Force for Good, Leadership with Purpose and Trust
Our guest today is John Blakey, author of Force for Good. He explores how leaders can embrace a purpose-driven approach to build trust, inspire teams, and create lasting impact in a skeptical world. John discusses the transformative power of leadership centered on values and purpose, moving beyond traditional profit-driven models to foster deeper connections and resilience. Drawing on his practical framework, he shares insights into the “UP, IN, and OUT” dimensions of leadership, guiding leaders to connect with their purpose, maintain personal motivation and well-being, and inspire trust among their teams. The conversation addresses the challenges leaders face in today’s postmodern landscape, where skepticism and mistrust often dominate, and emphasizes how intentional actions can bridge trust deficits. With practical tools like purpose journaling, value alignment, and random acts of kindness, John offers a clear and engaging guide for leaders seeking to navigate complexity and motivate others authentically. This episode sheds light on what it means to lead with integrity and purpose, providing useful strategies for anyone aspiring to become a force for good in an ever-changing world.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
(…) which has often been taught as a model that describes human motivation and how we progress through different levels. We start with that survival, a life of survival, looking after those basic needs, food on the table and a roof over their head. But then we move into that life of success, self esteem, money, a sense of belonging. I think the world of profit lies at that level in the hierarchy of needs. But beyond that, the hierarchy goes further into what I would say is a life of significance and a life of purpose, where people are motivated by achieving their potential and also honouring their intrinsic values. So I think part of our migration over time in certain societies is to recognise that success and profit isn’t the end of the game. It might actually be the start of a new game, which is moving into purpose and being motivated by potential and by values.
The UP, IN and OUT of purpose-driven leadership
So the UP purpose driven leadership is about identifying your purpose, staying connected with your purpose, and feeling the joy of that purpose. The IN is about taking care of your own motivation, your own resilience and well-being as you go on the purpose driven journey. And the OUT is about how do you bring people with you to be part of the community that pursues that purpose? In terms of practical examples of tools and techniques that a leader can use in each of those three dimensions, I’ll give you three examples. I have a “thrival kit” in the book with 19 different approaches, but I can mention maybe three of them here, one for each of those dimensions. So in terms of the UP, I talk about a daily purpose connect that a lot of the leaders that I work with, they will, during their working day, connect with their purpose in some shape or other. The way that a number of them do that is by keeping a journal, and the last thing they do on an evening is they complete that journal, but the journal isn’t about what happened during the day, the journal is about communicating with purpose what happened that was purposeful during the day, and recognizing and being grateful for those things that were connected to purpose, and then committing to things tomorrow that will also be committed to purpose. So that’s an example of a daily check in on the IN a purpose driven leadership, there’s a weekly routine that a number of my clients will use, which is about honouring their values, so they will list their values in their app, and they will look at their diary and they will ask themselves the question, how am I honouring my values this week? And they’ll do a map between their activities and their values. So if one of their values is courage, they’ll be looking in their diary for anything that honours that value and over time, looking to build more activities that honour their values, because that’s part of what will fuel that purpose driven motivation and resilience. And finally, in the OUT of purpose driven leadership, one of the things and techniques, again, a daily technique that I encourage leaders to use is random acts of kindness.