Scaling With Purpose Kit: Personal Purpose and Its Role in Business

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Skasz** (0:17)
Well, welcome back to the show. This is our Scaling With Purpose series. These are 10-minute episodes, helping you embed purpose in your business to guide growth and create impact. I'm Stephen Skasz, joined as always by Tulio Siragusa. Hey, Tulio.

**Tulio Siragusa** (0:34)
Hey, looking forward to today's topic. Very much interested in this topic big time.

**Stephen Skasz** (0:38)
Yes. So today we're diving into the topic of personal purpose and its role in business. So we're going to explore how an understanding of an individual purpose can fuel an organization's overall purpose and what this alignment means in a purpose-driven company. Tulio, get us started.

**Tulio Siragusa** (0:59)
Well, this topic is super fascinating because we often think of purpose as this big organizational concept when it's actually very deeply personal. So in fact, when people feel personally connected to their own personal purpose, they will bring more energy, more commitment, more creativity to their work. And when that personal purpose aligns with the organizational purpose, that's when you create powerful synergy or what I would call magic. So this is interesting. And you can purposefully align these things with the personal purposes too. So this is a very interesting topic. I'm looking forward to it.

**Stephen Skasz** (1:45)
I don't know if we can do it in 10 minutes, too, Leo. We're going to have to.

**Tulio Siragusa** (1:48)
That might have to be a full show.

**Stephen Skasz** (1:50)
But we'll try. So in next level organizations, there's this recognition that each person's purpose isn't just nice to have. It's kind of central to the whole organization's growth and health. And so individuals are encouraged to connect with their personal why and find ways to bring that into the work. So this allows both person and organization to thrive. So what do we mean by personal purpose? So at its core, personal purpose is that, you know, your own unique reason for being the things that give life, your life meaning, direction, fulfillment. For some, this is about creativity or innovation. For others, it might be about service, connection, or making a difference in the community in some way. When people have the space to bring these personal values to work, they feel more fulfilled and connected. And so this is what really directly benefits the organization, is when you can pull that into your organization and align it with what you're doing.

**Tulio Siragusa** (3:01)
In fact, there's a growing body of research, Steve, and that shows how employees who feel connected to a purpose, whether it's purpose or whether it's personal or organizational, they tend to be more engaged and even more productive. A study by LinkedIn found that employees who feel a sense of purpose at work are 30 percent more likely to perform better and 50 percent more likely to stay at a company long term. So purpose can be a very powerful motivator for aligning personal and organizational values and purpose. When you align these things, you can drive both individual and business success, because there's this idea of like attracts like, and you want to stay in a place that resonates with who you are, you know, at the core of who you are. So not surprised at these statistics at all.

**Stephen Skasz** (3:56)
Yeah, so those are some pretty powerful statistics. So how can leaders and organizations create this kind of environment where personal purpose aligns with company purpose? Here's a few practices that can help with this. So first, you want to encourage reflection on personal purpose. We've just done that in our organization, I don't know, several months ago, where it was a good exercise for everyone. But organizations, you can create these structured sort of opportunities for employees to explore their own purpose. And that can be workshops, can be mentorship programs or reflection exercises that we kind of did that can kind of help you and help your employees identify what drives them and figure out kind of how that relates to your company's purpose.

**Tulio Siragusa** (4:47)
And speaking of having just done this ourselves, the one thing that emerged out of that was how the employees were able to get to know each other at a much deeper level because it was a very transparent exercise, or everyone shared their personal purpose. And it was very deep and meaningful. We've had very emotional meetings around this really created intimacy. So, yeah, it doesn't have to be complicated, by the way. Great ideas are always simple. Just a simple practice like journaling prompts or purpose driven one on one conversation, a team building exercise centered on personal values. These things can help people tap into what matters most to them. And it's surprising. Some people struggled initially to understand and define their purpose because it's not a question that would often come up in business, unless you're working with a coach or someone. So, you know, drawing it out was a gift to a lot of folks who realized, wow, I actually really believe this is what I stand for. So, when employees feel seen and understood this way, they automatically engage deeper and are able to contribute to the company's purpose.