Hi, I'm Andrew Soren and welcome to Meaningful Work Matters. Today I'm joined by Kendall Cottenbronk, professor of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University and a leading researcher in the science of purpose. For over 20 years, Kendall has explored how purpose shapes our lives, how it enhances our well being, fosters resilience, and connects us to something that
is bigger than ourselves. In this conversation, we unpack the evolving nature of purpose across life stages, its cultural influences, and the role of shared purpose in families and in organizations. We also explore the connection between purpose and character and how cultivating both can lead to more meaningful values driven work. If you've ever wondered how to discover, nurture, or sustain your sense of purpose, this episode is for you.
Welcome to the Meaningful Work Matters podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Soreness, founder of Eudaimonic by Design. On this podcast, we'll dive into the world of meaningful work, explore its complexities, and examine its impact on people and the organizations they're a part of. Each episode features insightful conversations with cutting edge experts who are
successfully navigating the challenges of meaningful work. We hope to offer you ideas, frameworks and tools to unlock potential and design work that's fulfilling, impactful, and supports everyone's well being. Subscribe or follow us now and let's make meaningful work matter foreign. It is a pleasure to be able to have you on meaningful work matters. I'm so delighted for us to be able to dive into a conversation today that is probably going to revolve around what is purpose
and how does it impact our life. And probably also the thing that I'm maybe most excited about, where does virtue fall into all of that? So welcome, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Andrew. I am a big fan of your podcast and I feel pretty honored to get to be a guest today. So thanks. Well, that's humbling given how much of an expert
in this field you are. So let's dive in. Maybe you can just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and what makes your life and work, I should say work, meaningful and maybe even purposeful. Great. Yeah. So my name is Kendall Cottenbronk. As you said, I'm a professor of psychology here at the Claremont Graduate University.
At Claremont Graduate University, with this program that I'm in, Positive Developmental Psychology was founded by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and as a result we have a strong focus on
positive psychology. So focusing on, you know, what goes right and how we can help people thrive in their lives and at work and, gosh, for the past 20 plus years, that's what I've been focused on, is really studying positive psychology through the lens of purpose, trying to understand what makes particularly young people, young adults and adolescents, but midlife and older adults to some extent as well, what makes their lives purposeful and what
difference it makes to lead a life of purpose. So you also wanted to hear about my own purpose at work and gosh, I feel so lucky to do this job. I always feel like I have the best job around. I love the idea. Ever since I was an undergrad, I've just. I love the idea of being able to contribute a small piece to this ongoing dialogue around, well, in my case, purpose. But I just love the idea of, you know, academics in general, we're all sort of fitting in a piece to this larger puzzle.
And I've always found that to be really purposeful. I feel like the work that I do, people will, you know, let me know that they've applied it in their lives or in schools or in other kinds of organizations. And I love that idea that I get to be a small part in this sort of large apparatus. I feel like you've set the stage for us talking about shared purposes, which eventually we will also be talking about. It's interesting to think about Claremont and Csikszentmihalyi.
If for. If listeners could see us right now, you would see that there's like a big flow sign behind me. And flow, of course, was what Csikszentmihalyi was famous for in his research. And I've always been such a huge fan of Csikszentmihalyi and the work that gets done at Claremont. I guess a little fun fact about purpose and potentially how there might be a genetic connection to it. When I was a little kid, my mom was doing her PhD and she was studying museum experiences.
And the big thing that I remember about her PhD was that there was somebody's name that was, I think, 14 characters long. And it was like, that's just such a funny long name. And that name was Mihaly Csiksangmihalyi. And so my mom was writing about flow experiences before, I mean, high published about flow in the 80s. And so my interest in all of this stuff, I suppose, connects to a long history, a legacy. What a great story. I like that. It's great. I only found out about that
years later. I was actually thinking about going to Claremont and I was reading Flo and I was telling my mom about how much I was loving this book. And she's like, you've got to be kidding me, right? Like, you know, that's what I wrote my PhD on. I love when things come full circle. And to be honest, I feel like that's kind of the story of purpose, right? That we sometimes don't know what our purpose is until we get past it.
