Is it power, fame, glory, and money?

Your university degree or business accomplishments?

Or does it lie in your ability to create connections in your thinking to create a purposeful life? 

While money might bring financial security, it will not necessarily build your personal fulfillment, satisfaction, trust, or confidence. 

In a Harvard Business Review article by Hubert Joly, former Chairman/CEO of Best Buy and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, he shares the 5 Bs for purposeful leadership. The article took me back to a post I shared last year about how “money, position, university degree, and last name might open many doors, however, will not grant you professional or personal success."

Hubert Joly’s 5 Bs for Purposeful Leadership are:

• BE CLEAR ABOUT YOUR PURPOSE.

“That is, your purpose, the purpose of those around you, and how that connects to your company’s purpose.”

• BE CLEAR ABOUT YOUR ROLE

“You cannot choose circumstances, but you can control your mindset. Your mindset determines whether you generate hope, inspiration, and energy around you — or bring everyone down.”

• BE CLEAR ABOUT WHOM YOU SERVE.

“You serve the people around you, by first understanding what they need to give their best so you can do your best to support them.”

“It takes vigilance and a healthy dose of self-awareness to avoid sliding into the trap set by power, fame, glory, and money. Before speaking or acting, be clear about your motivation and whom you’re trying to serve.”

• BE DRIVEN BY VALUES.

“Being driven by values is doing right, not just knowing or saying what’s right. A leader’s role is to live by these values, explicitly promote them, and make sure they’re part of the fabric of the business.”

• BE AUTHENTIC.

"The longest journey you’ll ever take is the 18 inches between your head and your heart."

According to him, it is about unleashing a certain kind of human magic.

 What type of leadership are we showing up with every morning? How do we interact with our families, with our business, with our communities, and with ourselves?

One of the quotes from the article that really struck me is, “successful hero-leaders can start believing that they’re untouchable and, ultimately, indispensable. It’s easy to be seduced by power, fame, glory, and money. It’s easy to become disconnected from reality and colleagues, surrounded by sycophants and yay-sayers.”

The openness to the discrepancy and polarizing ideas will open your perspective and allows you to stand from a place of truth and reality. 

Whatever we repeat in life is what we become masters of. What are you mastering in your daily life? 

Olympic athletes are not born with superhuman skills. They all trained for endless hours, improving their skills slowly to get where they are right now. They started inspired by the fire in the belly. An incredible wanting that looks supernatural. This perseverance made them accept failure and learn from it to become their very best!

Millionaires and billionaires, Nobel prizes, and exemplary figures around the work were also not born with the skill of creating what they became masters of. Like athletes, they rely on inspiration to fuel that incredible energy and desire to achieve and accomplish. This was the starting point of a path with ups and downs.

The intersection between them is that both groups are still doing their workout, they are still training, studying, analyzing, achieving, and looking for what comes next. They know that if they stand still, they will miss the place they have. That place is maintained by a constant desire, a fire that still burns! 

I want to conclude with this quote from Pablo Picasso “To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow, the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

“Do not kill the soul of life and create every single moment of your precious life.”