I get it.

You’re juggling a lot, and it doesn’t seem to help your prospects as the next winning act on
America’s Got Talent.
ENGAGEMENT:
Think about the last time that you affirmed yourself: “I’VE GOT TALENT!” THE PATH TO A
Most importantly, think about the last time you were satisfied with your work, your play,
and your relationships … all at the same time. B BETTER YOU!
A MUST read for your
NOW and FUTURE
Your memory is getting a little foggy, right?

These last two statements aren’t separate; rather, they serve to show you that engaging
ALL parts of your life is the ULTIMATE talent.
Professional
When you unlock your ability to engage and enrich everything that you do, you’ll cultivate
unprecedented growth in your work, in your hobbies, and in your relationships. +
Let me help guide your journey to growth. In this book, you’ll access a unique
methodology that empowers you to apply actionable, daily principles that will elevate ALL
parts of your life … ALL at once. Personal
Enjoy the book, leverage its insights, and may your journey continue to shine! +

Here’s what people are saying about the book:

Social
“Kyle's passion for leading a more fulfilled and meaningful life is contagious. This easy-
read is filled with inspiration and practical tools.” =
- Karin Hurt, CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, Author, Speaker, Former Verizon Executive
Integrated
“I'm blown away by Kyle's unique, visual methodology to engagement and highly
recommend Engagement: The Path To A Better You if you're looking to grow and develop LIFE
... and who's not looking to grow and develop throughout their lives?” “Kyle takes the time to tell you what he’s going
to say, then shows you what he means, and then
- Cory Warfield, Founder and CEO of ShedWool tells it to you again to make sure each concept
and application sticks with you. Engagement:
“Kyle’s newest piece, Engagement: The Path to a Better You, is more than just your
ordinary self-help book. It’s packed with relatable anecdotes and helpful activities that you The Path To A Better You adds value to anyone
can immediately apply to your career, your friendships, and beyond. This is a must read if looking to enrich all parts of their lives, whether
you are looking for a book to enrich your life.” you’re a recent college graduate or a tenured
executive at a Fortune 100 company.”
- Kyle Elliott, Career & Life Coach, Member of Forbes Coaching Council
-John Mattone, World’s Top Executive Coach
God bless you and your journey to engagement!

Kyle Crooke
Crooke’s Books
 Introduction

This book is all about engagement. And if I can engage

you just long enough, you’ll acquire a unique methodology
that identifies your engagement pain points and provides a
structured plan for increasing your overall engagement in
your work, play, and relationships.

A 2017 Gallup survey[1] revealed that “worldwide

employee engagement is only 15%.”

15%? The fact that this number isn’t even close to an

overwhelming majority, or at least a modest 50%, is
incredibly disheartening.

Given the amount of time we spend at work, we may as

well spend this time pursuing fruitful, meaningful
activities. Without true engagement, we can’t optimize our
talents. We can’t fully enrich or enjoy our lives without
holistically engaging every part of our livelihood.

With the Gallup survey in mind, I’ve developed an

integrated approach to one’s life-long mission, which
includes both mission maturity (refining your mission as
you interact with the world) and mission fulfillment (the
tangible realization of your goals and actions).

In this book, we’ll deconstruct your mission into three

lifelines, which represent all three parts of your life:
professional, personal, and social. Each of these lifelines
requires engagement so that you can lead an integrated,
fulfilling life.

Each of your three lifelines is broken up into three

individual components, which I call “fundamentals,” that
reinforce themselves. And, finally, we discover that
 www.kylecrooke.com

purpose, passion, and persistence are the foundational roots

of our mission, lifelines, and fundamentals.

As an added bonus, you’ll find helpful worksheets and

visuals, provided at the end of the book, to facilitate your
understanding and jumpstart your journey to engaging a
fulfilling life!

And as a double bonus, the last chapter of this book offers

business insights on employee engagement, which can
materially impact your company or organization. This
book will cover engagement on a personal, individual level
that resonates with you directly. And, for companies and
employees alike, this book will provide unique insights into
improving employee engagement and cultivating better
opportunities for you in the workplace. If you bring this
book’s business insights into your organization, you’ll
realize gradual, long-lasting impact in your company’s
culture and performance. This book is just as valuable for
organizations as it is for individuals, and I equally
encourage both organizations and individuals to leverage
this book for their benefit!

The main message behind this book is for you, the reader,
to understand that you must engage yourself in your work
AND your play, not just one or the other. And as you
improve in engaging different parts of your life, you’ll
realize the synergistic and compounding results that
committed engagement offers you.

The contents of this book will add value to a wide range of

people. Engagement and purpose fulfillment are relevant
topics that impact the 22-year-old recent graduate, 20-year
industry professional, and the recent 65-year-old retiree.

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My main purpose for creating this book is to influence

YOU to capitalize on the offerings that arise from a fully
engaged, integrated life. With true engagement comes
discovery, new learnings, and enlightened action.

Thank you for your interest in this book. I hope it serves

you and provides an insightful perspective that enhances
your approach to work, play, and relationships.

If you reflect upon and implement the concepts discussed

in this book, you will lead a more engaged life that brings
you fulfillment, enrichment, and unlimited opportunity.
Engagement starts with your mind and ends in your daily
interactions with the outside world. This book will help
you get your mind right, but it’s up to you to implement
your learnings in your day-to-day actions, behaviors, and
habits.

Keep your mind open, your eyes abreast, and your ears
active! You’re about to traverse an extraordinary journey
throughout this book, which will better prepare you to
continue on your journey in the outside world.

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Why should you read onwards, and who am I to guide

your journey?

You should read this book because it will allow you to:

 Engage every part of your life more effectively

 Enrich your work, your play, and your relationships
 Enjoy your life, instead of live with regret or
resentment
 Fulfill your life’s mission and goals
 Reframe your perspective and approach to daily
activities.

All good things, right? Just imagine how GREAT all these
things will become once you apply the methodology and
solutions provided in the pages to come.

Let me address the second question: Who am I to guide you

on your engagement journey?

I’ve personally experienced the full spectrum of

engagement. From severe disengagement, to moderate
apathy, to committed engagement, I’ve navigated all points
along this spectrum. I’ve also identified precisely WHY I
was positioned all over the spectrum at different times in
my life.

Whether at work, in school, or in my personal endeavors,

I’ve diagnosed different levels of engagement in myself
and in others.

More important than my own perspective, I’ve gleaned

insights from my relationships with family, friends, and
colleagues. Not only have I learned how I engage my
relationships, but I’ve learned how others engage theirs.
Additionally, I understand how relationships are
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differentiated based on each individual’s level of

engagement with the other person in the relationship.

With these eclectic and cumulative insights, I’ve developed

a holistic methodology that will hone your approach to
engagement in your professional life, personal life, and
social life. These three areas cover every single part of
your life and synergistically add value to your mission.

Along with this methodology, you will find solutions that

allow you to immediately improve your level of
engagement in EVERYTHING. These solutions are
accompanied by worksheets, visual aids, and concepts that
provide a relevant, fit-for-purpose action plan for YOU,
wherever you are in your engagement journey.

I’ve observed the impact of enhanced engagement levels in

my own life by applying the principles in this book. I’ve
also witnessed comparable impacts in others. This book
will transform your ability to engage your work, play, and
relationships. This book will change your life … if you let
it.

I will lead you to the pool (as you’ll read about later). But
only you can dive in.

So dive on in! And make more splashes in your life. Just

take off your floaties and jump!

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About the Author

My name is Kyle Crooke. Back in high school, I told

myself that, at the end of my career, I would regret not
writing a book.

But I didn’t want to be hasty in completing this book. I

wanted to write about something impactful that would
influence millions of people across the globe.

Over time, throughout my experiences as an undergraduate

and graduate student at the University of Florida, as well as
various internships and full-time roles after graduation, I’ve
developed a keen focus in adding value to others through
sharing motivational and personal development insights.

I’m particularly interested in any topic related to the human

experience, which includes leadership, personal fulfillment,
and exploration.

Across my academic experiences, work experiences, and

encounters with hundreds of others in these environments,
I’ve realized that people vary in how they approach their
work, their play, and their relationships. As a result of
these varying perspectives, people consequently pursue and
engage their activities in unique alignment with their
individual mindset, attitudes, and behaviors.

When I came across a recent Gallup survey[1], which

revealed that most workers are disengaged with their jobs, I
knew I had to write about the topic of engagement. I’ve
personally experienced both underwhelming engagement
and overwhelming engagement at various points in my life,
and I can’t possibly overstress the fact that engagement
makes life so much more enriching, enjoyable, and
meaningful.

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I want people, all around the world, to engage all parts of

their lives. So that they can enrich their lives, enjoy their
lives, and pursue meaningful activities throughout their
time on this earth.

More specifically, I want YOU to be more engaged. And

to reap all the benefits that come with wholehearted
engagement across all aspects of YOUR life.

Enjoy this book, and may you discover new opportunities

to engage your work, play, and relationships! And if you’d
like to stay updated with new content, please subscribe
at www.kylecrooke.com for continued insights and
thought leadership!

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Testimonials

“Kyle drives home one key message throughout this book:

Engagement is THE path to a better you. As you engage
different parts of your life, you’ll discover new meaning and
purpose behind your actions and mindset. I'm blown away by
Kyle's unique, visual methodology to engagement and highly
recommend Engagement: The Path To A Better You if you're
looking to grow and develop ... and who's not looking to grow
and develop throughout their lives?”

- Cory Warfield: Founder and CEO of ShedWool

“Kyle takes the time to tell you what he’s going to say, then
shows you what he means, and then tells it to you again to make
sure each concept and application sticks with you. Engagement:
The Path To A Better You adds value to anyone looking to enrich
all parts of their lives, whether you’re a recent college graduate
or a tenured executive at a Fortune 100 company. In my
experience as an executive coach, which includes work with the
late Steve Jobs, I’ ve personally seen the impacts of engagement
at a leadership and individual level. If you want to take the next
step in enriching your life, I highly recommend Engagement:
The Path To A Better You.”

- John Mattone: World’s Top Executive Coach & The Coach

of Coaches

“Kyle’s newest piece, Engagement: The Path to a Better You, is

more than just your ordinary self-help book. It’s packed with
relatable anecdotes and helpful activities that you can
immediately apply to your career, your friendships, and beyond.
This is a must read if you are looking for a book to enrich your
life.”

- Kyle Elliott: Career & Life Coach, Member of Forbes

Coaching Council

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“This is more than a book - it's a roadmap that guides your

journey as a professional, as a person, and as a social
being. This book provides the necessary tools and resources to
help ANYONE navigate their path towards total enrichment! If
you're looking for a timeless book that empowers you to take
action in your life, I HIGHLY encourage you to
read, Engagement: The Path To A Better You.”

- Emily Crooke: Software Co-Creator, e-Commerce

Director, Influencer

"I love how Kyle integrates practicality and ingenuity to provide

a pragmatic approach to enhancing engagement in all parts of
your life. Through imagery, visual aids, and unique analogies,
you'll find nuggets of wisdom in every chapter, concept, and
resource provided. Engagement: The Path To A Better You will
help you bridge the gap between where you are currently and
where you want to be in the short-term AND long-term."

- Trevor Maloney: Chief Development Officer & Keynote

Speaker

“Kyle's passion for leading a more fulfilled and meaningful life

is contagious. This easy-read is filled with inspiration and
practical tools.”

- Karin Hurt: CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, Author, Speaker,

Former Verizon Exec

Thank you all for your testimonials – I truly appreciate

your feedback and I look forward to leveraging this
book as a value-add for as many people as possible!

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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Your Journey 11
Chapter 2: The Importance of Engagement 27
Chapter 3: Your Mission Visualized 34
Chapter 4: Your Three Lifelines 47
Chapter 5: Mission Setting 83
Chapter 6: Purpose, Passion, and Persistence 106
Chapter 7: The Sliding Spectrum 114
Chapter 8: The “Secret to Improving Engagement” 122
Chapter 9: The “Secret” to Sudoku 128
Chapter 10: Tips and Tricks 140
Chapter 11: BONUS – How to Improve 145
Employee Engagement
Thank You Shoutouts! 200
Worksheets and Visual Aids (Exhibits) 203
Book & Networking Recommendations 217

Author’s Note 221

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Chapter 1: Your Journey

If you’re reading this, you’ve bought into the idea of
engagement. You’re interested in learning more about
engagement and what it can bring to your life.

I don’t know what you want out of this book. I’m not you.
Maybe you’re looking for fulfillment. Maybe you’re
looking to overcome something you’re struggling with.
Maybe you’re looking to burn an hour or two on a flight.

For whatever reason you’re here, I thank you. You’ve

opened the first page to a new journey in your life. A
journey that will become more clear, more concrete, and
more exciting once you’ve completed this book.

Without further ado, let’s begin your journey to engaging a

fulfilling life.

I want you to think quickly about how engaged you feel in

your work, in your personal time, and in your relationships.
I also want you to think about what engagement means to
you. In Chapter 2, I’m going to define engagement and
leverage that definition to build out our engagement
methodology. As you read this book, and as you continue
on your life’s journey, make sure to apply what’s useful to
you and stay open to the principles we explore. At
different points throughout your life, you may find some
concepts in this book shine more brightly on your path than
others, and that’s completely natural. Let yourself practice
the principles in this book and, over time, adapt to what
works best for you.

Different concepts will mean something different to you at

different times in your life – as long as you have this
guidebook in mind, you can adjust your journey as you

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shift your perspective and accumulate more experiences.

With your reflections on your current engagement levels
and your viewpoint on engagement itself, let’s initiate our
journey towards full engagement and build on your current
frame of reference.

Now that you’ve started your journey, I want to give you

some companions. Bobby, Joseph, and Fred will guide you
along your way throughout this book, and the rest of your
life, as you find out more about yourself and what you
choose to do with your guides’ example.

Your first guide is Bobby. Let me introduce him to you, so

you can understand what type of companion you’re dealing
with. Here’s what you need to know about Bobby:

Bobby wakes up for work around 7:30am. He hits snooze

until 8:00am rolls around.

After he gets out of bed, he haphazardly puts on his work

attire and picks up a Taco Bell breakfast burrito on his way
to work.

He spends the first three hours of work, from 9:00am to

12:00pm, responding to emails and putting out fires.

Once noon hits, he removes himself from the computer

screen and shuffles off to lunch, where he settles on a
burger and fries. He guzzles down his fifth cup of coffee,
and a couple Cokes, to energize himself for the remainder
of the day.
After a couple meetings in the early afternoon, in which he
focuses all his energy on resisting the urge to sleep, he
makes a new pot of coffee and finishes off another three
cups before 3:00pm.

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From 3:00pm to 6:00pm, he answers emails previously

received during his lunch and afternoon meetings.

After an hour in traffic, where he spends his time punching

the steering wheel in frustration, and listening to radio
gossip, he enters his home and slumps into his beloved
recliner. He turns on his TV, demands his wife bring him
some food, and continues to watch the latest shows until he
falls asleep in his chair … only to roll out of that same
chair at 8:00am the next morning, with a stamp of déjà vu
on his forehead.

Bobby may not be your role model, but he’ll come in handy
when you fight the urge to be “mediocre” as you navigate
the trees and wild animals that come alive throughout the
rest of this book. He’ll be fresh meat for the animals, since
he has no drive to thrive in this world. Plus he’ll be slower
than you, due to his poor diet and health. As he’s devoured
by the animals, you can break free and separate yourself
from his influence.

Now that you’ve met Bobby, let me introduce you to

Joseph. I have a feeling he might be a little more of a role
model for you, and he’ll always have your back as you take
your next steps. He’ll be the one fighting off the animals
and leading you onwards as you navigate your path.

Joseph gets up around 6:00am, immediately after his alarm

clock sounds. In fact, he really doesn’t need an alarm clock
– his body naturally arises due to his habit of early rising.

Once he hops out of bed, he immediately works on his most

value-adding activity of the day. He dedicates 1-2 hours to
pursuing and completing this activity, without distraction or
disruption. The night before, he identified which activity

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would be most fruitful in reaching his goals and actualizing

his mission for the proceeding day.

Last night, he identified today’s primary activity: devising

a strategic initiative for one of his biggest clients. That
way, he can increase his client’s market share, which will
allow Bobby to interface more with the client’s executive
leadership team.

After completing his #1 priority for the day, he takes a

short break to eat breakfast with his kids and sees them off
to school. He kisses his wife on the cheek, wishes her a
great day at the office as she rushes out the door, and then
returns inside his home, where his office awaits (a comfy
couch some days, and a kitchen table on other days).

For the rest of the morning, he knocks out his #2 and #3

prioritized activities for the day.

Around noon, he takes his dog for a long walk on a nearby

park trail. Joseph takes this time to decompress and ideate
– he always finds peace and creativity during his nature
walks.

He returns home around one and makes himself lunch. As

he eats his lunch, he spends half an hour responding to
emails that add the most value to him, for the least amount
of time required to address.

He sets up a couple calls that last until 3:00. These calls

include a quick touch point with his big client, who ends up
embracing Joseph’s strategic plan and requests a detailed
transformation plan within the next week.

When 3:00 approaches, Joseph shuts off his laptop, throws

his phone in the back seat of his car, and picks up his kids

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from school. With the kids back home, he spends quality

time with them by shooting hoops and swimming in the
backyard pool.

When Joseph’s wife returns home at 6:30, he already has

dinner on the table. He knows that her day has been filled
with customer complaints and tedious meetings, so he
decides to surprise her with a delectable steak dinner.

Joseph spends the rest of the night helping his children with
their homework and listening to his wife discuss her
excitement over their upcoming vacation next week. After
he puts the kids to bed, he enjoys a warm bath with his wife
and wastes no time in telling her how much he loves her.
The last time he checked his phone was at 7:00, and he
hasn’t been on his laptop since he picked up his kids from
school.

This deliberate choice (to limit technology usage) allows

him to free up his time, focus on what’s important in his
life, and disengage from distractions that try to disengage
him from his family. As a byproduct of disengagement
from distractions and disruptions, Joseph better engages his
work AND his family.

Before going to bed, he spends 10 minutes planning out his

prioritized activities for tomorrow. He then crawls into
bed, snuggles up to his wife, and eagerly awaits another
day of purpose, passion, and persistence.

Joseph is the real deal. He’s got your back, he’s got your
front, and he’s got what it takes to help you along your
journey.

Notice any differences between Bobby and Joseph?

Scratch that – can you identify any similarities?

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I’d say the only thing they share is their gender.

Bobby leads a reactive, complacent life. He is at the mercy

of the day’s distractions, where he puts out fires without
discovering why the fires exist in the first place. Due to his
poor attitude and approach to work, he allows his family
life to suffer under his own limitations. He ignores his
kids, mistreats his wife, and spends his free time catching
up on shows that will run their course in a couple seasons.

Bobby is disengaged from his professional life, his personal

life, and his social life. He accomplishes nothing of value
in his work, alienates himself from his wife and kids, and
never initiates meetups with his work colleagues or
neighborhood friends.

Joseph is the exact opposite of Bobby.

Joseph leads a proactive, decisive lifestyle. He prioritizes

his day and focuses his efforts on the most value-adding
activities that further his mission. He persistently tackles
these activities at the start of his day, so that he can free up
the remainder of his day for family time and relationship
building. When he plans tomorrow’s activities the night
before, he aligns his activities and his schedule with a
singular purpose – a purpose in establishing a client
network that will put him on retainer (so he can allocate
even more time to his family, which he feels is the most
important part of his life).

Joseph utilizes this professional life to better pursue his

social life in cultivating stronger relationships with his
family. Joseph knows how to prioritize his activities and
purpose to fulfill his mission. Joseph’s self-awareness and
alignment allow him to pursue outcomes, whether
professional, personal, or social, that are most important to

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him. Clearly, he values his relationships over his vocation,

so he aligns his expectations and activities to reflect his
preferences (NOTE – he still values his work, but he
engages his vocation primarily as a means of better
realizing his mission in leading and serving a loving, strong
family unit).

Joseph’s engagement in his work allows him to fully

engage with family and friends. Joseph effectively engages
his professional life so he can better engage his social life.
Through his actions, you can tell how much time and
dedication he gives to his family. If he wasn’t as engaged
in his professional life, he wouldn’t be able to engage his
social life nearly as optimally.

Engagement in one part of his life allows him to be more

engaged in other parts.

Engagement truly is a reinforcing virtuous cycle that

synergizes our time, relationships, and daily actions.
Engagement in one part of your life does not equate to
engagement in other parts, unless you understand how all
the parts are related.

Clearly, Joseph understands that he can spend more time

engaging his social life, represented by his family, by
intelligently and deliberately engaging his professional life
in a way that still supports his passions, purpose, and
overarching mission. By prioritizing activities and
persistently limiting the time he spends on distractions, he
creates more time for his family, as well as a larger
disposable income he can use to enjoy vacations and other
experiences with his family.

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As long as you understand how the different parts of your

life are related, you can play with the levers in one part and
observe the impact on another part.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Bobby is an extreme

case. As is Joseph. Most people fall somewhere in the
middle of the spectrum.

And yes – I agree with you.

There are few Bobbies in this world, and even fewer

Josephs.

Most people probably identify with our new friend, Fred.

You probably do, too, if you’re reading this book.

Fred’s a nice person, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing

wrong with Fred. And that’s the problem. Fred represents
the conflicts inside you that prevent you from achieving
your potential. He represents the status quo that keeps you
from enriching your life with a purposeful mission. He’s
the guy who keeps things tolerable enough to accept and
never change.

Let me tell you – Fred is more dangerous than any Bobby

or Joseph you could ever encounter. And, even more
concerning, Fred is the person you see in the mirror. The
third guide on your journey is Fred. In essence, you are
your own guide. Nobody else can live your life for you.
Joseph doesn’t have the time to do that. And Bobby just
doesn’t care enough to do that.

You must take ownership of all your decisions and

understand that, at some level, you probably have Fred’s
hand show up in some parts of your life. Take a deep, hard
look in that mirror. Whether you see a purebred Bobby, a

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purebred Joseph, or a Fred hybrid, you have TOTAL

control over the person you see in the reflection.

Don’t be your own stumbling block. There’s plenty of

other stumbling blocks you’ll come across as you journey
throughout your life. And if you choose, today, to change
how you engage your life, I guarantee that you’ll be able to
transcend ANY hindrance you’ll ever encounter.

The largest hindrance is what you see in the mirror. The

Fred that keeps you at bay. The Fred that keeps things just
good enough for you to accept your life for what it is and
not for what it could be. The Fred that leads a life of
mediocrity, treads water just to stay afloat, and never truly
realizes the life that he’s been missing out on. This last
statement is terrifying – Fred will NEVER realize the life
he could have had, because he’s too scared to abandon the
norm.

Yes, Fred is a generalization and may not be entirely

relatable to you. However, I’m sure you can see some
elements of Fred in you, just as you may find some
elements of Bobby and Joseph inside of you. Fred simply
represents the third guide in the equation: YOU. You’ve
got the final say in deciding if you want to be Bobby,
Joseph, Fred, or a combination of the three.

With Bobby, his wife will probably come to her senses and
divorce him. He’ll probably get fired. He’ll probably see
his kids only once in a blue moon. But at least Bobby will
come to realize, and experience, just how badly he messed
up his life. He’ll finally come to terms with the poor
choices he’s made. He’ll have an awakening moment in
which he grasps how differently his life could have been …
if only he had been more purposeful, passionate, and
persistent with his life.

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If only Bobby had engaged all parts of his life! It may be

too little too late for Bobby, but at the very least, he WILL
come to realize what could have been. And this realization
gives him closure, however twisted or convoluted, with
how he led his life.

Joseph, on the other hand, will lead a beautiful marriage

and happy household. He will organically increase his
income, his family time, and his impact simply by staying
engaged in all areas of his life. A tree that stays firmly
rooted in its soil will continue to grow, whether in stature,
beauty, or utility to the nearest bird looking for a place to
build its nest. And since Joseph is so engaged with his life,
he will always keep a pulse on his mission, his actions, and
their impacts on all parts of his life.

Since Joseph is continually aligned in his mission and his

actions, he understands how his life enriches him.
Whenever he doesn’t feel enriched, he can identify
misalignment and make proper adjustments to return to his
typical levels of engagement and enrichment. Joseph is
well aware of how his current life reflects his deliberate
choices, persistent execution, and continued orientation to
his mission. Since he is engaged in his life on a daily basis,
Joseph can make real-time adjustments and adaptations
whenever required, for any circumstance. He can quickly
reorient his actions and thoughts with his mission, which
mitigates potential losses from further unaligned behavior.
Like Bobby, Joseph also has closure – but in an entirely
different sense of the word. Every day, Joseph realizes that
he is leading an enriched life because he is fully engaged in
all parts of his life. With Joseph’s daily engagement levels,
he experiences closure every night before he cuddles his
wife and drifts off to sleep. He goes to sleep, each day,
knowing that he engaged everything and everyone, which
affirms his mission, his goals, and his actions. He receives

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closure at the end of every day as he knows just how much

he prioritized, executed, and accomplished.

