Building the SOUL of an Organization: When Purpose and Passion Collide from Dr. Alise Cortez

0:00If we can help people to nurture those higher emotional states of wonder, joy, passion, compassion, gratitude, peace. Now what happens is we open their capacity to experience more deeply meaning and purpose, so everything is much more fulfilling anyway. Dr. Elise Cortez, purpose, meaning, passion, how to find it, how to detect it, how to unfold into the greatest version of you. You know what the number one response is when I'm out to an audience speaking and I ask them, what are you passionate about? What do you guess they say back? The most commonly cited answer is, I don't know what I'm passionate about.

0:37People have lost touch of the connection of their heartbeat, which is why I do the work that I do, right? Let's resurrect these people while they're still living. Can we? Let's dive into your success with Dr. Elise Cortez. All right. So, Elise, what is your definition of success? How do you define it? Well, I have to have it through the lens of course purpose, Brad. You're not surprised by that, I'm sure. and I really think that being successful is really being totally true to yourself, what you think is important in your life and the world and that you've honored that and that you have lived your purpose.

1:14To me, that is ultimate success. Yeah. How did you come to that though? Because obviously, you know, through life we define success differently. How did you come to that? Yeah, thanks for asking. That's a great question. I love that. I would tell you that I got far enough along the journey, the path, That means I aged, that I started to learn how to listen to that voice inside of me that was telling me, desperately trying to tell me where to put my foot next instead of what society, even my husband, my friends and my community was trying to tell me that I should be doing with myself in my life.

1:49and when that when that happened Brad what what what happened was this beautiful like almost like ah kind of experience happened where you know I heard the voice and the voice really led me down the path of really continuing to research my meaning and purpose and identity which really led me in the purpose realm and so it was really just drowning out all those other voices. Yeah yeah where do you think in life you chose success as like your standard that that you were going to be successful at whatever you did? Well, I would say there was probably two distinct junctures for that, Brad. One was when I was in my early 30s.

2:29And, you know, I've got, I had a pretty decent job. I was making money. I'd lived abroad and had the great experience of living in Spain and Brazil. And then I was back in the States and had, you know, a good sales job, making good money and all sort of thing. And then that was that big hollow place of, and is this all there is? Right. So I would call that the early life crisis. And that was about, you know i don't know 33 or so for me so my response to that was not to go get a nice sports car have an affair at the office go to an ashram in india i decided instead to get a phd yeah it wasn't the ayahuasca let's go and do the trip and do the whole thing yeah it's go get a phd got it that was the first time and i was really probably like 1999 i was in my early 30s and I was definitely that choice.

3:14I choose you, Elise. I choose you and I'm going to invest in you for the journey forward. That was the first time. The second time I would say I truly really chose success was related to that. Fast forward a good, you know, several, almost a decade, about a decade later, after I've gotten married, after I've had a child, I'd moved to Texas and there was that niggling feeling again, Brad, that little niggler that kept saying, but there's something else, there's something more. And I'd gone back and started teaching classes at Southern Methodist University, University of Phoenix, as well as my consulting.

3:48And then that just hit me back. Oh, I love the academic, the research part of things, really sniffing closely what it is to be a human and what do we struggle with. And I went back and did this huge, big postdoc meeting and work and identity research. And once I did that, Brad, I had totally stepped on my path, claimed it for my own, And what I didn't know was how it was going to open as well as close doors, close the right doors and open others that I could have never imagined. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really interesting that we have to listen to ourselves and follow the purpose side of it to stay on track.

4:25What I know that purpose is a big part of yours and we'll get to a lot of that stuff in a moment. But do you have like a formula for success or these are the steps if you do these things, then success will come your way? I love that you know I don't know that I've ever been asked that question before but it's delightful um I don't know I don't know that there's you know you might be surprised by this I think already I don't know that there's a formula for everyone this is the formula to get you to success because I think people are just too messy and too individual and there's just too many paths to take to get there and sometimes the path for one person is really fast and for another but somebody else like me, it's the winding road.

5:04But I would say the first thing is, and I just had a great conversation on my podcast last night talking about this very thing, Brad, which was personality. When we are really true and clear about what is it that we really value, what lights us up, what do we care about, independent of our well-meaning parents that are trying to send us down a well-intentioned path, our teachers, our friends, whoever, who are telling us, oh, you should do this. You'd be great at that. That we really are clear about what is it that we, how is, how do we really gel in the world? What do we really like doing? Like for example, the example that Eric gave last night on the podcast was, he was talking to a young man who, when he asked him, what would be the one thing that you would never want to do when it came to work?

