Defining Your Roles – Part 1
Defining your roles has a crucial impact on how you will proceed in your career.
Last time, we talked about your mission or your purpose statement if you will.
Now, the question is how does your purpose or mission play out in the various roles of your life?
Define What Roles Mean for You
To start the conversation, I want you to think about having people speak at your funeral – many years from now.
Consider having one person from each of the different areas of your life who would offer a tribute about you and how you have affected the people around you.
They see you in those different roles.
What would you want them to say?
When we think about defining our roles, it turns out this is both an important and difficult task.
It’s important because it tells you how your life affects those around you. It’s difficult because the questions require honest answers.
What’s Really Important
I was first challenged on this concept when I read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen Covey challenged me to ask about my roles to identify those areas in my life that were very important for me.
In thinking about my family, I noted that my family is very important to me. But then I had to define family.
When it came to my immediate family, my wife and children, I could honestly answer that they are a priority. And I could prove it with my time and attention.
But when I thought about my brother, and my sisters, and my parents, and my cousins, they were not as much in my life as I felt they should have been.
That was a tremendous challenge to me.
As I said, the answer to these questions requires brutal honesty.
If these roles that we feel really matter, then we can prove it with our time.
You can see it on your calendar.
How to Define Your Roles
So, how do you define your roles?
I’m going to give you several possible role identifications, and I want you to do two things:
First, rate the role according to its importance, according to its alignment with your values.
For example, you could look at it and say, as a parent this is a 10 out of 10. As an extended family member, maybe it’s a 7. But go through each role and give yourself a rating. Some will apply, some won’t. That’s fine.
Next, rate the role according to your commitment. There’s one test for that: How does your calendar reflect your commitment to each role?
After all, that which is important demands our time.
For example, here is a list of roles for you to size up:
- Spouse
- Partner
- Parent
- Child
- Sibling
- Friend
- Co-worker
- Boss
- Entrepreneur
- Churchgoer
Now, this is only a partial list and you can certainly feel free to add other roles to it. But now it’s time to go through the list and really read the various roles.
Where To Look
Look for those areas where your importance aligns with your time. You should be able to find areas that you can rate as very important for you.
They should also receive a high mark for the amount of commitment that you are going to offer these areas of your life.
Now, go back and look for the discrepancies. Look for those areas where you said something was important, but if you were being honest, you’re not really giving it your time or attention.
Know that, for these areas, something must change. Either you’re changing your commitment, or you’re changing your actions.
But be honest with this!
Wrapping Up
Look, the purpose of this exercise is not to make you feel guilty. The purpose of the exercise is to motivate you to live out your values with your time and energy in commitment.
It is not too late to support the things that you know matter in life, or that should matter in life.
Time to go to work!
Until next time, learn more to earn more.