And then we look back in our lives and we realize, oh, my gosh, there were all these little breadcrumbs all along the way that I now recognize were leading me to. In this particular direction. So, you know, maybe the flow was a. A breadcrumb for you, leading you in this. In this direction towards your looking forward. Through the rearview mirror. That's exactly, exactly. That's beautiful. Well, maybe that's like a good segue. Why do you think questions of purpose
are so central in our lives? You know, I think that it's really a human need to make meaning of our experiences. And we have, I think everybody at some point in their lives. It's. I think it just happens. We stand back and we think, what is the point of all this? What am I doing here? And what is the purpose in
my life? And, you know, until more recently, until maybe 20 years ago, despite the fact that it was really this somewhat ubiquitous, like, you know, experience that everybody goes through at some point, psychologists weren't really thinking about it. We weren't really thinking about what difference
does it make to have a purpose in your life. And it's really been in the last 20, maybe 30 years that we've been starting to recognize how important it is for people to have purpose, a purpose in their lives in order to, you know, really thrive. Well, let's, like, let's dig in there a little bit. Like, how would you try to encapsulate what some of the benefits are in terms of the research of that last 20, 30 years? We all have a sense of what it means to lead a life of purpose.
But when I talk about purpose, I'm talking about a really particular form of it. And so that's why I always like to start with this, just to clarify exactly what I mean, because what I'm thinking about, when I talk about, you know, purposeful commitment is what we often call. It isn't exactly the same as what all other researchers are talking about when they reference a purpose.
So when I think about a purpose in life, I'm thinking about the ways that we use our skills and our talents to contribute to a really personally. In a personally meaningful way to the world beyond ourselves. So I think There are kind of three parts of this definition that are important to highlight. The first is that a purpose? It's kind of like a goal when I'm talking about it. It's like a far horizon, long term aim that
you're working towards. It may not be a goal or an aim that is ever fully achievable, but it is one towards which you can make some progress. So for instance, maybe you find a lot of purpose in working to eradicate homelessness, right? That's a big issue. And it's not clear if we'll ever get to the point where all around the globe there's absolutely no homelessness, but there are definitely steps that we
can take to make progress in that direction. So that's the first part of purpose is that it is sort of this goal, like activity. The second part is that it is an activity, right? It's really personally meaningful. But it's so personally meaningful, it matters to us so much that we're willing to dedicate our time, our energy and our personal resources in
making some progress toward that. So what that means is that a purpose isn't just something we dream about, it's something we actively engage in. Right? We care about it so much that it just inspires us to take action. So that's really the second part of the definition. And then the third part is that we have all kinds of goals, but this is a very specific kind of long term aim that is inspired by a desire to make a difference in
the world beyond ourselves. Right? So it's kind of like how we want to leave our mark, how we want to make a contribution to the broader world. And that's a really important component of purpose, at least as I conceive of it. And I think it's important to highlight that because when I think about the benefits of purpose, I think that one of the primary benefits of purpose is that it sort of helps move our gaze away from ourselves and out into the
broader world. And I think that, right, we're instead of thinking about, you know, woe is me or what can I do to just, you know, make myself happy. Today we're thinking about how can we function in the broader world? What can we contribute to the broader world. And this movement of, you know, your focus sort of away from yourself and towards the world beyond yourself, I think is really core to a lot of the benefits associated with leading
a life of purpose. So we find in our own research that purpose is associated with things like hope and life satisfaction. And, you know, I think that when you're thinking about this sort of form of purposeful commitment, not only do individuals benefit, but there's also the potential anyway for a strong societal benefit because individuals benefit by focusing on the world beyond themselves. But so too do the activities, right, the people or the causes or the institutions that they
find purpose in serving. So our research finds that people today find purpose in caring for their families, in serving their communities, in creating novel works of art and living out the tenets of their faith, and importantly, given the context of our conversation, in pursuing careers that enable them to make a really personally meaningful difference in the world beyond themselves.