Bobby and Joseph both come to realize how engagement

played a critical role in developing their careers, personal
affairs, and social lives. They can both understand how
their mindset, behavior, and intention impacted their
engagement levels, which directly impacted their feelings
of fulfillment and enrichment in life. Although they are on
totally different ends of the spectrum, with Bobby bogged
down by regret and Joseph uplifted by fulfillment, they
both come to a conscious recognition of how engagement
has transformed their lives.

Fred, on the other hand, will never have an “AHA!”

moment when it comes to recognizing the impact of
engagement on his life. Through Fred’s example, we can
better understand how most of the world exists. We can
better understand why Fred is more dangerous than Bobby.
We can better understand the importance of engaging our
lives on a daily basis. And, most importantly, we can better
understand the changes in mindset and behavior required to
convert Bobby and Fred into Joseph (or, at the very least,
influence them to adopt “Josephish” habits).

Where Bobby displays zero engagement, Fred displays

some level of engagement.

Where Joseph displays complete engagement, Fred falls

short.

Like we did with Bobby and Joseph before, let’s quickly

look at a day in Fred’s world. Then take a few minutes to
understand how Fred relates to you, and what you want to
start changing in your own life.

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The typical Fred will wake up at a reasonable hour in the

morning.

He will spend a little time with his family before heading to

work.

Throughout the day, he juggles emails, meetings, and

independent work required to complete daily deliverables.

He gets tired from time to time, but usually puts something

together that will satisfy his peers or his superiors.

When he returns home from work, he sometimes plops in

front of the TV and spends the night watching shows with
his children.

Other nights, he drives his kids to sports practice.

And on special occasions, he treats his wife to a romantic

dinner.

Plus, as an added bonus, he plays softball with his work

buddies every month. Kicking back some brews, making
jokes, and taking some time to recuperate from the past
week’s challenges.

After he bids his children good night, he retreats to his

bedroom and cuddles his wife. At this point, he says his
prayers, tells his wife he loves her, and drifts off to sleep
with a meek smile on his face.

That’s Fred in a nutshell. A very dangerous nutshell.

At this point, you can identify when you behave like a

Boring Bobby, a Fine Fred, or a Joyful Joseph. Fred will
always be a part of you, as are Bobby and Joseph. They’re

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not just external guides on your journey – they’re two

pawns that are constantly battling for your attention as they
sit on your shoulders like tiny figurines. We all have
Bobby, Fred, and Joseph type tendencies within each of us.
But it doesn’t mean we have to attend to their needs.
Through discipline, vision, and action, you can keep Bobby
and Fred dormant while you leverage your inner Joseph.

Let’s get back to what makes Fred such a dangerous

specimen.

On the surface, Fred’s life doesn’t seem that bad. He’s

contributing to his work, spends time with his family, and
makes sure to carve out time to address different interests
in his life. He even combines his professional life with his
social life when he plays softball with his colleagues!

So what’s wrong with the dangerous nutshell of Fred’s

existence?

On the surface, nutshells never seem too bad. Whether it’s

a peanut, pistachio, or walnut. Different nuts, yet each
shell holds the same function across all types of nuts (the
function of protection).

But can you ever determine the integrity of the nut by

examining its nutshell alone?

NO! Absolutely not.

How many times have you deshelled a pistachio, only to

find that the nut itself is nowhere to be found?

How many times have you ripped open a peanut, only to

find one of the peanuts deformed or missing entirely?

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How many times have you cracked a walnut, only to find

the nut itself crushed by the force that you applied while
cracking the shell?

The nutshell is deceiving. The nutshell can be in perfect

condition, yet hold a deformed nut. Or, even worse … no
nut at all.

Fred is only a nutshell. That’s why he’s so dangerous.

Everything looks good from the outside. Since everything

looks good, he doesn’t take the time to really dig inside
himself. To his nut, if you will.

And what is Fred’s nut? His nut is the end-all-be-all. His

mission. His goals. His razzamatazz!

Good lives are dangerous because they influence us to

become complacent, shortsighted, and fearful of losing out
on a continued good life if we try and upscale to a great
life.

Fred will keep polishing his nutshell, but won’t dare to

peek inside his own life to evaluate the condition of his nut.
The condition of his mission.

A majority of people can relate to Fred because they ARE

Fred. Their nutshell looks good, so they either don’t think
about the nut or are too scared to look inside the nutshell
and examine its contents.

The nutshell inhibits Fred from cultivating the nut inside.

Fred won’t engage his mission, his goals, or the meaningful
parts of his life because they are all tied to the nut.

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At the end of his life, Fred won’t have any idea what his
nut looks like. Will it be missing entirely? Will it be
deformed? Will it fall short of how large or tasty it could
have been?

Fred doesn’t know. And he won’t know. He’ll never

realize how engagement could have transformed his nut
into a jar of peanut butter. He’ll never appreciate how his
peanut butter could be spread across the lives of his family,
friends, and acquaintances. He’ll never understand what
his little nut could have accomplished. He lives the status
quo, and therefore will only have a status quo existence,
totally ignorant of what his life was meant to be.

I think we’ve beaten this concept to death, but for good

reason. Fred is dangerous because he won’t take the next
step. He won’t deshell. He won’t take root in his mission.
He won’t realign his daily actions or connect the different
parts of his life to magnify the value of his mission. At the
end of Fred’s life, he won’t realize what could have been.

He uses his nutshell to protect himself. Protection from

asking himself the hard questions. From truly engaging his
mission and the consequent adversity that arises from
maturing and fulfilling his mission. Living out a mission is
not the status quo – it’s not the life that he was taught, so he
doesn’t know how to learn it. And since he won’t ask the
hard questions, he won’t be able to provide himself with
the answers. His life has already provided him with
lessons, homework, and tests, in the form of different
experiences and circumstances. Unbeknownst to Fred, he
is his own answer in leading a fulfilling life.

If only he engaged his life. If only he understood his low

level of engagement. Then he could have made a shift
towards higher engagement. If only, if only.

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Bobby comes to terms with his lack of engagement, and

consequently realizes how engagement could have changed
his life.

And Joseph comes to terms with his wealth of engagement,

and consequently realizes how engagement has enriched
his life. And with this understanding, Joseph can more
effectively engage the rest of his life.

Fred will never come to terms with his engagement, and

will keep that blindfold over his eyes until he enters the
grave.

Fred has so much unfulfilled potential, and will never

conceptualize that potential due to complacent
contentment, short-sightedness, and lifelong mediocrity.

Stop being Fred. By now, you’ve probably identified what

areas of your life are more Bobbyish, Fredish, and
Josephish. Take ownership of your life, your choices, and
your current state. Look at yourself in the mirror, identify
the Fred in you, and let yourself start your journey. With
Bobby on your left shoulder, Bobby on your right shoulder,
and Fred between the ears, it’s time to take your first step.
I’m willing to bet there’s some sort of Fred in your mind
and in your actions, which is why we’re assuming Fred is
between your ears. It’s the law of averages.

But don’t worry – as we continue along this trip, you’ll

soon replace Fred. Bobby will disappear, Joseph will climb
into your ear and take residence in your mind, and Fred will
similarly vanish like Bobby.

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Chapter 2: The Importance of Engagement

Before we go any further in your journey, I need to explain

why engagement is crucial in shaping and defining your
journey. If we don’t cover this, it’ll be nearly impossible to
convince you to follow the principles in this book. Once
we’re on the same page in our perspective of engagement,
we can conquer this journey together!

Let me tell you something – when I was growing up,

people weren’t talking about engagement.

It certainly wasn’t a buzz word that companies used to

better cultivate their employees’ talents.

It definitely wasn’t on the mind of job candidates looking

for a better cultural fit with their hiring company of choice.

And it ABSOLUTELY wasn’t anything that I thought I

could, would, or should write about.

But here we are, 26 years later.

Companies are becoming increasingly customer-centric

AND employee-centric. As machines and technology
continue to advance, organizations need to leverage their
people as the differentiators in business decision-making
and leadership. Therefore, it’s becoming even more crucial
for companies to optimize their employees’ skills and
productivity. In order to cultivate employee talent,
companies must fully engage their people so they can
maximize their return on investment. After all, companies
already invest money into their employees in the form of
salaries; it would be a waste for companies to ignore the
synergies that employee engagement offers.

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With every choice you make, you’re subconsciously asking

yourself something to the effect: “To engage, or not to
engage?” In other words, you’re deciding how to expend
your energy and attention.

In case you were wondering … no, this is not a question for

your romantic pursuits (please excuse the terrible pun).
However, as you learn how to better engage, enrich, and
enjoy your TOTAL life, you’ll realize that you can
transform anything – from your work to your love life – by
adhering to the principles in this book.

Anyway, back to the question – this question is something

that every living, breathing person should ask himself or
herself. It’s a question that every business owner,
employee, manager, or leader should ask. And frankly, it’s
a question that transcends work and applies to all
individuals in all aspects of their lives.

However, as you will see, asking this question within the

context of your professional life will naturally carry over to
your personal and social livelihood. By the end of this
book, you will have the context and conviction required to
answer this question …

… hopefully with a resounding, “TO ENGAGE!”

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we must ask if

engagement is relevant. If it is not relevant, then this book
serves no purpose. I wholeheartedly assert that
engagement is relevant, and will now answer WHY it is
relevant. Once we agree on the WHY behind
engagement’s significance, then we can also agree that
engagement truly is relevant.

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Per an October 2017 Gallup report, global employee

engagement is at a staggering 15%[1].

Let me repeat: on a worldwide scale, only 15% of

employees are engaged in their work. This incredulously
low number, by itself, does not explain WHY engagement
is relevant.

Rather, the potential of the remaining 85% validates

engagement’s significance. The potential of this 85% can
translate into unprecedented breakthroughs, performances,
and discoveries that will shape the world for generations to
come. Even if engagement incrementally increases
throughout the globe, the impact on individual businesses,
large corporations, and interdependent economies will be
enormous.

At the micro level, an engaged employee will contribute

more to his tasks, his team, and his company. An engaged
manager will allocate resources and structure task design
more effectively. An engaged leader will better influence
her team and reorient her people toward a shared vision.
These micro improvements build upon one another and
permeate throughout an organization.

The connection is simple: An engaged leader creates a clear

and compelling picture; an engaged manager ensures that
her carpenters are building the frame and her photographers
are setting up the perfect lighting; an engaged employee is
committed to perfecting the molding or securing the
highest-quality camera for the picture-taking. Engagement
that originates from individuals within the organization
quickly catches fire and ignites various teams, different
departments, and overarching organizational initiatives.

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At the macro level, a more engaged organization can better

engage external stakeholders. Whether these stakeholders
are members of an organization’s supply chain, customers,
or relevant communities, they all benefit from a more
engaged organization.

When an organization itself is more engaged with its own

people and processes, it becomes more engaged with its
mission, objectives, and impact.

As the organization translates its engagement to its supply

chain, it can foster better relationships with suppliers,
ensure higher quality products and services, and better
align its overall operations and logistics to better serve both
supply chain partners and end consumers.

When organizations engage their customers, they can

solicit feedback, develop better solutions that alleviate
customer pain points, and transform their customers into a
community of advocates.

When organizations engage their relevant communities,

they become more socially responsible and responsive,
which allows them to leverage the rule of reciprocity. With
reciprocity, organizations engage customers and
communities in mutually beneficial relationships that
facilitate communication, commitment, and contributions
from both sides.

Outside of a singular organization, we can visualize

engagement on a larger, global scale. Organizations can
engage other organizations, governments, and industries, in
both a domestic and international scope. Economies can
engage other economies, societies can engage other
societies, and nations can engage other nations.

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Engagement, in its simplest and most refined form, is a

tangible display of interest in something. When you
show interest in a task, an idea, or an individual, you
automatically become more connected with the subject
of interest.

And notice the use of “tangible” – as you will discover

in this book, engagement is not just a feeling or an
abstract concept. Engagement is an observable
phenomenon that elevates both you and your area of
interest.

You become better at a task by practicing it more and

learning about different approaches to tackle the task at
hand.

You become better at understanding or implementing an

idea by broadening your perspective (and soliciting others’
perspectives), applying different nuances to your idea, and
engaging in trial-and-error to better enhance the reality of
your idea.

You become better at interacting with and understanding an

individual if you show genuine interest in that person’s life
or circumstance.

Just as organizations engage other organizations,

governments, and industries, YOU can engage every
individual part of your life, as well as every individual you
meet throughout your life.

The simple act of displaying interest in something creates a

connection. This connection multiplies throughout other
areas of your life and builds itself into your journey.

What Exactly Is Your Journey?

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Your journey is your mission. It’s where your purpose,

passion, and persistence (your 3 P’s) all coincide and move
you to pursue and achieve excellence in all facets of your
life.

Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, but the way you
prioritize and attack each hour depends upon your mindset,
habits, and behaviors, all of which derive from your
purpose, passion, and persistence. This is why your 3 P’s
are the foundation of your journey. The rocks, gravel, and
stepping stones that create your path. And as you’ll find
out soon, persistence is the cornerstone of your foundation.

In this book, we will discuss your mission and examine

how it plays out in your external reality. Your mission is
your ultimate source of engagement in all areas of your life,
including work, hobbies, and relationships.

We will also examine how a focused approach to

engagement in your career translates to your energy and
engagement in the personal and social components of your
life.

Are you now convinced of engagement’s relevance in your

life?

In different aspects of your life?

In the context of interpersonal interactions, and ultimately,

the world at large?

If so, then you’ve officially bought into the WHY of

engagement, and we can continue on to our analysis of
HOW engagement holistically impacts our livelihood and
wellbeing.

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If you’re still not convinced, I encourage you to keep

reading – maybe one of the proceeding chapters will
connect with you and add value to you.

As you embark on your journey, let me share my own

mission with you. After all, I want to walk the walk of my
journey, not just talk the talk. And maybe, just maybe, my
mission will strike a chord with you and cultivate an
enlightened journey of your own.

My life’s mission is to influence others (including YOU!)

to achieve their goals by homing in on their vision,
disciplining their daily habits, and prioritizing their value-
adding activities. In other words, my end game is to help
you lead a more purposeful, passionate, and persistent life.
Whether or not you’re currently convinced of
engagement’s relevance in your life, I believe that you can
utilize at least one insight from the upcoming chapters that
will enhance your vision, daily habits, and actions.

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Chapter 3: Your Mission Visualized

Let’s now cannonball into the pool of your mission! As

you navigate your journey, you’ll interact with other paths,
other people, and outside obstacles. Which makes it
critical for you to master yourself, and your mission, so you
can respond optimally to anything that comes across your
path. To illustrate your mission, as it applies singularly to
you and independent of your path’s natural surroundings,
we’re going to use an ordinary pool as an extraordinary
illustration of your mission.

Imagine the clear blue skies on a hot summer day, with the
sun glistening off your skin. You’re at your community
pool, which stretches about 25 meters. You’re enjoying
time with your family and looking forward to refreshing
yourself with a dip into the cool, peaceful waters contained
within the pool walls.

As you step into the pool, you notice a couple of swimmers

working on their technique. You can tell they’re swimmers
because of their goggles, caps, and attention to each stroke.

On the other side of the pool, you see a father showing his
daughter how to swim. The daughter is equipped with
orange floaties and matching orange goggles, but her most
vital equipment is the sound of her dad’s voice, and the
encouragement he provides every time she splashes and
drifts closer to him.

As you continue to look around, you also notice a couple of

young boys playing in the shallow end, partaking in the
infamous game of “Marco Polo.”

Imagine this pool as your mission. Remember, your

mission is where purpose, passion, and persistence all

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coincide and move you to pursue and achieve excellence in

all facets of your life.

Let’s take a deeper look at the people in the water. The

pool will represent each individual’s mission, and each
individual’s function in the pool will represent his or her
purpose. Our concept of a “mission” is fluid, dynamic, and
simply a foundation upon which our pursuits and behaviors
are based.

The Two Swimmers

One of the swimmers is 17 years old, trains for three hours

a day, and is on his way to compete at the next Olympics.
The other swimmer is a close friend who trains with the
future Olympian from time to time and helps keep time of
the Olympian’s splits during training.

The Olympian’s purpose is to accomplish a feat that has

never been attained before. He has a passion for swimming
and committing himself to arduous physical training. He
displays clear persistence in his daily workouts and dreams
of breaking the 100m freestyle in the upcoming Olympics.

His mission is aligned – his persistence in training, coupled

with his passion for swimming, will actualize his purpose
in accomplishing a previously unattained feat (breaking the
100m freestyle record and thereby owning the Olympic
record).

What about the Olympian’s friend?

Well, her purpose is to work with children and encourage

them to play nicely with one another. She has a passion for
swimming, as well as a passion for helping others achieve
their goals (as evidenced by her help in timing the

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Olympian’s splits). She displays persistence in her

volunteer work centered on mentoring underprivileged kids
at the local YMCA.

Her mission is aligned – her persistence in helping out kids

within her community, matched with her passions for
swimming and supporting others, will actualize her purpose
in working with children and encouraging them to play
nicely with one another (via engagements like teaching
swimming classes or running an outdoors summer camp
that incorporates swimming and other enticing activities).

For the Olympian, we can see the direct relationship

between his mission and the impact that he wants to
achieve.

For the friend, we can see that her mission is indirectly

connected with the impact that she ultimately wants to
achieve.

As we examine the father/daughter duo and the two young

boys, we will again discover that the entire “mission”
concept is fluid, dynamic, and simply a foundation upon
which our pursuits and behaviors are based.

The Father/Daughter Duo

The father’s purpose is to serve as a role model for his

daughter. He has a passion for outdoor activities and
creating unforgettable bonding moments with his child. He
displays persistence in the time, effort, and support that he
provides for his daughter on a daily basis.

His mission is aligned – his persistence in making time and

memories for his daughter, matched with his passions for
outdoor activities and creating bonding moments, will

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actualize his purpose in serving as a role model for his

daughter. The experience he’s creating for his daughter
right now, as she learns to float and swim, represents a
bonding moment he initiated by taking time away from his
lucrative online business. The father is utilizing the pool as
a way to build out his lifelong purpose by creating a
momentary intersection of his passions and persistence.

The Two Young Boys

Both share a purpose in exploring their creativity and

learning new skills. They both have a passion for frivolous
activity. They both are persistent in expressing themselves,
as they spend hours every day playing made-up games and
sports.

Each boy’s mission is aligned – persistence in self-

expression, coupled with passion for frivolity, will
actualize each boy’s purpose in exploring his creativity and
learning new skills.

The pool is a temporary environment in which the boys are

pursuing their purpose and passions with persistence.

After looking at the Olympian and his friend, the

father/daughter duo, and the two young boys, you can see
that the pool is a temporary environment for all parties
involved. After all, they will eventually leave the pool and
move on to other things in their day-to-day lives that also
require their purpose, passion, and persistence.

Remember that the whole “mission” concept is fluid,

dynamic, and simply a foundation upon which our pursuits
and behaviors are based.

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Each of the pool scenarios we discussed is malleable and

transferrable to other pursuits along our journeys. Just like
our brain’s neurons connect with each other and form
pathways that serve the brain, our pursuits connect with one
another to shape and reinforce our overarching mission in
life.

For instance, the future Olympian’s purpose is to

accomplish a feat that has never been attained before.
Along his journey of persistently pursuing his passion in
swimming, he may find that he simply cannot compete with
another up-and-coming swimmer who has a naturally
longer wingspan and better coaching at his disposal.

Were the future Olympian’s efforts fruitless? Absolutely

not.

By utilizing his passion and persistence to instill discipline

and productive habits, he realizes, over time, that he can
apply this same energy and diligence to new passions that
capture his attention.

In fact, as the Olympian attends college and gains a little

more life experience, he may embrace an unrivaled passion
for cancer research and work around-the-clock to derive a
cure for prostate cancer. Through his passion and
persistence in cancer research, he may discover the cure he
seeks and satiate his purpose in accomplishing a feat that
has never been attained before.

But does this mean that he has reached his peak and no
longer has anything to strive for, since he has fulfilled this
particular purpose? Absolutely not.

You see, his purpose in accomplishing an unprecedented

feat is not his lifelong purpose (or, in similar terms, his

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life’s mission). Instead, it is one of many purposes he

pursues in order to support his overarching mission. You
can have and fulfill many purposes along your journey, all
of which refine and reinforce your mission.

For example, a fire can serve different purposes in cooking

a hot dog, or heating a home, or burning your hair to
remove ticks. Sure, the fire can be used in various ways,
but its main function as a source of heat stays consistent
across each activity. The same concept applies to your
purposes and your mission. You’ll have various purposes
along your journey, throughout your professional, personal,
and social lives. But each purpose will serve to shape and
elevate your overarching mission in life, regardless of
circumstance.

Just like each neuron supports the network of the brain,

each purpose you pursue supports the network of your
life’s mission.

The Olympian’s initial network, contextually given by the

pool and his swimming, was one of many networks that
comprise his life’s mission.

The analysis we just discussed can be applied to the

Olympian’s friend, the father/daughter duo, and the two
boys. Instead of reiterating each of these individual
circumstances and reconnecting them to the same finding
we uncovered with the Olympian, let’s move on and focus
on how temporary pursuits, and their fit within your
mission, directly influence you throughout all parts of your
life.

Before we dive into this relationship, you may be

wondering what this particular Olympian’s life mission

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actually is. Well, his particular mission is to add value to

others by inspiring them to achieve their own “unknowns.”

In other words, he wants to accomplish challenging

endeavors that compel others to expand their own
understanding of what is truly possible in life. The
Olympian’s purpose in attaining an unprecedented feat,
whether in the pool or in the research lab, is one way to
support his mission.

In fact, the Olympian has another purpose in renovating his

local community’s recreation center. On top of that, the
Olympian has another purpose in starting a nonprofit that
builds schools in impoverished areas around the globe. The
Olympian’s various purposes support his overarching
mission.

I am explicitly differentiating between mission and purpose

because a “purpose” is temporary and relative, whereas a
mission is permanent, absolute, and everlasting.

Just look at a piece of paper.

If I need to take notes in a meeting, the purpose of the

paper is to capture my thoughts and others’ words. If I
need to work on an arts and crafts project with my son, the
purpose of the paper is to create an airplane that soars
through the living room. If I need to capture the attention
of my crush in math class, the purpose of the paper is to
grab her attention by balling up the piece of paper and
chucking it at her.

What is the mission of the paper?

The paper’s ultimate mission is to best serve the needs of

its user, whatever those needs may be.

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Although this example may be silly, it helps us understand

the difference between purpose and mission. A purpose
changes based on our context and on our experience,
whereas a mission provides us with a core and
unchangeable meaning, uncompromised by time, people,
and external events.

Now, let’s look at the relationship between temporary

purposes and one’s life mission, and how this relationship
can influence an individual throughout all parts of his life.

We’ve already illustrated how the Olympian’s temporary

purpose, given contextually within his Olympic pursuits,
actually shaped him to better fulfill his mission and other
purposes down the road, like when he found a cure for
prostate cancer.

Simultaneously, the Olympian leveraged his best practices

from swimming (such as the daily discipline, positive
mindset, and work ethic required to fulfill his
“unprecedented feat” purpose) to better approach and
tackle his other purposes. He labored consistently and
diligently as he moved on to discover new cancer
treatments. He utilized his disciplined behavior to
maneuver all the rigorous steps required to renovate his
community’s recreation center, which ultimately attracted
thousands of children for summer camp adventures and
after-school activities. He utilized his work ethic to
coordinate the construction of 15 schools in Africa and 12
schools in Central America. The Olympian’s temporary
purpose, given contextually within his Olympic pursuits,
translated and connected with other pursuits to better fulfill
the Olympian’s overarching mission in adding value to
others by inspiring them to achieve their own “unknowns.”
You could say that the Olympian shares many traits with
Joseph.

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Ultimately, the Olympian’s various purposes, shaped and

adjusted over time, support the pursuits responsible for
achieving his mission over his lifetime.

In goal setting, we don’t just set a lofty goal and then wish
it into reality. We derive an action plan that consists of
smaller goals, check points for feedback and adjustments,
and contingency measures.

Let’s transfer this methodology to “mission setting.” Once

you set your mission, you must derive your action plan that
consists of smaller purposes that align with your mission.
As you engage these purposes, you must align them with
passions and persistence that can transform the purposes
from thought into reality.

