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Business is an unlikely hero: a force for good working to solve society's most pressing challenges, while boosting bottom line. This is social purpose at work. And it's a dynamic journey. Purpose 360 is a masterclass in unlocking the power of social purpose to ignite business and social impact. Host Carol Cone brings decades of social impact expertise and a 360-degree view of integrating social purpose into an organization into unfiltered conversations that illuminate today's big challenges and bigger ideas.
Carol Cone:
I'm Carol Cone and welcome to Purpose 360, the podcast that unlocks the power of purpose to ignite business and social impact. Welcome to Purpose 360, and today is very exciting because we've got three amazing people and they have written a book and here it is, it's the Purpose Reset. I have read it twice, I've got lots of circles and bent over pages and such because there's so much wisdom in this book. So first, we'd like to start out with our esteemed colleagues, our authors, and please, a little bit of background. So Carolina, why don't we start with you. So a little bit about yourself, what is your personal purpose and what made you decide to write the Purpose Reset?
Carolina Lasso:
Thank you, Carol. It's so great to be here. And my purpose, now, I introduced myself as this, my purpose is to help you reconnect with yours. So it's a little meta to be talking about purpose and then my full-time job now is related to that, but it didn't start that way. I worked in the corporate world for 20 years, including financial services in New York. I was at Google for seven years in Silicon Valley, media and entertainment. And then the three of us were together at a non-profit organization called the Searching Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. And so what I would say is my purpose has evolved and I see it now as a journey that continues to give me feedback whenever I am on track or off track.
Carol Cone:
Oh, interesting. How about Rich?
Rich Fernandez:
Great, thanks Carol. Hello everyone. My name's Rich Fernandez. I'm a performance and organizational psychologist by training. Like Carolina, I spent many years, almost two decades in large corporates. So JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and then running talent and learning at eBay, eventually winding up at Google as head of executive education. That's where really we started collaborating on this platform for emotional intelligence because the engineers realized they had to work with other humans so we developed a whole curriculum for that, which spun off as this nonprofit that Carolina, Steph and I worked on together. Eventually spun that out into a startup called SIY Global and was CEO of that until very recently, about a month ago. So independent now, consulting, coaching, advising. My purpose throughout that entire arc of my career, from getting a PhD in psychology to spending two decades in large corporates to running a nonprofit and then a startup has always pretty much been the same, which is the full integration of consciousness in every dimension of life.
Rich Fernandez:
That's a lot of personal and collective so integrating consciousness in work, at home, in my community, for myself, but also supporting others to do the same.
Carol Cone:
And I think we need a lot more of that today, so we're going to get into that. Steph.
Steph Stern:
Thanks, Carol. So I work as a coach and facilitator and I just love supporting people to become a more authentic version of themselves. So I often think, oh, I just get to love people all day. And that's a simple way of putting my purpose. As I was thinking about purpose and how I define it, I was remembering that at the beginning of my purpose reset, that's what really brought me to work at Search Inside Yourself with Carolina and Rich. I'd come across a quote from the writer Anne Lamott. The quote is, "Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save, they just stand there shining." And when I read that, it just really struck something in me of like, oh, I want to be that lighthouse. I spent the first part of my career in the environmental policy field where I was really running all over, looking for boats and islands to save. And the idea of really grounding in myself and the authentic version of me and sharing that light for others to navigate by, to find themselves with, that's a beautiful image that really encapsulates my purpose.
Carol Cone:
It's a beautiful image. You all have amazing experiences and very distinctive personal purpose. That's great, we're going to get into that. So why call the book the Purpose Reset?
Steph Stern:
We called it the Purpose Reset really because we want to emphasize this idea of reset, of purpose as a process. Because I think often when we think about purpose, particularly for an individual, but even for an organization, you can think of it as a destination, we have to go find the purpose. And for me, that always has an edge of perfectionism, that there is a right answer out there. And instead the three of us are really interested in more the idea that purpose is an ongoing inquiry that we hold in our life and that it will change and it may look different as well. So a purpose reset may be for an individual, it may be a huge career pivot.
The three of us have all made them several times actually, but it also might be something really small. It might just be like, oh, I just have to get in touch with the impact I'm making. I just feel disconnected because I'm not seeing it. Or it might be a little bit of a redefinition. So we wanted this idea of ongoing process and also this range of what that reset might look like. And I think we also think that the idea of a purpose reset is really important because we are changing and the world is changing around us. And so we will probably have to continue to reset again and again in big and small ways.