Thank you for that clarity in the way of just even constructing that definition, kind of the goal orientation, the meaning focus, but then really that beyond the self aspect, which is I think, very different than how many other people or some other people within this, within this space think about the definitions. Of course, you and I got a chance to know each other at a bit of a convening of some of the people who are studying purpose all around
the world. And this question of beyond the self is one of the big questions of the different researchers and the different people coming at this from different perspectives. And it seems really important to me for the reason that you just articulated in that it, it elevates
us beyond the self. And, and that, you know, when I, when I think about some of the, well, the philosophy and the psychology over the last couple millennia that, that have most inspired me, so much of it is transcendent in that kind of nature, it seems like.
And even Aristotle when he's talking about Eudaimonia, you know, it's this idea that, that, that this virtue, which is probably something that we're going to be talking about much more, that this virtue that lives within us, this good spirit that exists within us, that our. It's our goal to potentiate. What he was describing, what flourishing was, what, what well being might mean, was really in service of creating something bigger than ourselves. It was in service of creating good societies,
that that's what we, we would have. Well being, when ultimately we were able to apply ourselves to served all of humanity. I think many others today would say beyond humanity to the planet to potentially even beyond the planet, that this beyond self aspect is really, really important. Yeah, right, right, right. We think about this conceptualization of purpose. We typically frame it using what we call relational developmental systems meta theory. And that's a lot
of big words. But basically just a little bit of jargon for you. Just a little jargon. But basically I think we could Kind of boil that down to the idea comprise their context. And their contexts are comprised of the people in them. And what that means is like we shouldn't think of the context as something separate from us. It is who we are. We are shaped by our context and we also shape the context that we're in. And so the idea is that they talk about positive developmental regulations
and another big phrase. But the idea is that when individuals thrive, their context tend to thrive, right? Their communities, their families, their relationships. And when their relationships thrive, then the people who make them up thrive. So I think that's this bi directional, you know, thriving people, thriving communities. And communities doesn't necessarily have to be the town you live in. It could be your, your family community,
your work community, your faith community. It, it's, you know, wherever, wherever you are spending time. So yeah, so I think that's important. And, and I think that's a unique facet of this sort of beyond the self conceptualization of purpose. Right. It's building this, it's recognizing a really tight connection with people and their context. That's a really nice way of framing this virtuous cycle that is possible.
A virtuous feedback loop between that kind of function, well, feel good aspects that ladder up. You've just talked about some developmental aspects of purpose, so why don't we just actually unpack some of that. Tell us a little bit how purpose tends to evolve across our lives. Purpose is generally people are finding issues in the broader world that inspire them that they care about. So it may be careing for your family, it may be
working to preserve the environment. Right. And so what you have to be able to do is sort of think into the future and imagine like, what would my life look like if I was going to really dedicate my life to working on behalf of the planet? Say that's actually something that children cognitively aren't capable of doing. We call it hypothetical deductive reasoning. And they can't really look into the future and imagine realistically what, what their lives would look like dedicated to a particular
cause or issue. They don't really engage in that abstract reasoning. So like thinking about issues like homelessness and like what that really means. Right. So we don't really think about purpose among children. However, I think that we have a study going right now where we're looking at like, what are some of the antecedents to purpose? Well, I do think there are experiences that children can have that can help set the stage for purpose development when they get a
little older. Adolescence and young Adulthood is right from a developmental perspective, this is when issues of identity take center stage. So, of course, the identity process is a lifelong process, but during adolescence and young adulthood, this really takes center stage. Young people are trying to figure out, who am I, who do I want to be? How do I fit in with the
world? And one of the things that we're finding is that questions of purpose play into this identity development process really naturally. Right? So as you're trying to figure out who am I and who do I want to be young, those are sort of the identity related questions young people are also likely to reflect on. What is it that I want to accomplish in my life? How do I want to leave my mark? And those are really sort of the purpose questions. And a lot of times those
questions are sort of inextricably intertwined. And there's actually some research to suggest that as you make more progress figuring out who you are,