As you follow the path of your smaller purposes, you will

run into roadblocks, successes, and learnings that provide
you with feedback along the way. Accordingly, you can
adjust, consider contingencies, and better develop your
mindset and overall action plan to align your purposes,
passions, and persistence with your life’s mission. These 3
P’s are the foundation that support the mansion of your
mission, with persistence as the cornerstone. Whenever
purpose and passion feel lacking, you can always push
through your daily life by implementing persistence and
discipline. Your experiences, learnings, and instilled
behaviors along your journey can synergistically enhance
all of your pursuits and heighten the impact of your
mission.

Once you figure out your mission, you must engage in

“mission setting” to secure alignment amongst your
pursuits, which are formed by your purposes, passions, and
persistence.

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We will dive deeper into your mission, and the 3 P’s, in

proceeding chapters.

Now that we’ve established how your various pursuits can

contribute both to each another and to your overall mission,
let’s examine how this contribution carries over to all walks
of life, throughout your entire life.

Similar to how you can use experiences, learnings, and

instilled behaviors from one pursuit and translate them to
better execute a different pursuit, you can apply this
principle of transference to your professional, personal, and
social pursuits. Your professional, personal, and social
lives represent the lifelines to your mission.

Ultimately, your mission is comprised of your actions and

pursuits both within and between your professional,
personal, and social lifelines. The more intertwined and
related your lifelines, the more opportunities for shared
learnings, synergy, and application toward future actions
and pursuits.

You may be asking yourself, “Why divide your mission

into three “arbitrary” categories?”

That’s a good, legitimate question. And I have the answer!

Upon further reflection, these categories aren’t so arbitrary.

Your professional, personal, and social lives, or lifelines as
we’re calling them, truly capture all your thoughts, actions,
and environments at every point in your life.

Your professional lifeline captures your vocational

ambition, business network, and mission fulfillment.

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Your personal lifeline captures your avocational ambition,

mindset, and mission fulfillment.

Your social lifeline regards your various relationships, level

of influence, and mission fulfillment.

The three categories within each lifeline represent the

fundamentals. You have the professional, personal, and
social lifelines, followed by each of their three
fundamentals, followed by the 3 P’s (purpose, passion,
persistence), which make up your foundation. And, of
course, persistence is the cornerstone of your foundation.

Throughout this book, we’ll use the terms “lifeline,”

“fundamentals,” and “foundation” for ease of reference.
Additionally, these terms provide another exemplary visual
to illustrate your mission’s intricacies. The foundation is
needed to support the construction of your home. The
fundamentals represent the cement, paint, and everything
else needed to prop up your home. The lifelines are what
make your home a true home. Your work, your leisure, and
your friends/family transform your house into a genuine
home. And when all these pieces work together, your
mission becomes a limitless mansion, providing you with
many doors to open and rooms to enter, just like your
mission opens up new opportunity for you along your
journey.

When I described the fundamentals under each lifeline, did

you notice the emphasis on mission fulfillment?

This emphasis is both intentional and necessary.

Ultimately, mission fulfillment arises from the interactions
between your purpose, passions, and persistence. If you
don’t have mission alignment and fulfillment spanning
your three lifelines, you cannot sustain your journey.

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Besides mission fulfillment, your three lifelines naturally

overlap with one another. Just like all the fundamentals
within your professional lifeline must work with one
another to support your lifeline, each of the three lifelines
must work with one another to support your overarching
mission. Your mission captures your three lifelines, the
three fundamentals within each lifeline, and the
foundational 3 P’s that reinforce your mission at its core.

All three of your lifelines incorporate mission fulfillment

into their structure. They also direct all of their smaller,
fundamental features towards your life’s mission. As a
result, you can reap the benefits of purpose, passion, and
persistence that effectively reap what you’ve sown in your
“mission setting.”

These last few paragraphs articulate the relationship

between all your lifelines and how critical it is for you to
connect your lifelines through your experiences and
reflections. As you’ll see throughout this book, the
concepts of connectedness, synergy, and experiential
learning are crucial in fulfilling your mission.

In the next chapter of this book, we will deep-dive into

each of the three lifelines so we can better understand what
they are and what they mean. Afterwards, we’ll connect
your lifelines to your mission by identifying them as the
critical points that make your mission viable. Naturally,
we’ll proceed and discuss how you can determine your
mission. I’ll introduce you to my “mission setting”
framework that will help you secure alignment amongst
your lifelines and their fundamentals, as formed by your
purposes, passions, and persistence. Once we understand
the importance of our missions and how to engage our
lifelines through their various components, we can truly

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connect our missions with our engagement in work, life,

and everything else.

For now, let’s move into a deep dive of our three lifelines:
professional, personal, and social. As we progress in our
understanding of these lifelines, we can better comprehend
the magnitude of our mission.

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Chapter 4: Your Three Lifelines

As discussed in the prior chapter, your mission is broken

down into its professional, personal, and social lifelines.
Each lifeline, by itself, represents a vital part of your
engagement and mission fulfillment. Collectively, the
three lifelines synergistically represent your overall
engagement levels in all aspects of your life.

As we discuss each lifeline in detail, take the time to reflect

on your own life and begin to differentiate between your
three lifelines. I suggest you write the names of each
lifeline on a piece of paper, and proceed to describe the
parts of your life that fall into each corresponding lifeline.

As you reflect and articulate your reflections on paper, you

will begin to notice patterns and trends that connect your
lifelines and ultimately connect your understanding of how
the lifelines interplay with one another and comprise your
mission. Even if you don’t write down your reflections,
take the time to think through your experiences and their
impact on your lifelines. With reflection comes wisdom,
realignment, and improved action.

Professional Lifeline

Let’s start off with your professional lifeline, which

connects your vocational ambition, business network, and
mission fulfillment. Your professional lifeline is the
pipeline to your career, which serves to sustain your
livelihood. Without a functional professional lifeline, you
cannot achieve full engagement in your working life, which
trickles over into your engagement and participation levels
in other parts of your life. Your professional lifeline
provides the foundation that offers you the resources and

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means to support yourself, your other lifelines, and your

ultimate mission.

Your career represents a material amount of time, energy,

and progress that adds value to your mission and the
amount of success you achieve over your lifespan. The
WHY behind the professional lifeline is quite simple: this
lifeline explicitly provides the path to your “calling” and
directly manifests the tangible fulfillment of your life’s
mission. This lifeline validates your purpose and the
amount of resources required to realize your professional
output. Your career helps drive your calling, which is the
key component of your vocational ambition. When you
transition from a job, to a career, to your calling, you are
ultimately transitioning from an income, to a livelihood, to
a motivating purpose for providing value and discovering
meaning in your work. Your calling is the cornerstone of
your vocational ambition – the closer you orient your work
towards your calling, the closer you become in fulfilling
your vocational ambition.

Your vocational ambition is essentially your calling in life;

more specifically, it is the driving factor that makes your
work meaningful. Companies that are purpose-driven are,
on average, more profitable than companies that are solely
profit-driven[2].

Likewise, people who are purpose-driven in their work, as

opposed to solely salary-driven or promotion-driven, may
similarly find more success with their mission and overall
life engagement.

Instead of focusing on finding happiness at work,

individuals should strive to discover meaning in their
callings by developing their foundational understanding of
how they can leverage their work as a means of both

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impacting others and engaging their vocational ambition

completely.

If you already know your calling, I commend you!

Knowing your calling takes a heightened level of self-
awareness. As you progress throughout your career, you
should take the time to provide yourself with feedback on
how well your calling is aligned with your professional
lifeline and overall mission.

Many of the aches and pains that individuals experience

throughout their careers can be alleviated by either
readjusting the pursuit of their calling or by simply
reframing their perception of work as a meaningful
endeavor that is greater than the work itself. This
perception shift is significant, on two fronts.

First, when you orient your work as something meaningful,

you become more engaged with your calling, and
ultimately, with your overarching mission. You become
more in-tune with the elements of purpose, passion, and
persistence that bring your calling to life and enhance your
overall engagement levels throughout various aspects of
your life.

Second, as you recognize that your work is greater than its

current form, you can draw parallels in your own life and
recognize that you, as a person, are greater than your
current form.

When you realize your potential and target different goals

to help reach your potential, what you’re actually doing is
engaging in mission setting! Once you set your mission,
you can fully engage all three of your overarching lifelines.
As you alleviate the discrepancy between your current state
and your potential, you soon discover what parts of your

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calling need to be changed, what parts need to be

heightened, and what parts should be removed all together.

Don’t worry – as promised, we’ll discuss mission setting in

more detail later in this book.

If you don’t already know your calling, I challenge you to

think about your life’s mission and to reflect on your
current vocational ambition. Are you performing work that
is meaningful? Does your work align with your mission?
Do you find purpose in your work? Are you passionate
about your work and persistent in cultivating the impact of
your work?

Once you fully identify your calling and answer these

questions, you can engage your professional lifeline and,
therefore, engage your whole life more emphatically than
you ever have before.

Let’s transition from your calling, or your vocational

ambition, to your business network.

By business network, I’m talking about your level of

influence within your vocation. This level of influence
includes your associates, your associations, and your
personal brand.

In a game of basketball, you can move the basketball much

quicker by passing it off to teammates as opposed to
dribbling down the court yourself. Similarly, the associates
in your business network serve to expedite the impact of
your work and add value to the meaning behind your work.

As you build relationships with associates and combine

efforts with them through different projects and
interactions, you can discover more meaning in your work

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by broadening your perspective and understanding how

your work aligns with the work of others. Effectively, you
step outside your own mission and allow your lifelines to
synergize with your associates’ lifelines.

This type of synergy is infinitely scalable – in fact, it is

only limited by how many associates you engage and how
deeply you engage them. The more meaningful your
interactions you’re your associates, the more engaged you
become in your professional lifeline. And, for an added
kicker, your associates become more engaged in their
professional lifelines as well. What we have here is not just
a win-win, but a win multiplied by each associate in your
network, whether it’s 50 or 5,000.

Your associations represent another layer of your

connectedness with associates, your calling, and overall
engagement in your professional lifeline. Essentially, your
associations represent the groups and the connections you
engage within your calling to add even more meaning to
your vocation.

These associations go beyond individual associates and

present you with additional opportunities to expand the
scope of your mission and, consequently, your profession.
Examples of associations include out-of-office sports
leagues, nonprofit board involvement, and employee
resource groups.

Out-of-office sports leagues reinforce your working

relationships with associates. Nonprofit board involvement
provides you with the opportunity to partner with your
local community and realize additional avenues to expand
your calling. Employee resource groups provide you the
opportunity to blend diversity, special interests, and
leadership within the workplace.

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As you integrate your unique interests into your work

environment, you automatically enhance your engagement
level by bringing more of your full self to work. By
bringing your complete presence, and personhood, to work,
you allow yourself to naturally add more meaning to your
vocation by embracing authenticity, exuding transparency,
and engaging more of your lifelines! Your full self requires
enhanced lifeline integration and synergies, both within
your professional lifeline and between all three lifelines.
As you’ll discover later in this book, we can simultaneously
engage our professional, personal, and social lifelines both
at work and at play.

Now let’s look at your personal brand, which is the third

component of your business network.

Your personal brand is your unique identifier within your

vocation. As you build relationships and progress in your
career, you develop a brand that reflects who you are, the
quality of your work, and how you value others. Your
personal brand is a culmination of your reputation and the
type of impact you consistently deliver to both your
associates and associations.

You control your reputation, since your reputation is a

direct result of your character, integrity, and service to
others. You control your impact, since your impact is the
tangible fruition of your calling. You control both your
reputation and impact!

Sure, there may be temporary periods where an associate’s

unfair perception of you negatively affects your reputation.
There may be times where your impact, both in your
vocation and in your business network, is too implicit for
others to recognize. However, given appropriate time and
consistency in your branding, you can solidify your true

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reputation and level of impact. Unfair perceptions become

isolated and irrelevant to the overwhelming evidence of
your true reputation, and your level of impact becomes
more comprehensible as you work more extensively with
your associates.

Ultimately, your personal brand influences how you engage

your associates and associations. Your personal brand
requires you to engage both your vocation and your
business network with your full attention and dedicated
effort to ensure consistency in your reputation and level of
impact.

Don’t fall victim to sacrificing your reputation by behaving

uncharacteristically in a regrettable 15 minutes of
frustration or disservice. The tiniest inconsistency in your
behavior can forever taint both your reputation and impact,
which both relate to the fruition of your calling. To avoid
this fate, heightened engagement levels are required to
provide consistency in all things related to your reputation,
impact, and overarching personal brand.

With an understanding of your calling and your business

network, let’s transition into your mission fulfillment.

Recall that all three of your lifelines (professional,

personal, and social) incorporate mission fulfillment as a
means of ensuring that you incorporate your mission into
all aspects of your life, as provided by the various goals
you execute and disciplined efforts you implement
consistently.

Consistency, again, is key.

Whatever your mission, you must align your three lifelines

to fully realize and fulfill your mission. Since your mission

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is a synergetic offspring of your professional, personal, and

social lifelines, you must explicitly detail how you plan to
utilize each of your lifelines as a means of fulfilling your
mission. This plan must include how you use each
individual lifeline to actualize your mission, as well as how
you use the relatedness of all three lifelines to add even
more value to your mission. Once you tackle your lifelines
individually, you can develop a clearer picture of how your
integrated lifelines can further reinforce your mission.

Within the context of your professional lifeline, you should

incorporate various considerations into your mission
fulfillment component. Simply put, you must consider
your calling, business network, and their fit in supporting
your life’s mission. This “fit” component is where your
mission alignment, goal setting, and disciplined efforts
bring your professional lifeline to life.

Naturally, this “fit” component is also the toughest part of

your professional lifeline to capture. As you contemplate
your fit, I implore you to reconsider the illustrative
examples, provided earlier in this book, that demonstrated
how different people used the pool to align their purpose,
passion, and persistence. These examples showed that your
pursuits are fluid, adaptable, and serve a particular purpose
by deliberately connecting passion with persistence. You
can apply this line of thinking to your mission fulfillment
(in all three of your lifelines) by viewing “persistence” as
your disciplined efforts, your “particular purpose” and
“passion” as facets of goal setting, and your conceptual
understanding of adaptability as a means of continually
aligning your overarching mission with your professional
pursuits.

As you become more comfortable with framing your

mission alignment in terms of your calling, business

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network, and their fit in supporting your life’s mission, you

will realize that mission alignment is nothing more than
ensuring that you are engaging your professional lifeline.
As you engage your professional lifeline, you can more
aptly leverage your calling and your business network as
disciplined efforts that sustain the professional lifeline
itself.

As you reach and set new goals within your professional

lifeline that coincide with these disciplined efforts, you
develop a stronger sense of how your professional lifeline
ties into your overarching life mission. And bingo! Your
mission fulfillment naturally develops from connecting the
individual components of your professional lifeline with
your life’s mission. You can bridge any gaps in this
connection by appropriately realigning either your mission
fulfillment or individualized efforts within your calling or
business network.

Not only is consistency key, but as the book’s title

suggests, engagement in your professional lifeline
ultimately drives better engagement in connecting and
realizing the relatedness between your professional lifeline
and your overarching life mission, as well as the
relatedness between your professional lifeline and your
other two lifelines.

Much of what was just expressed across the last few

paragraphs applies to how you should approach your
mission fulfillment within your personal and social
lifelines. I highly suggest you refer to these paragraphs as
we discuss your remaining lifelines in detail.

Personal Lifeline

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Let’s now transition entirely out of the professional lifeline

and focus on your personal lifeline.

Your personal lifeline relates your avocational ambition,

mindset, and mission fulfillment.

Avocational ambition is comparable to vocational

ambition, in that your avocational ambition is the driving
factor that makes your recreational pursuits meaningful.

Remember that, with vocational ambition, your “calling” is

responsible for making your vocational ambition
meaningful; likewise, your “hobbies” are responsible for
making your avocational ambition meaningful.

Your hobbies can range anywhere from philanthropic

endeavors to artwork creation. Ultimately, your hobbies
are the tangible fruits of your avocational ambition because
they represent the culmination of your time, efforts, and
interests outside of the workplace. Your hobbies naturally
develop from your preferences and indicate where you
ultimately spend a significant portion of your recreational
time.

If you don’t currently identify with any particular hobbies,

I’d suggest you reflect on how you currently allocate your
time and where you would like to allocate that time in the
future. And if you discover that one of your current
hobbies may be undesirable for you, such as extensive
television viewing, you can reallocate your time and efforts
appropriately by determining how you want to use your
recreational time to add value to yourself and others.

You must align your hobbies with your overall avocational

ambition. Just like your work must align with your
vocational ambition, your hobbies must align with your

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avocational ambition in order to optimize your actions and

commitments.

What is your avocational ambition?

Are you interested in helping alleviate poverty in your

community? What about providing homes for abused
animals? Or maybe you’d like to join a CrossFit gym to
improve your health and meet new people?

Once you determine your areas of interest, I recommend

you develop a one-sentence statement that identifies your
overall avocational ambition, so that you can reference it
and align your hobbies with your ambition. It’s okay if you
have multiple interests! Just find a way to connect them
under one major theme; if that’s not feasible, then convert
each interest into its own statement and compile your
statements into your overarching avocational ambition.

Your statement doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. Sure,

don’t let me stop you from writing: “My avocational
ambition is to rid the world of poverty.” If that’s
something that drives your avocation, then by all means,
write that down! An equally valid statement would look
like: “My avocational ambition is to coach my son’s
basketball team and directly impact each basketball player
on the team.” What’s most important is that you have an
awareness of the meaning behind your avocation, which
will allow you to better execute your hobbies and
additional pursuits.

Once you have a clear avocational ambition, you can better

select your respective hobbies that support this ambition.
And better yet, you can weed out current hobbies or
involvements that do not support your avocational
ambition.

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For instance, let’s take the basketball coach as an example.

To support his avocational ambition in becoming a coach,
he can cut out one hour of TV time every night. In
replacement, he’ll read the latest books on coaching and
leadership, which will allow him to more effectively lead
and influence his son’s basketball team.

Ultimately, your avocational ambition allows you to

productively, and proactively, engage your time and efforts
outside the workplace.

As you become more engaged in your vocational ambition,

as well as follow your calling, you become more engaged
in your work by clarifying your calling and making your
work meaningful. Similarly, your recreational
engagements will provide you with additional meaning,
energy, and fulfillment within your avocational ambition.
If you follow the methodology we just discussed, you’ll
gain immense clarity as you develop an avocational
ambition statement and identify value-adding hobbies that
support your avocation.

And just like the three lifelines can synergistically add

value to one another, both your vocational and avocational
ambitions feed off one another. Your increased
engagement and fulfillment in your work require you to
bring your full self to work; as you bring your full self to
work, you better align your own energies, focus, and
productivity. Your enhancements in these areas translate to
your avocational ambition, in the sense that you’ll have
more energy to pursue your hobbies, clarity of mind in
developing your avocational ambition, and ability to both
effectively and intentionally add value to your avocational
ambition.

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As you become more engaged and fulfilled by your

avocation, you can translate additional energies and
meaning to your vocation. Your vocation and avocation
are not separate – they rely on one another to increase your
engagement in both. In turn, your elevated engagement in
both adds more meaning to your life as a whole, which
ultimately represents the connection between your
professional and personal lifelines.

In more direct terms, your avocational ambition determines

how you realign your recreational pursuits. Your
realignment automatically increases engagement in order to
ensure the fruition of your ambition. As you become more
engaged in your avocation, you become more engaged in
your vocation because you experience heightened levels of
fulfillment that begin to permeate all your endeavors in life.

This same methodology equally applies to how your

vocational ambition, or your calling, ultimately allows you
to become more engaged in your vocation and translates
over to your avocation through increased engagement and
fulfillment encountered in the workplace. Your avocational
ambition is just as important as your vocational ambition,
because your avocation adds just as much meaning to you,
and to others, as your vocation.

Your avocational ambition allows you to impact yourself

and your community through your dedicated efforts, time,
and involvement. Just like your calling, you must choose
your hobbies wisely! Take the time to consider your
avocational ambition and align your recreation you’re your
ambition in order to better realize your engagement and
fulfillment levels. This train of thought mirrors how you
must intentionally consider your vocational ambition and
align your work with your calling in order to truly engage
yourself in your work. Vocation and avocation are both

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necessary for your development, and they reinforce the

need to develop a life mission that is fully supported and
integrated into all your lifelines.

Let’s transition from avocational ambition to mindset. The

topic of mindset has been readily articulated in various
works that range in their depiction and application of the
mindset variable. One such work is Mindset: The New
Psychology of Success[3], which brilliantly differentiates
between growth and fixed mindsets, and relates the impact
that each maintains in the lives of the individuals who
subscribe to each mentality.

I will provide you with a brief discussion of the mindset

variable, but I encourage you to read other literature and
research that can more aptly detail the overwhelming power
of your mindset and how that power trickles into your
work, play, and everything else.

Ultimately, your life comes down to both your perspective

and your attitude, which frame your mindset. Your
perspective sets the stage for your life, and your attitude
determines how you choose to act on your stage.

Life is more about what happens to us than what we

actually do ourselves, right?

Well, not exactly. Life really isn’t about what happens to

us. Life is about what happens within us as a response
to what happens to us.

It is true that we cannot control much of what occurs

externally; however, we can always control how we
respond and how we orient ourselves to cope with, change,
or conquer what we’ve been dealt. How we respond to the

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external environment ultimately seals how engaged,

successful, and fulfilled we become.

Good news for us – we can always control how we

respond, which is the driving factor that allows us to take
ownership of our lives and holds us accountable to our
mission. As Charles Swindoll beautifully reminded us, life
truly is “10% what happens to you and 90% how you react
to it.”

How do you choose to react to life? Remember, you have

full control over your reaction. Take ownership of your life
and decide, intentionally, how you want to live your life.

Everything begins with your perspective. Your perspective

structures your thoughts, which frame your decisions,
which enable your habits and behaviors. Intangible
thoughts really do reveal themselves in our tangible actions
and disciplined efforts. Therefore, it is critical for you to
control your perspective and continually align it with your
mission and goals.

As you hone your perspective and reorient your habits with

your thoughts, you can better implement your disciplined
efforts that drive the realized development of your life’s
mission.

You hold the reins to your perspective and are responsible

for owning it, modifying it when necessary, and always
realigning it with your mission and goals when necessary.

Similarly, you maintain complete control over your

attitude. Your attitude reveals your overall approach and
response to life’s provisions. Your attitude influences how
you carry out your disciplined efforts and ultimately
impacts your level of success in fulfilling your mission.

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Your attitude can either limit your efforts, or empower

them, by impacting how you leverage your perspective,
how you view yourself, and how you view others.

A poor attitude leads to a poor fruition of your perspective,

a poor self-image, and poor relationships with other people.
However, a rich attitude leads to a rich fruition of your
perspective, a rich self-image, and rich relationships with
other people.

How do you approach your disciplined efforts every day?

On a broader scale, how do you approach life? Do you
approach life with skepticism, negativity, or uncertainty?
Or do you approach life with energy, enthusiasm, and
humility?

HOW you approach your vocation, avocation, and all your

disciplined efforts impacts the manifestations of your
perspective and your life’s mission, which serves as your
ultimate WHY.

Be cognizant of your current perspective and attitude, and

ensure that you align them daily with your mission and
goals so that you can maximize the tangible impact of your
mission.

Let’s transition from mindset to mission fulfillment.

Many of the points I previously made regarding your

professional lifeline’s mission fulfillment are equally
applicable to your personal lifeline’s mission fulfillment.

Within the context of your personal lifeline, you should

incorporate various considerations into your mission
fulfillment, just like you did with your professional lifeline.
You should consider your avocation, mindset, and their fit

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in supporting your life’s mission. Recall that this “fit”

component is where your mission alignment, goal setting,
and disciplined efforts bring your personal lifeline to life.

I must reiterate the following point to you, since it applies

equally to all your lifelines and connects many concepts
we’ve covered thus far in this book: you can apply this line
of thinking, associated with the “fit” between your mission,
goals, and disciplined efforts, to your mission fulfillment
by viewing “persistence” as your disciplined efforts, your
“particular purpose” and “passion” as facets of goal setting,
and your conceptual understanding of mission fluidity as a
means of aligning your overarching mission with your
professional pursuits.

Your avocation, perspective, and attitude must align with

your mission and your other overarching lifelines in order
to fruitfully realize the synergies throughout your journey.

I’ve emphasized the idea of fulfillment repeatedly

throughout our particular coverage of the personal lifeline.
My reason for doing so is to reinforce the idea that your
fulfillment does not stop once you leave the office for the
night.

