How positive leadership can help us to fulfill our goals

Welcome to the latest edition of Positive Leadership and You. 

This month, we consider fulfillment: how we can work towards it; how we can help others feel more fulfilled, and how we can fulfill our ability to change the world. 

Me: Focusing on our personal growth, wellbeing and being positive. 

What does it mean to live a fulfilled life? Is it about professional or financial success? Or is it, as my former podcast guest and best-selling author Mo Gawdat at suggests, an active process of engagement and self-discovery? 

I am sure we have all thought about this. And sometimes it might lead to us asking: what would have happened if we had taken, in the words of the poet Robert Frost, a road less travelled?

Professor Herminia Ibarra 's best-selling book, Working Identity, is a response to this feeling. In it, she explores the process of creating a more fulfilling future, reinventing yourself through meaningful work, when you feel like you’ve hit a roadblock in your life. 

Her theory is radical because it is counterintuitive: don’t try to discover yourself by introspection, change yourself by doing. In other words, you will never feel fulfilled sitting still; it is about practising a different side of yourself, about experimenting and being an entrepreneur of your life. 

The book has just been updated and re-issued. It’s a great read if you are thinking about how to evolve your career to find meaning and purpose.

Listen to my conversation with Herminia here:

Last month, I interviewed Dr Tara Swart Bieber , who reinvented herself in her mid-30s, changing career from a medical doctor specializing in neuroscience to setting up an executive coaching practice. 

She told me that even though she was good at her job, the pathway always felt “predestined” by her family. It did not feel true to who she really was – or what she was capable of becoming.

In her own coaching, Tara takes Herminia’s call to action and applies a combination of neuroscience and ancient tools of visualization. At the start of our conversation, she set the tone for her approach: 

“If you go through life saying things like that never happen to me or that’s not going to work out for me, then that’s probably going to become true. Your logic, your emotion, and your intuition have to be aligned. If logic’s telling you to do something but in your gut it feels wrong, it’s not going to work.” 

According to Tara, finding harmony between head, heart, and gut can positively transform our lives and help us to feel more fulfilled. This is one of Tara’s six principles for rewiring your brain in order to provoke positive personal change.

You can listen to what this means in practice and how you can apply Tara’s approach here:

and you can also find more in her book, ‘The Source’. 

Recommended by LinkedIn

Me & Others: Connecting with and empowering others to achieve more 

How do we create an environment where other people experience fulfilment? 

For Ranjay Gulati , author and professor at Harvard Business School, the answer lies in a strongly articulated purpose. He says that we should all expect more from our work, and leaders who are able to create an environment that brings people together around a shared ideal, will unleash tremendous potential. 

Ranjay points to the famous story of the janitor at NASA, who when John F. Kennedy asked him, “What do you do here?” He responded by saying, “Mr. President, I'm here to put a man on the moon!” The point being that every one of us can feel pride, purpose and fulfillment at work, whatever our role, as long as we understand how it aligns with a greater sense of purpose.

Catch up on the episode to hear more expert advice on creating purpose driven teams here:

My latest podcast guest, Nandan Nilekani, is an inspirational business and public sector leader whose incredible success has been driven by his ability to create a purposeful and fulfilling environment at work for everyone. 

Nandan co-founded Infosys in 1981 and has played a central role in India’s digital transformation journey ever since. He is a thinker and a doer. His energy is really contagious. Like Ranjay, he knows that successful leaders create meaning for others through sharing a vision: 

“Always articulate a vision or make it ambitious, make it audacious, make it bold, but make it plausible. And that gets everybody energised to go towards that goal.” 

Bold goals encourage us to achieve more, together. They also create a sense of shared purpose. Like NASA’s mission to the moon, Nandan has always created an environment where people are encouraged to go further.

Learn more about Nandan’s incredible journey here:

Me & the World: Having a positive impact on the world.  

Ambitious, audacious, bold, but plausible. I see Nandan's framework for success in the work of so many purpose-driven entrepreneurs I meet every day. I am in awe of these individuals who find their fulfilment through changing the world for the better. 

We recently marked the halfway point for delivering the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. This is something I talk about a lot. If they are new to you, take a look at the link. In a nutshell, they are goals we have to achieve if we are to all thrive on a healthy planet. But with just 12% of the SDGs on track, the path to meeting them feels daunting. But what can you and I do to make a difference?

As I look at the months and years ahead, I still feel optimistic because I know there are so many entrepreneurs who are driving positive change. It’s how they personally feel fulfilled in their work and life. An inspiring example is inventor and entrepreneur Neha Shukla , who I caught up with in New York the other week. Here’s what she had to say: 

I hope this month’s newsletter inspires you, too.

Speak soon. 

jp