you also make more progress figuring out what your purpose is. So adolescence and young adulthood is kind of a really interesting time, I think, for exploring issues of purpose, because this is where a lot of people are really trying to figure out what is it that matters to me most to me, and how am I going to live that out in my life and in midlife, lots of purpose, and many people don't develop purpose until later in life. We see lots of examples of adults developing purpose
in life. So it's certainly not the case that it has to be developed in adolescence or young adulthood. Not. Not even close. But that's sort of the first time young people are seriously encountering these ideas. But in midlife, lots of people find purpose at work and, you know, through relationships and with, you know, people in the community or organizations. And we still find, you know, purpose persisting into older adulthood. There's a lot of research Mark Friedman and others
have done looking into encore careers. And this is when you have older adults who are no longer maybe working in their careers that they did right across most of their life, but they're finding encore careers that are really purposeful, really meaningful to them, that enable them to stay engaged, but to really focus on giving back to their community or to whatever group it is that matters most to them. So, yeah, so purpose really persists across the lifespan, at least from
adolescence onward. So there's lots of talk about the ways in which Gen Y, Gen Z, like Millennial. Are these kind of generational cohorts potentially seeing purpose differently, or is this really just a developmental stage kind of thing? Do you have a perspective on any of those questions. Yeah, I, you know, I wish this, like I said, this research really only got underway in earnest 20, 25 at most, maybe 30 years ago. And so unfortunately
we just. It'd be neat, right, if we could have gotten boomers when they were young and then Gen X when they were young and then Gen. Right. And we are starting to get some of that data, but it doesn't go as far back as we would like. My sense is that with every generation there are new opportunities and challenges to the pursuit of purpose. So I think about when I was younger, right? Way back in the day, we did not have a lot of social media.
And social media, I think, plays a role in this, right. And so I remember taking long car rides and this is what a nerd I was. But seriously thinking about, like, what will my life look like? What am I going to do? There was nothing to distract me other than brothers on either side of me. And it actually, there's some really interesting research that Mary Helen and. Mary Helen and Merdino Yang at USC and her colleagues have been doing looking at brain functioning.
And one of the things they find is that I'm probably going to way oversimplify it, but there are at least a couple different modes that your brain can be in. One, when it's sort of in this executive function mode and it's really organizing and paying attention and, you know, the attention is really intentionally focused on whatever it is that you're doing. And then there's a different mode that they
call the default mode, which is when you're kind of mind wandering, right? So when I'm sitting in the back of the car and just staring out the window and turns out that mind wandering phase in your brain is really important for meaning making and exploring purpose. So I think one of the challenges that, that some of the young people today have is there's not much mind wandering going on. And I think that might be a special challenge for this generation, right?
Is when do you actually have the time to sit back and just kind of let your brain go, right? Let your mind wander and draw connections among like we were talking about those breadcrumbs. On the other hand, I think this generation has some really special opportunities. Social media, I think, plays a big role in connecting people with things they're really passionate about. Right. So I remember working with this,
interviewing this young woman, she lived in rural Texas. It was a pretty conservative county of farmers. And she was really concerned about people pouring their motor oil in the ground. That's what they, you know, There was no like recycling system spot
and she got really concerned about this. She was really interested in preserving the environment and having access to the Internet allowed her to find a group of young people who were similarly concerned because there weren't as many of them in her own community and to connect with these people and to learn how to take action. So my sense is that's just kind of an example of using social media about how it can
be both a challenge and an opportunity. But my sense is that each generation has different challenges and opportunities, but that it's a pretty universal soul need to find, to figure out or to explore, to spend some time contemplating what it is that you want to accomplish in your life, what it is that is your purpose. I think it's very helpful to frame this question of mind wandering as something that is so important,
so useful for the cultivation of what is meaningful. What might be my purpose that for anybody listening who's interested
in this? Johann Hari has this wonderful popular press book called Stolen Focus which kind of gets into some of these questions around the default mode and the ways in which our whole entire existence in some ways precludes us from being able to have this space, to be able to do some of that mind wandering, that meaning making in our lives, and yet at the same time having the capacity to be able to be so present to issues, to actions, to think about. What are those meaningful goals
and what might a meaningful action be? And how do I even conceive beyond the self? I mean, I feel like there's so many opportunities for empathy gains that we might have that, that might feed purpose development with the context that we have. So definitely double edged sword of empathy of the world. Right? Right. I think that's, I think that's exactly right. And like you said, I feel like I see it in my own life, even as a, as an adult, right. I'm standing in line at the grocery store and it's
