Your purpose, time and priorities
If you found time recently to reflect on where you are on life’s journey or on the pathway of your executive career, you may have found yourself thinking more about your purpose, your time and your priorities.
Finding meaning in your work, and the example you set as a leader, is a powerful motivator when business demands require you to travel to far away time zones or when urgent matters require you to stay up late or arise very early to monitor emails and more.
As the demands on global leaders continue to escalate and complicate the balance between work and life, it is imperative to take stock of why you’re committing so much of yourself to your current role, your current employer and its employees and customers.
Sometimes, finding the energy the keep doing what you do requires nothing more than the force of will, and the ability to push yourself beyond others’ barriers.
Then comes the important consideration of your time. After all, you spend most of your waking hours focused on the affairs of your organisation, your strategy and your people. If things aren’t quite going the way you want them, perhaps it is high time to start creating new options that can connect you more often to the things you want to do and less often to the things you can’t wait to get over.
Whatever time you are spending on your current professional calling may be too much considering what’s left on your personal ‘To Do’ list. If you’re not feeling a real sense of mission and alignment to what the owners of the business want to achieve, perhaps it would be better to take your skills and experience to someone else’s door.
In search of a new mission
Just remember, standing idle is itself a choice. Spending one more year, let alone one more month in a job for which you don’t feel a real connection or sense of internal motivation to excel in would be an utter waste of time. Opportunities abound. It is your duty to set your own course, reset your own career compass, and decide what you intend to do about making a change.
If you go in search of a new mission, considering the timeline you are working from, you will invariably impact the priorities that seem to dictate how your time and focus as a leader.
Yet as with so many things in the world of global business, you must hold yourself to your objectives and seek out some measures that you’re making progress toward achieving your new vision.
Be it purely professional and/or a bit personal, your defining goal for the next 12 months must put you in a position that you can truly own and identify with. If it brings you more money, all the better. But it might also bring you a clearer sense that you are spending your precious time on the right things, and with a keener sense that you can sort, manage and live your priorities.
The success you have already achieved should give you the confidence to figure out your next step, boldly and without fear. No matter what the future holds, resetting your internal compass by re-enforcing or re-imagining your purpose, your priorities and how you spend your time will provide the momentum you need to align them all.
TRANSEARCH International is one of the leading executive search organisations in the world. Headquartered in Europe, we have representation in The Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Our global presence allows us to service companies around the world – covering all the major industry sectors. For over 40 years TRANSEARCH International has, as passionate experts in the executive search and leadership consulting industry, built leadership teams for our clients.
