A lot of talented, driven people wrestle with the notion of Impact. They feel compelled, even obligated to leave their mark, or what Steve Jobs called “make a dent in the Universe.” I think that, for the most part, this comes from a good place. We want to use our gifts to do something that matters. But for many of us, the need to make an impact can have undesirable side-effects. We can alternately feel that our lives and work are too important or totally insignificant. So we’d like to start off 2022 by the offering you a little encouragement and providing a slightly different perspective on Impact. We’d suggest that you might do better, and feel better by thinking of your effort through the lens of Contribution.
Maybe it’s just semantics, but I’ve found this re-frame to be really helpful. It’s a great reminder to take the focus off of myself and put it on others. Instead of thinking about how I am going to go out and impose myself on the world, I consider how I can support the people and causes that I care about. How can I be a positive and meaningful contributor to the work and life of my partner, kids, clients, neighbors, etc.? To do this I have to ask them, and then I have to listen. I don’t need to get them to buy-in to my vision. Rather, I need to try and see things through their eyes. Over the years, we’ve learned that the best way to be significant is to help others achieve their goals.
Another nice thing about contributing is that it doesn’t require you to have any particular role or title. How to effectively lead without authority is a very common topic in our practice and a very real challenge in many organizations. And where we usually recommend people start is with building trust and demonstrating value, or said differently…show that you are committed to contributing to the success of others (or the collective). Doing this will quickly make you a valuable (and valued) person.
Focusing on contribution is also great fo keeping you out of what I call “The Existential Ping Pong Match”. This will be familiar to many of you. It’s the back and fourth between feeling that our work is going to save the world, and that none of it really matters. It’s our difficulty in finding an appropriate balance between arrogance and indifference. But if we just think about how we can contribute, even in so-called small ways, we tend to calm ourselves and simply do the next right thing.
Every major philosophical and spiritual tradition has some version of explaining our universal interconnectedness while reminding us of our relative smallness. They encourage us to embrace that tension, to remember that all of our actions matter, but that none of them change the world on their own. I personally find Don Miguel Ruiz’s “4th Agreement” to be the most useful cue: “Do Your Best”. Those three words are both empowering and freeing. Just do your best. We don’t really know which of our actions are “big” or “small”, so we’re wise to simply do our best. We don’t need to worry about what others are doing or have accomplished. That doesn’t have anything to do with us. We either did our best or we didn’t.
So as you look into 2022 and think about the impact you hope to make, perhaps you could take a moment to shift your perspective and consider how you might make a positive and meaningful contribution to the success of others. Take a few minutes to write down the people and issues that you care about: family, employees, customers, vendors, colleagues, neighbors…and think about how you can do your best to help them. You don’t need to worry about your impact or your legacy…your contributions will take care of that.