staring at my phone. Which really is true, even just going for a walk, right? Like how I real intentional, I have to be, not to put in the headphones, not to listen to something or to talk to somebody. All of this, all of this ultimately leads to the question of how many
people actually experience purpose. So, so one of the things that distinguishes again, the way that you think about purpose, the way that others on this podcast, like Patrick Hill, for example, might think about purpose, is this idea that purpose is the goal, as opposed to just like a sense of purpose. But this, but this actual kind of goal, this meaningful goal that's beyond the self. I've seen you say something like 1 in 10 tween seems to have this, 1 in 5 teen seems to have this, 1 in 3 young
adults seem to have this. And that kind of continues pretty consistently throughout the lifespan. So like, are those numbers right? Am I, am I saying that about correctly? I think you've got it right. Yeah, yeah. And I think that we have a pretty high bar for what is purpose. I mean, I think that what I like to emphasize is they don't all have it yet. Right. Just because somebody may not have put all the pieces together
yet doesn't mean that they aren't working on it. I mean we do find that most, as much as 75% of young people are working on it. They do. Have they figured out what really matters to them? What they haven't figured out is like how am I going to act on this? Right. How is this going to play out in my daily life? I want to work on behalf of the environment. We keep using that example, but I don't know what that's going to mean for me. Am I going to
become an environmental engineer? Am I going to become a journalist who writes about it? Am I going to be someone who does beach cleanups on the weekend? Like how am I going to live that out in my life or other? Right. There's lots of different, you know, ways in which you can have sort of partial purpose. But I think that's the important thing is they just don't have it all put together yet. It doesn't mean they won't
later in life. And, and like I said, yes, we have a pretty high bar for what constitutes a purpose in life. Life. Tell me a little bit about, about some of the, the insights that you've done from some of the cross cultural research that you've been doing recently. So we've done some research in Africa, we've done research in Asia, particularly in Taiwan and in Africa, in Liberia, done a lot of research in Europe. So I think that's my cross cultural research is one of the things
that has experiences. It's really convinced me that this is like a universal human need to kind of figure out what is the point of it all and what do I to accomplish. So I think there's some universal universality to this idea of purpose that people want to figure out what it all means. At the same time, it's also going back to that relational developmental systems theory, meta theory. It also has convinced me that purpose really is shaped by your cultural
context. And so Purpose looks different among children who have been orphaned to the streets in Liberia or young adolescents than it does in young people in, you know, private schools in Taiwan. Right. As you would expect it. It would. So I think that it's been. It's been exciting to see that there is a universal, I think, motivation to explore the things that matter most to us and to think about how we want to contribute. But it definitely looks.
Looks different in different cultures. So we're working on a study in Taiwan right now, and one of the things that, that we see is, not surprisingly, there's a big role of filial piety. Your parents have a lot of say, more say in a communalistic culture than in the US about how young people are going to live their lives. When I've given talks in Taiwan, young people will say that, well, what do I do if my parents don't support my purpose? And, you know,
in the US the answer is fairly straightforward. Like, that's okay, right? You know, you do you like, you go figure it out. Right. But that's not the case in Taiwan. It's very important to figure out what's going to work for the parents and for the adolescents. So, yeah, so I think it's both. There's a universal interest in leading a life of purpose. But what that means, how that progresses, what that looks like really does vary
by cultural context. Let's maybe kind of segue into this idea of shared purpose, which maybe kind of connects a little bit to some of the things that you're talking about in terms of the cultural context. Context. And cultural context could, as you say, be a national identity. It could be a religious identity, but it also, I suppose, could be an organizational identity. So tell us a little bit, what do we need to know about shared purposes? So shared purpose is a newer area for me.
It's something I probably haven't thought as much about as I have sort of the individual pursuit of purpose. But it's definitely a compelling idea. And the context in which I've probably given the most thought to this idea of shared purpose is really within the family. So we did a study where we were looking at. We were trying to identify, like, what families would actually need a shared
purpose. I mean, in a pretty individualistic culture like ours, like we said, you know, do you need a shared purpose in a family? Well, you do if you have a family business, right? Or like a family foundation or. So that's where we started. Our research was looking at families with large, you know, family, all different sizes. I shouldn't say, say all of them were large. Some were quite large, some were quite small. Family businesses, family foundations.
