Leadership Horizons

Reconnecting With Your Sense of Purpose

• Lois Burton • Episode 35

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When the calendar is full and the title looks impressive, why can the work still feel empty? Lois digs into that uneasy gap between outward success and inner drive, sharing a candid story of a senior leader who looked unstoppable on paper but felt depleted in practice. The conversation moves from recognition to action, showing how small, practical shifts can restore meaning without blowing up your career.

We start by getting honest about what changed. Early joy often came from learning, solving problems, and building relationships; over time, roles tilt toward managing up and mitigating risk. 

You’ll hear how to map energizing versus draining tasks and redesign your week to make room for what matters. Then we zoom in on who you serve. By naming the real people affected by your leadership—your team, customers, students, or community—you regain a clear North Star for decisions, boundaries, and focus. Mentoring stops being “just another meeting” and becomes a direct way to create impact.

Finally, we connect daily work to a larger ripple. Leadership shapes culture, models behavior, and influences how people experience work. When you act from that bigger lens, even routine tasks carry weight. The result for our guest story was striking: fewer yeses, clearer values, renewed energy, and ironically, a deeper form of happiness that followed purpose rather than chased it. You’ll leave with simple prompts you can use this week: list what energizes you, protect two time blocks for it, write one sentence that names your North Star, and note one ripple you created each day.

If the phrase “my alarm clock gets me up” hits a little too close to home, this is your reset. Subscribe, share with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with one action you’ll take to reconnect with your why.

Leadership Horizons - Helping You Lead Beyond Boundaries

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome back to Leadership Horizons. I'm Lois Burton and today we're talking about something that I see come up time and time again with the leaders I coach. That feeling of being disconnected from why you started in the first place. That sense of, wait, what am I actually doing this for? You know, over my 25 years of coaching hundreds of leaders, I've had the privilege of sitting across from some incredibly accomplished people. CEOs, managing directors, senior executives, people at the top of their game. And you know what's fascinating? Some of the most successful leaders I've worked with have sat in the coaching chair and said, Lois, I'm not sure what I'm doing this for anymore. And that's not failure, that's being human. Let me tell you a quick story. A couple of years ago, I was working with a senior leader in the higher education sector. Let's call her Anna. Anna had spent 20 years climbing the ladder, ticking every box, hitting every target. On paper, she was living the dream. But when we started working together, she looked exhausted, not just tired, totally depleted. In our first session, I asked her a simple question. What gets you out of bed in the morning? And she just stared at me. And then she laughed, but it wasn't a happy laugh. She said, honestly, my alarm clock. Now, Anna's story isn't unusual. In fact, I say I'd say it's more common than we'd like to admit. We start our careers with this fire, this sense of mission. We're going to make a difference, change things, be the leader we wished we'd had earlier on in our career. And then life happens. The daily grind, the politics, the endless meetings, the targets that keep moving, the crises that keep coming. And somewhere along the way, that fire gets buried under layers of responsibility and routine. And right now, let's also remember that small thing called the pandemic that took a huge toll of so many people and left them depleted in the years following, the impact of which we're seeing so much of now. So here's what I want to explore with you today. How do you reconnect with that sense of purpose? Not in some abstract philosophical way, but in a real practical Monday morning kind of way. Because here's the thing: purpose isn't something you find once and keep forever. It's something you have to actively reconnect with, especially during times of upheaval and change. Let me share three things that helped Anna and that I've seen work for countless leaders. Firstly, get honest about what's changed. Anna and I spent time looking at what had shifted for her. When she started out, she was motivated by learning, by problem solving, by building relationships with students and colleagues, and developing others. But over time, her role had become almost entirely about managing others, about reporting up, about risk mitigation, all important things, but they weren't the things that lit her up. The question isn't, am I in the wrong job? Though sometimes that is true. But the real question is what parts of my role actually energize me and am I giving them enough space? For Anna, it was still about developing others and innovating in areas that impacted students, the direct impact. So we found ways to carve out time for that again, even in her senior role. The second thing is remember who you're serving. When we get caught up in organizational politics or quarterly results, we lose sight of the actual human beings our work affects. I always ask leaders who benefits when you're at your best? For some, it's their team, helping people grow and develop. For others, it's customers or patients or students. For some, it's about the broader impact on their industry or community. Anna realized that what really mattered to her was helping younger colleagues navigate the complexities of higher education with integrity and create things that directly impacted students. That became her North Star. Suddenly, those mentoring conversations weren't just another meeting, they were the point. The third thing that helped her was connecting your daily work to something bigger than yourself. Now, I'm not talking about some grand vision statement you read once a year at a strategy day. I'm talking about something you can actually feel on a Tuesday afternoon when you're tired and there's another problem landing on your desk. What I've learned from working alongside leaders like Anna is the most resilient leaders are the ones who see themselves as part of something larger. They understand that their leadership matters, not just for their career, not just for their bonus, but because leadership creates ripples. When you lead well, you model something, you create culture, you shape how people experience work. That matters. So let me bring this back to Anna for a moment. About six months into our coaching work, something shifted. She came in one day and said, I've stopped asking myself if I'm happy, and started asking if I'm making a difference. And that changed everything. And she did feel happy. She restructured her week to make room for the work that mattered. She got clearer about her values and started making decisions that aligned with them, even when they were hard. And yes, she had to have some difficult conversations about what she was and wasn't going to take on. But here's the beautiful part. Her energy came back. Not because her job got easier, but because she reconnected with why she was doing it. So here's what I want you to think about this week. What originally drew you to leadership? What did you hope to achieve and where has that gone? I'm not asking you to have all the answers right now, but I am asking you to get curious about the question. Because here's what I believe. You can't lead others to places you won't go yourself. People who know me will have heard me say that a lot. It's one of my mantras. And if you've lost your sense of purpose, others will feel it. Your team will feel it. They'll sense the disconnection, even if you're going through all the right motions. But when you reconnect with what matters, when you lead from a place of genuine purpose, that's when transformation happens. Not just for you, but for everyone around you. That's what we're here to explore together on Leadership Horizons, my vanguarders, because the future of leadership isn't about doing more, it's about connecting more deeply with why we lead in the first place. Thanks so much for joining me today. If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. And next week we'll be diving into another critical leadership theme that can help you lead beyond boundaries. Until then, keep asking yourself, what am I really here to do? I'm Lois Burton and this is Leadership Horizon.