Carol Cone:
Oh. So it's continuous and it's evolutionary. So I'm curious, how did three authors come to agreement on the name of the book? What was that like?
Rich Fernandez:
That's a really good question. So to build on what Steph was saying, I think from our view it's a process of alignment, that ongoing process is unfolding. It's about aligning the who, the what, the why personally on a team for an organization. And that was probably very true of our own process, of aligning our perspectives on what purpose really is and really getting down to questions like what role does love play in understanding purpose? I want to come back to this idea of moving towards love when we think about purpose, and maybe I'll ask Carolina and Steph to share the story of the napkin and how that really highlighted the idea.
Carol Cone:
The napkin. Okay, let's hear the napkin story.
Carolina Lasso:
So the book was going to be called at some point From Ladder to Love, which was something that Steph wrote on a piece of napkin. And I'll let you tell the story Steph because it's beautiful.
Steph Stern:
Yeah. So when I first came to work at Search Inside Yourself, I was leaving behind this 10 plus year career in the environmental field. And I actually took a huge pay cut and demotion in responsibility to make this career pivot.
Steph Stern:
And so to remind myself, why did I do this? Why did I make this change? I wrote myself this little note that said From Ladder to Love. And that was really symbolizing this huge shift for me that before that, my career had really defined success as climbing up a career ladder, more and more responsibility, more pay, title, all of that, very conventional. And instead, I really wanted to anchor on what does it feel like to work with love? And that's the ethos I wanted to bring into my work at Search Inside Yourself and my life really.
Carol Cone:
Beautiful. No, that's great. I love in the book, since I've been working in the field since 1983, I love the fact that you've got three different sections and you have personal purpose. And we're going to really spend a lot of time on that because Purpose 360 is very much about organizational purpose and brand purpose. Then we were going to shift to talk about team purpose and how do you make that work? And I think that'll be a great gift to our listeners. So let's start out at a high level about what is personal purpose?
Carolina Lasso:
I can start. So we did find purpose as this ongoing process, of aligning, and we used three elements, three key elements throughout the book. So it's aligning our what, right? So think of that as your strength, your character, your skills. Then your why. What is it that truly, truly moves you, your motivations, your values, those causes that you really care about? And then who. Who are those people, who are the groups that you want to have an impact on? So your what, your why and your who. And then when you combine those two with awareness, with greater clarity, with having the moment to sit down and really reflect on this.
Carol Cone:
Love reflection.
Carolina Lasso:
Reflection, right? So it's awareness and then aligned action. It's not just about thinking and having great ideas, you really have to act on that. So we really thought a lot about this, did a ton of research to get to that point of really seeing how to make it really practical for us in our own lives truly. And then for other people to reconnect with that sense of purpose, with identifying the integration of the what, the why and the who with awareness and with just the decide to take action.
Rich Fernandez:
Yeah. And then so to build on that, taking that personal view of purpose, I mentioned this earlier, what's different about this book is that we didn't just focus on the individual, we talked about the individual in the context of teams and organizations. Because I think most books on purpose, I'd have to say, focus only on individuals, which makes that development of those qualities that Carolina was describing, the what, why, and who, a very isolated exercise. So rather than decide what you want to be when you grow up and your what, why, and who, we saw that as a limited framework and we wanted to take this as an ongoing process of also aligning with the systems in your life. So we wrote that purpose reset to take a more dynamic and systems oriented view of purpose from the perspective of an individual who operates in an ecosystem that may include their team or community and organizations in which they work. So really this book is taking this unique approach and it takes into account how to align the individual with a team and an organization which allows true flourishing to happen.
Carol Cone:
And I love you use flourishing a lot in terms of just letting things to grow and expand. Steph, you want to add to that?
Steph Stern:
Sure. I'll add a couple of things. One is that what Rich is saying about these different levels, to me, that reconnects to this idea that sometimes a purpose reset is small. Like, oh, I'm an individual on this team and I just need to shift how I think about my job to be more of service to the team and the organization or vice versa, things might cascade down. And sometimes when we start the purpose reset, we realize like, oh, I'm so out of alignment with everything the team and organization are doing and I need to make a bigger change.
So part of seeing ourselves in context is also seeing that ripple effect and the bigger impact for the positive and maybe for an inspiration for greater change. So I think that's a critical piece. The other thing I'll add is we like to think of those ripple effects also as sound waves, that when they're in alignment, there's a resonance and it naturally builds and becomes more than the sum of its parts. And that's really exciting, to us, that's the promise of actually devoting some time and energy to thinking about purpose at these three different levels.