5:49And the guy said, standing still, being in one place all day. He said, what are you studying in college and he said pharmacology. He said, what do you plan to do? Be a pharmacist. He's like, dude, you're going to be standing in one place all day, every day, right? So talk about a recipe for disaster, right? To complete disaster. He said, instead, you know, if you want to use a pharmacology degree, do that, but then go into maybe pharmaceutical sales or something where you can be out and about moving. And, you know, the guy was more of a hunter mentality than a gatherer. Anyway, so the first thing I would say is, man, you got to have some really strong self-awareness of who am I what do I care about what lights me up what kinds of things do I really love doing and importantly what do I detest doing so important you start there and then you start looking at what kinds of things really interest me that I'm that they're worth studying whether you go to college or not and start preparing for a field where you have some skills in that space and then finding and enrolling people along the way who can help you to refine that path, maybe make it a little bit easier.

6:50But the recruitment piece is really important too. I know you know this, right? The social piece of being able to enroll others who can help us along the way and guide the light. So to me, that's at least the basic start to the journey towards success from my vantage point. I love that. So let's go like purpose. I want to start with one question that I'm always intrigued by. Do we create our purpose, find our purpose? What's your thoughts on that? I love that. There's lots of ways to answer that, but I think really the best way that I've ever heard it described that I tend to align with Brad is that we detect it.

7:33And that's individually as well as companies. We all detect our purpose. It's like it's like you know being able to finally fine-tune your nostrils enough to be able to smell it right it's right there oh and now I can see it as well so it really in many ways when we get present to it and it took me a while I mean I wild a live scratch through my 20s and into my early 30s trying to find it you know I was so desperate to try to find it and again that once I let the quiet voice a little bit of time come under me was easier to discern but I do think it's detecting and then once you sort of get clear about it and it sort of takes hold of you and then you oftentimes two things one you can go back in your life and you can recognize oh i see it there i saw it when i was six and back then even then i was empowering you know my elders to do things back then at age six i was doing that and then secondly it just starts to make sense to see where you want to go next i would add one more thing and that is you do need to constantly nurture it, to love it, to honor it.

8:35Don't just park it on the shelf once you've detected it. You've got to live it. I always talk about this as it's like you've got to be able to nurture your meaning engines every day. Just like you take vitamins every day, you brush your teeth, you drink water, you sleep, ideally you exercise. It ought to be on that level.

8:57yeah so once you've are there any clues or are there any keys to detecting it like because i know there'll be a lot of people who've been you know years thinking about their purpose and you know i remember buck mr fuller said maybe your purpose shall forever remain obscure to you kind of like the bumblebee but are there some keys to detecting it like what are some of the things we can do to find it? Yeah. Well, the first thing is, if what you think is your purpose makes you feel dull and alive, that ain't it. So we can start with that one in the bookend. The other end of that bookend is, what is it that really lights you up?

9:34And that could be one of two things, Brad, and I know you probably know this too, is one is, what is it that just delights you? Like today, I'm in McAllen, Texas, because I get to keynote at a conference. That delights me. I get to share the message of inspirational leadership that I absolutely jam on. I want to create a world where those are the kind of leaders that are the norm, right? So that just jams me. But the other way too that you can be lit up is by what just breaks your heart that you just can't stand in the world that you want to do something about, right? So somewhere in there, whatever it is, it's got to elicit some kind of a charge.

