Your engagement problem is not an engagement problem

Thank you for having me.

Backstory of my career is that I spent 25 years at Whirlpool Corporation doing a number of things in branding, marketing, communications, innovation, and consumer insights. I always considered myself an entrepreneur on the inside of a large company. They would put me in places that needed to either start up from scratch or needed to transform or elevate. So moving from market research to consumer insights. But about 11 years ago, a mentor said to me. She said, Kathleen, will you try to hang on or will you figure out what's next? And when she said that to me, it kind of stung a little bit because I was still energized by my work, but I also realized that I had stopped telling people how long I'd been at the company. I realized that there weren't many women. At my level or above in the company. And I started to also think that I'm not a hang on kind of gal. So I realized that I needed to figure out what was next. And I had the opportunity in my last 18 months at Whirlpool to figure out. Through a combination of understanding my strengths and identifying the work that energized me, what I wanted to do next. And that was really helping individuals, entrepreneurs, and small to medium organizations move from complexity to clarity or turn. Progress. Into defined possibilities for commercialization of their goods, services, and really make a difference by aligning purpose, people, practices, and performance. And that's what became the purpose partners.

I've always wanted to write a book, and honestly, I have started probably five to six different books throughout the course of my career. But last year I was with a handful of entrepreneurs as we were planning for the coming year, and I was trying to figure out where I wanted to spend. my time. And one of the things that kept coming back to me is that I want to reach more leaders. I think the world needs more strong leaders. And through my consulting work, I can reach a number of people, but they have to be able to afford me. And I provide a great value, but I also realize that there's a number of people who may be early in their careers, they may be working for other people, and they have this idea of the leader that they want to be, or the organization that they want to create at some time. And so writing the book became about helping those people. Who aren't working with me on a consulting basis, helping those people who are still in the early stages of their idea of creating an entrepreneurial venture, but also from a personal perspective, and I didn't necessarily plan it this way, but writing the book. Has helped me solidify the framework that I use to help my consulting clients. So it was a process of me getting really clear about the services that I offer and articulating them in a way that other people could understand them better. That's the book writing process.

Well, I think one of the things that you just mentioned, making money but not feeling f fulfilled, is a clear sign that you are not aligned with your purpose. And for entrepreneurs or people who are thinking about starting their business, I I'll take this from Simon Sinek. I would say start with your why. And what what does that mean? When I help people clarify, develop, or understand their purpose, I start with positive psychology. Start with what you already do well. What do people come to you for? What energizes you in your work? Those are clear signs of a purpose. And for me, purpose isn't just about self-fulfillment, but it's how you serve others. So what do you do really well? What energizes you? And what about those things can you do to help others be successful? That's where you'll find your purpose.

Well, the say do gap is the distance between what you say you're going to do and what you actually do. I find this quite often in people who are leading without a purpose. I find a larger say do gap in individuals or organizations who are working explicitly for the shareholders or the money rather than leading authentically and doing what's well what's good for others. So I will also experience this. Clients often come to me and they will articulate their challenge. So I've heard I've got a communication challenge, or my people just aren't motivated. And one of the first things that I do is I will talk to the people. And I use what I call a purpose interview. And I listen to what people say is important. But where the activity is centered around. And that's where you'll see gaps. And so in a recent client engagement, they came to me and said, My people aren't very engaged. But when I talked to the people, they were really committed to the leader, the owner of the small business. And to their work. But what I found is that there weren't any clear goals established. Everyone thought that they were doing the right thing, but the performance requirements weren't documented. The leaders that were leading these people weren't having coaching conversations to make sure that their actions We're making the impact and creating the outcomes that the organization wanted. So that disconnect is really the challenge for the business. So sometimes we might think that we know the problem within our organization, but we're too close, and we assign it a name. that isn't the root cause of the challenge. And that's what I love going in and listening and understanding so that we could find the root cause of that gap between what people say is important and actually what's happening.

I would say I've only had one client come to me and say, Help me establish my purpose, even though my company is called the Purpose Partners. Again, only one client has come to me and said, Help me establish my purpose. What what I see is that when an organization either A doesn't have a purpose or B has a vision or a mission or a stated purpose, but they don't live it, that creates challenges. And that's why I have a framework. That I call the experience ecosystem, and that's how I approach client work. We always start by articulating an individual's or an organization's purpose because your purpose acts as guardrails for your business, for your career. Your purpose also becomes the compass for decision making. Is this aligned with my purpose and will it move our organization or our impact forward or is it not? Because if it's not aligned, then that just becomes noise.

Yes. Well, I've always been an early adopter of technology. I'm enamored by it. So two and a half years ago, I got certified as what's called an AI strategist. And what it helped me understand is that AI is just one tool in your toolbox. And you, as the individual, need to be the strategist. So you have to understand how AI can help you make a greater impact in your business. And so for me, AI has transformed the way that I work because it you you mentioned meaningful. So for me, I use AI to do the mundane tasks. So I can focus on the meaningful. And so for me, the meaningful is building relationships, having these conversations, learning, interacting with others. I use AI for scheduling, for tasks, for some research. But again, AI is just one strategy. I have to be the strategist. And and the thing that you'll see as a as a thread throughout everything that I do is that creating work that works. Humans and performance are not conflicting priorities. We have to make sure that there's a people focus because people are the ones that produce the results. And so whatever we can do, use technology, use AI to help us spend more meaningful time with our people, coaching them. developing them, steering them towards the outcomes that we desire, that is how to implement AI and technology so that we can spend time, meaningful time, developing those relationships with people.

You have to understand your challenges, but trying to fix what's broken isn't always the best solution. So, an example that I use is that when I was in corporate, my performance development plan had me working on. Excel spreadsheets. I was supposed to take a course in multi-macro spreadsheets. I could use Excel, I could manage a budget, I can do a lot of things in Excel, but it didn't energize me. And so Q1 went by and I hadn't taken the course. Q2 went by and I hadn't taken the course. Q3 went by and I hadn't taken the course. But because I have responsibility as one of my top ten strengths, in Q4, I took the Excel spreadsheet course, I learned how to do it, I checked the box. So that's an example of me trying to fix something that may have been broken. But using positive psychology, we see that when we focus on what's broken and try to fix it, we can get incremental, you know, small gains and improvements. But if we figure out what we do really well and lean into that, that's where we'll see our impact. In our energy explode in a good way.

So the best place to connect with me, I would say, is either at my website, www.the purposepartners with an s dot com. Or you can find me on LinkedIn. So LinkedIn and I'm Kathleen Curtis Wolf. I'm out on LinkedIn regularly. I love the interaction with other career-minded business people on LinkedIn. You can also see a mix of business and personal on my Instagram as well.

Thank you.