Carol Cone:
Super. So let's dive into the what, the why and the who. And this is very clearly explained in the book, and it starts with personal. And I really want you to think about, I'm sure all of you have coached someone who truly wants to make a shift and they need to find their personal purpose. And I assume that you give them this guidance. And so let's get really specific in the what, the strengths, the talents. You talk about what I spend my time on flourishing. So someone's come to you and you're going to start working with them. So let's walk through it. How about the what?
Carolina Lasso:
Yeah, so I can brainstorm a few questions. And it starts with, let's talk about you, what makes you who you are? And so there we dive into what are your strengths, what takes you to a state of flow? What are those activities you enjoy doing? What are those activities that are really easy for you that just come easily and do an assessment of that? A little bit of a SWOT analysis, but for the individual, let's just start with the facts. Your character, what are you inclined to do? So we start with those aspects, then move on to the why, and then we can do a values assessment, what matters to you, but for real?
I give the example of I really care about whales. They're beautiful, I admire them, but it's not my thing. I'm not going to go into the Pacific Ocean. It's great to understand those movements, causes, values that truly, truly resonate with us. And it's also equally valuable to understand what doesn't resonate, what's not for me. And so we do an assessment of all of that, what truly strikes a chord and moves you within. So that's the why. And then within that why, there's also about the future. So we talk about the past, what shaped you, what made you care about certain things, and then what about the future, the legacy you want to leave behind. What is it that you truly want to change in the world? What's that change you want to bring forth? So that's within the why. And then the who, that has to do with who do you want to work with, what's the community that you want to be part of? Who do you want to serve?
It's not about discovering, it's about uncovering what can guide you to where the next step and then the next step, and then the next step. Because as we said, it's a process. It's not a destination. It is not the little treasure at the end of the rainbow that you find once and then it's all solved, it's ongoing, and that's why you reset and reset again.
Carol Cone:
That's a great, great point. I want to understand more about mindfulness and why is mindfulness one, for people who don't have, how do they get it? And then why is it so important to the purpose reset?
Rich Fernandez:
Yeah, it's an interesting word because there's a lot of misconceptions about mindfulness, but I think maybe a very simple way to describe it as a different word, which I would use, which is awareness. So it's becoming aware, becoming aware of your what, why, and who, the things Carolina was pointing to, of your core values, of your core strengths, of the impact you want to have in the world. And in the book we have a lot of what we call micro-practices or purpose reset practices that allow you to reflect and develop awareness.
Steph Stern:
I want to underscore something that you're saying about mindfulness and awareness, Rich, which is that it can happen or I think it's essential that some of it happens in the moment. That we're mindful and aware in the moment of how our experience is or what are we enjoying, what are we drawn to, what are we curious about? And I know for me, one of the huge pivots that brought me to Search Inside Yourself was really that awareness.
Carol Cone:
I want you to, in the book, you give a few examples of some illustrious people such as Malala, which I think she's extraordinary. But there was a woman named Silvia Vasquez Lavado, and you told her story, and I hear that it's going to be made to a movie with Selena Gomez, I think you mentioned in the book. Can one of you share that story? Because it's quite profound.
Carolina Lasso:
Yeah. I actually met Silvia, we were doing a writing course, a writing workshop, and we were paired up as buddies. So Silvia is originally from Peru and she was sexually abused as a child, and then she moved to the United States and pursued her entire career in business and she ended up being a very successful business person in Silicon Valley. But then she encountered alcoholism and lots of different things, and eventually she did her own purpose reset. And so she completely started to question her life, first of all, and completely shifted it. And then eventually she became the first Peruvian woman and the first openly lesbian woman to complete the seven summits in the world to get up to Everest and all the other summits.
And not only that, but she wrote a story, it's called In the Shadow of the Mountain, but not only that, now, she created an organization called Courageous Girls, and she takes girls from all over the world to go on hikes and educational programs to support them, especially when sexually abused. It is indeed a truly inspirational story.
Carol Cone:
It's great, you just told it beautifully. How many people do you feel in the United States that understand or in touch with their personal purpose? I'm curious about where are we in the arc of this being a movement?