10:09If it's a deadbeat kind of a thing, that's not it, right? So where is it that you find yourself just reaching for or that just when you're in it, you just feel the jolt of life? That's the first thing that I would say. Yeah, someone used the word calling with me one time. It was a friend of mine who said, you know what, Brad? And fortunately or unfortunately, as he put it, his son was born high on the spectrum, nonverbal. And he said, you know what? I was given my calling. I'm lucky. you have to go and find yours or as you use the word and I love the word detect it let's let's go to that passion side of it then once we've detected it how do we live a life that is passion how do we make that happen well I have a you know really a I guess a particular pursuit or a lens on that because I'm a logotherapist that which is one who heals through meaning and if you look at the vantage point if you look at logotherapy and you look at the idea that it's really chief focus is that we as humans our chief concern is finding meaning and that happens to be our chief source of energy so there according to logotherapy we have three sources of meaning we have those the experiential which they all align with our values whatever it is that you value so yours will be different from mine but the experiential speaks to you know what what are we what are we giving of ourselves to the world that really matters to us that in the giving of that that we get that energy that lights up um i call that passion um the second source of meaning is in experience what encounters or experiences do we have that also really energizes that matter to us that energizes i call that inspiration and the third source of meaning is our mindset and what that speaks to how do we choose to relate to the world when it throws whatever it does at us and that could be attitudinal or mindset.

12:10But those three sources are, according to Logo Therapy, are sources of meaning. So that first one, passion, really speaks to what are you doing? What is it that you're putting yourself into, of yourself, you're giving of yourself, that in the giving of it, that you feel this energy, that you feel alive, you feel invigorated. Maybe you lose track of time for hours or you're just so psyched from it or high from it afterwards words that you're not tired, you're hiring when you started. Those kinds of activities indicate passion. Damn, never heard of put that way. So the giving and the meaning, yeah, yeah, that's really a cool thing.

12:51So how does, like when you're doing therapy with someone, how do you help them find that meaning? I guess it's helping them find places where they give of themselves really. Is that the way? Yeah, you know, so that my, I'm an organizational psychologist, really. And so much of my work is working with organizations to help them to transform and lift their culture and their leadership. And then of course, along the way, ideally, all the humans are in their care. And so yeah, I meet people all the time who, like I have been, Brad, I mean, I'm not, I'm not ashamed to say I've been a card carrying member of the walking dead.

13:25I know what that's like. And why do I do the work today is because I want to awaken people to their passion and purpose and then inspire them to make a contribution worthy of their one precious life. And what I've discovered is most of us need a little bit help with that. You know, life takes over. We're really fast on that hamster wheel. Thing has got us out of control. If we don't keep moving our feet in that wheel, man, who knows what's going to happen? So finding a way to intervene in that process and help people recognize, hang on a minute here. We have one precious life. You don't know when the exit ramp is coming.

13:56Let's talk about what is it that really, really, just as I've been out telling you, what is it that when you give yourself over to these activities, that you're lit up by that? And most of the time, you know, the number one response is when I'm out to an audience speaking and I ask them, what are you passionate about? What do you guess they say back, Brad? What are you passionate about? What do you think the most common response is? Helping others, taking care of people, something along that line, I'm guessing. Yeah, and I hear all that. I do. But the most commonly cited answer is, I don't know.

14:31I don't know what I'm passionate about. And then, yes, really, I'm dead serious. And I understand this, Brad. People have lost touch to the connection of their heartbeat, which is why I do the work that I do, right? Let's resurrect these people while they're still living. Can we? Yeah. Well, let's talk about that in a business setting then. Because when we look at, you know, you talk about the soul of the matter, the soul of an organization. How do we bring purpose into a business setting today? You know, I was just talking to an executive about this the other day, somebody who's like literally lived and traveled all over the world and led businesses all over the world.

15:09And I was so surprised that when I was talking first about, you know, some of my own experiences of having inspirational leadership in my life. And like, for example, one person that I had in my journey who literally first, you know, he saved my life first when I was 19 years old by giving me a job in the big exotic city of Portland, Oregon, and then 18 months firing me because he saw way more potential in me than he was ever going to be able to provide in that job. And that like shaking up, you know, by the scruff of the neck kind of thing and causing me to see my life and possibilities in a whole other way, that's inspirational leadership.

15:43And when I was talking with him about this, he said, well, in all the years I was always, you know, in charge, I always made sure to tell people, you know, tell me if you're not satisfied. I said, this has nothing to do with satisfaction. I was totally satisfied, loved working for this man, but I didn't know what I could do. So the first thing is when we're really talking about how do we enliven organizations so that people are just compelled to come to work for this company, they give their best persistence because they're so enamored with what they're doing and so connected about it. And two, they create new products and services, and then they never want to leave.