And we thought, you know, how do you kind of get everybody on the same page to think about what is the purpose of this, of our shared organization, what is our shared purpose? And as we were thinking about shared purpose, we were thinking about not just creating an organization that serves us, but again, is of service to the world beyond that organization. So maybe beyond the family or beyond the family foundation or beyond the, you know, family business.
And I will say one thing we found is that it's fairly rare. You don't see tons of organizations or families coming together that really demonstrate sort of all the facets of purpose that are really actively engaged in working towards making a positive difference in the broader world. And that at least most of the members of the organization are really on board with. And you can imagine how that gets harder as the organization gets bigger. Bigger, right, because you've just got
more people you've got to find, buy in with. But we definitely saw instances of it. We saw families that would come together on a really regular basis and they had this shared commitment. In one case, it was a family that was. So they had this family business, but they also had sort of a family foundation. And the. The focus of the family foundation was really building their local community. And so it was kind of neat because a lot of the family members had different interests within the
community. One of them was a chef. And so he was really. He had his own business. This was, you know, something he did on the side. But he really was committed to food programs in the community. And that was sort of like the way he hooked into this larger shared purpose of building this community. One of the other family members was really interested in nature, and so they were always trying to build,
you know, preserve. It was a beach community, so preserve the beach, but also putting in new walking trails and preserving green spaces and things like this. So anyway, so it was really interesting how the family members were able to connect sort of their own purposes in life with this shared family purpose to make a difference in the. In the broader world. And I think one of the keys was that jumped out every single time was really strong relationships among the members of.
In this case, they were family members. I have to say I was blown away by how much time they voluntarily spent together, how well they knew one another. They had structures in place to ensure they spent time and had fun together. And. And I feel like when we think about shared purpose, having that deep sense of connection and trust in one another. And even just knowledge of one is really key to supporting a shared purpose over time.
I think one of the other things that is like, came out as, as a result of those close relationships was a really important relationship between the older generation and the younger. So in one of these families, the older generation, they said, we all go to work for a day with the members of the younger generation. Like, every year they'll try to, you know, they might have 30 or, you know, or people that they need to go check in with,
but they will go spend a day. And they want to understand their lives and they want to understand what they care about. And I think this is important because we were looking for purposes that extend across generations like, like, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 years. And those kinds of purposes have to be somewhat flexible. I mean, there's. We did see families that managed to do it, and there was a strain
of continuity, like a string that, that, that. That held these purposes together over 50, 60, 70, 80 years. But there was also an element of give and take. And the older generation, and this is not easy because the older generation kind of thinks, hey, we did it right. We got it right. We, we did so well. And they just kind of. There's this tendency to just
want to get the younger generation to do the same thing. But in the families where this really worked, where this really persisted, they were willing to really listen. So sort of that humble leadership and make some ad. And that made the younger generation feel really bought in, and it gave them some say over this shared purpose, and it enabled them to, like we said, sort of allowed that shared purpose to evolve across generations, it's great.
I mean, just some of the reflections that I hear, as somebody who spent, you know, most of my career working in organizations, who've thought about many of these questions around purpose and like, how does purpose show up in a big organizational context? There's, I think, so many of these lessons that we can learn from the smaller family businesses or just this kind of closer ecosystem to try to think about.
What does it actually look like when this stuff happens? Well, so even just taking this notion of purpose, if purpose means big, hairy, audacious goals that are actually significant and meaningful for a large number of the people working there, that is ultimately above the self. And usually that means above a profit margin or motive, like, there's a reason for doing this over and beyond self interest, over and
above self interest. That those are like, three great criteria for what great purposes in organizations actually need to look like, but it's one thing to be able to say those purposes and it's another thing to create maybe what Brian Little would call the personal projects that we need to be able to figure out. How do those purposes actually come to life in the
context of my day to day working? So if I'm the person who has to put on the asset tag on the computer, well, what does it mean to grow the good if that's the purpose of one
bank that I used to work for? Right. And just even kind of this morning, I was talking to somebody who worked in philanthropy and they were talking about how sometimes difficult it is to be able to help every single person within a fundraising and development department understand what their unique role is in actually creating the context for achieving their purpose, which was ultimately about, you know, being able to create education for all. Right.
