Identity, Alignment, and Purpose

I am excited about writing my first blog post to introduce Higher Up Consulting, LLC. I have had the pleasure of serving clients from internal and external consulting roles while affiliated with two Fortune 500 companies and often dreamed of the opportunity to bring more of my unique approach to consulting. Higher Up Consulting offers scalable solutions to support individual, team and organizational effectiveness. I frame my services around Identity, Alignment and Purpose because they provide strong foundation for achieving and sustaining higher level results. I will briefly describe each below and plan future posts intended to provide greater detail on each individually.

Identity: Understanding who you are (as an individual, team or organization) is an important step for success. While I believe everyone has value, we also have unique strengths, interests and opportunities. At the team/organizational level, identity includes the collective characteristics of individual members as well as the culture and climate.

Alignment: It is important that our unique characteristics are matched well to our pursuit of meaningful outcomes. How effective are we individually or organizationally with leveraging our strengths and understanding our contributions to success?

Purpose: Understanding and valuing what we are trying to achieve individually and collectively requires clarity of purpose. These outcomes may be identified by personal choice or as a result of joining a team or organization. Individually, purpose is important for career planning and developing into the type of leader you want to be. Organizationally, purpose relates to the organization’s reason for being such as their mission, vision, values etc.

Individuals, teams and organizations who understand who they are and align themselves with the pursuit of meaningful outcomes are positioned to bring the best of who they are to what they do. The path is not necessarily linear; beginning with Identity and ending with Purpose. You may begin with a strong sense of Purpose, but little to no understanding of who you are and what you bring to the table or vice versa. You may also have a strong sense of Identity and Purpose, but efforts are misaligned. Optimal experiences and outcomes become possible when we have all three: Identity, Alignment and Purpose. Additionally, it is helpful to reevaluate and realign periodically to monitor progress and adjust to potential changes relevant to your efforts.

Look forward to follow-up posts where I provide more detail about each topic and various individual and organizational effectiveness topics.