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Dustin Peterson is a leadership trainer with Proof Leadership Group and works with organizations to help develop their culture. He is also the author of Reset: How to Get Paid and Love What You Do, and coaches individuals to help them get unstuck in their careers. He has served in a stake presidency in Houston, Texas, and also on a high council and as an early morning seminary teacher, and currently serves as a branch president. In this interview, originally recorded as a Facebook Live session, Dustin talks about clarifying personal purpose to better lead in all areas of your life.
Highlights
4:45 About Dustin and what he does as a leadership trainer and career coach 6:00 Where his passion for purpose came from 7:30 Research study: What makes you an effective leader? Identified the only commonality is a clear sense of purpose with a story to go with it 10:15 Transferring this knowledge into the gospel and the church 12:20 Most of us just want to help other people, but we need to get more specific 13:10 What purpose is: your intention to contribute to the well-being of other people 15:20 The concepts for individual and organizational purpose are the same 16:55 Purpose can be confused with goals or a mission; focusing internally is demotivational 18:00 Your purpose is Your Big Why: What drives you 18:35 To identify your purpose you first need to know three things
- Purpose is broad and ambitious: a big, bold statement
- It serves as an umbrella over everything
- It’s what wakes us up in the morning
- It’s what motivates us to move forward and pulls us through the hard things
- “Be anxiously engaged in a good cause”
- Example of hospital custodial staff who saw themselves as healers
- 29:20 Macro-purpose, micro-purpose, nano-purpose: everything I do should have purpose
- 32:00 Dissonance of having a strong purpose and having goals that drive you elsewhere: purpose is the unifying force
- 33:20 Purpose is short: 10 words or less
- Share it with other people
- Edit it down
- 36:15 Purpose comes from the ups and downs of your life
- Draw a journey map line
- Purpose lies in the past, not the future
39:00 Routines to keep your purpose top-of-mind: reading it out loud as an affirmation 40:30 Example of ward council/bishopric purposes: look at the evolution of the unit you are in
- Let it guide all your goals
- Let the goals then guide your agenda
44:30 When your calling seems to be outside your purpose: example of educator looking for a way to stop dreading cafeteria duty 48:15 A purpose can’t be identified in isolation; we can help others by being a listening ear and by reflecting what we see from the outside 50:10 What has helped shape who I am today? Questions to ask yourself to help identify your purpose:
- What three people have most shaped who I am today, and why?
- What are three experiences that have most affected you and why?
- What are three interests that are most motivating and fulfilling?
- Imagine you could write the script for you life, knowing everything would go as well as it possibly could. What is the story you’d like to see unravel before you?
- What is a problem that you see in your family/church/community/city that really bothers you and you want to solve? What is a problem you see that you really want to get to the heart of, that’s near and dear to who you are?
52:05 Two forces push against us when it comes to the choice to step up and lead: resistance from the adversary telling us not to grow (fear, lack of confidence, self-doubt) and the reaffirming voice of the Lord telling us to lift where you stand
Links
Leading with Your God-Given Talents | An Interview with Dustin Peterson Reset: How to Get Paid and Love What You Do, by Dustin Peterson https://thepurposeblueprint.com/training Email: dustin at proofleadership.com Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast Note: This transcript was machine-produced. We would be grateful for help correcting errors. You can help! Simply copy/paste the transcript text into a document, make the corrections, and then copy/paste the corrected text into a comment on the page (below) and we will get the corrected text published!
This is going to help with my work and my calling. I am a counselor in a Spanish branch presidency, and a neurology nurse. Thank you for sharing! I shared your thoughts with a coworker today who is thinking about switching professions from Nursing as it is so difficult sometimes. I encouraged him to consider clarifying his purpose so that he can either find joy where he is, or make a very conscious decision away from nursing to something that aligns better with his purpose. Next step, is to do the same for myself!