On the other hand, your fulfillment does not and cannot

only result from what you pursue in your personal time.
Too often we see people who throw their entire lives into
their work, and identify their purpose (and consequent
fulfillment) as a sole output of their vocation. We also see
many people who find no value in their work, who
effectively zone out for forty hours a week and leverage
their personal time as the sole driver of their purpose,
passions, and persistence.

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Neither of these approaches will lead to engagement and

fulfillment levels that truly nourish your appetite for
realizing your life’s mission, which incorporates your
vocation, avocation, and other factors as equally needed
contributors to your fulfillment.

Your vocation is more than just work – your vocation is

your calling, from which you derive meaning.

Similarly, your avocation is more than just play time – your

avocation is your opportunity to drive continued value and
impact through your hobbies and recreation.

You must pursue fulfillment in both your vocational and

avocational ambitions because fulfillment measures the
amount of success you achieve through your individual
lifelines and your life’s overarching mission. As you fulfill
the individual components of your lifelines, and similarly
reach fulfillment across your lifelines, you will ultimately
fulfill your life’s mission, which is the entire reason for
your journey in the first place! You must fulfill your life’s
mission and actively engage your journey in order to
optimize the use of your talents, your value, and your
impact.

And how can you ensure fulfillment in your personal

lifeline?

Just like you ensure fulfillment in your professional lifeline

… by engaging your personal lifeline completely!

As you engage your avocation and your mindset, you will

reach fulfillment levels that you never experienced
previously. And as you exercise more engagement and
realize heightened fulfillment in your personal lifeline, you
will become more engaged and fulfilled in your

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professional lifeline as a byproduct of your enhanced

personal lifeline.

Once you engage an individual lifeline more fully, you

allow yourself to engage other lifelines by embracing more
energy, intent, and consequent fulfillment. Both
engagement and fulfillment are scalable, fully transferrable,
and synergistic – your professional and personal lifelines
play off one another in order to enhance your fulfillment
separately, collectively, and as part of your larger journey.

As you will see shortly, your social lifeline also reaps the
benefits of the engagement and fulfillment you reap from
your professional and personal lifelines!

If you remember one thing from the relationship between

your professional and personal lifelines, remember that you
must engage both lifelines in order to engage and fulfill
your life’s mission – you cannot be a one-trick pony and
expect to win the Triple Crown (and, conveniently, you
also have three overarching lifelines to win over!).

Social Lifeline

Let’s now transition entirely out of your personal lifeline

and explore your social lifeline.

Your social lifeline relates your various relationships, level

of influence, and mission fulfillment.

Recall our discussion on the business network’s context

within your professional lifeline: the business network
regards your level of influence within your vocation, which
includes your associates, your associations, and your
personal brand. As you can see from our understanding of
the business network, we already experience the synergies

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between business relationships and level of influence

within our professional lifeline!

It is crucial to understand not only how the three

overarching lifelines interplay with one another, but how
the individual fundamentals of each lifeline relate to other
lifelines. This interplay assures that you are aligned
throughout your journey, and that you can better apply
learnings and experiences across all your lifelines,
fundamentals, and foundation.

Within the context of your social lifeline, your various

relationships extend past your business relationships, as
identified by your business network. Your various
relationships regard the level of connectedness you share
with your significant other, your family, and your friends.
More broadly, your various relationships also include your
interactions with others who are inside your sphere of
influence, which include acquaintances, followers, and
others who are impacted by you.

The heart of the relational component of your social lifeline

rests not so much in your relationships themselves, but in
the way that you approach relationships with others. The
way you approach relationships impacts the strength of
your connections, how you make others feel, and how you
influence other people. Given the emphasis on how you
approach relationships as opposed to the precise categories
of your relationships, you can understand that, ultimately,
anyone you interact with, touch, or even spot across the
street are all impacted by the relational component of your
social lifeline.

Let’s break down such a broad scope and focus on how

your approach to relationships impacts the strength of your

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connections, how you make others feel, and how you

influence other people.

Tim Sanders reminds us that “your network is your net

worth.” Therefore, the level of your net worth is materially
driven by the strength of your connections. As you relate
to people and develop strong ties with them, you build
rapport, trust, and opportunity for synergistic engagements.
This opportunity presents itself in various forms, but
ultimately identifies the potential for you and your
connections to leverage one another for mutually beneficial
personal or professional interactions.

For instance, imagine your friend is struggling to

understand why her significant other is pulling away from
her. When your friend approaches you and vents her
frustrations, you provide a listening ear that consoles her.
As your friend leaves, you suggest she be open with her
significant other about her frustrations and engage him in
dialogue. Long story short, your friend and her significant
other hash out their misunderstandings and now benefit
from heightened communication channels.

Why is this example meaningful? Because it’s so powerful

and aligned with what we just discussed! Clearly you and
your friend have built a level of rapport that allows her to
trust you with her feelings regarding her romantic
relationship. Given her trust in you, she seeks your
consolation and benefits from your individualized attention,
your time, and your caring suggestion.

In turn, she approaches her significant other, explains how

she’s feeling, and allows him to open up about his feelings
as well. As they engage one another in intimate discussion,
they come to realize the underlying issue and work to
resolve it together. This type of engagement allows both of

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them to come together and strengthens the vulnerability,

intimacy, and trust that they share with one another.

And for you? Well, you have the benefit of helping out a
friend in need and realizing the impact that you directly had
on two people, which further validates your social lifeline,
your larger mission, and the value that you bring to others.

From this example, we can see how the strength of your

connection with one person materially impacts both you
and your counterpart. We can see how crucial it is to make
others feel respected, appreciated, and cared for. We can
see how you influence your immediate connections, as well
as their connections, simply by developing your
relationships with rapport and trust. As a result, synergistic
engagements are bound to happen, which add value to you,
your connections, and your connections’ connections. A
virtuous cycle of connectedness arises!

The previous example can equally apply to professional or

vocational developments that naturally derive from your
connectedness with others. For instance, if you’re a writer,
and your friend is working on a freelance web design
project, you can offer your assistance on the editing and
content creation components of his project. In turn, you
and your friend can leverage one another’s skill sets for
future projects, and build out each of your business
networks by engaging more people who require your
abilities.

Just look at how fluid your three overarching lifelines

actually are! The personal impacts the professional, and
the professional impacts the personal. The professional and
the social are truly related, as evidenced by the interplay
between your business network and the relational
component of your social lifeline. The personal and the

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social are also related, as evidenced by the connection

between your avocational ambition and your level of
influence. Every one of your relationships and interactions
presents an opportunity for connectedness, personal
growth, and (a)vocational manifestation.

We’ve covered how the strength of your connections is

impacted by how you approach relationships, and that the
strength of your connections does impact how you make
others feel and how you influence others. We will now
connect them with HOW you should approach relationships
in order to effectively leverage these two strengths, as well
as the strength of your connections themselves.

Let’s dive in to how you make others feel.

Maya Angelou could not have been more correct when she
said, “people will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made
them feel.” Emotion is a powerful driver of human
interaction and behavior, and we cannot ignore others’
emotions if we want to connect with them, respect them,
and influence them.

I want to point out the final part of the quote.

With an emphasis on how you make THEM feel. No

matter what you do to try and help someone out, no matter
what you feel when you interact with someone, you must
realize that your actions and your own emotion do NOT
matter when it comes to how others feel.

That’s right, read that sentence one more time.

Your actions and your own emotion do NOT matter when it

comes to how others feel.

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Obviously, you should approach others with positive

emotions and meaningful actions that add value. However,
what truly matters in your interactions is how others feel
during and after their interactions with you. This means
that you must understand what the other person needs, the
other person’s current emotional state, and how the other
person will respond to you.

As Steven Covey brilliantly noted, “seek first to

understand, then to be understood.” When you show
genuine interest in others and put their needs above your
own, you develop trust, openness, and vulnerability with
others. As people trust you more and open up to you, your
relationships strengthen and you become a valuable
contributor to the thoughts, behaviors, and actions of
others.

This contributive nature, created by your ability to make

others feel respected, valued, and cared for, translates
directly to how you influence others. Mind you,
influencing others is not about what you can get from
others, or how much power you can exercise over your
friends and family.

Remember, you only become a valuable contributor to

others’ thoughts, behaviors, and actions when you place
their needs above your own, and show them that you are
genuinely interested in them. Therefore, as an extension of
this approach, your influence on others must align with
how you’ve gained your contributive status with them.
How you influence others is directly related to how you
make them feel. You influence others by actively listening
to them, understanding their missions, goals, and habits,
and challenging them to improve particular components of
their lives, so that they can better achieve their own
missions.

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But what benefit does this selfless, altruistic approach to

influencing provide for you?

As you build influence with others, you effectively impact

the way they frame their mission, set their goals, and
discipline their daily efforts. You’re extending outside
your own path and effectively shaping others’ journeys.
Just like your three overarching lifelines synergistically
support your life’s mission, you can synergistically realize
the added benefits of engaging both your journey and the
journeys of all people with whom you have an influence.

When you influence, you’re essentially engaging the

mission and lifelines of the person you’re impacting. Your
lifelines, and ultimately, your life’s mission, can mutually
benefit by leveraging others’ lifelines, experiences, and
missions.

The more people you influence, the more lifelines you can
leverage to both enhance your own journey and better
realize your own mission. In turn, the people in your circle
of influence can leverage your unique lifelines and
fundamentals to benefit their own. This is the epitome of
win-win relationship building!

Influence is the external manifestation of your mission – as

your lifelines build off one another’s learnings and
synergies, your entire mission builds off the learnings and
interactional synergies of others’ lifelines! The deeper you
can influence an individual, and the wider your breadth of
influence amongst others, the more you can refine and
elevate your life’s mission (and the missions of those in
your circle of influence!).

Your circle of influence is comprised of all people with

whom you have influence.

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Within your professional lifeline, your circle of influence is

identified by your “business network.”

Within your personal lifeline, your circle of influence is

identified by your hobbies that support your avocational
ambition.

Within your social lifeline, your circle of influence is

identified by your various relationships and your level of
influence itself.

In order to effectively develop your circle of influence, and

ultimately, uplift all your relationships, you must capitalize
on HOW you approach relationships.

You must approach relationships by considering how you

make others feel, and how you influence others. You
should approach relationships by placing the other person’s
needs above your own. This type of humility demonstrates
trust and vulnerability that allow the other person to be
open with you, which ultimately buys you into the other
person’s thoughts, behaviors, and actions. As you
contribute to others’ thoughts, behaviors, and actions, your
lifelines stand to engage others’ lifelines, which magnifies
your mission, goals, and disciplined efforts (as others’
missions and goals become magnified as well).

Engaging with your own mission allows you to engage

others’ missions. When you engage your own life, you
automatically begin to engage others’ lives as well.
And, in turn, others can engage your life and add value
to your own mission, as you add value to theirs.
Synergy within your lifelines parallels the synergy that
arises from your engaged interactions with engaged
people.

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The strength of your connections reveals your ultimate

level of influence. Whether you have little, moderate, or
immense influence depends on how you approach
relationships, which is a byproduct of how you make others
feel and how you influence others.

And the more influence you build with one person, the
better you become at influencing the next person, and the
next person, and the next person, until your circle of
influence reaches thousands of people directly and millions
of people indirectly. How you approach relationships, and
the strength of your relationships, interplay with one
another and contribute to your level of influence.

The stronger one connection becomes, the stronger your

consequent connections become, which constitute your
level of influence. Which is exactly how your overarching
lifelines behave – the stronger one of them becomes, the
stronger your overarching mission becomes. There is
strength in numbers, AND there is strength in the depth of
connection with each of your connections.

Your ultimate level of influence builds upon the strength of

your connections, as provided by how you approach
relationships and how you create value with other people.
Your level of influence is only as limited as the value that
you place on others and your relationships.

Relationships are not just a one-and-done type of deal –

you must constantly influence others by constantly valuing
them, valuing your relationship with them, and valuing
their relationships with others. All of these different
“value” components arise from the intersection of your
approach to relationships and the strength of those
relationships, which finally brings the connectedness of
your relationships, and your influence, full circle.

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Your relationships are only as valuable as your influence in

those relationships, because your influence is what drives
the tangible fruit of your social lifeline. Your level of
influence directly impacts the development of your
mission, the missions of those within your circle of
influence, and the missions of all parties involved. Your
level of influence and your circle of influence, which
represents the true level of your influence, embody the
“calling” of your social lifeline.

Stepping outside of the social lifeline itself, we can see

other variables at play.

For instance, your mindset, which is comprised of your

perspective and attitude, materially shapes how you
approach others. Your mindset, as a function of your
personal lifeline, must align itself with your social lifeline
in order to achieve better influence. Not only does your
social lifeline add value to others’ lifelines, but your
personal lifeline actually adds value to your social lifeline
and greatly determines both how you approach
relationships and, consequently, how successfully you
influence others.

This relatedness illustrates a vital point: just like your

mission can only be fulfilled through an integrated mix of
lifelines, fundamentals, and foundation, your social lifeline
can only be fulfilled through integrating your mission with
others’ lifelines and missions.

Your three overarching lifelines, which comprise your

mission, are comprised of individual fundamentals that all
maintain their own purpose, passion, and persistence.

As you align all your fundamentals within your overarching

lifelines, you can better fulfill your life’s mission, establish

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your goals, and execute your disciplined, daily efforts. You

can aptly apply learnings and experiences from your
lifelines in order to better integrate them and synergistically
add value to your overall life’s mission. Better
engagement, integration, and elevation of your three
overarching lifelines will elevate the value-add of your
mission.

Similarly, as you interact with others in your social life, as

identified by your various relationships and your circle of
influence, you can further elevate your own mission by
applying the learnings, experiences, and synergies
exhibited in the manifestation of others’ missions. And as
you deepen your connection with others and expand your
circle to more people, you can leverage even more
learnings, experiences, and synergies that continue to uplift
your mission. Why not speed up your learning curve by
learning from others’ experiences and insights? That way,
you can save yourself some time and energy by avoiding
similarly undesirable experiences and consequently
pursuing the experiences you know will be more valuable
for your journey.

As you leverage others’ lifelines, you will find that others

can leverage your lifelines to enhance their missions as
well! A synergistic, virtuous cycle of mission elevation
and fulfillment is at your fingertips! But let’s not sell
ourselves short here – something even more powerful than
individual lifeline synergies, and collective lifeline
synergies, has the potential to empower peoples’ missions
far beyond compare or precedence.

This “something” is the additive and multiplicative nature

of human interaction.

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When your lifelines interact with others’ lifelines, you reap

the value-add of their missions, just as they reap the value-
add of your mission.

Most importantly, every person you influence, and are

likewise influenced by, creates new potential for immense
synergies and rewards that can only be realized when
different journeys are fully engaged and connected between
people. This heightened potential for synergy increases
exponentially as more journeys are engaged and connected
with one another, as provided by the depth and breadth of
one’s circle of influence.

Just like enhanced neural connections, or synapses, in your

brain increase your brain power, your enhanced social
connections increase the impact of your social lifeline and,
therefore, your mission. Similarly, every deepened human
connection within your circle of influence, or new human
connection as an expansion of your circle, will continue to
shape both your journey and the journeys of all your human
connections. And, as those human connections, which are
the epitome of your relationships, impact their own circles
of influence with their heightened missions, they can
impact even more people and their respective missions.

What we’re talking about is a gradual impact on ALL

people. As lifelines, and people, interact with one another
and benefit from synergistic connectedness, we will see a
global population that experiences improved lifelines and
missions at both the individual and collective level.

And what is the crux of this connectedness?

By this point, I’m sure you guessed it – engagement!

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As you engage your social lifeline, comprised of your

relationships and your influence, you actively push others
to sharpen their lifelines, as they return the favor to you.
Beyond the individual level, we can see a rise in groups,
communities, and societies that leverage the basic concept
of lifelines to derive missions, goals, and disciplined efforts
that their members can perform in order to deliver the
collective mission of the respective group, community, or
society.

These members can develop purposes, passions, and

persistence that drive value for themselves, their
overarching cause, and the world at large. And on the
largest scale, we may witness a world that embraces
engagement to serve and align the major missions, goals,
and disciplined efforts that sustain, advance, and nurture
every person on earth.

The domino effect starts with one domino … and you can
be that domino! Embrace your relationships, your level of
influence, and your approach to influence. Combined with
the mission fulfillment component of your social lifeline,
you can realize the limitless potential of a social lifeline
that engages both your circle of influence and your other
two overarching lifelines, particularly within the business
network of your professional lifeline.

What does the mission fulfillment of your social lifeline

entail?

Well, we’ve spent a lot of time discussing how the

relationship and influence components of your social
lifeline can uplift both your own mission and the missions
of those around you.

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Let’s spend a little time reviewing your mission fulfillment

as applied to your social lifeline.

As mentioned in both sections regarding professional and

personal lifelines, your mission fulfillment is a component
of all three overarching lifelines to ensure that all your
lifelines are aligned with your mission. This alignment is
the driving factor of your fulfillment, engagement, and
success. When you align your social lifeline with your
other two lifelines, you are effectively serving your mission
and satisfying the mission fulfillment element of your
social lifeline.

We previously connected your social lifeline with your

professional lifeline by identifying your ability to influence
your business network, which is a subcomponent of your
professional lifeline. As you align your social lifeline with
your mission, you become more actively engaged in the
interrelational elements of your vocation and avocation.
And as you align your relationships and your approach to
influencing, you also become more actively engaged in
your social lifeline, which translates to increased
engagement throughout your entire mission and journey.

Long story short: engagement in your social lifeline

elevates your engagement in your mission by connecting
the business network and avocational components of your
professional and personal lifelines, respectively. As you
engage your social lifeline, you better engage others’
lifelines and can create previously unexplored synergies
that impact your circle of influence, your circle’s circle,
and society at large.

Human beings are a social species! Our interactions have

led to inventions, innovations, and globalization that touch
every person, in every country, on every continent. The

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power of your social lifeline alone creates a ripple effect

that spreads to others’ social lifelines, their own circles of
influence, and their missions.

Your social lifeline is a mustard seed that firmly plants

your tree of influence. Each branch represents each person
you influence in your immediate circle, and each branch’s
twigs represent your circle’s circles, comprised of
individuals who are indirectly impacted by your initial
influence in your branches’ development.

The leaves that top your tree represent a united effort by

your tree’s branches and twigs to physically elevate the
tree’s stature and to elevate the tree’s utility (in other
words, its mission fulfillment). The leaves, twigs, and
branches create the crown of the tree, which provides
support for incoming birds and their nesting. The crown
also provides shade to a bystander on a particularly hot day.
And when the school nerd is running away from the class
bully, he can climb the trunk and hide himself in the crown
(don’t be offended, nerds … I was a nerd myself and
embrace my nerdom to this day). The crown, which
represents the synergies that result from your relationships,
influence, and continued interactions with others, permits
other species to benefit from its presence. Your little
mustard seed has impacted your circle of influence, your
circle’s circles, and numerous outside forces that cannot be
realized until they’re experienced in real time.

The mission fulfillment component of your social lifeline is

reflected in the crown that you generate as a byproduct of
your relationships, level of influence, and synergies
resulting from your interactions with others. By engaging
your social lifeline and, consequently, engaging others and
their lifelines, you can serve birds, squirrels, and bystanders
that you were previously unable to envision or conceive.

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Ultimately, your social lifeline’s mission fulfillment will

magnify the impact that your overarching mission
maintains on everyone you both directly and indirectly
influence through your various purposes, passions, and
persistent, disciplined efforts. Your crowning achievement,
as represented by the crown of your tree, results from the
daily application of your mission, and its impact, to others’
lifelines, lives, and circles. The mission fulfillment piece
of your social lifeline ensures that your crown creates kings
and queens of all parties with whom you engage and
develop meaningful, influential relationships.

We have now covered each of your three overarching

lifelines in detail.

The professional lifeline regards your vocational ambition,

business network, and mission fulfillment.

The personal lifeline regards your avocational ambition,

mindset, and mission fulfillment.

The social lifeline regards your various relationships, level

of influence, and mission fulfillment.

As your three lifelines integrate more fully with one

another and elevate each other through shared experiences,
learnings, and relatedness, they ultimately elevate your
entire journey.

And as you interact with others, you can experience the

same type of integration and elevation with others’
missions, which ultimately produce unprecedented
synergies and inconceivable realizations within your
mission and the missions of those around you.

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You fully realize your mission as you engage your journey

and engage others’ journeys by leveraging all components
of each of your three overarching lifelines. You fulfill your
mission by aligning your lifelines within yourself and with
others’ lifelines.

You have the power to truly change the world by taking

control of your mission, over which you have full
autonomy and ownership. The more you own your
mission, the more capable you become in utilizing your
purposes, passions, and persistence to realize your mission
and the missions of those around you. As a vital element of
each of your three overarching lifelines, mission fulfillment
reinforces ownership and accountability throughout your
entire journey.

OWN your journey. Ownership at the mission level, all the

way down to the 3 P’s level, will empower you to engage
every single action, every day, without succumbing to
distractions and disruptions.

Since mission fulfillment is so integrated into your journey,

as well as the journeys of all people, let’s transition to a
discussion on mission setting. Once you properly set your
mission, you can align the mission fulfillment pieces of
your journey and, ultimately, fulfill your mission by
wearing your crown. Now that you have a better
understanding of your throne, as represented by your
lifelines and their interaction with others’ lifelines, you can
now accept your crown and wear it proudly.

Now it’s time for you to accept your mission.

But first, you must understand it and clarify it before you

can engage it throughout all your lifelines. Through each

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purpose, passion, and act of persistence. Through the goals

and disciplined efforts that support your mission.

As you figure out your mission, you can completely engage

in mission setting to secure alignment amongst your
lifelines, which are formed by your purposes, passions, and
persistence. Everything within your journey is related to
your mission, to others’ missions, and to every meaningful
connection with the external world.

After we discuss your mission and mission setting in the

proceeding chapter, we will dive deeper into purpose,
passion, and persistence, and discover how these 3 P’s are
the foundational building blocks of your fundamentals and
your lifelines.

Remember – everything within your journey is related!

When we fully grasp and engage this relatedness, we can
truly reap all the experiences, learnings, and synergies
discussed throughout this book.

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Chapter 5: Mission Setting

Your mission is the crux of your journey.

Your journey exists solely to support your mission.

Once you set your mission, you can effectively engage in

mission setting, which entails the process of aligning and
implementing your mission into your goals and disciplined
efforts.

We’ve looked at how the three overarching lifelines align

with one another to promote your mission fulfillment; now,
we’ll look at how your mission aligns itself with your
journey.

What exactly is your mission?

And what level of clarity do you possess in understanding

and applying your mission?

These two questions often remain unanswered and,

therefore, subconsciously thwart any efforts aimed at
accomplishing anything throughout one’s life.

When you identify your mission and clearly understand its

value in your life, you can appropriately align it with your
journey in order to both fulfill your mission and add value
to the world around you.

If you’ve already identified your mission, and clearly

understand its value in your life, then you have NO excuse
as to why you’re not living out your mission. As we
review the concept of mission setting, you’ll bridge the gap
between your mission and its active incorporation into your
journey.

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If you have not yet identified your mission, and therefore

do not understand its value in your life, then you also have
NO excuse. There is no time like the present, and you
should take advantage of this present moment to reflect on
your life, reflect on what you’ve read in this book, and
consider the past, present, and future states of your life.

What have you accomplished thus far?

What have you struggled with?

Who are you at this very moment, and how do you see
yourself adding value to others in the future?

This last remark, in asking yourself how you can add value
to others in the future, will serve you tremendously in
discovering your mission.

People have a tendency to find themselves more when

they’re serving others and looking outward, as opposed to
serving themselves and looking inward. Find yourself by
losing yourself in giving to others, as noted by Gandhi, and
you’ll typically receive more than you give. In giving to
others, you gain experiences, interactions, and learnings
that impact the way you view your world.

Wait a minute … we’ve mentioned experiences,

interactions, and learnings before.

And what do they do? When combined, they create

synergies!

Synergies between lifelines, synergies between people, and

synergies between societies. Everything truly is
interrelated, and your mission is no exception. Your
mission reinforces interconnectedness, as evidenced by

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your journey, and its three overarching lifelines, and each

fundamental, and your mission’s relationship with all
surrounding lifelines. Mission fulfillment is an interrelated
component of all three overarching lifelines, which
reinforces your mission’s omnipresence throughout your
journey.

So where does this cerebral and philosophical discussion

leave you on your path in identifying your mission?

Well, in actuality, it’s creating your path!

As you serve others, you serve yourself by increasing and

leveraging your experiences, interactions, and learnings.

Continually serve others in activities of interest to you, and

you’ll naturally understand things that trigger you, excite
you, or fire you up. You have a repository of past
experiences, interactions, and learnings that you can relate
to your current and future activities. And when you apply
your mind to making connections and reflections based on
such a large amount of your own, personal data, you can
develop the algorithm that outputs your mission statement
by envisioning the “future you.”