Like that. How do you peel back those layers and understand the personal contribution, the meaning making that's required, boil it into, from these big statements, into very concrete behaviors or attitudes or narratives that we can have. All of that feels probably like a really useful thing to start to talk about. Like, what does it actually mean to build
a sense of purpose? Purpose. No, I agree. And I feel like there's a little bit of a tension there because one of the things that, you know, I think whenever possible it's great if people can figure it out for themselves. Right. Like in these family purposes, which. Yes, you're absolutely right. Organizations are going to be much bigger than many of these families with the family. Now, they had big family businesses. These were
many big. But the actual families themselves, there were, I mean, maybe a hundred members, but they weren't thousands or 10. And you know, and we did find that it was harder to build a really strong sense of shared purpose the bigger the family got. Right. Cause it's easier to kind of keep everybody on board when it's smaller. But anyway, the tension that I'm kind of talking about is that purpose really comes to some degree from within. Right. It's, it's what matters to me.
What do I care about? And so I feel like, yes, there's. When you have a large organization and you're right, you want to help everybody understand how the, the, the, the role they're playing is contributing to this larger purpose. And so in some cases, just sharing that information with them, like, look, here's what you're doing and here's how you're contributing. And this is absolutely essential to us achieving this larger goal. But I feel like whenever possible it would be It.
It's ideal when people can sort of see those connections for themselves and, and they can think about, you know, in my own life, here's what I do and here's what. How it. Here's how I can sort of play that out at work. And so again, I think that's where, you know, in that example of family purpose, it was really exciting for people who were like, you know, I'm. I'm a. I'm a chef, I'm a cook. I love providing people with food and entertainment
and making them happy and full. And all of life's good moments happen around food. And so my hook into the larger family purpose, it makes sense that it's around food. So anyway, I don't know the answer. I guess I'm just saying I think there's this sort of interesting tension about between management sort of telling employees, here's how you contribute, and that sort of grassroots approach for employees to recognize that, like, I see myself as a part
of this larger goal and I can see how what I'm doing contributes. And that's really meaningful to me. I guess I just see that as an important challenge. I really don't know the answer. It is.
It's a really important challenge. And I think it's important because I think that, you know, taken to an extreme, there is the potential for exploitation or potentially alienation of an individual in the context of this tension between what is personally significant, worthwhile for me, what is my own purpose, and what's the purpose of this organization that I'm supposed to be working for, that I'm supposed to be applying. And that incongruence can actually lead to a lot of moral
outrage, I guess, when it's managed poorly. So I think there is certainly some warning signs in terms of how we go about doing this and how we do it in an authentication way, which maybe connects to the next thing that I would love to talk about, which is, I guess, how we build purpose in our lives and specifically the role of virtue in that kind of context. So tell us a little bit, tell us, I guess, a little bit about some of the work that you're doing around character and virtue
development. I think if we go back to the way that I think about what constitutes a purpose in life, right? It's having this sort of far horizon goal orientation that your goal or aim that you're working towards, it's. It's so meaningful to you that you're actively engaged in making progress toward it. And it's inspired by a desire to Make a difference in the broader world. Well, that's all pretty
value neutral, actually. So I think that you probably could pick up the newspaper today and find lots of examples of really antisocial and negative purposes in life. And that's not what we're generally studying, but they undoubtedly exist.
And I think that in coming up with this, the, the, the definition that we put forth around purpose, we intentionally didn't include that it has to be a positive contribution to the broader world because to be honest, I don't really think psychologists are the right people to be making those determinations. Right. We need philosophers and all of that. And that was a little beyond our, our scope at the time.
So I think that when I think about purpose and the way that I think about purpose, I think about how it really needs to be paired with character and virtue. Because purpose in the wrong direction can be quite, could be, theoretically it can be. And we see examples of it, I guess, not just in theory, in reality could be quite antisocial and destructive. And so. But if we have character, right, if we have an understanding of,
you know, kindness and compassion, right. We could think about all the different kinds of character virtues, performance and moral character and civic character and, or civic virtues. And so if we, if we, if we pair purpose with character, then I think we're, we're moving in the right direction. And, and so a lot of times I do a lot of work with schools that are really interested in cultivating in purpose and we talk about purpose in the context of character development all the time.