16:21How do we do that? As we start by how do we activate the meaning and purpose in organizations? And the first part is, how do we teach managers to be actually humane people who care about the well-being of their people? I know that sounds so simple, but most managers are not really plugged into who are my people, what are their life aspirations, what do they care about, what are they trying to accomplish, what are they dealing in their life in total that I can help them deal with, not because I'm going to give them therapy or watch their kids, but how am I going to help them navigate this whole thing, right?

16:54And then, so if we start there, I have a whole program called Managing Through Meaning that teaches just that. How do we actually manage people in a way that gives them feedback that is constructive, but also still elevates and knows that it's there to grow and not to punish and diminish them? And there's, people don't know how to do that. It's not something that people learn automatically. So anyway, there's all that you can do on the managerial level. But then when you look at the very full of the organization, how do we situate? What's the purpose of the organization? Why does it exist? And why should anyone care beyond the profits?

17:29Why should anybody care about that? And when you do that, Brad, and this is the coolest work that I get to do, is going to organizations and helping the whole organization to detect and articulate their purpose. Together, they wild a live scratch for it to articulate it. not given from the top down to the bottom. And then we start to thread it through their behaviors and how to reward people for living that purpose and the values of the organization. Now it's really sticky and that culture holds everybody up so that the leaders, it becomes an easier lift for the leaders for everything that they do.

18:03Anyway, that was a lot, but there's so much that we can do to be able to infuse meaning and purpose in organizations and Many organizations are not doing it just yet. Now, if let's imagine, and I'm sure you see this a lot, companies that have, they've found a purpose or they've found a meaning, they know what it is. How do they live it more on a day-to-day basis? How do they, you use the word infuse, I think. How do you do that more often? Because sometimes I get so busy running companies that I forget that thing. And it's like, I don't know what rituals or what methodologies maybe you could give us some thoughts.

18:42Well, first, let's think about it like this, Brad. Imagine, you know, we recognize that we're both human beings and we have a body and we know there's blood flowing through that. And we have air moving in and out of our lungs. Let's just imagine that we cut off half the source of the blood supply in the air. Let's just imagine that for us as humans. Okay. that's what's happening when when people go into organizations and they lose they don't have contact with that source that that whole purpose source they've lost the connection to the beating heart essentially that's driving the blood moving through the body and the the air moving in through the lungs so already we've cut off half of that you know essential life supply when we don't have that so that tells you that you better pay attention to it and you better find a way to spend time infusing and another word is embedding it into your organization so being very conscious about that being very mindful about that and monitoring it on a you know a daily weekly basis is really the first thing and so then how do we do that is we create um really you know the rituals where we like here at this company we stand for whatever it is saving lives through whatever it is blood transfers what it might be so we've got to make sure that people can see the results of their overall work, the patients that survived because of those transfers?

20:02How are their lives improved? So we, you know, a lot of the best organizations are making sure that they showcase and bring in the people who benefit or the organizations, whoever, who benefit from the products and services so people can go, oh yeah, that's why we do what we do. Whether I'm the programmer who's creating the back office infrastructure, whether I'm the front person selling this stuff, whatever it is, we're like, leave it recognized, oh, we're all connected to this. We did this. So those are just, those are, those take a lot of architecture, right? A lot of, you know, just being mindful and conscious and, and making sure that, you know, you're, you know, pushing that blood supply into the organization.

20:42So they're at full steam, you know, in their work every day. Got it. Love it. So let's flip that to the leadership style then and the methodology, inspirational leadership. First, can you give us, how do you define an inspirational leadership? Yeah. So inspirational leadership really speaks to a leader being able to communicate a couple of things, a vision of what the organization is about that does inspire, that pulls people out of their chairs and says, yeah, I want to be a part of that. That's the first part of it. The second part of it is that that same leader, just like the one that I was talking about earlier, can see who this person is and recognize and really lead them to where they could be in a loving, encouraging way, not where they are today.

21:30So they're literally helping to pull them toward their possible self and the realization of their potential. And what that does is it helps people feel so enlivened and so encouraged. They want to follow that leader. So and underneath all of that, Brad, and this is always sounds a little weird in the world of business is there's this four-letter word that drives all of that and it's love. So inspirational leaders are working from love, not fear, right? So that's how I would describe the two-part piece of inspirational leadership, the vision as well as how they're really helping people to realize and pull them to their own individual potential.