The future you who actively pursues his ambitions, engages

in his favorite activities, and serves others in the manner he
wishes. The future you reveals how you see yourself in
your shiniest, most fruitful form. The future you provides a
blank slate in which you have a prime opportunity to own
your past, learn from your current self, and look forward to
becoming the type of person you want to be. The person
you want to develop through your current thoughts, actions,
and behaviors.

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The more time you take to serve others, and the more time
you take to reflect on all your life experiences, you can
identify trends and patterns amongst your thoughts,
feelings, and actions.

Your service to others represents the actions that you’re

inclined to take as a means of adding value to the world.

Your reflection on your life, and where you want it to go,

represents your thoughts and feelings that either validate
your actions or signal the need to reorient your actions to
match who you are in the present and who you envision
becoming in the future.

The gap between who you are now, and who you strive to
be in the future, creates your mission.

The culmination of your thoughts, feelings, and actions,

which represent your mind, heart, and body, effectively
identifies this gap. And your spirit, which drives you to
higher levels of existence, compels you to strive for the
future you.

Just like that, all four parts of your existence, being your
mind, heart, body, and spirit, are directly connected to your
mission, which is connected to your journey. Your mission
connects your four “elements” of existence with your three
overarching lifelines!

Unlike your “pool” of purpose, passion, and persistence,

your mission is not a fluid concept. By this, I mean that
your mission does not change based on circumstance or on
a whim. Rather, your mission is your definiteness of
purpose that guides your journey, your pool, and your
pursuits.

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Your three overarching lifelines, and their fundamentals,

are very fluid because they continually realign themselves
to support your mission. Your lifelines are responsible for
adapting to changing external circumstances and enhancing
your personal development. Your fundamentals, which
comprise your three overarching lifelines, which interact
with one another, dynamically adjust themselves to achieve
homeostasis within your mission. Your adaptation to
external circumstances and your continued personal
development produce synergies that trickle down from your
lifelines to your fundamentals, which enhance each
foundational element of purpose, passion, and persistence
required to further your mission.

The approach you take towards your journey is both fluid

and dynamic, because it’s responsible for gauging your
current state, your current external environment, and the
interaction between your actions and the outside world.

Everything underneath your mission continually adapts to

the factors that arise in the pursuit of your mission.
Therefore, although your mission itself is not fluid, your
journey leverages fluidity and dynamism to continually
realign itself with your mission.

The reason your mission is NOT fluid is simple – your

mission is the crux of who you are, your value, and what
value you offer to the world. Your mission is at the center
of your personal development, relationships, and pursuits in
all aspects of your life. A mission that constantly changes
would not provide any foundation for your character,
perspective, and alignment between your thoughts and
actions. Your mission is an integral component of your
identity, and your identity is an anchor you can always rely
on … regardless of the nastiest torrential storm or the most
devastating crashing waves.

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Although your mission is not fluid, your process of

discovering your mission is most certainly fluid. Some
people discover their mission when they’re five years old.
Others discover their mission when they’re sixty. And
others require many career paths, experiences, and
learnings to recognize their underlying mission. Most
people “change” their missions every few years,
transitioning from one pursuit to the other, in an attempt to
find the mission that sticks (or ultimately becomes revealed
through different pursuits).

Unbeknownst to the majority of people, what they are

pursuing is not actually their mission, but a temporary
pursuit or interest that ultimately distracts them from
centering their efforts toward a true mission.

Let me tell you something right now: There is no

standardized metric for determining your mission.

Anyone who tries to sell you on a template or book that

provides a “tried-and-true” method of finding your mission,
or purpose, or calling (whatever verbiage of the moment is
trendiest), is providing a disservice to you and to
themselves.

Sure, two individuals may have the exact same mission in

life.

These two people may share the mission to add value to

other people through their fiction writing, for instance.

However, the way these two individuals realize their

mission will be different and distinct. All people are
unique, since we are the culmination of our own
experiences, interactions, and learnings.

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Additionally, one person’s journey may treat a comparable

mission differently, based on that particular person’s
vocation, avocation, and relationships.

In the example with two people who want to add value to

others through their fiction writing, we can see that the
mission itself is open to the actions and synergies realized
by the individual who embodies his own version of the
mission. Bear with me for this one.

Person #1 may start an online community for fiction

writing, build out an audience of 50,000 members, and
provide weekly fiction pieces that serve to inspire other
fiction writers to further pursue their own writing goals.

Person #2 may write three fiction books that reach an

audience of 5.5 million readers and provide a lifestyle that
allows Person #2 to contribute $100K+ to her charities of
choice.

Person #1 and Person #2 have the same mission, to add

value to other people through their fiction writing, but they
realize their identical missions differently by following
their own journeys, which incorporate their unique purpose,
passions, and persistence that align their respective
lifelines. Their skill sets, interests, and goals shape how
they each pursue and apply their mission. The mission is
the same, but the pursuits and outcomes are unique to the
individual.

Every person in this world will either realize, or

shortchange, his/her mission based on the level of
alignment established between the mission itself and the
journey. The mission serves as your North Star, and the
journey serves as your roadmap for reorienting your
lifelines to that North Star, no matter where you are in the

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world or what type of bifocal you’re using to gaze upon

your Star.

So how do you find your mission?

This is a bad question – you can’t find something that

you’ve possessed since you were born.

A better question is: how do you uncover your mission?

Some people are naturally gifted in uncovering their

mission – the five-year-old who uncovers her mission
simply commands a faster “mission maturity” than the
sixty-year-old who takes significantly more time to uncover
his mission. This concept of “mission maturity” is aligned
with the notion of uncovering, as opposed to finding, your
mission; ultimately, mission maturity regards the amount of
time, experiences, and learning required to concretely
identify your mission.

Realizing your mission, or in other words, fulfilling your

mission, is an entirely different concept. Mission maturity
lies in identifying your mission, whereas “mission
fulfillment” lies in both actualizing and executing your
mission. Remember that “mission fulfillment” is an
integral part of all three of your overarching lifelines.

Your mission, which sits atop your lifelines, is validated

when you complete the mission maturity process. Your
journey supports and achieves your life’s mission when you
actively leverage the individual and collective “mission
fulfillment” components of your professional, personal, and
social lifelines.

The integration between your mission and your journey

relies on the interplay between your mission maturity and

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mission fulfillment. Both your mission and your journey

incorporate the notions of mission maturity and mission
fulfillment, so that you hold yourself accountable for
uncovering your mission and tangibly realizing your
mission. Your mission is the plan of action, and your
journey is the action itself.

Mission maturity does not necessarily precede mission

fulfillment. Actually, given the interaction between your
mission and your journey, your mission maturity and
mission fulfillment are at play throughout your life, from
when you’re born until you take your final breath.

But how can this be?

Don’t you have to identify a mission or goal before you can

consciously pursue it and accomplish it?

Not so!

All of your experiences, learnings, and pursuits help

uncover your mission and provide you with data points to
better realize your ultimate mission.

Life is not linear, in that we, as humans, often fail when we

try something new or something difficult. We regress at
times, and we plateau frequently. But with every
regression comes new learnings, and with every plateau
comes new action that breaks the mold. Short-term
regression is matched with long-term progression, and
plateaus are matched with momentum. Throughout your
life, you will navigate the tides of turmoil and the waves of
winning. No matter the current, what’s most important is
your consistency in surfing the water you’re dealt.

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Identifying and realizing your mission is certainly difficult,

and requires you to think differently, pursue new
opportunities, and abandon any natural inclinations toward
maintaining the status quo.

The five-year-old may identify her mission at age five, but

not truly add value to her mission until she’s in her forties.
Meanwhile, the sixty-year-old may not identify his mission
until age sixty, but he has already realized his mission by
engaging his journey throughout his life, adjusting his
purpose, passions, and persistence to better align with his
continued efforts that uncover his mission. Actions will
always speak louder than words, but it usually helps to
identify something, both mentally and verbally, before you
plan your attack. In cases like the sixty-year-old, some
people naturally align and adapt their behaviors, habits, and
actions over time. If you’re like that as well, then the more
power to you! But most of us will perform extraordinarily
better if we have our plan in place before we execute the
attack. This plan is the North Star; simply put, it’s your
mission.

In your attempts to uncover your mission, you naturally

come closer to both uncovering your mission and fulfilling
your mission as you engage your three overarching lifelines
and realign your lifelines with each purpose, passion, and
act of persistence you execute in all areas of your life,
throughout your life.

The ideas of “mission,” “mission maturity,” and “mission

fulfillment” are difficult to conceptualize. They are even
more difficult to execute in real-time. You may never have
an “AHA!” moment when your mission clicks with you.
You may never understand why you’re here on this earth,
and what you were meant to do with your vocation,
avocation, and social interactions.

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And you know what … these realities are perfectly okay.

Many of us have an underlying, subconscious sense of

purpose that guides our perspective, thoughts, and actions.

Your “mission” is nothing more than a concrete

identification of this subconscious sense of purpose that
guides the actions you take in life.

Your “mission maturity” is nothing more than you

embracing the feelings and experiences you encounter as a
result of the actions you take, based on your subconscious
sense of purpose.

Your “mission fulfillment” is nothing more than the impact

that your continued actions maintain on loved ones,
acquaintances, and strangers alike.

We can never fully understand our impact on others in this

world, since the people we touch respond differently to our
actions and pursuits. All of this philosophical discussion of
mission, lifelines, fundamentals, and foundation can be
summarized in one sentence: Follow your interests, take
action, and continually readjust based on your
continued interests and learnings from your old and
new experiences alike.

Where does engagement fall into our discussion of mission,

mission maturity, and mission fulfillment?

Engagement lies at the heart of this discussion!

Remember, your mission regards your subconscious sense

of purpose that guides the actions you take in life. The
higher the level of your engagement, the more actions you
take, in terms of both volume and quality.

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Your mission maturity regards the feelings and experiences

you embrace as a byproduct of your action. The higher the
level of your engagement, the more actions you take, AND
the more in tune you become with your emotions,
reflections, and learnings based on your actions.

Your mission fulfillment regards the impact of your

continued actions. The higher the level of your
engagement, the more actions you take, the more in tune
you become with yourself, AND the more equipped you
become in leveraging your lifelines to serve your mission
and your network of loved ones, acquaintances, and one-off
interactions.

Mission fulfillment is a core part of your journey, displayed

by its relevance in each of your three overarching lifelines.
Fulfillment of your mission is the culmination of your
mission itself and your mission maturity, which must be
continually aligned, readjusted, and explored to ensure
proper engagement. As you engage the mission fulfillment
piece of each lifeline, you better engage your journey and
your mission.

Think forward, work backwards, and align your mission

fulfillment with your mission. As you engage the mission
fulfillment components of your three overarching lifelines,
you better connect your three lifelines and synergistically
leverage them to uplift the absolute fulfillment of your
mission and everything that falls under it.

Engagement is vital if you want to realize your mission

fulfillment. Your mission fulfillment is the concrete
realization of your mission, which is based on your mission
maturity.

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So how can you possibly ensure that you are on the right
track with your mission?

After all, your mission is the cornerstone of your journey,

which supports everything you think, say, and do. The
answer lies in one vital concept: mission setting.

Mission setting is the process in which you align your

mission with your journey. It leverages mission maturity to
synchronize the development of your mission with the
foundation of your journey; additionally, mission setting
leverages mission fulfillment as a foundation in each of
your three overarching lifelines to connect all three phases
of your mission (the mission definition itself, mission
maturity, and mission fulfillment).

Much of what we’ve discussed thus far may seem pretty

abstract, so let’s dive into mission setting a little deeper and
develop a concrete framework you can utilize as your
Mission Setting Map. This map, comparable to a goal
setting map, will allow you to better identify your mission,
align your lifelines in pursuit of your mission, and realize
the labors of your mission execution. You can find the
Mission Setting Map worksheet at the end of this book.

Mission Setting Map

This Mission Setting Map is comprised of five elements

that create the acronym, K.N.O.C.K.

You’ve heard of ask, seek, and knock, right? If you don’t

know what your mission is, you’ve probably asked what it
is, or what it could be, or what it should be, at this point in
the book.

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And if you’re still reading, I presume that you’re seeking

more insight as to how you can better determine or hone
your mission. Therefore, let’s move on to the
“K.N.O.C.K.” methodology, which offers a tool you can
use for developing and shaping your mission.

Without further ado, here’s the K.N.O.C.K. framework:

Keep listening and learning.

That’s the first step.

To develop an informed awareness and understanding of

anything in life, you must listen and learn.

Listen to others by hearing their insights. Listen to the

outside world by observing its ebbs and flows. Listen to
yourself by following your character and values. As you
listen to various sources of information, you effectively
learn more about others, the outside world, and yourself.

The integration of your learnings provides more input for

your mission and mission fulfillment. To develop an
informed awareness and understanding of your mission,
you must listen to both your mind and your intuition, as
well as learn from different experiences. When you’re in
tune with your mind and intuition, you naturally align your
reason, emotion, and passion.

When you learn from your own experiences, you become

more aligned with the activities and pursuits that light a fire
under you. And when you learn from others’ experiences,
you can leverage limitless data points that offer insights
into your own thoughts, activities, and pursuits. As you
retain more information collected from others’ experiences,
in addition to your own, you’ll cultivate your ability to

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synthesize the world around you, internalize your

reflections, and apply your learnings to your mission
development.

Notice personal behavioral trends.

That’s the second step.

The first step emphasized information collection and

awareness, which help create the blueprint for your mission
formation.

The second step personalizes your information collection

and transcends self-awareness.

Once you collect information, from your own experiences

and others’ experiences, you must use that information to
form your mission.

As you notice your personal behavioral trends, you realize

the tangible activities and pursuits you engage as a result of
your thoughts, feelings, and learnings. Whereas these three
cerebral elements are largely intangible, your tangible
activities and pursuits represent the manifestation of your
experiences, reflections, and learnings.

As you work backwards from your actions, to your habits,

to your thoughts, you enhance your holistic understanding
of the intangible components of your mission. This
enlightened understanding allows you to concretely identify
what is driving your actions (if you find it helpful, you can
track your various actions and behaviors, over time, on a
piece of paper. Then, after an extended period of time, you
can reference your list, observe trends, and reflect on how
your thoughts and feelings over that time period shaped
your tangible actions.

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With this awareness, you can regulate yourself and realign

your actions accordingly, depending on their current fit
with your values and character. As the awareness from the
first step transforms into autoregulation with this second
step, you begin to adjust and realign your actions with your
thoughts and passions. You are transitioning from the blue
print to the foundation of your mission.

Organize information.

That’s the third step.

Whether you use paper, or your mind exclusively, to track

and reflect on your actions, you must organize the immense
amount of information you’re aggregating. As you notice
the behavioral trends within your actions and compare them
to your internal values system, you can better gauge which
actions are aligned with your character, which actions are
not aligned (and, at the same time, undesirable), and which
actions can be realigned.

Ultimately, you can categorize your actions/reflections into

three categories: 1) Aligned, 2) Not aligned and not
desirable, and 3) Realigned ready.

The items falling under your “Aligned” category represent

actions that correctly manifest your thoughts, behaviors,
and values. Use these items to understand the main themes
responsible for driving these actions, so you can
comprehend what is driving your mind and heart. As you
align more actions with your values system, you will
identify more patterns and understand the tangible fruits of
your underlying mission.

The items falling under your “Not aligned and not

desirable” category must be eliminated.

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Immediately.

They serve no purpose to you, do not further your mission,

and distract you from pursuing actions that are more
aligned with your internal infrastructure. Many times, a
“not-to-do” list is more valuable than a typical “to-do” list.

The “Not aligned and not desirable category” is your “not-

to-do” list. When you become cognizant of certain actions
and behaviors to avoid, you free up more time, effort, and
focus to apply towards actions and behaviors that DO
further your mission.

Lastly, the items falling under your “Realigned ready”

category indicate actions that are not necessarily furthering
your values and mission currently, but have the potential to
further your values and mission if they are redirected.
“Realigned ready” items will hold similar themes to your
“Aligned” items, but they will typically represent actions
that are not as effective or value-adding as your “Aligned”
actions.

Even though your mission may still be unclear at this point,

you are beginning to identify trends and themes amongst
your actions, which indicate trends and themes amongst
your behaviors, thoughts, and values. With your
foundation set in place, you are now starting to identify the
composition of your structure.

Clarify your strategic plan.

That’s the fourth step.

Now that you’ve organized your action items and sifted

through different themes, you can develop and clarify your
strategic plan for concretely articulating your mission.

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As you collect action items in the “Aligned” category,

create a plan to optimize the value that the respective
behavioral trends and themes provide. Focus most of your
energy in the “Aligned” category, even if this category only
has a couple reflections and is outweighed (in volume) by
the other categories.

Remember the 80/20 rule – most of your output and

achievement derive from a minority of your activities. The
“Aligned” category can identify a few, specialized actions
that will account for a material amount of your mission and
consequent success.

Focus on the “Aligned” category and create strategic plans

for magnifying your Aligned actions.

Be wary of the action items in your “Not aligned and not

desirable” category, and do all that you can to avoid them.
If needed, put your “not-to-do” list in the various places
that inspire your “not-to-do” actions.

For instance, if you catch yourself spending thirty minutes

checking social media during your afternoon bathroom
break, place a “DO NOT LOOK AT SOCIAL MEDIA”
note on your bathroom wall.

Or, if there are particular times in the day you’re more

prone to accessing social media, setup a telephonic, not-to-
do reminder that coincides with those particular times.

As you become more cognizant of your actions that take

away from your aligned, value-adding actions, you become
more disciplined and active in eliminating your
distractions.

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And for those items in your “Realigned ready” category …

as you focus your energy on your “Aligned” items, you will
naturally convert more and more of your actions into
alignment with your overarching mission. Therefore, the
truly value-adding activities in your “Realigned ready”
category will organically transition to your “Aligned”
category over time, or they will fall off pace and morph
into your “Not aligned and not desirable” category.

Using a little of your intuition and self-awareness, you can

decipher between the value-adding and nonessential actions
covered under your “Realigned ready” category. Inaction
in deciphering between these actions will eradicate the
progress you make in enriching your actions altogether;
therefore, take the time to construct, outline, and refine
your categories, as well as your consequent strategic plans,
so that you can optimize your value-adding activities that
actually interest you.

Now that you’ve identified the composition of your

structure, you’ve started to collect the raw materials and
tools required to complete your structure of choice.

Knuckle up.

That’s the fifth step.

With your strategic plans in place, execute your plans by

following them diligently, disciplining yourself daily, and
reworking your plans based on feedback that you collect
from your actions, results, and interpersonal interactions as
you work through your plan.

Continual feedback solidifies a virtuous learning cycle and

allows you to adapt, which ultimately strengthens your
ability to execute your plan and realize the impact of your

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externalized learnings. The more actions you take, the

better you understand which actions are aligned with your
inclinations. With this heightened understanding, you can
leverage actions that are fully aligned with your interests,
discover new actions that are also aligned with your
interests, and further eliminate actions and opportunities
that are not aligned with your interests.

As you execute your plans and evaluate your actions, you

enhance your self-awareness and become significantly
better at differentiating between value-adding, aligned
actions and valueless, unaligned actions.

As you convert your raw materials into finished goods and

leverage your toolkit (comprised of your categories and
strategic plans), you are continually crafting, modeling, and
expanding the structure of your mission. Your mission is
not just a blanket statement – it’s a map that requires your
preparation and discretion for maximal benefit.

As you collect more raw materials (in the form of

additional value-adding, aligned actions) and improve your
process in refining those materials (in the form of better
aligning and understanding the impact of your actions), you
can further craft, model, and expand your mission structure.

The K.N.O.C.K. structure provides the tangible fruition of

your mission. The shape of your structure, the image it
conveys, and the composition of the structure illustrate
your mission and will make your mission readily apparent
like never before. Regardless of differences in individual
missions, everyone can rely on the K.N.O.C.K.
methodology to structure the particular mansion that holds
their mission. YOU can rely on this methodology to help
gain clarity and vision when it comes to your mission.

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Does this analogy sound familiar? It should! Your journey

is the structure that supports your mission. Your three
overarching lifelines are the pillars of your mission, and
each of your overarching lifelines is comprised of particular
raw materials and tools that create, reinforce, and expand
your structure. Each overarching lifeline contains three
raw materials, composed of their own ingredients, that
integrate with the other two overarching lifelines’ raw
materials and synergistically enhance the structure (your
journey). With an enhanced journey, you can better
actualize and realize your mission, mission maturity, and
mission fulfillment. And if you remember, each raw
material of each of your overarching lifelines is formed by
the 3 P’s – purpose, passion, and persistence. The 3 P’s are
the plaster that connects all the bricks of your mission-
oriented mansion!

We’ve covered a lot of material at this point.

We’ve covered your three overarching lifelines, identified

the three individual fundamentals of each overarching
lifeline, and introduced the three foundations of these
individual fundamentals.

Remember the analogy of the swimming pool? That’s

where we visualized the granular elements of purpose,
passion, and persistence (the foundation) that constitute
your journey Within each of your three overarching
lifelines (professional, personal, social), and each of your
lifeline’s fundamentals (your professional lifeline relates
your vocational ambition, business network, and mission
fulfillment; your personal lifeline relates your avocational
ambition, mindset, and mission fulfillment; your social
lifeline relates your various relationships, level of
influence, and mission fulfillment), the 3 P’s serve as the
chlorine that treats your pool.

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In other words, your purpose, passion, and persistence are

the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that provide the
foundational, necessary elements of your journey’s waters.

In more concrete words, your purpose, passion, and

persistence comprise the mindset and actions you take to
realize all components of all three overarching lifelines,
which translate directly to your mission.

Now that we’ve discussed your mission, the three

overarching lifelines, and each lifeline’s three individual
fundamentals, we can dive into the 3 P’s. I promise that
this deep-dive will be the last bucket of “threes” that we
explore throughout this book. In fact, the 3 P’s are going to
complete our understanding of our mission, our lifelines,
and our daily engagement required to strengthen our
lifelines and better realize our mission. After we review
the 3 P’s in detail, we will apply our learnings and adapt
them to real-world, real-time manifestations of our
professional, personal, and social lives.

But before we proceed to the next chapter, let’s summarize

what we learned from our nifty “K.N.O.C.K” methodology.

In three short sentences: All you must do is K.N.O.C.K. to

bridge the gap between general business advice and
individual action. The more doors you K.N.O.C.K. on, the
more opportunities you create for success. Continued
action, realignment, and learning will enable you to identify
your mission, execute mission setting, and filter into both
your mission maturity and mission fulfillment (like a
waterfall effect).

And … well, those were the three short sentences for your
review. As you knock, execute, and adjust your actions
throughout your journey, you will open yourself to new

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lifeline connections that synergistically enhance your

mission, mission setting, and journey. When it comes to
your mission, the smallest spark will light up more wicks
than you may ever realize. Reference and leverage the
Mission Setting Map to discover your matches, so that your
3 P’s can light them up. And with that, let’s expound upon
the 3 P’s.

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Chapter 6: Purpose, Passion, and Persistence

Your 3 P’s are responsible for lighting up and revealing the

depths of your journey.

In Chapter 2, we utilized a swimming pool as an analogy to

convey the impact that purpose, passion, and persistence
maintain on your daily actions, emotions, and mission.

For simplicity, we can equate daily actions with

persistence, passion with emotions, and purpose with
mission.

Ultimately, the 3 P’s are a granular application of our

mission, mission maturity, and mission fulfillment.
Purpose, passion, and persistence provide the day-to-day
goals and behaviors that comprise our lifelines and drive
our journeys. Luckily, we don’t have to traverse the depths
of a swimming pool to get deep into the 3 P’s (unless that’s
something you’re purposeful, passionate, and persistent
about … then go on right ahead. In fact, I’d recommend
skimming Chapter 2 again as a relatable recap of the 3 P’s,
whether you’re a swimmer or not.).

Purpose

From a purpose perspective, you want to ensure that every

thought, action, and reflection is purposeful. When you’re
intentional and deliberate in your daily pursuits, you
continually realign your behaviors and learnings with each
of your three overarching lifelines.

For instance, let’s say you’re working on developing your

professional lifeline. Within the fundamental of
professional ambition, you’re dedicating efforts towards
acquiring more responsibilities and influence within your

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company. One piece of this fundamental involves your

initiative in establishing weekly calls with your manager to
provide updates and solicit feedback. This “piece” is a
supporting element of your “professional ambition”
fundamental, which ultimately supports your professional
lifeline. You can see how the lifeline chain naturally flows
into its subcomponents, which ensure that your mission is
truly being set, accounted for, and fulfilled.

