Mission Mindset: Driving Outcomes Through Your Purpose

The second is when your mission drives your decisions, everything in your organization aligns and it's really beautiful. The third thing is that your systems, your team, your organization, need to be able to operate without you in order to grow beyond you and it's mission that really makes that happen. Before we dig in, I just want to give a little bit of context.

So Mission Mindset is one of my Core 4 of Impact Leadership, so the Core 4 of Impact Leadership, really my my set of values that informs everything I do as a service leader. So this show, Passion & Profits, my leadership development modules, everything that I'm doing with this idea of serving others aligns with these Core 4. So the first is Mission Mindset. That's what we're talking about today. The second, which we'll talk about in the next episode, is Compassionate Culture.

How to really bring this ethos of compassion into our organizations and how to make it sustainable. The third of my Core 4 is Professional & Personal Progress, growing as an individual and why that's so important. And the fourth of the Core 4 is Sustainable Self-Care. And I want you to notice that these Core 4 are equally balanced between focusing on the output on others, on our organization, and on our own needs.

That is the biggest challenge that I've seen in my work over the years, both personally and working with other service leaders, is the imbalance between serving others and serving ourselves. We are not able to sustainably do our work if we're not continually investing in ourselves. If we give, give, give all the time without replenishing, we come from a place of lack, and that is what leads to burnout.

So that balance between our output and our input, our self care and our care taking is what allows this work to continue in a sustainable. So that's just a, a brief overview of kind of the structure and how Mission Mindset fits into that. All right, So let's dig into this idea of Mission Mindset. First I wanna share just some definitions around Mission Mindset. So I wanna differentiate between passion, between purpose and mission. So passion is something that's very important to me.

As you can tell, it's in the title of my show. However, passion while it, it's a, a strong feeling and it is something that is really, I would describe as like being bright and being really inspiring is often short lived. Because passion has such a high energetic output, it's not sustainable in the long run. Let's look at relationships, right? You meet someone, it's all very exciting. There's this attraction and there's this passion that happens.

What happens after a few months that starts to fade, it starts to die down. There's a a biological reason that that happens, but just also energetically staying up here all the time. It's, it's impossible. Right? That's, that's a, that's a manic state. That's not good for us to be in all the time. It's an energetic drain. So passion has a place, but it is not what makes an organization last. Okay? Purpose is a deep value. Purpose is something that at your. Drives you.

So unlike passion, which is way up here, purpose, I would say lives down here, right? In our, in our chest, in our gut. And the, and the purpose is something that's like intrinsic to us that that helps us really, I think informs, what we do. And if. Having trouble really understanding and aligning with your purpose. There's a great episode with Kate Kali, I believe it's my third episode. And Kate shares about how to align with your purpose and how to really understand it.

And I would highly encourage you to check out that episode if you really wanna understand what your purpose is. Now mission, I believe, is the combination of the both of those. So we have our passion, we have our purpose, and the mission is really the structure of, of the infusion, of those two things. Okay?

So our, our mission is something that has a lot of energetic value to it, but also is rooted in, in a deep core value and, with that, in order to make that structure work we have to have systems alined with it. And we'll, we'll talk more about the systems and, and how to create those. But I just wanted to kind of get those sort of for the purpose of this episode, definitions sort of understood.

The cool thing about all three of those is they, they work synergistically to create the type of environment that we need to create. If we look at passion and purpose and how they sort of work together. Think of a, think of a sine wave, right? sine wave goes up and down, right? So we have this passion and it peaks, and then it starts e energetically ebb, and that's when we can connect with that purpose, right? So over time it will ebb and flow. Passion, purpose, passion, purpose.

And I've experienced this personally. Building organizations you get really fired up about something and you go in, you're all gung-ho, and then after a little bit of time that fades. And if you don't have systems in place, then when the passion fade. What happens to what you're building, what you're working on, it just goes away, right? So if our passion and our purpose are aligned, then the cool thing is this.

We have this energetic passion, it fades and then we can root down in our purpose and use that to boost back up. If we're just sort of riding those waves and not doing anything with it, then what? What good are we actually doing? We have to capture it. We have to capture that, and that's where mission comes in, right? So when we observe ourselves heading toward an inspired time in our lives when something is really driving us and really passionate, that should be a cue to capture this time.

And that can be through writing, journaling, it can be through videotaping audio recording through conversations. If you work with a team, have someone help capture those ideas. It is so important in those moments of inspiration to grab it because the raw beauty the energy that comes with that can help inspire us on those during those energetic slumps. Or if we're thinking about long long term in an organization, there's gonna be good times and bad times times of plenty and times of lack.

So helping to bring that passion, that energy into those other times is really important. So capture whatever you can during those times of high passion, while really understanding your purpose, really digging into the, the true purpose and aligning with that when you have those two, they work so beautifully together. But how do we translate that into a system? A system that actually works and that we can infuse into everything in our organization?

