Purpose Archives - Training Unleashed

Unlocking the power of purpose with Mark Mears

Mark Mears is the founder and Chief Growth Officer at Leaf Growth Ventures LLC, a consulting firm that helps companies focus on strategic planning and execution. Mark is also author of the new book The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder.

In a recent Training Unleashed Podcast with host Evan Hackel, Mark talked about using the power of purpose to revitalize your company and unlock new levels of success.

Mark believes that successful businesses are purpose-driven. But his insights go deeper than that. “Companies should understand that employees or team members do not want to just be an employee ID number. They want to feel like they’re part of the process, that they’re making a difference, that they’re connected to something that’s bigger than just pulling a shift, clocking in and out and getting paid every other week. They don’t want that anymore. They have put up with it for years – we all have.”

He continues, “And so, the great repurposing has given us a pause for employers to look and say, `Let’s look at this pragmatically. We’ve all heard that our people are the most important and valuable resource on our balance sheet or, `Our people make the difference.’ But how can we make those words more than just an empty set of platitudes? We’ve got to put the meat on the bones. We’ve got to say, okay, how are our people the most important? How can we listen more deeply than we’ve listened before to really understand what and who is most important in their lives?… We’ve got to get this right. And that’s why I call it the Purposeful Growth Revolution, because not only is it circular, but there is this uprising in the people, and we must recognize that they’re mad as hell. They’re not going to take it anymore.”

Make sure you listen to the entire episode to hear more about unlocking the power of purpose in your organization.

A Special Offer

Visit https://www.markamears.com/free-book-chapters and sign up to receive free chapters from Mark’s book The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder.

About Our Guests

Mark Mears is Chief Growth Officer at Leaf Growth Ventures LLC, a consulting firm that helps companies focus on strategic planning and execution. Mark is also author of the new book The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder.

During his 30+ year career serving in a variety of executive marketing and leadership positions – spanning both agencies and brands – he has gained a unique and well-rounded perspective working for or with GROWTH brands such as PepsiCo/Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Frito-Lay, JCPenney, NBC/Universal and The Cheesecake Factory among many others. His personal experiences, along with Best Practice observations of others he admires, led him to develop L.E.A.F. – a proven model to help maximize the full GROWTH potential of Individuals, Teams and Brands — founded upon 4 ‘revolutionary’ and purposeful processes: L.eadership, E.ngagement, A.ccountability & F.ulfillment. L.E.A.F. Growth Ventures can help achieve your stated GROWTH goals – whether you desire to grow an emerging brand, or reignite growth in a mature brand.

Establishing a Noble Purpose with Elizabeth Lotardo

In this energizing episode of Training Unleashed, Evan speaks with Elizabeth Lotardo, VP of Client Services at McLeod & More (and self-proclaimed training nerd) about the concept of noble purpose behind the book, “Selling with Noble Purpose,” that Elizabeth co-authored. According to Elizabeth, purpose-driven organizations score high in customer retention, employee engagement and other quantitative metrics.

Evan kicked off the interview by asking Elizabeth, “what is a noble purpose?”

Elizabeth’s response, “A noble purpose is a declarative statement about the impact you make on someone else. You’ll hear a lot in business we talk about the why, the higher calling, some people call it a mission or a vision, we call it the noble purpose. It is the essence of why you exist as a business or why you exist as a person.”

Evan continued the conversation by asking, “what was the genesis of the idea” of a noble purpose?

“The genesis of the idea is that people want to feel good. Beyond food and shelter we have core needs as human beings for belonging and significance. We want to be part of something greater than ourselves and we want our work to matter.”

Elizabeth continued, “[t”he crux of nobel purpose, Selling with Noble Purpose, the first edition which obviously came first, was born out of a research study which identified how that feeling of pride how that impact lens played out in a sales capacity. What we know is that sales is really measurable and you can see now from the research a clear difference in sales and in other professions of the people who do keep that purpose at the fore of their heart who show up every day to make an impact on their colleagues and customers and the people who are only focused on their own individual metrics.

“The difference in performance is really clear on an individual level and of course an organizational level. We’re seeing all kinds of data that the organizations who operate as purpose-driven businesses hit it out of the park on metrics like customer retention, innovation metrics, employee engagement, all those quantitative things we work so hard to adjust.”

Elizabeth notes that being a purpose-driven leader or being a purpose driven employee is a learnable practice and the way you learn it is by through closely connecting with the impact you have on others. She shares an exercise to help people find their purpose or connect to the purpose of your organization. But, you’ll need to tune into the episode to get her recommended exercise.

And, don’t forget to listen to the end of the episode for Elizabeth’s tip!

Elizabeth’s Giveaway

If you think your sales team could use a little more purpose, check out our assessment: Creating a Tribe of True Believers today!

About Our Guest

Elizabeth Lotardo is a consultant, researcher, and co-author of Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work that Makes You Proud.

As the VP of Services at sales leadership consultancy McLeod & More, Elizabeth leads sales transformation initiatives for clients like Oracle, G Adventures, and Fiserv. She is a popular LinkedInLearning author, and her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and on NPR.

With an undergraduate degree in advertising from Boston University and a Master’s in Organizational Psychology, Elizabeth has enabled firms to drive employee engagement, competitive differentiation, and ultimately revenue.