Rich Fernandez:
Roughly, let's call it 60 to 75% of the workforce disengaged, showing up to their work but not actually feeling like they want to doing that work? That to us signals a purpose drift, and that's a perpetual problem because I don't think we really take this exercise that we've tried to outline here of connecting your own purpose to where you're actually working and being with the team you're on and the organization you're with.
Steph Stern:
I would say it's even more important to young people. They're not necessarily using the P word, but I think it is what they're deeply looking for, right? Young people are born into this world, that's highly volatile, highly brittle, very non-linear with these meta-crises. They're born into this world of AI, climate change, global disruption. And what I hope that we're at the beginning of is this idea of purpose as this alignment towards what we love most, our unique skills and being in service and that both/and feels like a unique opportunity. That for so long, work was about going and showing up loyally to the company that you stayed with for a long time.
Then there's been this switch to I'm going to create my personal brand, it's all about me. And I think we're really seeing like, oh, we need to move past that to have the best of both, that there is a sense of contribution to the world we want to create to a solution to these meta-crises and changes that we're seeing but still anchored inward, that we're not leaving ourselves behind. So I think it's all the more important to young people, even if they're not using purpose specifically, they're talking about meaning, they're talking about disengagement, they're scared about the future and figuring out what's their place in the world.
Carolina Lasso:
I was going to say they also care a lot about impact. I think there was a study by PWC that uncovered that Millennials in particular, and this is not the youngest right now in the workplace, but Millennials are 5.3 times more likely to stay in a company when they have a strong connection to their employer's purpose and impact.
Carol Cone:
Yeah, I know that when we did our early purpose work in the nineties and we would ask people what companies were purposeful and we always, I think we were 20 years ahead of saying "It's the employee." It's the employee. The employee is your economic engine. The employee needs to be committed, they need to engage with and really see your values being activated in behaviors and such. I'm curious about, because I want to now begin to shift towards purpose and teams. I know the ones that are really profound, but I'm curious, are we in the early days?
Steph Stern:
I would guess that we're early and that most companies aren't doing this much, but we have a biased perspective because. We have all tended to work with the organizations that do take this seriously.
Rich Fernandez:
Yeah. It's not embedded in a lot of business models. And that's how you will know if purpose is embedded in the actual business model, if it's embedded in how they treat their employees, if it's embedded in how they make decisions driven by their purpose as well as internal storytelling and rituals. So you could look for those things or are they just fluff and on posters on a wall and never lived?
Carol Cone:
Right. Yes. We did a piece of research and we launched it about a week before COVID and the country closed down, but it was called the B2B Purpose Paradox. And we asked individuals, does their company have a purpose? And 86%, this is in the B2B world, because mostly people are focusing on the B2C, 86% said, oh yes, they have their purpose. But then we asked, "Is it being activated? Is it being lived?" And the number was 24%, which I still thought was too high. So that chasm, the paradox, which is yes, purpose is really powerful, but they're not living it, breathing it, the activation.
And that's what we do, we work in the middle where companies have identified, but they really need help in activating. So let's turn to teams and purpose. So you call the team the functional unit of purpose within organizations. So why is the team level so critical and how do leaders start building bridges and a culture of shared purpose among team members who can bring diverse motivations, their energy, as you say, Rich, to the party versus command and control?
Steph Stern:
Yes. I love, Carol, that chasm that you described. I think a big chunk of that work belongs at the team level, to close that gap between an individual who shows up and does their job and that stated mission statement. And so it's at the team level that we actually enact our work that becomes the bridge between our strengths and roles and this bigger goal.
We like to think about teams as becoming, a high-functioning team, becomes more than the sum of its parts. So the starting point is just to look around and think, do we talk about purpose? Do I know what my team members actually care about? Do I see their strengths? Do I see them as individuals? Is this something that we already have clarity about and it's more about renewing it or bringing it alive in some way? Or is this like, wow, we've never even touched this. So a good chunk of the team section of the book, we talk about creating a team purpose statement.
And you can do that from the bottom up, thinking about who's on your team, what are their purposes and what does it add up to? And you can also think about it from the top down. So of everything happening in an organization, what's our team's role in it? And ideally those two should meet and they will not meet perfectly, and that's okay.
Carol Cone:
And I'd love to know more about how you do it because I think that we've got people sitting here on the edge of their seats, "Okay, okay, great personal purpose. I think I've got mine, but how do I really bring others in our company together and then get a team purpose?"
