As I continue reading The Purpose Economy by Aaron Hurst, I want to spend time thinking about the three core categories of purpose he outlines, including 1) Personal purpose, 2) Social purpose, and 3) Societal purpose. From my interpretation, personal purpose relates to what we asked participants at our exhibit booth during the 2015 AECT convention. The question “What impact will you make?” turned out to be a very powerful prompt. Most asked for clarification, “You mean impact I’ll make here at the convention? As a member of AECT? Today? At work?”
We purposely didn’t set boundaries around the question. Instead, we just asked people to interpret the question as they wanted and write down their responses on a whiteboard. Some walked away saying they needed more time to think about it. Some returned. Others didn’t. Some quickly jotted down their answer and mentioned it related to the work they were doing or pursuing. We then took their picture holding the whiteboard, printed out the picture on a mini photo printer, and then pinned the photo to our exhibit. Check out the amazing roster of responses we received.
The activity was so profound for me that I’ve tried to incorporate the notion of reflecting on personal impact/purpose in our subsequent programming, including our Design in the Open course. It’s a tough course to try to explain. I’m frequently asked for advice about how to break into the field of instructional design. Therefore, I most often frame it as a course about taking steps to develop your “professional presence” in the field but that angle has more of an “in the eyes of the beholder” aspect versus an internal motivation to identify and pursue your personal purpose. As I continue to read through Purpose Economy, I want to get a better handle on how to reframe that course (and others we are designing) to give people space to take on small (and big) challenges to lead them toward their desired personal purpose/impact.