They're almost like in an ideal world. They're two sides of the same coin. Right. So you have purpose with a strong sense of character so that you really, yeah. Working towards hopefully a altruistic, a positive pro social kind of
purpose in life. I mean, certainly when I've, you know, heard philosophers talk about these things and again, going back to the beginning of this conversation, Aristotle, in kind of framing what telos is or what, what a sense of a bigger sense of purpose is, it is ultimately about, you know, a society that's cap of well being. Right. So it is that very pro social or very kind of orientation, a moral orientation, and very much of a pairing of character as the
pursuit, as the drive of being able to do that. I'm curious a little bit about what do you do when you're in, let's say, the kind of youth development and maybe I don't know how high you go up within that youth development curve in terms of what these purpose cultivation interventions are A Bit like, what does it actually look like to talk about purpose and character in a school
setting? When I think when we think about character development, that historically one of the issues has been that we take sort of one virtue at a time and really focus on cultivating that. And then we sort of end up with what we call this sort of bag of virtues, right? Like, how do these fit together? And I think that when it really comes down to it, one of the biggest issues that we deal with on a regular basis is not that that, like, is kindness good or is being
honest good? Right? Like, obviously both are good. And the challenge is when you have to think about, well, which one's more important in this particular situation, right? I could be honest with this person and tell them that, you know, they, they just did a terrible job in some big, whatever performance they just gave. Or I could be kind and just say, you know what? Right? Like, so I think that one of the things that we focus a lot on is wisdom. And wisdom is really just
focusing. So the virtues, what are the virtues and what are the kinds of ways that we want to behave? But also wisdom is sort of understanding which of these virtues to enact under which circumstances, to which degree, and which
one should take priority in which situations. So I think that is sort of how we, you know, in general, I'm giving a very high level view of sort of how we think about character, but pulling it together beyond just hearing the here are the list of character strengths that we should cultivate, but also thinking about, well, which ones are more important in which situation, how do we make those kinds of decisions.
And Aristotle talked about phronesis, which is sort of this idea of the enactment of wisdom and then bringing in conversations about purpose. And we have just started thinking about these kinds of things. How does purpose fit in with curricular materials really designed around character? This idea of practical wisdom is phronesis is I think, really in so many ways what it's all about.
Certainly again, in the leadership development work that I've been able to do in organizations, the most powerful thing that you can get a leadership team to do is to be able to pause, to be able to ideally pause and stride, to be able to think, well, what is the right thing to do in this situation, in this context with these people right now, right? Like what, what does it mean to be able to enact whatever values or virtues that we have in service of whatever
purpose we have? I think it's a really powerful thing not only to be able to do and instruct in schools, but a huge opportunity that we have in an organizational setting, like, if you have a purpose in your organization, if you have values in your organization, to pause and stop and think about collectively as any team, no matter where you are in the organization, how do we make the right call in this moment, in this context, and think about what. What is the practically
wise thing to do right here? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we've thought about it most. I've thought about it most commonly in a school context. And there we, you know, it's, it's nice because we have teachers who we can, you know, you have to train the teachers, but they can step back and say, you know, here's an opportunity for us to step back and really think about how do we move forward? How are we going to handle this? Where. What's the best
way you. In light of, you know, the character strengths and virtues that we've said we want to embody and the larger purpose that we want to make progress toward, you know, we found that role modeling. Right. That modeling this, this pause can be really useful, a very useful approach. Kendall, thank you so much for showing up in such a practically wise way and painting such a broad picture that is so useful and very accessible about a topic that is incredibly comple plex.
So thank you. Yeah, well, thank you for having me, Andrew. I really, I really appreciate it. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Meaningful Work Matters. If you haven't already done so, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform. And if this episode resonated with you, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your feedback helps us make this podcast better and reach more listeners. You can connect with me, Andrew Soren, on LinkedIn or visit www.eubd.ca
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