she sends her regrets.

**Molly Graham** (4:16)
Well, tell her I say hi.

**Anne Morris** (4:18)
We want to congratulate you right off the bat on a new season of WorkLife.

**Molly Graham** (4:22)
Thanks. I'm finding my podcast legs learning from the two of you.

**Anne Morris** (4:27)
This is really your first swing at this format?

**Molly Graham** (4:31)
I've been on a lot of other people's podcasts, but this is my first time as a host, and it's, as you know, very different.