There are always going to be constraints on how you create meaning in your work and life. Some of those constraints are real and some are imagined.
Still, even given the reality that life comes with constraints, you still have access to the agency to select a purpose. If you select a purpose and take action, you will experience growth. If you connect with others in the process, you will discover areas where your actions are coming together with the actions of others to make a contribution to something even bigger than your own growth.
When you look back at how you have translated your agency together with your peers, colleagues and friends into personal growth and shared contributions, you will experience meaning.
– AGENCY: the experience of making independent choices about what to do in your work and life (within the range of what is possible for the organization)
– PURPOSE: the experience of moving toward objectives and intentions that are personally resonant for you and also significant at a higher level (within the range of what is possible for the organization)
-GROWTH: the experience of growth and progress in a domain you have chosen for yourself (within the range of what is possible for the organization)
– CONNECTION: the experience of living and working in ways that connect you to other people and a positive greater context (within the range of what is possible for the organization)
– CONTRIBUTION: The experience of doing something that adds to the realization of something that feels significant to you (within a greater context that also matters)
– MEANING: The experience of LOOKING BACK on your life and work and realizing that you have been contributing to the achievement of a significant purpose that resonates for you (within a greater context that also matters)
Focusing on personal AGENCY, PURPOSE and GROWTH helps us figure out what we really want to do and be AS INDIVIDUALS.
Focusing on our CONNECTIONS and CONTRIBUTIONS to something or someone OTHER THAN OURSELVES helps us notice the ways we can integrate our own actions with those of others to proactively create something MEANINGFUL in the world.
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As leaders we are blessed with the opportunity to support the process by which the people we lead convert their own agency into purpose, growth, connection, contribution and meaning.
We just need to slow down enough to remember to invite them to step into the space where agency meets constraints, so they can choose what kinds of purposes they want to contribute to with whom and what kinds of growth and meaning they want to create.
© Dana Cogan, 2026, all rights reserved.