22:07Yeah, I've seen such a massive shift over the last probably 10 years of head leadership moving to heart leadership. How do you, Dr. Elise, how do you teach someone that they don't lead a company, they lead people? How do you teach that or get people to understand that? Because I still struggle with a lot of leaders thinking they're leading the business and they're not. Oh, well, if we can get them to have experiences like Bob Chapman, who's the CEO of Barry Waymiller has had. Do you know Bob by chance? He's an amazing man.

22:46Many of the people who are listening to this maybe have heard of him, but Bob Chapman is the CEO of a manufacturing organization out of St. Louis called Barry Waymiller. He's been at it for decades. He's also covered in a book called Everybody Matters. And what's beautiful is if we can get more leaders to have a bit more of the experience or hear more of something like this, I think we can kind of approximate a directional movement forward, Brad. And that is that Bob discovered some years into his own leadership work, he said, I was at a wedding. And he said, as I listened to the vows being exchanged, and I watched the two families come together, and I watched the father say, when he answered, who gives this woman over to her husband?

23:33He said, I do. Bob said, I can't imagine that anybody would say that they want to give their beloved son or daughter over to just mediocrity. They want them to have an average life. They want the very, very, very best for them. He said, in that moment, I realized I have, at that time, he said, 7 ,000 people who work for our organization. and not only do I have them for 40 hours a week when the preacher here has them for 40 minutes, but they're somebody's precious child and they're in my care. And so he really refers to, you know, they don't talk about the people, the number of heartbeats they have in their organization.

24:13Now they have like 12 ,000 or so. And so when they acquire companies, Brad, they don't just come in and acquire the company and get rid of all the leaders and managers that were there before. They bring them into, as they say, the family. They adopt them, as they call them. And then they invite all of the managers that were there before to come into and learn their way. So they have this whole institutional educational way of listening and connecting that allows people to feel that fullness of humanity. We're in a manufacturing company, and they're doing that. And so Bob Chapman, who speaks all over the world, really talks about, you know, what if you thought about your people as individual heartbeats who are somebody's precious child?

24:56So if we could start to move to that, you know, and then ask these leaders, do you have children? Would you want them to be, you know, a sentence to a life of mediocrity and averageness and where people just get them, you know, badly like they didn't care about them? So I think if we can start that process, Brett, somehow help them humanize and see, you know, how, what are the lives of all these people that are connected to that they depend on for their business? I think that would go a long, long way in helping them move from managing a business to managing and stewarding the lives of all of these people.

25:31Well, hey there, and thanks for listening. I've noticed that 78 % of you are brand new, which means you haven't hit the subscribe button yet. By subscribing, you help us bring on even better guests, better quality content, and serve you better with even more podcasts. So please hit that subscribe button. It only takes a second. It makes a huge difference. If you support us, we're going to support your success and help you achieve big success together. What would be the first steps a leader could take to move to that inspirational leadership? What would be some of the things that I need to focus on to get there?

26:06I was going to say something flip. but I won't. It was something about, you know, severing their heads so they could stop thinking, but we won't say that. Well, getting, getting out of your head into your heart is tough. Sometimes that's tough, you know? It is. It's, well, it's really tough, especially for people that, you know, here's the thing from a, from a personality vantage point, a lot of CEOs are what Eric Gee, this personality guy would call the Smiths. They are very, very intensely rational sort of beings. And anyway, And so it is very, very hard for them. So let me make sure that we situate that.

26:41I'm not suggesting that this is an easy path. Becoming much more fully, fully human is hard for all of us. And I think that's part of the reason that we're here on the planet in the first place as spiritual beings, having a human experience. so I think what's really interesting and what I've seen work beautifully I happen to be a conscious capitalist you won't be surprised by that so I'm part of the global movement of conscious capitalism you know which just speaks to doing business in a way that's that serves its higher purpose with conscious leadership conscious culture serves all stakeholders and if you listen to some of the businessmen and women who have gone through that movement you'll start to hear some of their epiphanies where they began to recognize, wow, some of their people are working two and three jobs to make ends meet.

27:28And we're wondering why we can't get them here on time for this job. Well, what would happen if you went out to the field and really came and you started connecting with your people and learned about their lives? I think that would be an amazing place to start. So the people that are actually power your business, what is happening for them. I mean, wouldn't that be amazing if you even just spent, say, two hours a week going out and connecting with people that work for your organization? I think that would be an amazing place to start. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. So you bring the word love into business.