Being clear about what matters
The compass of leadership
A clear purpose is the compass of leadership. It’s your answer to the question: “Why does what I do matter?”
Your answer. No-one else’s. And you find it by listening inside - to your head, your heart, and your gut.
Look outside yourself and you almost certainly won’t.
If you’re not clear, you may end up doing the wrong things in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. And that hurts.
For example, you’re in transition and trying to figure out what to do next. Rather than getting clear on what you really want from work, you accept the first good-looking job offer. A few weeks into your new role, you realise it’s not where you want to be at all.
Or you’re considering where to go on holiday and someone says, “Arcadia is nice,” and something inside you says, no, that doesn’t feel right. But you go anyway, and you don’t like it; and then you wish you’d listened to that feeling.
Clarity is a fundamental principle of skilful leadership. And ‘Clear Purpose’ - being clear about what matters - is a key foundation of Mindful Command.
Clarity needs a disciplined approach: one that’s rigorous, consistent, compassionate. The one I rely on is
’ Clarity Practice.In the early stages of our Evolving Leadership programme, we introduce the group of eight leaders to Charlie’s way of finding clear paths through challenging feelings and satisfying answers to big questions. Individuals bring their dreams, ambitions, frustrations, and confusions, and clarify them - with our guidance - using the seven questions of the Clarity Practice. In practical terms, this often boils down to having the clarity to do what’s needed, rather than what feels urgent, or is expected, or is easiest.
Being clear about what matters most - whether that’s your family, your career, your community, the environment, or something else - is the guiding light we all need.
In my book, Mindful Command, The Way of the Evolving Leader, I tell the story of one woman’s struggle to find her path…
Clare was a senior leader in an organisational role she’d built from nothing. She’d accomplished a lot, but she was unhappy. For many years her work had consumed her, and she was wondering who she was outside work.
“So many things are up in the air,” she told me.
When we’re unclear, things feel scattered. We want to pin them down, but we have nothing to pin them to. For this feeling to settle, we need to pause and get clear.
“I’m scared of feeling lost and unmoored,” she added.
“And how do you feel right now?” I asked.
“Lost and unmoored.”
She was already in the place she feared most. This is what fear of an imagined future does: it gives life to the fear in the present.
So, I asked her to imagine herself already on a sabbatical and to bring her full attention to being there. Then I asked her the seven questions at the core of the Clarity Practice:
What do you need?
What do you want?
What do you demand?
What do you love?
What do you wish for?
What do you dream of?
What do you live for?
As she voiced each answer, I wrote it down. Then I read them aloud.
“Is this what you need?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is this what you want… demand… love… wish for… dream of… live for…?”
The answer to these test questions must be 100% ‘yes’. Even a 99% ‘yes’ means ‘no’. When Clare’s answer was either a straight ‘no’ or not a straight ‘yes’, I asked the open question again, like this:
Is this what you love? No.
OK. What do you love?
And I tweaked her idea and read it back and repeated the test questions until all Clare’s answers were 100% ‘yes’. This was now a very clear idea:
“I’m taking ownership of my life and committing 100% to the next stage of my life, by finding out who I am, and by taking the time to connect with myself and others and do the things that feed my soul, and by making space for serendipity and spontaneity to lead to opportunities I never would have planned, and by living for myself and not my obligations.”
“I’ve had these feelings inside I haven’t voiced,” she said. “If I don’t do this now, I’ll feel as if I shied away from it.”
Clare had validated her why. It was always there – smothered by things which seemed more important but, she now realised, mattered less. She could also see that her fear of being lost and unmoored was linked to a deeper fear of losing her identity, which she’d tied to her work. The Clarity Practice showed her this was not true. She was so much more.
Clarity unlocks everything. You see what’s really needed. You let go of what doesn’t matter and focus on what does.
If any of this resonates with you personally, drop me a line and let’s talk.
With love from the mountain,
Sally-Anne