Carolina Lasso:
Yeah. I was going to share an example. So I'm actually coaching a non-profit organization in Germany and it's their executive team. So these are the people reporting to the CEOs, and we're talking about purpose. And I asked what I thought was a fairly simple question, which is "Why does this executive team exist?" and they couldn't answer the question.
Carol Cone:
Drop mic, dead silence, right?
Carolina Lasso:
Right. And then some people start saying, "Well, to guide the company or to enable our mission", but there wasn't that sense of true alignment on why is it that we exist as a team? And I think I want to highlight the importance of doing team purpose work for those leadership teams, for those teams truly guiding organizations. And what happens at the top, of course, trickles down. And so how do you do it? Well, we bring that same framework that we just mentioned for individuals to teams as well and to the entire organization. So you do your assessment, what are the strengths present within this team? What are we really good at? Not as individuals, but as the sum of all the parts, what makes our team so strong, strengths? And then the why again, why do we exist? Do we even need to exist?
Carol Cone:
Great. We're unfortunately winding down our time, but this is going to be a tough one because I want you to give one word. So when a personal purpose is understood, and then the team purpose is understood, and then the company's purpose is understood and lived, what's the one word that's the outcome of that? Oh, one word.
Carolina Lasso:
I want to say ripple.
Carol Cone:
Ripple, okay. Steph?
Steph Stern:
Flow.
Carol Cone:
Rich?
Rich Fernandez:
Amplification.
Carol Cone:
Amplification, love that. Ripple, amplification, flow. Terrific. So as we wind down, and again, our listeners, get the book, it's a great book. It's both high level and it's got lots of great exercises. There's a quote in the book that I really liked and the quote said, "It's not about the grandeur or magnitude of your purpose reset, but your ability to gain alignment with your purpose, one step, one degree at a time." So it's not like the "Ha! There it is." I love that quote. So in closing, I always like to give the mic over to my guests for something that we haven't said or you want to reiterate. So Rich, you get to go first.
Rich Fernandez:
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And so a purpose reset is like riding a bike. You're constantly making micro adjustments to maintain the balance and get to your destination, and hopefully you enjoy the ride along the way. So just pay attention to each step, each micro adjustment, each degree, that brings you to full alignment.
Carol Cone:
Love. Oh, that's great. See, I brought love back into the conversation. Steph?
Steph Stern:
I'm glad you brought love back in because that's the note I want to end on as well. In the conclusion, we talk about this idea of loving what you get to do, loving the people you work with, loving who you are as you enact your work in the world and also loving the world you get to help create. And I think it's such a beautiful orientation so I think I would leave listeners just thinking about how does that already show up for them in their lives?
Carol Cone:
That's great. Carolina, bring it home.
Carolina Lasso:
So I think following your curiosity, your breadcrumbs of curiosity will take you one step at a time in what I am now envisioning as a spiral, purpose as a spiral that takes you to your authentic self, who you truly are, who you want to be in the world, how you want to serve. And it's an ongoing process, we talked about it being dynamic, evolving, but in the end, it's really taking you back home to your essence, who you are and your own Love, capital L, to yourself and the world. So yeah, the L word is quite present here.
Carol Cone:
Which is so fascinating because companies and brands, they don't... Well, they talk about brand love, but it's more about, "I want to sell more and I want to be the brand that people love", but organization's very different, and especially in a fearful world today, can I spend time on love? Can I spend time on unleashing the potential, the flourishing of these human beings and have them dedicated with connection to what they're doing every day, loving? So I'll give you one more comment if you want to just close it off.
Steph Stern:
I think we just say that feels essential, the more fear, the more love we need.
Carol Cone:
That's great. Okay, I'm going to end on that one. So the more fear, on the end, the love we need. Again, the Purpose Reset written by these, and they're still friends, they're still working together. I did a book with four of us and that was not easy, but we're still friends. It's a great book, listeners. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you for all the great work that you're doing and continue to flourish and to love. Thank you, Carolina, Steph, and Rich, authors of the Purpose Reset.
Carolina Lasso:
Thank you, Carol.
Rich Fernandez:
Yeah.
Steph Stern:
Thank you, Carol. Such a pleasure.
Carol Cone:
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I'd love to thank them. Anne Hundertmark and Kristin Kenny at Carol Cone On Purpose, Pete Wright and Andy Nelson, our crack production team at True Story FM. And you, our listener, please rate and rank us because we really want to be as high as possible as one of the top business podcasts available so that we can continue exploring together the importance and the activation of authentic purpose. Thanks so much for listening.
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