And let’s not forget another critical concept – the

synergistic effect of lifeline engagement!

Think about the initiative we just covered, in which you

frequently converse with your manager as a way of
soliciting feedback, demonstrating your competency, and
ultimately acquiring more responsibility. As you develop a
better rapport with your manager and display your
eagerness to grow, your manager may connect you with
members of his business network that can provide you with
additional guidance, insight, and development opportunity.
As your manager offers his contacts to you, eureka! You
realize that you’re expanding your business network
(another fundamental within your professional lifeline) as a
byproduct of enhancing your professional ambition
fundamental. Just imagine what synergies you can
cultivate when you connect all your actions within your
professional lifeline!

But wait … there’s more! As you acquire more

responsibilities and cultivate your business network, you
begin to realize that your initiative and openness to
opportunity are elevating your career prospects. With this
heightened sense of empowerment and ownership, your
mindset focuses itself on leveraging both accountability
and self-direction as internal resources for external
progression. Accordingly, your “mindset” fundamental

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within your personal lifeline becomes transformed. Your

mindset starts to cultivate ownership as a fundamental
driver of your thoughts and actions within your personal
lifeline; consequently, you begin to approach your
avocational ambition with more fervor, responsibility, and
empowerment. And look at that … “avocational ambition”
is another fundamental within your personal lifeline,
alongside “mindset” and “mission fulfillment!”

With this example alone, we see that your purposeful

activity within your professional lifeline impacts multiple
fundamentals comprising your professional lifeline. Even
more profoundly, we also see that your purposeful activity
touches multiple fundamentals comprising your personal
lifeline. The ripple effect of each thought, action, and
adaptation transcends a singular lifeline and manifests
throughout your lifelines (professional, personal, social),
fundamentals (the three unique components of each
lifeline), and foundation (your purpose, passion, and
persistence that drive your fundamentals, lifelines, and
mission … which all comprise your journey). This
example shows the impact that a particular action maintains
on your entire mission, as evidenced in the dynamic
relationship between your different lifelines, fundamentals,
and foundation.

One action alone can completely transform one, multiple,

or all components of your journey. Therefore, I suggest
you apply purpose to every thought, action, and adjustment.

Heightened purpose, and a deliberate realignment of

thoughts and actions that don’t serve your purpose, will
elevate your mission, mission maturity, and mission
fulfillment (which, remember, is an active attribute of all
your lifelines).

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Passion

From a passion perspective, you want to ensure that your

passion is captured by your thoughts, actions, and
reflections. Your passion is what continually drives you to
pursue your purposeful intentions, no matter the day or
circumstance. Your passion allows your emotional energy
to interact with your logic, creating a synergistic foundation
for your behaviors.

It’s no secret why people are more likely to sway under the
influence of emotion as opposed to logic – emotion
capitalizes on feeling, connectedness, and humanness.
When you harness a sense of passion behind your
intentional thoughts, actions, and reflections, you
effectively drive higher levels of connectedness and
humanness within your pursuits.

We can articulate these levels of connectedness and

humanness as indicators of your engagement in life. Once
more, we come full circle in tracing our heightened sense
of engagement with the foundation of purpose, passion, and
persistence! Everything else, from our mission to our
fundamentals, connects the lofty with the basic. The crown
with its servants. The treetop and its roots.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though – we still need to

discuss the idea of persistence, and before that, we should
examine passion a little more deliberately.

“Passion” is often leveraged as a buzz word used by

employers and motivational speakers to encompass an
individual’s unyielding, burning desire to pursue some type
of career or calling.

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For our application of “passion,” we should probably go

beyond the hackneyed “unyielding, burning desire”
verbiage and anchor on something a little more meaningful.

Let’s anchor on our understanding of logic, emotion, and

connectedness. In fact, let’s associate “passion” with one’s
emotional connectedness to his purposeful thoughts,
actions, and reflections. (The concept of coming full circle
is still alive and well, don’t you worry.)

This connectedness, which, in all honesty, represents

engagement at its fundamental level, offers a powerful
relationship with our daily behaviors. Our logic, emotion,
and engagement are all intertwined and optimized to add
tremendous value to our behaviors and pursuits. And on
those days when we’re not feeling it, or something
unfavorable occurs, we can usually overcome the
temporary circumstance by cultivating and relying on the
energy generated from the intersection of logic, emotion,
and engagement.

Now you may be wondering about those days outside the

realm of “usual.” The really tough days, or circumstances,
to which our passion succumbs.

The days where you have nothing in the tank. The days
where you’re unintentional in your thoughts, or dormant in
your connectedness, and stray away from engaging your
mission.

Have no fear! Persistence is here! Persistence is the last

defense against disengagement. No matter the day, or the
circumstance, or your emotional state, you can overcome
any sense of apathy or disillusionment by exercising
persistence.

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Persistence

In its truest, most simple form, persistence is the

unrelenting commitment to and execution of your mission.
Where purpose wanes on a given day, or passion loses its
fire for a little while, persistence is a firm constant that will
always put you back on track.

Persistence is the daily application, execution, and

realignment of your thoughts. As you convert thoughts into
actions and results, you develop a data pool that provides
you with necessary feedback for your journey.

Without persistence, we would struggle with holding

ourselves accountable. When push comes to shove,
persistence ensures that we stay on the roadmap of our
mission, regardless of the vehicle, terrain, or pit stops. And
the more persistent we are, the more destinations and
opportunities we create. With more persistence comes
more action. With more action comes more feedback.
With more feedback comes more realignment. This
realignment is crucial at the 3P level because it enhances
overall mission fulfillment.

Additionally, this realignment is crucial at the overarching

lifeline level because it dynamically reorients the three
overarching lifelines with our mission. This is the reason
why “mission fulfillment” is an integral component of each
overarching lifeline. Without feedback and realignment,
we can’t possibly adapt our mission, and our supporting
lifelines, to our personal development and external
circumstances. Again, we are coming full circle –
realignment at the elemental, 3P level reflects in our
overarching lifelines, which tie directly to mission, mission
maturity, and mission fulfillment at the highest levels.

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Most of us have heard that consistency is key.

Persistence is crucial in maintaining consistency across

multiple layers.

For one, persistence allows us to consistently execute and

implement our mission and our intentional thoughts. This
layer of persistence accounts for our actions, feedback, and
realignment that trickle up into our mission.

For two, persistence allows us to consistently monitor our

progress within and between our overarching lifelines and
fundamentals. This layer of persistence accounts for our
ideation, reflection, and resulting lifeline synergies.

For three, persistence allows us to consistently connect our

mission with daily activities. This layer of persistence
accounts for the glue that reinforces passion and purpose,
so that the 3 P’s are fully engaged and interconnected.

As we can see, the most foundational component of our

mission (persistence) addresses and touches the entire
landscape of our journey, from our mission, to our
overarching lifelines, to our fundamentals, to the other two
P’s. The more persistent we are, the more we capitalize on
our experiences, learnings, and insights. Likewise, the
more time and energy we spend engaging different parts of
our lifelines, the more synergies we realize. All
components of our journeys are truly interconnected, and
we can optimize this interconnectedness to elevate our
missions.

Persistence facilitates the virtuous feedback cycle.

Persistence catalyzes the actions that spark feedback and
realignment. And, most importantly, persistence invades
every thought and behavior to ensure that we are

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intentional and engaged in our mission fulfillment, which

drives the development of our mission and cultivates
mission maturity.

When we are intentional, we are purposeful. When we

engage our logic, emotion, and connectedness, we are
passionate. Persistence brings the 3 P’s together, relates
the 3 P’s to our mission, and reiterates the need for
realignment and dynamic adaptation within and between
the three overarching lifelines.

Now that we’ve examined the 3 P’s in detail, we have

officially concluded the more cerebral, abstract component
of this book. We’ve covered everything from mission, to
the overarching lifelines and fundamentals, to the 3 P’s that
serve as the foundation for our missions. We’ve
successfully explored all components of our mission, and
now we want to see what it looks like outside the lines of
this book!

The textbook is in place … now let’s see how the lesson

applies to the real world.

Don’t worry – I won’t give you the same response that your
high school calculus teacher gave you. Instead, I’ll give
you a genuine application that touches all parts of your life,
no matter your profession or circumstance.

Let’s now move into WIIFM. In other words, What’s In It

For Me? And no, not me … when I say me, I mean YOU.
What’s in this for you?

Trust me – a whole lot! You’ve come this far, and now that
the foundation is established, the rest of the walls, columns,
and ceilings will fly right up!

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Chapter 7: The Sliding Spectrum

Now that we’ve started your journey to engaging a

fulfilling life, let’s take a look at the Sliding Spectrum of
Engagement.

Bobby, Joseph, and Fred are rejoining us for this

discussion. For memory’s sake: Bobby is the disengaged
devil, Joseph is the engaged evangelist, and Fred is the
feared hybrid.

There’s a little bit of Bobby, a little bit of Joseph, and a

LOT of Fred in most of us. For different activities and
different goals, we may be more or less engaged given our
environment and our efforts. Therefore, the Sliding
Spectrum of Engagement gives us a contextual framework
to understand where we are and how we can improve our
engagement in work, play, and everything in between.

As we’ve hashed out, we can see that Fred is the majority.

The majority of people lead their lives on a spectrum:
Freddie on the left, Fred in the middle, and Frederick on the
right. Incremental improvements in engagement, over
time, can transform a Fred into Frederick. And,
consequently, a Frederick can elevate his engagement to
Joseph’s spectrum: Joey on the left, Joe in the middle, and
Joseph on the right.

Similarly, when Frederick enters Joseph’s position on the

spectrum, Frederick can gradually improve his engagement
and transition from Joey into Joe, and even from Joe into
Joseph if he so chooses. For an illustration of the Sliding
Spectrum of Engagement, refer to Exhibit 2 at the end of
this book.

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The Secret to Improving Engagement, no matter if you’re a

Freddie or a Joe, is to actively choose one or two activities,
every day, that you can better engage. Over time, you’ll
realize better engagement not only in a couple activities,
but across all areas of your life. Your work, your play, and
your social life are compounding, synergistic, and
interdependent. Plus, the more you engage one little
element of your life, the more signals you send to other
parts of your life, which provide massive momentum in
transforming your livelihood.

If you identify with Bobby, you’re in the minority. The

undesirable minority. Increasing your engagement levels
will prove challenging at first, since you’re not used to any
type of engagement. Once you embrace the initial
“engagement shock,” you’ll quickly realize the benefits that
a little bit of engagement carries in all parts of your life.
And as you tangibly experience these benefits, you become
increasingly motivated to engage all parts of your life more
meaningfully.

If you’re tired of being Bobby, I recommend you embrace

and adapt to the initial engagement shock. The rest is
downhill from there.

If you identify with Joseph, you’re in the minority. The

desirable minority. You’ve enriched your life, your
mission, and your goals by completely embracing,
leveraging, and applying engagement to every single thing
that you do. You will continue to engage your life and
capitalize on your experiences, insights, and actions to
improve your life, your family’s life, and the lives of
everyone you touch.

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If you want to keep challenging yourself, then you need to

push yourself to continually maximize the value-add and
impact of your engagement.

If you identify with Fred, you’re in the vast majority. The

vastly undesirable majority. You’ve succumb to
mediocrity, complacency, and stagnation. You realize
some of the benefits that honest, hard work offers you and
your loved ones, but you don’t understand how
extraordinary you can become with just a little more
engagement. If you look past your shell for a second, and
come face-to-face with your nut, you can start engaging
yourself gradually. And then, like Bobby, you’ll
experience a snowball effect that uses your initial
engagement shock to create a spark that fuels future
engagement efforts. It’s all about creating and maintaining
momentum.

If you’re a Fred (Freddie, or Frederick), you have two

choices: 1) keep being Fred or 2) initiate a new form of
engagement in your life.

If you choose option #1, then I have been unable to

convince you to embrace engagement and utilize it for your
betterment. I have failed you. However, at the very least,
I’ve been able to plant some seeds that are ready for water
when you’re ready to pour it. At this point, I don’t think
any of the option #1 choosers would still be reading, but I
figured I’d give you all a shoutout just in case.

If you’re a Fred and you’re still reading this book, you’re

most likely leaning towards option #2.

So let’s see what option #2 looks like. Initiating a new

form of engagement in your life.

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Conveniently, this is the exact same methodology that all

the Bobbies can use to transform their own lives as well.
The secret sauce. Bobby, Freddie, Fred, Frederick, Joey,
and Joe can ALL use this methodology to better engage
their lives. It’s a one-size-fits-all solution that is inherently
customized to the person who uses it!

THIS is why you’ve been reading up until now. This

solution encapsulates exactly WHAT IS IN IT FOR YOU.

The solution is none other than …

The “Secret to Improving Engagement!”

Let’s review this Secret again:

The Secret to Improving Engagement, no matter if you’re a

Bobby, Freddie, Fred, Frederick, Joey, or a Joe, is to
actively choose one or two activities, every day, that you
can better engage.

Over time, you’ll realize better engagement not only in a

couple activities, but across all areas of your life.

Your work, your play, and all other parts of your life are
compounding, synergistic, and interdependent. Plus, the
more you engage one little element of your life, the more
signals you send to other parts, which provide massive
input throughout all areas of your life!

Ultimately, this continual input offers feedback,

realignment, and reorientation to your overarching mission.
Supported by your goals, and driven by your disciplined
actions, your mission will mature and fulfill itself as you
continue to engage yourself every single day. And by
engaging yourself, you’ll engage others around you, who

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can contribute even more to your mission, wellbeing, and

efforts.

That’s the shorter version of the Secret to Improving

Engagement. It’s really not a secret at all – it’s a simple
concept. The secret comes where the rubber hits the road.
Are you going to drive the Secret home by implementing it
into your daily life, or are you going to ignore it and keep
living a life of mediocrity and unrealized fulfillment? The
Secret is simple, but it ain’t easy. If applied correctly, it
will magnify your engagement in all areas of your life. In
turn, your life will become more enriched, and you will
experience more success, fulfillment, and purpose than you
previously realized.

Are you prepared to leave the easy life and embrace this
Secret? It’s a decision that only you can make. And trust
me, every day you integrate the Secret to Improving
Engagement into your lifestyle, the better your life
becomes. You’ll wake up every day with a purpose, and
you’ll never regret your days, weeks, or years spent toiling
and engaging.

Sure, call this a “soft” approach to bettering yourself. This

approach incorporates the intangible, as well as the
tangible, to elevate your understanding of how different
components of your life interact and feed off one another.

This “soft” approach articulates just how “hard” it is to

truly engage all components of your life. It holistically
defines the inputs required to achieve the desired output
that engagement brings about.

Purpose, passion, and persistence will provide the initial

flame, and the exponentially available pile of wood, that fill
your furnace with fire. This fire will burn even brighter as

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you engage your life and realize your potential in the

office, at the ballpark, and in your family room.

Your fire warms everything in your life, from your mission

to your disciplined actions. It energizes you and converts
your thoughts, actions, and behaviors into habits that serve
your mission and goals. Your professional, personal, and
social life rely on your flames as their source of energy.
Without the fire, nothing in your life is meaningful or
productive.

The fire won’t always be a furnace fire.

In fact, the furnace won’t always be a furnace. Sure, if

you’re looking to heat your home, then you’ll apply a
furnace to heat it. But if you’re looking to roast a
marshmallow, you’ll apply a bonfire. And if you’re
looking to warm your feet on a cold night, you’ll use a
small fireplace.

With this analogy, I want to highlight that everyone will

have the same types of inputs. Everyone’s purpose,
passions, and persistence will create the flames that ignite
their lives.

You have a fire inside of you. Depending on how you use

your fire, you will leverage your particular experiences,
actions, and goals to capture the flame that sets your
particular mission on fire. You will apply your fire to
whatever mission, goals, and actions you choose to pursue.
Although you have a fire like everyone else, your fire
might light up something entirely different.

And that’s what makes us individuals. We get “fired up”

about different things, and we all have unique preferences
that drive our decisions and pursuits. Whether you use a

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bonfire to cook a hot dog, or you use a lighter to smoke a

cigarette, you have a fire that belongs solely to you. What
you do with it, how large it becomes, and whether it hurts
you or harms you, is completely up to you.

Don’t be misled when I label our approach as “soft.” It’s

not a fluffy, soft marshmallow at all; rather, our approach is
the inflamed, roasted marshmallow that satiates our
appetites and our missions. Our approach encompasses our
mission, all the way down to our daily engagement levels,
to ensure that we are aligned and prepared to realize our
mission every single day.

Let’s wrap up this Chapter by dissecting two crucial

components of the Secret, which will add tremendous value
to you as you apply what you’ve learned in this book. As
we continue throughout this book, I urge you to reference
the visual diagrams in the Appendix, complete the
worksheets, and reread relevant sections of this book as you
consider precisely how you can better engage your life.
The ultimate objectives of this book are to: 1) convince you
that engagement is relevant to your life, and 2) provide you
with the framework required for you to realize enhanced
levels of engagement for the rest of your life. The
diagrams, worksheets, and relevant insights from this book
were designed to achieve these objectives … now it’s up to
you to reflect, implement, and execute.

I can only convince you so much. I can only provide you

with so much information and frameworks. YOU have to
apply what you’ve learned in order to realize the benefits in
your life. Take the time to reflect and reorient your
lifestyle to embrace the actionable insights you’ll continue
to acquire. The insights themselves are actionable, which
means that all you have to do is take action in order to
tangibly realize these insights in your own life. Reflect on

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your experiences and leverage your learnings to create

waves in your pool of engagement.

Let me help you out in applying these actionable insights.

Let’s dissect the two crucial components of the Secret to
improving engagement, which will help lead you on your
way to an engaged, fulfilled life!

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Chapter 8: The “Secret to Improving Engagement”

The Secret to Improving Engagement relies on two integral

components: 1) gradualism and 2) the Sliding Spectrum.

Gradualism

Let’s look at gradualism.

Gradual changes, over time, will allow your actions to align

organically and provide you with a canvas of experiences,
learnings, and refinements that provide invaluable input to
your changes and your continued progress.

Large, immediate change comes with shocks that can easily

overwhelm your affected systems. In our case, we may
experience adverse impacts on our mission, goals, and
actions when we try to enact massive change in a short
period of time.

Gradual changes also align with the principle of

persistence, which serves as the foundational attribute that
supports your mission and its fulfillment.

Small, daily acts of persistence allow you to better develop

yourself and ultimately fulfill your mission over time.

Similarly, small, daily changes in your level of engagement

allow you to focus on different parts of your life. As you
engage different areas of your life over time, you’ll elevate
each individual part and realize the synergies that arise
from the interdependencies within your professional,
personal, and social life.

As we’ve discussed before, engagement in one part of your

life can trigger synergies and engagement in other parts.

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This interdependency creates impactful applications for

your daily engagement. Your daily engagement is crucial
in maturing your mission and fulfilling your mission. This
is precisely why gradual change is an integral component
of the Secret to Improving Engagement – gradual change
allows you to build your engagement over time to deliver
daily, tangible results that continually encourage and
reinforce your daily actions.

Bobby’s “initial engagement shock” presents a large,

immediate change that can thwart Bobby’s future progress
in developing his engagement. To combat this shock, all
Bobby has to do is apply his understanding of gradual
change. Over time, new levels of engagement will prove
easier as each daily engagement reinforces the benefits of
implementing purpose, passion, and persistence into every
action. A mindset grounded in gradual change will serve
Bobby in his continued efforts to grow all of his lifelines
and support his mission.

If Bobby can’t overcome the initial shock of engaging his

life, he won’t be able to slide the Spectrum and become a
Fred or a Joe. Therefore, it is crucial for Bobby to grasp
and implement the mindset of gradual change. In fact, the
Freddies and Joeys of the world also experience their own
engagement shocks, to a lesser degree, when they begin
engaging their lives more profoundly. Since they already
understand the importance of engagement, and have
personally experienced engagement’s value-add, they can
more quickly adapt to their “engagement shock”
experiences.

Just as we discovered previously, the snow-ball nature of

engagement allows momentum to pick up speed whenever
its creator wants to add more snow. YOU are the creator,
and each snow flake represents one action you take to

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increase your engagement in a particular part of your life.

The more snowflakes you collect, the heavier your
snowball and the easier it is to roll down the hill. The more
actions you take to initiate engagement, the greater your
engagement and the easier it becomes to engage more parts
of your life more often.

This snowball effect is a virtuous cycle of action, impact,

and feedback that guides future action. As the basis of
engagement, action allows you to engage your life and
fulfill your mission through this virtuous cycle. The more
action, impact, and feedback you have, the more you learn
about yourself and the world around you. As you
continually learn, you can continually improve. In fact,
you become an active ambassador of gradual improvement.
Gradual improvement, at its heart, is the byproduct of
continual learning based on your actions and environmental
feedback. Before you know it, you’ll lead an engaged
lifestyle based on daily realignment and proactive action
based on prior action and feedback. All you have to do is
learn from your actions and adapt them accordingly.

You produce feedback from your environment, or within

yourself, whenever you act. You must take ownership of
your decisions and actions alike. With this ownership, you
hold yourself accountable in disciplining yourself, taking
action, and learning from your actions to better inform
future decisions. You have the keys in your hand! Be
consistent, disciplined, and intelligent in your daily
pursuits, and you’ll realize the value of gradual
improvement. Consistency is key, after all. Gradual
improvement uses consistency and feedback to bridge the
gap between where you are and where you want to be as
you fulfill your mission.

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Gradual improvement will maintain your momentum

throughout your journey, as well as offer you daily
opportunities to step outside of your comfort zone. Outside
of your current path. And if you decide to make this step,
you’ll soon realize that there’s been more to your journey
than what you once though. Gradual improvement is the
first major component of the Secret because it provides you
with daily goals, actions, and alignment that serve your
long-term mission. Gradual improvement lays down your
path as you twist and turn through different trees, bushes,
and obstacles. In fact, the more you step outside your path,
the easier it becomes to land on both feet as you jump into
new opportunities. Gradual improvement provides the
stepping stones that allow you to walk off your path and
reclaim your true journey. Every step you take, gradual
improvement will provide a new stepping stone that
absorbs your foot and carries you on your way to
fulfillment.

Now, back to the snowball. Bobby just needs to build the

snow ball first, and then his progress will match that of
others higher up in the spectrum. If Bobby focuses on one
ball of snow at a time, he’ll create a self-sustaining snow
ball to roll down his hill of engagement. Freddie and Joey
already have that snow ball, so they can more effectively
pile on snow flake after snow flake as they transform into
Fredericks and Josephs.

Which brings us to the second integral component of the

Secret – the Sliding Spectrum.

The Sliding Spectrum of Engagement

As we’ve discussed, Bobby is the left endpoint of the

spectrum, Joseph is the right endpoint of the spectrum, and

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the variations of Fred crowd around the middle of the

spectrum.

We’ve detailed the transition required for Bobby to become

Freddie, and for Frederick to become Joey. These types of
transition are progressive and positive in direction.

However, we have yet to describe the regressive, negative

slides down the spectrum.

Just like enhanced levels of engagement can move you up

the spectrum, you can also move DOWN the spectrum by
decreasing your engagement.

The snow-ball momentum of engagement is a double-

edged sword. On one hand, the more you engage, the
MORE YOU WILL ENGAGE. On the other hand, the less
you engage, the LESS YOU WILL ENGAGE.

Basic physics tells us that an object will maintain its

trajectory unless acted upon by an external force. If you’re
a Bobby, and you’re able to overcome the initial
engagement shock after initiating your first act of
engagement, your snowball will build its mass and
transform you into Freddie, then Fred, then Frederick, then
Joey, then Joe, all the way to Joseph.

However, if you decide to stop or reduce your engagement

along your climb up the spectrum, you will either stagnate
at a particular level or regress into Bobby 2.0. Even if you
start out as a Fred or Joe, you have to be persistent in
engaging all parts of your life, or you will slip down the
spectrum and lose out on engagement synergies you
previously cultivated.

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Here’s the good news – it’s far more difficult to lose your
level of engagement than it is to initiate or build your level
of engagement. In initiating engagement, you have nothing
to lose. In building your engagement, your daily
persistence and actions will virtuously reinforce your
behaviors and your future engagement. In losing your level
of engagement, you have to actively resist the snowball
momentum of your current engagement levels and
willingly sacrifice the maturity and fulfillment of your
mission. Losing your engagement level, therefore, is both
physically and psychologically harder than initiating or
building your engagement level.