Because continually infusing your mission, invigorates you and your team, and helps to avoid burnout. Your mission, and this is the cool thing about it. Your mission can continue to inspire after your passion fades. And that I think is really cool. First, I, I just wanna mention the consequences to not doing this. I have burnt out so many times that I even, I just stop counting and. When I would get passionate about something and really start working on something it was exciting.

It was that, that new relationship feeling. But when the passion fades, it is such a big letdown and it's like a breakup. And there were a lot of times when I almost quit because I didn't have the structure in place to be able to make that sustain. So for me, the, the change was really defining my mission. And, and I just wanna pause and say, you may work for an organization and the, the mission of the organization may already be defined for you.

Okay. So that's, that's all well and good but what I'm talking about today a mission for yourself, for your immediate department or if you're running an organization really understanding the mission. So the mission should have a very clear outcome, okay? Whereas passion maybe doesn't have any defined parameters around it and our purpose really has something that is maybe, maybe not always tangible, but, but something that's more defined. Our mission needs to have a specific outcome, right?

So if you think about infusing those three, something that you're really passionate about, that you care a lot about that aligns with a, a core value or a purpose, and that has a desired outcome. And this can be an outcome that is for, for others, for the good of humanity, for your team, for yourself whatever this mission is. It, it needs to be very well defined. So for instance NoStigmas, our mission is to ensure that no one faces mental health challenges alone.

We do this by building allies and advocates who can work in every single community and align with individuals who are struggling with mental health challenges. Right? So in that mission we are really defining like who we want to serve, how we want to serve them, and what happens when we serve them. And that is such an important, important part of mission.

So if you're working for a specific department or you are trying to create something as, as an individual, that mission needs to be part of everything that you do. This brings us to that second takeaway, which is the mission has to drive your decisions if you are making a decision that is based on something other than the mission if it is for notoriety, if it is for pure gain for profit's sake. If it is for any other reason solely exclusive of your mission, you shouldn't do it.

You absolutely shouldn't do it. And I, and it is a hard point to argue that you can give up short term gains for the long term good. But it is so incredibly true and I, I've learned this personally the hard way so many times. But we. When we infuse that mission into everything we do, it is just beautiful, beautiful when that happens. This can include supplies that we purchase, people that we hire, the SOPs that we put in place the.

Partners that we align with, understanding that everyone should be on board with that mission. Everything should be in support of that mission. And if it's not, an alternative needs to be found or you need to go in a different direction. It can be really tough if you are answering to others. But there are ways that you can do it in that you can figure it out. And if you have a really well defined mission, then it's even easier.

So let's move on to this third idea that your systems and team can operate and have to operate without you in order to grow beyond you. So when we, when we really create our mission and infuse it into everything that we do, that means that every workflow we create, every, SOP we create has the opportunity to be a piece of inspiration. So this is not just an onboarding sequence that helps someone get to know how to do a particular task.

It is get to know how to do this particular task, but really understand the why of it. Why are you doing what you do, and how does this align with that mission? If we can create systems and create workflows that infuse mission into it, It can truly replicate our work and take our place in that particular thing. So for instance there's an onboarding sequence for NoStigmas for new team members.

That includes videos that I created that share the mission and a little bit of my story, why we do what we do. We're learning how to become a member of the community, but also simultaneously understanding the why of it. And the cool thing is, is because I captured myself in a inspired, highly passionate time.

Now every single person who onboards into the community gets to have the taste of that Jake, that passionate Jake, and moving forward, I don't have to give that same talk every single time to every single person who comes into the organization. They get to understand and be inspired by that mission, they get to know me and my why and the purpose behind what we do, and they get to learn the systems and the structures that help them grow and do their work better. It's a win-win for everybody.

And here's the great thing is that now that energy is captured, the process is captured, and I get to go and work on something else. Rinse and repeat. fifty , a hundred times and suddenly entire departments or organizations are running without me. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not there for support. It doesn't mean that I can completely walk away and just leave everybody to their own devices. No, of course not.

But the, the cool thing is, is that I get to continue to do more and expand the organization in different ways, because I'm continually capturing my knowledge, capturing my passion, capturing my purpose, capturing that mission, translating it to other people, sharing it with other people, and then moving on. And in that way, the organization can grow beyond me, can grow bigger than me.

It is all because that mission is infused into all of it, so that's a very simple, simple explanation of this idea of mission being infused in everything that you do. We're just scratching the surface here. If you want to dig deeper into this reach out to me. We can talk about this. I, I love nerding out about this and, and how to do that in a tangible way.

If you want clarity on what that looks like, I will leave my contact information in the show notes here, reach out and let's talk more about how really to infuse mission into your organization and what that looks like in, in a practical sense. Well, that's all I have for you today. I really appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode where we talk about Compassionate Culture and continue on with the rest of the Core 4.

Thanks for being here, and until next time, take care.