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How One’s WHY Impacts the WHAT. When Minor Changes Matter.

October 8th, 2024

I’ve just spent several hours changing a single word on mch’s branding, marketing, presentation materials and documentation. Instead of describing my work as one of, ‘staff development’, I changed it to ‘people development’. Why did I bother to make such a change? Where did the insight to do so come from?

The answers to both can be found in the Source of Leadership Programme I deliver. A guiding premise of the programme is that leadership is a never-ending quest to know yourself, be yourself and manage the creative tension that comes from trying to be at peace with oneself whilst also striving to develop oneself. To this end, an early exercise in the programme involves finding what Simon Sinek terms your, ‘WHY’. Essentially, this involves completing the following sentence;

‘My WHY is to [Insert the contribution you want to make in the world here] so that [Insert the impact you perceive your contribution will make here].

For a summary of Sinek’s work, and guidance on completing this sentence, click here.

In the Source of Leadership Programme, I raise the prospect that participants may generate multiple WHYs initially, with a personal WHY and a professional WHY being the most common. By way of example, I share the following personal and professional WHYs I generated for myself and my organisation;

Personal ‘To live my values so that I can be the best father, partner, son, brother and friend I can be.’

Work/mch: positive impact ‘To help individuals, teams and organisations reach their full potential so they can achieve the positive impact they want to have on the world.’

I deliver the Source of Leadership Programme annually and always try to approach each exercise with a fresh pair of eyes (or more accurately a pair of eyes with a year’s more experience and reflective practice). In practical terms, this typically means I do the exercise myself in advance of facilitating it for participants. Doing so this year, I was struck by:

1. The multiple roles I have.
2. How artificial it seems to separate my professional roles from my personal ones: whilst some roles may be more important than others, they are all part of who I am.
3. The fact that given I only have one set of values, perhaps I only have one WHY.

With these insights, my provisional, overarching WHY became;

‘To live my values so that I can be the best father, partner, son, brother, friend, colleague, mentor, trainer and facilitator I can be.’

These insights also explain why I felt it was appropriate to change ‘staff development’ to ‘people development’ in all of mch’s materials. My ultimate aim is not just to develop a person as a member of staff, but as a human being. This is what draws me to the type of training I deliver. The utility of the likes of emotional intelligence, mindset, resilience, management and leadership training is not confined to the workplace. These topics are equally valuable outside of work. Although there can be an understandable desire to compartmentalise life, the ‘buckets’ we create for ourselves often prove quite transparent and porous - one impacts on the others. This perspective is supported by the extended feedback I receive from participants six to 12 months after their training formally ends. One of the most common qualitative comments goes something like;

‘Whilst the training was useful at work, it’s also had a really positive impact on my relationship with my partner/son/daughter/friend/mum/dad/sister/brother.’

So what’s the ‘So What?’ to all of this? I believe there is one general and one specific ‘So What?’. The general one is that no matter how experienced you are, there can be real value in repeating the same reflective exercises, provided you can do so with genuine curiosity. The specific is that discernment is likely to serve you well, if like me, your WHY is based on the roles you have. Given that your WHY is intrinsically linked to your identity, if you start to attach your identity to a role, the question that’s then worth asking is;

‘Who would I be if that role no longer existed?’

A while ago, I was faced with this reality when a separation led to my role as ‘partner’ no longer existing. Given the multiple roles I have, the loss was felt, but did not lead to any sort of identity crisis. However, it did make me appreciate that all my roles could come to an end at any point. If that were to happen, who would I be then? This is a question I’m reflecting upon, and it may lead to a further iteration of my WHY. If so, it would be a fitting illustration of the never-ending leadership quest to know yourself, be yourself and manage the creative tension that comes from trying to be at peace with oneself whilst also striving to develop.

For an overview of the Source of Leadership Programme mentioned in this blog, click here.