Since losing your engagement level is more difficult than

initiating or building engagement, you shouldn’t concern
yourself too much when it comes to sliding down the
spectrum. However, it’s important to understand that the
spectrum goes both ways … it is not organically linear.
You must be intentional in your engagement and deliberate
in your daily actions. For those days where passion is
almost nonexistent, and persistence is barely getting you
through, remind yourself that you MUST engage your day
to prevent spectrum slippage (or, in a positive light, to
enhance your current engagement and elevate yourself
along the spectrum).

Now that we’ve discussed the Secret’s two integral

components, which are gradualism and the Sliding
Spectrum, let me give you a visual example that illustrates
both components at work.

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Chapter 9: The “Secret” to Sudoku

I’ve recently gotten into Sudoku, so I’ll use an ordinary

Sudoku to make something extraordinary as we illustrate
the Secret to Improving Engagement. Remember, the
Secret to Improving Engagement is to actively choose one
or two activities, every day, that you can better engage.
With gradual improvement and an understanding of the
Sliding Spectrum, we can all claim our missions, take daily
action, and continue to grow with every new experience
and opportunity. And trust me, an ordinary Sudoku really
does provide us with an extraordinary example to help us
visualize and embrace the Secret.

For those who aren’t familiar with Sudoku – a Sudoku is a

3x3 square. Each of its nine squares are comprised of nine
individual squares. Each of the nine larger squares must
contain the numbers, 1-9, without any repeats. Across the
nine squares, the rows and columns must contain the
numbers 1-9 as well, without any repeats. In the Appendix,
you can find a Sudoku for your visual reference, as well as
a “Secret” Sudoku that integrates some of our engagement
concepts. Exhibit 3 is your “ordinary” Sudoku you’d fill
out as described above, and Exhibit 4 is our “extraordinary”
engagement-oriented Sudoku.

When you look at the Sudoku itself, as a combination of the

nine larger squares and each of their nine individual
squares, you see the numbers 1-9 in each of the nine
squares, as well as the numbers 1-9 along the sides and
through the middle of the Sudoku.

Depending on difficulty level, the Sudoku will provide you

with several fixed numbers already placed in the Sudoku.
These fixed numbers serve as constraints that guide your

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strategic decision-making in placing your numbers to fit the

individual square and the Sudoku as a whole.

Now, based on the visual of the Sudoku alone, I’m sure you
can already draw parallels between the Sudoku and the
integrated nature of your life. Still, let’s review these
parallels. Because I may surprise you with a couple
additional insights you may not have initially considered.

The Sudoku itself represents your mission, supported by

your goals and daily actions.

The nine larger squares represent the lifelines that comprise

your mission – your professional, personal, and social life.

The nine individual squares that comprise the nine larger

squares represent the fundamentals that comprise each of
your three lifelines.

The numbers already inserted into the Sudoku represent

your current level of engagement in life.

The numbers that you insert into the remaining spaces

represent your 3P’s, the building blocks of your mission –
purpose, passion, and persistence.

Your approach, or strategy, to aligning the numbers within

and across the larger squares, represents your level of
engagement with your mission, lifelines, and fundamentals.
Without your engagement, the larger squares, smaller
squares, and numbers themselves are meaningless. The
value-add comes from connecting the numbers within each
individual large square and across the collective large
squares. When you align the numbers with each of the nine
large squares in mind, as well as the connectedness
between squares, you complete the Sudoku successfully.

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When completing a Sudoku, you may find yourself unable

to fill in a number after several minutes of contemplation.

Yet, when you return to that Sudoku the next day, you
almost immediately input three or four numbers that come
to you, based on your mental rest and consequent follow-up
analysis.

As you work towards completing the Sudoku, you

occasionally hit a road block. Although most of the
Sudoku is completed correctly, you find that one misplaced
number has made your Sudoku unsolvable. And you’re left
with two choices: 1) throw up your hands and give up, or 2)
erase all your numbers and start over.

Most other times, you complete the Sudoku successfully as

a byproduct of strategizing your attack and aligning the
numbers within each square, and across squares, as you
complete the Sudoku. This continual alignment prevents
future road blocks.

When you complete a Sudoku, you feel a sense of

accomplishment and therefore approach the next Sudoku
with a little more confidence, momentum, and diligence.
The more Sudokus you complete, the more confident and
intentional you become.

And for those who are inspired to tackle a Sudoku after this
discussion – depending on difficulty level, you have to be
creative with your Sudoku! Sometimes, when the next
number isn’t popping out to you, you have to consider the
remaining numbers that may or not fit within an individual
large square, based on the remaining numbers required to
complete other squares and connecting rows/columns. You
have to think holistically and consider alternatives that
offer you solutions within and amongst your squares.

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Through this type of integrated thinking, you can conquer

any Sudoku that you encounter.

There’s our visual.

Let’s recap the insights real quick.

Engagement, holistic thinking, and diligence are all

required to complete your Sudoku and to move you on to
the next. As you input your purpose, passions, and
persistence (your numbers) into the squares, you start to
realize the power that alignment and its synergies bring to
solving the Sudoku at large. As your fundamentals overlap
with one another and feed off each other (your columns and
rows), you develop an infrastructure that supplies you with
more numbers that help you complete your squares (your
three lifelines) and the Sudoku itself (your mission).

As you engage the individual squares and input your

numbers, you open up more opportunities to complete the
larger squares and the rows/columns that connect your
larger squares together. Your 3 P’s, fundamentals, and
lifelines become aligned and synergized; consequently, as
you complete more Sudokus, you become a Sudoku master.
A master of your mission. Every Sudoku pushes you
towards maturing and fulfilling your life’s mission. And
with every completed Sudoku, you gain another batch of
experiences, learnings, and alignments that improve the
way you tackle your next Sudoku. Your continued
engagement will continue and grow your mission. Each
Sudoku is a mini mission that fits within your overarching
mission – alignment at its finest!

In order to ensure your engagement, you must implement

holistic thinking. Just like Sudoku lovers implement
holistic thinking to consider contingencies related to their

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next move, you must embody holistic thinking in your

approach to your mission and your lifelines. We’ve
previously discussed your approach to engagement, and
we’ll reiterate it here again. When you implement holistic
thinking into your approach, you allow yourself to realign
and reorient your lifelines, which drive forward progress in
your mission. Without holistic thinking, you’d be unable to
realize the connectedness and synergies between your
lifelines; therefore, holistic thinking is crucial in making
your lifelines come alive by facilitating the alignment, and
consequent synergies, of your mission. Your mission
drives your journey, and only YOU can hold your steering
wheel.

Diligence in completing your Sudokus directly reflects

your level of persistence. As the foundation of your
mission, your persistence lays the groundwork for your
daily thoughts, behaviors, and actions. Similarly, your
diligence in Sudoku will allow you to overcome road
blocks and find creative ways to successfully complete the
Sudoku. Without diligence, your Sudoku puzzle will never
be completed. Without persistence, your mission will
never come to fruition.

Recap complete.

And here’s a little bonus, to highlight a few insights that

may not be as noticeable as the ones presented previously.

First bonus insight:

Gradual improvement. That’s right, gradual improvement.

The first integral component of the Secret to Improving
Engagement.

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We breezed over this point earlier, but I want to emphasize

it here:

When completing a Sudoku, you may find yourself unable

to fill in a number after several minutes of contemplation.

Yet, when you return to that Sudoku the next day, you
almost immediately input three or four numbers that
“suddenly” come to you, based on your follow-up analysis.
Since you’ve allowed your mind the time to process
information and derive next steps, you can now attack the
Sudoku with new resolve (and with new solutions).

This is a direct application of gradual improvement! Minor

changes, over time, allow us to continually grow and foster
our abilities. These incremental changes allow us to adapt,
realign, and continue our progress.

A vital component of gradual improvement comes in the

form of sharpening your saw, as coined by Stephen Covey.
When you remove yourself from a task and take the time to
recoup, regroup, and relax, you can reengage your
creativity and productivity.

The same reasoning applies to Sudoku. When you retreat

from your Sudoku and return to it at a future time, you can
make rapid progress when you return because you’ve taken
enough time to reignite your creativity and strategic
thinking. If something doesn’t look right, it usually looks a
little better when you separate yourself and return with a
clearer head and rejuvenated energy.

The element of gradual improvement is built into the Secret

to Improving Engagement because it’s an organic part of
your engagement journey. As you engage your mission
every day, you need time to reflect on your experiences,

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realign your actions, and apply your learnings. When you

make a daily habit of sharpening your saw, you can
effectively allocate the time and energy required to
rejuvenate, reflect, and realign your lifelines. This time is
crucial in applying your learnings and serves to fulfill your
mission over time, throughout your experiences and
choices.

Sudoku beautifully illustrates how gradual improvement

can work for solving your next puzzle, just like gradual
improvement helps mature and fulfill your mission over
multiple Sudokus and across difficulty levels
(metaphorically speaking, of course).

Which brings us to our second bonus insight:

The Sliding Spectrum. The second component of the

Secret.

And yes, if you haven’t figured it out already – this Sudoku

visual is a clever ploy to reiterate both components of the
Secret to Improving Engagement. However, with this
visual, we can better understand engagement’s tangible
impact in our lives, which is the entire focus of this book.
We’re wrapping it all together and packaging it as the gift
you give yourself every day (in more direct language, this
gift is the action of engaging everything in your life). And
I’ll throw a third bonus insight into the mix as well, free of
charge.

But right now, let’s connect the Sliding Spectrum with

Sudoku’s difficulty levels.

A basic Sudoku book will offer three difficult levels: easy,

medium, and hard.

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Bobby is comparable to the “easy” level. The easy Sudoku

requires limited strategy and therefore commands minimal
engagement.

Fred is comparable to the “medium” level. The medium

Sudoku requires some element of strategy and commands
moderate engagement.

Joe is comparable to the “hard” level. The hard Sudoku

requires a LOT of strategy and commands heavy
engagement.

Once you start doing Sudokus, the first Sudoku determines

if you: 1) swear off of Sudokus forever or 2) develop a
“healthy addiction” to them.

The first Sudoku represents your “engagement shock.” If

you swear off of Sudokus forever, you succumb to that
shock and will forever relate to Bobby. If you overcome
the shock and begin to complete Sudokus left and right,
you’ll work your way to the hardest Sudokus and ascend to
Joseph status. The more Sudokus you complete, the more
experience and confidence you bring to the next Sudoku.
Every completed Sudoku pushes you forward to
progressively harder Sudokus, symbolized by the
progression in Fred and Joe variations. You effectively
develop a virtuous cycle of achievement, reinforcement,
and initiative that continually pushes you to embrace,
engage, and conquer more Sudokus (this point is a beautiful
segue into our third insight, which provides the many
stepping stones that you create throughout your journey).

And if you lose focus while tackling your Sudokus, or you

go an excessively long time without working on a Sudoku,
you will consequently notice a drop in performance. You’ll
struggle with your Sudokus and regress from the “hard”

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levels to easier levels, only to regain your former glory

after putting in the repetitions again. You can move from
Joey, back down to Freddie, and back up to Frederick, all
based on the level of engagement you choose to employ.
The movement between Sudoku levels replicates the
movement along the Sliding Spectrum … which is totally
controlled by your levels of ownership, accountability, and
engagement.

This is a great transition to the third and final bonus insight:

The snowball effect!

The more Sudokus you conquer, the closer you come to

securing your throne. With more and more Sudokus under
your belt, you can continue to enhance your approach and
your execution. This concept translates directly to your
daily engagement – as you engage more elements of your
life, you can better approach and execute new opportunities
for elevated engagement. Your ability to conquer reflects
your prior engagement experiences and the momentum you
collect from those experiences. Your momentum is only as
large as you allow your experiences to transform into
insights and consequent action. Let that snowball roll
down the mountain and gain as much mass as possible –
just like you’re gaining as much engagement as you can!
Prior experiences provide feedback, alignment facilitates
correction, and new action offers additional engagement
experiences and learning opportunities. The virtuous cycle
is alive and well, captured perfectly by your snowball.

We’ve covered the snowball effect previously, but I don’t

want its importance to melt on you! Rather, I want to make
sure you understand how you can leverage persistent action
as a means of establishing momentum for your continued
mission maturity and fulfillment. Without your disciplined

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actions and consequent momentum, you’re less inclined to

adopt persistence as a habit. And since persistence is the
foundation of your mission, it’s crucial to adopt
persistence, and its resulting momentum, as the catalysts of
your mission fulfillment. All you have to do is let your
snowball naturally roll down the mountain … whether it’s a
mountain of Sudokus or the mountain of your dreams.

There you have it. The three bonus insights. Gradual

improvement. Sliding Spectrum. Snowball effect.

Okay, you got me. We’ve covered these insights before,

but not to the level of detail we just described. The Sudoku
perfectly illustrates the Secret to Improving Engagement
(which carries the first two bonus insights) and the
snowball effect. Not only do we have an intellectual
understanding of these concepts, but we now have the
Sudoku as a visual association to reinforce our learnings.

We’ve covered varying engagement levels, in the forms of

Bobby, Fred, and Joe.

We’ve covered solutions to unsatisfactory engagement,

which include your approach to engagement, the two-
pronged Secret to Improving Engagement, and the
snowball effect.

We’ve covered a transformative example, provided by the

Sudoku, that highlights all elements of your mission and
your life.

We’ve covered everything from A-Z in regards to your

mission, your lifelines, your fundamentals, and your
foundation.

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At this point, you should feel encouraged, empowered, and

confident in understanding your current engagement level,
realigning your mission with your lifelines, and enhancing
your daily engagement for the rest of your life.
Engagement spans across all parts of your life, whether
work, play, or anything (and everything) in between.
Engagement does not discriminate based on the nature of
your activity, but it does discriminate if you choose not to
embrace it fully.

In other words, engagement in one area of your life will

have carryover benefits in other parts of your life.
Similarly, lack of engagement in one area of your life will
flow over into other parts of your life, leaving you less
engaged, enriched, and fulfilled in your overarching
mission.

I encourage you to reread particular excerpts of this book

that stand out to you. I also encourage you to examine the
accompanying visuals in this book, and to complete the
provided worksheets. Just like more Sudokus will enhance
your Sudoku prowess, you’ll get more out of this book if
you take the time and exert the effort to absorb, reflect
upon, and apply the concepts in this book. Look at this as
your first chance to enhance your engagement. After all,
we’ve spent a good chunk of this book discussing the
importance of reflection, application, and realignment.

Before you go out and enhance your engagement, I’ll

highlight the main points of what we’ve learned throughout
the course of this book. I’ll also provide some final
thoughts that you can use as you ignite your journey
towards complete and committed engagement!

At this point in the book, we’ve turned over all the rocks
that comprise your engagement journey. We’ve also

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covered how to create new stepping stones with the

principles of gradual improvement and experiential
learning. We’ve broadly discussed the importance of
engagement, as well as its practical application in your life.
By now, I can no longer convince you that engagement is
important, or that you should be more engaged in your life.

The choice to engage, or not to engage, is on you.

Ownership and accountability, matched with attitude and
perspective, will shape how you make this choice.

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Chapter 10: Tips and Tricks

Whatever you do in this world, please please please …

choose engagement.

Engage, don’t enrage, your life. Let me repeat: Engage,

don’t enrage, your life!

To wrap up our learnings, I leave you with two summary

paragraphs and one list of key insights.

Ultimately, our persistence is the cornerstone of our

mission. Combined with our purpose and passions,
persistence allows us to commit our daily activities toward
our lifelong mission. The way we prioritize and attack
each hour, of each day, depends on our mindset, habits, and
behaviors, all of which derive from our purpose, passions,
and persistence. These 3 P’s allow our professional,
personal, and social lifelines to synergistically connect and
engage one another. As our mission develops and matures
throughout our life experiences, we can better fulfill and
enrich our mission by holistically integrating the mission
fulfillment components of each overarching lifeline. As we
continually experience, learn, and realign, we will better
ourselves, our mission, and the world around us.
Engagement is nothing more than learning and growing,
which is all that we can do as people.

Engagement is also a virtuous cycle – engaging your own

mission allows you to similarly engage others’ missions.
When you engage your own life, you automatically begin
to engage others’ lives as well. Your journey intertwines
with others’ journeys, and you all can help refine one
another’s path until everyone makes it out of the forest.
The destination may be the opposite end of the trees, but
your mission will always lie in the rocks, obstacles, and

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new paths you encounter along the way. The journey is

meaningful, enriching, and fulfilling … not the destination
itself. That’s why it’s so crucial to engage every moment
of your life – if you don’t, your life will pass you by when
you arrive at your destination. The journey, or the process,
is what provides you with true meaning. And as you
engage your journey, you will only elevate your level of
fulfillment when you’re at the end of the forest. Don’t let
life pass you by. Engage every moment, push yourself to
travel the unknown, and pick others up along the way.
Engagement, persistence, and meaningful community will
transform your life to unprecedented levels. You just have
to put your best foot, and your worst foot, forward as you
step on each stepping stone along the way. Be brave. Be
unrelenting. Be engaged in your life. The results will blow
you away!

Here are ten insights that you can reference, at any point in
the future, to help you along your engagement journey:

1) There may be good days and bad days, but there is

no excuse for bad decision-making. You always
control how you respond, how you behave, and how
you realign your life to coincide with your mission.

2) Persistence is more important than any other

behavior when it comes to creating, developing, and
enhancing your mission. Persistence alone will
drive you closer to your mission than any other
attribute discussed in this book.

3) Progress is not linear – you will make poor choices,

good choices, and necessary choices based on your
own discretion and your environment. As long as
you continue to stick to your intuition and your core

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values, you will realize immense progress over the

long haul.

4) The only negative experiences are those that you

don’t learn from and leverage as realignment tools.
The more experiences you encounter and engage,
the more opportunities you amass in learning,
growing, and realigning your lifelines and 3 P’s.

5) When in doubt, talk it out! Talk to yourself AND

talk to others in order to validate, reinforce, and
refine your mission as you engage others and
discern their experiential insights.

6) Context will shape your content. As you engage

more experiences and opportunities throughout your
life, use these engagements as platforms to refine
and elevate your mission, your mission maturity,
and mission fulfillment.

7) Engagement gets easier every time you choose to

engage. Get over the initial shock of engagement
and let your snowball gain momentum as you
engage more and more components of your life.

8) The Joseph inside you is one choice away. The

choice of engagement is always within your control,
so CHOOSE ENGAGEMENT ALWAYS.

9) Don’t kill yourself trying to engage everything at

once. Engage one thing at a time, incrementally
(gradual improvement), as you ascend the
Sliding Spectrum of Engagement. These concepts
are at the heart of engagement and constitute the
Secret to Improving Engagement. Let your
engagement snowball and gain momentum with

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every intentional action you take to improve

engagement in each part of your life.

10) I’ll leave this insight for you to fill in – after all,
when you take more action to better engage your
life, you’ll acquire many learnings, reflections, and
realignments that trump anything I can write down
for you. Always remember to seek feedback from
other people, your external environment, and your
own reflections to evaluate, realign, and synergize
your engaged actions.

These ten insights directly address why you read this book.
They also provide you with actionable takeaways that you
can use TODAY in order to better engage your life.

You now have the tools, the tool chest, and the raw
materials to create your mission mansion.

Your engagement is the glue that makes it all come

together. And your persistence is what makes you work on
your mansion, day in and day out. Your mission maturity
and fulfillment rely on your deliberate choice to engage
every part of your home. Every room. Every piece of
furniture. Every corner finish. The better you engage your
drapes, the better you engage your overarching interior
design. Just like engaging one of your fundamentals will
allow you to elevate other fundamentals and lifelines.

Don’t be fooled – the small things are truly the big things.
If you can’t engage your small, daily activities, you won’t
be able to fulfill the goals, objectives, and actions required
to fulfill your mission.

Embrace your inner Joseph and ENGAGE! As you engage

your small, daily activities … I promise you … you WILL

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fulfill the goals, objectives, and actions required to fulfill

your mission in life!

Now, without further ado … go out there and DO IT.

ENGAGE! ENRICH! And enjoy your journey to
engaging a fulfilling life 

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Chapter 11: BONUS – How to Improve Employee

Engagement

When I first wrote this book, I wanted to focus on how

companies can better engage their employees. However, as
I came up with the mission methodology and associated
themes in this book, I realized that engagement in the office
is only one component of employee engagement.

That’s why this book focuses on enhancing your

engagement levels in ALL areas of life. As you take more
action and engage different parts of your life more
intentionally, you’ll benefit from real, tangible gain in
everything that you do. From your work to your play, and
from your hobbies to your relationships.

This chapter is focused on organizational engagement;

specifically, we’ll cover how companies can better engage
their employees for optimal productivity and contribution
to corporate objectives. This chapter will help company
leaders, managers, and front-line employees align on
company culture, organizational effectiveness, and labor
output.

Let’s get right into the meat and potatoes of this chapter,
which I’ll preface with a qualifying statement:

Employee engagement is different for every

organization.

The underlying concept is the same – employee

engagement is all about aligning employees with company
directives, with one another, and with their individual
interests.

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Aligning employees with company directives comes down

to leadership and vision communication. In order to
properly communicate a vision, company leaders must
clearly, deliberately, and consistently present the company
vision in terms of short-term initiatives and long-term
goals. Many books and consultants already advise
companies on how to align employees with company
directives, so I won’t focus on this point.

Aligning employees with one another is crucial in forming

senses of community, belonging, and support within an
organization. Companies actively look to fill these senses
of community with company-wide participation programs
and employee resource groups that facilitate employee
connectedness and perceived value. Again, since a lot of
resources already offer valuable information on this
particular topic, I won’t focus on this point either.

Aligning employees with their individual interests ensures

employee satisfaction and loyalty. Whether through
compensation packages, benefits, or advancement
opportunities, companies strive to align with their
employees individually to develop their talent and engage
their pool of human capital. I don’t have expertise in
incentive alignment, so I won’t focus on this point.

I’m not going to focus on any of these individual points,

since they’re covered quite well with existing literature and
research.

What I’m going to do is focus on the bigger picture. When

combining all three points, we’ll find that employee
engagement is a complex, intricate beast that needs to be
tamed and domesticated a day at a time. We’ll also learn
that, despite a company’s best efforts to engage its
employees, it may find its engagement efforts fruitless if it

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doesn’t consider all three points in its activities. It’s critical

for companies to align employees with company directives,
with one another, and with their individual interests.

At the company directive level, the employee will

complement the organization as a whole. At the “one
another” level, the employee will complement his/her
colleagues. At the individual interest level, the employee
will engage his/her own work output and the meaning
behind his/her work. These three points account for the
company, for the employees collectively, and for the
employee individually.

Other stakeholders, whether they be shareholders,

customers, or impacted communities, are all associated
with the first point on company directives. Since all of
these stakeholders are directly, and indirectly, related to the
company itself, we can assume that stakeholders are
integrated into company directives.

In the “real” world, some key stakeholders may not be

considered in organizational directives and initiatives.
Which is why we’ve had the Wells Fargo account scandals,
data sharing and privacy issues with Facebook, and a whole
load of other corporate missteps. For the purposes of this
book, we will not go into specifics on stakeholder
engagement, since that’s worthy of its own book. We’ll
simply associate stakeholder considerations with the point
on company directives.

This chapter will focus on taming the beast of employee

engagement, which is a key stakeholder in its own right.
Without effective employee engagement, an organization is
unable to fully serve any of its other internal or external
stakeholders.

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Let’s get back to the three alignment levels: company

directive, one another, and individual. When a company
successfully engages all three of these levels, it will realize
synergies comparable to the synergistic impact of lifeline
integration. The organization, the employees, and the
individual account for the mind, body, and soul of any
organization. With all three of these levels engaged, the
organization breathes, walks, and talks with its values,
business success, and societal impact.

How about we tame the beast of employee engagement?

Here, I’ll give you practical tips that you can use with your
company to improve employee engagement on all three
levels. Whether you’re the founder, a manager, or a front-
line employee, you can bring these insights to your
company and realize immediate gains to employee
engagement and organizational effectiveness. With these
tips, we’ll cover the first thing I promised you: a focus on
the bigger picture, with actionable insights on taming the
“engagement beast” an action at a time.

Remember, it’s important to connect all three levels of

employee engagement and to consider their relatedness
throughout each of these practical tips.

Tip #1 To Improve Employee Engagement: Don’t put a

box around engagement.

Don’t treat engagement as a check box to satisfy a list of

corporate values.

Don’t limit engagement to a predefined set of activities or

interests.

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Don’t gauge engagement by deploying an annual survey to

employees.

Let’s look at each of these in detail.

Given the corporate world’s relatively recent focus on

employee engagement, many companies have integrated
“engagement” into their core beliefs and values. Which is
all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t hold weight if engagement
stops once it’s written down on the values list.

Companies have values, which are typically written out in

their value proposition or list of values. These values are
expressed at the employee level, through employee actions
and behaviors. Additionally, there are certain “levers” to
pull if you want the values, or their expression, to
significantly change.

For a real example of these concepts in action, let’s take a

look at Uber.

Uber originally prided itself on getting out to the

marketplace and beating out consequent regulations. After
penetrating different geographic markets and becoming the
primary ride-sharing service in various regions, Uber
planted itself firmly and beat out the regulations put in
place after-the-fact. With this mindset and approach, Uber
profited wildly and gained an incredible popularity that
remains intact today.

However, on the flip side, Uber’s value in outpacing

external regulations has also put the ride-sharing company
in the hot seat. With recent issues related to sexual
harassment and other misconduct at the company’s
executive level, Uber has faced major scrutiny. With
consequent regulations in place AND the negative stigma

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associated with Uber’s recent misconduct, Uber is

repositioning itself with a new CEO, branding campaign,
and revised company protocols for workplace behavior.

Uber’s value in outpacing external regulations allowed

Uber to gain a first-mover advantage in the ride-sharing
market, but this same value also led to Uber’s issues with
sexual misconduct and workplace behavior. Uber’s
employees expressed this value properly when it came to
penetrating new marketplaces, but they also expressed this
value poorly when they engaged in workplace misbehavior.
They disregarded internal accountability and regulation as a
byproduct of their value in outpacing external regulations,
which ended up adversely impacting their workplace
interactions and norms. Consequently, Uber is pulling the
levers of its brand image and leadership makeup by
replacing the CEO, engaging a new marketing campaign,
and openly working to resolve workplace misconduct.
Uber is pulling its levers to reframe its value in outpacing
external regulation, which will allow the company to
express this value differently in the future. Uber will still
act decisively and quickly, but the company will be more
cognizant of any negative ramifications associated with
“unregulated” action. As Uber pulls its levers, the
company’s employees will express this value differently, in
a way that mitigates risk and optimizes the upside. An
increased focus on market penetration and business wins,
combined with fewer occurrences of workplace misconduct
due to realigned expressions, will better position Uber both
monetarily and socially.

When values come alive in an organization, they’re

expressed uniquely by individual employees throughout the
organization. In order to ensure proper expressions,
companies must effectively lead and manage their values
system. When particular behaviors and expressions are

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unaligned with the organization’s main objectives and

intentions, company leaders must take the initiative to
identify and pull the levers required to adjust these
behaviors and ensure proper expressions once again. This
realignment requires wisdom, leadership, and foresight,
which all require complete engagement within the
organization as a whole, the interactions between
employees, and individual employee expressions. All three
of these components directly impact values, expressions,
and levers. They require complete engagement and allow
our discussion on values to come full circle.

With the importance of engagement in truly realizing your

corporate values, I urge you not to treat engagement as a
check box on your list of values. If Uber had been more
engaged with its values and its employees, it could have
avoided a lot of pain. Similarly, if your company
incorporates engagement as one of its values, DO NOT let
engagement fall on deaf ears. Engage your people, your
other values, and your company’s mission every single day.
That’s the only way to ensure that your organization, your
employees, and individual behaviors are aligned with profit
and purpose. Engagement can bring life to your other
values when you stop looking at engagement as a buzz
word on your value statement and start treating it as a vital,
living part of your organization and consequent interactions
with employees, the community, and all other stakeholders.

Now that we looked at the first “don’t,” let’s look at the

other two.

Don’t limit engagement to a predefined set of activities or

interests. It’s easy to get bogged down in metrics and
standardized expectations, especially if engagement is seen
as a key performance indicator on year-end evaluations.

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Employee resource groups (ERGs) are amazing

opportunities for employees to engage themselves in
communities of like-minded people. From LGBTQ groups
to African-American and Hispanic groups, ERGs provide
unique communities for employees to engage and gain a
sense of belonging.

But ERGs aren’t the only indicator of engagement. Internal

company initiatives, like people development programs, are
also strong engagement opportunities. As are mentorship
programs, miscellaneous involvement groups (like book
clubs or softball leagues), and your organization’s pipeline
of new initiatives and ideas.

That’s right: the pipeline of new initiatives and ideas. True

engagement is captured by your company’s existing
engagement platform AND the rate at which new
engagement opportunities present themselves. Employees
who are engaged with their work, and with their company
at large, will actively seek out new and creative ways to be
more engaged. Both the volume and quality of new
initiatives provide a strong pulse of engagement’s layers
throughout your organization.

This is precisely why companies cannot limit engagement

to a predefined set of activities and interests. In fact, the
more emphasis placed on new initiatives and ideas, the
better! Although it’s hard to predict and account for the
resources allocated to ideation, it’s crucially important to
foster robust structures for idea engagement. It can be even
harder to transform these ideas into practical application for
business use, which is why engagement should not be
confined to a predefined set of activities. Just because it’s
hard to measure the impact of engagement and new ideas
on the bottom line does NOT mean that your company
should place boxes around the value of engagement.

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Rather, it means that your company should develop robust

structures for engagement, both in ideas and in your
employee community, that provide the groundwork for new
opportunities that otherwise couldn’t be realized.

3M is a company that offers a robust structure for

engagement. 3M’s “15% Culture” encourages employees
to set aside 15% of their work time as a foundation to
pursue exciting, innovative ideas that interest them.
Alongside the traditional employee resources groups and
other community-driven initiatives, 3M’s 15% Culture
leverages employee engagement in ideation and in
community.

Cognizant is a company that strives to transform other

organizations in the Digital Age. This transformation focus
requires employees to continually educate themselves on
the newest digital platforms and trends. With its robust
eLearning platform, Cognizant provides its employees with
content, and context, to engage their unique interests within
the ever-changing landscape of digital innovation.

For a company to successfully engage employees, both

collectively and individually, the organization must foster
engagement in ideation and in community. Limiting
engagement to a predefined set of activities or interests will
curtail engagement’s added benefits when it comes to
generating new ideas, socializing those ideas with others,
and turning those ideas into profitable, actionable
initiatives. Instead of limiting engagement to a black-and-
white structure of activities, I encourage you to think
outside-the-box for all things engagement by allowing your
employees and colleagues to define what engagement
means to them. And as more employees define their own
engagement and communicate their perspectives to each
other, they’ll soon move past their own limited viewpoints

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and come to realize that engagement means something

different to everyone. With these differing perspectives
comes the understanding that engagement is a broad,
holistic topic that can’t be restricted to a list of
expectations. This understanding allows employees to let
their engagement levels sparkle and shine in unforeseen
ways. The potential for unforeseen gain is only accessible
when you quit limiting engagement to a predefined set of
activities and alternatively opt to release the floodgate of
engagement.

In other words, you’ll only realize as many benefits to

engagement as you allow in the process of fostering
engagement. The less you focus on predefined activities,
and the more you focus on fostering a malleable, open, and
transformative process for heightening engagement levels,
the greater volume and quality of applicable ideas you’ll
receive as the output. In simple terms, you need to: 1) stop
limiting engagement’s reach, 2) empower employees to
define engagement on their own terms, and 3) allow new
ideas to turn into reality. With these three steps in place,
you can turn initiative into action, which will pay dividends
in profit, purpose, and performance. Not to mention in
creating momentum for heightened employee engagement
down the road!

By all means, it’s critical to identify the essence of

engagement and its importance to organizational progress.
However, it’s equally critical to respect engagement as a
moving, multifaceted force that transcends expectations,
requirements, and mere words. Just like engagement
synergistically impacts an individual’s life, engagement at
the organizational level can synergistically influence
different teams and business units simultaneously. You
can’t capture this synergy by limiting engagement to
predefined activities or interests; instead, I implore you to

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map out the benefits of engagement to your employees and

allow them to actively pursue their own interpretations of
engagement. Naturally, you can host meetings and
interactive sessions that allow employees to come together
and learn from one another, which will further cultivate the
value-add of their engagement pursuits. When employees
engage one another alongside their own ideas, they’ll
deliver even more meaningful engagement initiatives and
results. As long as you set the path toward engagement,
your employees can fill that path with signs, trees, and
destinations that bring substance to the map you give out.
When employees uniquely engage this path, they’ll come
together and synergistically engage one another and the
organization as a whole. This snowball effect will create
huge momentum for new ideas, initiatives, and actions
founded on engagement sourced from your employees
collectively and individually. The more engaged your
employees, the more interactions, insights, and discoveries
they socialize and cultivate with one another, which result
in direct value-add to organizational directives and
objectives.

Now we’ll move on to the final “don’t,” which is: Don’t

gauge engagement by deploying an annual survey to
employees. This is just lazy. If you or your company relies
on an annual survey to determine employee engagement,
I’d suspect that your employees’ engagement levels are
already low.

Engagement isn’t something to measure or adjust once per

year. Engagement is a living, breathing part of your
organization that impacts employees, communities, and
other stakeholders on a daily basis. An annual survey can’t
possibly capture employee engagement and their
satisfaction with your company’s engagement efforts.
Even if it were to capture a good amount of information, it

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would take far too long and too many resources to

materially change the preexisting engagement levels.

Engagement can’t be measured by surveys. Surveys

themselves aren’t particularly engaging anyway. If you’re
trying to capture the pulse of engagement in your
organization, you need to check the pulse itself. This pulse
is felt in the day-to-day interactions between colleagues and
across the ranks. There are two key ways to check the
pulse and to change the pulse, as needed, to drive a
healthier organizational body.

The first way is to create a group that’s charged with

actively collecting employee feedback and providing it to
the upper levels of your organization. This group is
comprised of employees from different teams and business
units, which ensures companywide input. The group can
meet every month, or every quarter, to provide current pain
points from their particular team or business unit. As the
group members interact with their colleagues on a daily
basis, they can aggregate more perspective on their
colleagues’ level of engagement. Since the group is
comprised of on-the-ground employees, and meets with a
regular cadence, this group can better regulate the pulse and
report any anomalies to the doctor. The doctor, in this case,
is management and upper-level executives.

As management becomes more aware of engagement pain

points, company managers and leaders can address these
pain points with their reports and followers, respectively.
Addressing these pain points automatically enhances
management’s engagement with employees, since
management is taking an active role in catering to its
employees’ needs. As managers and leaders engage their
reports/followers more effectively, their employees can

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better engage their work since management is empowering

them to do so.

Which brings us to the second way to check the pulse:

build engagement into your organization’s managerial
mindset. This is the preventative treatment that overrides
the need for monthly or quarterly diagnoses from an
“engagement group.” When engagement becomes an
active component of management’s interactions with direct
reports and colleagues, the entire organization will
organically elevate its engagement levels. As management
better engages reports, and reports better engage both their
work and their managers in return, employee engagement
becomes a natural part of your company’s livelihood.

The power of reciprocity influences employees to better

engage the managers who effectively engage them. If
engagement is a natural part of management’s daily
interactions with employees, then the body’s pulse becomes
autoregulated based on feedback from these interactions. If
engagement isn’t a natural element of your organization,
employing an “engagement group” can bring attention to
pain points and help facilitate the daily interactions
between managers and employees. When engagement
becomes more organic and interwoven throughout your
organization, you can dial back on engagement meetings
and rely more on daily interactions themselves … once
engagement becomes a living part of your organizational
DNA. Some organizations are born with it, and others need
infusions. If your organization needs an infusion, make
sure to diligently leverage engagement groups. Refrain
from pulling back on these groups until engagement
becomes the centerpiece of day-to-day interactions and
activities throughout your organization, otherwise your
organization will fail to adequately adopt engagement

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throughout all departments and teams. We’ll see this point

illustrated in a future tip.

You build engagement into your organization’s managerial

mindset either at the onset of the organization or over the
course of your organization’s life. Talent management and
company culture are two crucial components in forming
and cultivating employee engagement. With proper talent
management in place, your organization will start off with a
positive engagement orientation and continue to build on it
as you hire like-minded, engagement-focused people. With
an engagement-centric company culture, you will align
your company values and expressions with engagement at
the managerial, employee, and customer levels, all of
which drive continued growth for your organization.

It’s much easier to start off with, and maintain, high

engagement levels than it is to start off with low
engagement levels and build up from the ground.
However, in this second case, all you have to do is bolster
your talent management infrastructure and your company
culture. It takes time, and it isn’t always easy, but it will
pay off in profit, employee productivity, and job
satisfaction. When you need to improve engagement
levels, first look to the employees themselves. Engage
them directly, and they’ll engage you in return. Whether
you form engagement groups or handle engagement
concerns less formally, it’s of upmost importance to have
an engagement infrastructure in place to monitor your pulse
and to adjust it as needed.

In review of this first tip, we’ve learned NOT to put a box

around engagement. We’ve covered three NOTs in detail:

1) Don’t treat engagement as a check box to satisfy a list of

corporate values.

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2) Don’t limit engagement to a predefined set of activities

or interests.

3) Don’t gauge engagement by deploying an annual survey

to employees.

We also reviewed the two ways to check and autoregulate

your organization’s pulse. The first way is to create
engagement groups comprised of cross-functional, on-the-
ground employees, and the second way is to build
engagement into your organization’s infrastructure. With
effective talent management and company culture
approaches, your organization will reinforce its levels of
employee engagement and customer engagement
simultaneously. From manager to report, from report to
customer, and from the customer back to organizational
leaders, you’ll find that engagement is a virtuous cycle that
builds off of momentum. As company leaders and
managers better engage their employees and other
stakeholders, your company will continue to grow,
innovate, and produce meaningful value to all stakeholder
groups and communities in question.

With all of these insights from Tip #1, I encourage you to

apply these principles to your organization. The most
effective way to do so is to lead by example and embody
engagement in your interactions with managers, colleagues,
and reports alike. YOU can initiate momentum in how you
engage others at work, which will carry over into how they
engage you, their own work, and their business network.
The snowball starts with a single push – and YOU can be
that push! As you build credibility and impact with your
heightened engagement levels, you can confidently bring
this chapter’s insights to your organizational leaders and
introduce them to the extraordinary benefits of talent
management, company culture, and overall engagement. In

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some cases, you’ll be reintroducing these concepts to your

leaders or managers, and you can show them the “money”
by living out the engagement principles you’ve learned.
Actions speak louder than words, and engagement will
speak volumes in your work relationships, your work tasks,
and your ability to generate new ideas and initiatives.

Don’t be afraid to bring these insights to your leaders and

managers! Without introducing new ideas, or reintroducing
them more meaningfully and from different perspectives,
your organization won’t be able to grow as quickly or as
fruitfully as you know it can! Be confident in your
understanding of engagement, express your engagement in
all your actions, and present your progress and insights to
organizational leaders/managers as ways to help your
company leverage its most important resource: the
employees (AKA the people!). You can equip your
organization for further success by transforming the
insights in this book into reality in your day-to-day
interactions. So put this book down now, get to work in
applying the engagement principles at work, and leverage
Tip #1 to communicate the benefits of engagement at an
organizational level, with a focus on talent management
and company culture. These concepts resonate with
company leaders and will add more weight to
engagement’s role in enhancing the infrastructure that both
areas perpetuate.

If you don’t want to put this book down yet, I don’t blame
you! Let’s move on to Tip #2. However, I can’t reiterate
this enough: with each tip, you need to take action to see
results in your company! As you take action, you build
credibility and experience, which give you more validation
as you build your influence and socialize these concepts
with other leaders and managers alike.

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Tip #2 To Improve Employee Engagement: Make

engagement a two-way street.

Good managers engage their employees deeply and

frequently. They empower their employees to better
engage their work and contribute to various organizational
goals.

Great managers also receive engagement from their

employees. These managers listen, synthesize, and apply
their employees’ insights.

Let me illustrate this point.

Mark and Stephanie are best friends. Mark’s golden

retriever recently gave birth to five puppies. Knowing that
Stephanie’s been wanting a dog of her own, he texts
Stephanie a picture of the litter.

No longer than two minutes later, she’s beating down his

door to get a first-hand glimpse of the newborns. Once
Mark lets her in, she immediately rushes over to the golden
retriever and excitedly looks over the litter.

As Stephanie comforts the golden retriever and admires the

newborns, Mark tells her that she can have the first pick of
the litter. In disbelief, Stephanie asks Mark what he means.
Then a smile crosses her face as she realizes what she’s
about to receive. She screams louder than any ear should
hear, jumps up and down, and gives Mark the biggest hug
she can muster.

Since Mark already took care of vaccinations and all other

newborn-related considerations, Stephanie was at choice to
select her new puppy. After sizing up the litter, she
couldn’t help but lock eyes with the runt of the bunch. She

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couldn’t take her eyes off of his small paws and his
adorable nose. Without hesitation, she picked him up,
tucked him under her arm, and marched triumphantly back
to her apartment. It was time to welcome a new addition to
the family!

As you can see from this illustration, the act of giving is a

two-way street. Mark offered Stephanie the gift of a
newborn puppy. In return, Stephanie accepted the gift and
effectively closed out the act of giving.

If Stephanie had denied the puppy, she would have denied

two things. First, she would have denied herself the
opportunity to fulfill her desire to raise a puppy. Second,
she would have denied Mark the opportunity to give her a
puppy. When Stephanie accepted the adorable dog, she
didn’t just receive. She also validated Mark and provided
him the satisfaction of giving.

The cliché, “it’s better to give than to receive,” is not

entirely true. Yes, Stephanie’s receipt of Mark’s gift
certainly makes Mark feel enriched, empowered, and
generous. The act of giving provides the giver with
feelings of fulfillment and pure joy. The giver and the
receiver effectively give each other value, or the giving
wouldn’t have taken place to begin with.

I’d like to change that cliché to read, “it’s equally good to

give and receive.” If you don’t receive someone else’s gift,
you deny that person all the good sentiments and value
associated with giving in the first place. Therefore, I
contend that it’s just as important to give as it is to receive,
especially when it comes to the little acts of kindness we do
for each other on a daily basis. Giving is a great thing and
should be emphasized in the giving process, but the act of
receiving is just as necessary and important as the act of

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giving. Without receiving, the giving cannot take place. A

lack of receiving totally nullifies the act of giving and
makes it meaningless, both in terms of the gift itself and the
giver’s perceived value from the exchange.
So how does this illustration relate to great managers
receiving engagement from their employees? And more
broadly, how does this relate to engagement being a two-
way street?

To answer the first question, great managers must allow

their employees to engage them. This way, the act of
engagement is properly given AND received. The more a
manager gives, in terms of engaging his/her employees, the
more he/she must receive from employees. As managers
better engage their reports, these employees will better
engage their work, their interactions with each other, and
their relationship with the respective manager. Employees
who are more engaged in their work will better engage their
managers as a way to align their work output and
coordinate effective next steps for improvement and
growth. If the manager doesn’t allow the employee to
reciprocate engagement, then all the manager’s engagement
efforts will be lost. The employee will be unable to engage
the manager, which will hinder the employee’s engagement
with his/her own work.

And, even more alarmingly, the manager won’t have any

actionable feedback or input if he/she doesn’t readily
accept and receive engagement from employees. Good
managers will make sure to engage their employees, and
great managers will make sure to leverage their employees’
engagement for better decision-making and strategy. The
transition process from “good” to “great,” in this context, is
simply to let employees engage their work individually and
to proactively address their feedback and input. Great
managers empower their employees to reciprocate

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engagement by setting aside time to meet and creating

psychologically safe environments for unrestrained
feedback and insight exchanges. Just like organizations
shouldn’t restrain engagement activities to predefined
notions, great managers shouldn’t restrain the ways in
which their employees reciprocally engage them with their
feedback and overall value.

To answer the second question, the act of giving is a two-

way street. One person gives, and the other receives.
Similarly, when relating to engagement, one person
engages, and the other engages back. However, the
“receiving” of engagement will naturally transform into the
“giving” of further engagement down the road, especially
as engaged employees apply their managers’ insights and
test them out in practice. A truly engaged employee will
quickly test the waters and reengage his/her manager to
provide feedback, input, and insight into what works, what
doesn’t, and what could work in the future. With this
information, the manager can better engage the employee
down the road, which initiates momentum and a virtuous
cycle of continued feedback and engagement. Each
moment of engagement shared between the manager and
employee will influence each party’s consequent actions,
which will ultimately converge once again after the
employee experiments and the manager applies consequent
learnings. This pattern of diverging and converging
engagement will form a consistent cycle of action,
feedback, and adaptation that drives all types of future
engagement and progress. When engagement is a two-way
street, your organization can develop a highway
infrastructure that extends to multiple lanes and equips
every employee to drive their own path when it comes to
productivity and innovation.

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Great managers are receptive to the fruits of their

employees’ engagement. They allow their employees to
engage them, which will facilitate future engagement
between the manager and the employee. The synergies and
snowball effect that result from each engagement will
create a dynamic, productive working relationship that
benefits the organization, the manager, and the employee.
As the employee meaningfully provides the manager with
feedback and insight, the manager can transform that
insight into action. With this action, the manager can better
align with the employee and foster new insights. In return,
the employee will convert new insights into results, which
continues the virtuous feedback loop that the employee
reengages with the manager.

For your organization or company, you need to remember

that engagement is a two-way street. It’s all too easy to
push new policies and standards from the top to the bottom
of a company, but it’s much harder to pull feedback and
insights from the bottom to the top. What looks great at the
top of a mountain may look entirely different at base camp.

As such, you should ALWAYS gather perspective from

base camp. Your front-line managers and employees are
the ones who operate base camp day after day, and they’ll
be the ones who solicit feedback from customers and report
it back to the mountaintop. If your company doesn’t
organically engage its employees in a two-way fashion, I
recommend incorporating engagement groups to the likes
of what we covered in Tip #1. With these engagement
groups at the ground level, your company can gather
feedback and receive engagement from front-line managers
and employees alike. Since engagement groups are
comprised of front-line managers and employees from
multiple business units, they will serve as the perfect
breeding ground for feedback, insight exchange, and

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innovative action. It’s crucial to receive engagement from

base camp, so your company leaders can keep the pulse of
your organization’s hands and feet (the employees who
make your organization run smoothly every day). As you
allow engagement groups to become more engaged in
organizational initiatives, you can achieve higher levels of
buy-in at the ground level. When you incorporate front-
line managers and employees into your organization’s data
collection, feedback loop, and decision-making, you’re
effectively incorporating your employees into the strategic
and innovative fabric of your company. As you keep pulse
with your engagement groups, you’ll achieve better and
better results from the bottom AND the top.

We ended Tip #1 with the concepts of talent management

and company culture, and we’ll end Tip #2 with these two
crucial elements as well. In order to make engagement a
two-way street, you can do one of two things: 1)
organically create a company that endorses engagement
from the beginning, or 2) transition your company towards
two-way engagement by mandating your talent
management pipeline and commandeering your company
culture.

The first option is easier. It implies that your company has

started off with a focus on engagement, which only needs
to be maintained and continued with your organization’s
talent management and culture infrastructures. Of course,
it’s of upmost importance to adapt to changes in the talent
pool and in workplace expectations, but these are natural
adaptations that engaged organizations can routinely adopt
and integrate into their systems. Engaged organizations
can predict changes, and adapt to these changes, because
they stay engaged in developing trends and understand the
changing dynamics of their respective markets, business
units, and human capital (their people!).

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The second option is harder. If your company doesn’t

prioritize engagement already, it can be difficult to instill
engagement in your talent management and culture
infrastructures. But just because this second option is
harder, doesn’t make this option impossible. Let’s look at
how you can mandate your talent management pipeline and
commandeer your company culture.

By mandating your talent management pipeline, you will

control what type of new talent you bring into your
organization. As your organization intakes new talent, your
company will directly control its talent acquisition process
and align its new talent with the principles of engagement,
resulting in synergistic benefits both for new and current
employees. Current employees will see the landscape of
new talent and understand where the company is pivoting
as a byproduct of new talent selection. As such, your
current employees will either “pick up the slack” and adopt
more of an engagement mindset, or they’ll resist the
changes and ultimately leave the company (or get pushed
out the door). Regardless of which scenario transpires,
your organization will fill its employee pipeline, in regards
to existing employees AND new employees, with an
engagement mentality that permeates throughout your
organization. In order to effectively mandate your talent
management pipeline, you must develop a robust system
for recruiting, hiring, and advancing your employees. As
you recruit talent, hire from your recruiting pipeline, and
advance your employees from within, you must take
ownership of all the processes involved in building out
your talent management infrastructure.

From a recruiting perspective, you need your company

recruiters to understand and align with the principles of
engagement that we’ve covered throughout this book.
These recruiters must also align your corporate values with

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potential candidates who “fit” the mold of engagement and

provide requisite hard and soft skills to perform their
desired functions within your company. In order to ensure
fit-for-purpose recruiting, it’s critical for your organization
to create written, communicated expectations for the
desired foundational traits of job candidates, as well as best
practice protocol for recruiters to follow. With these
expectations and best practices in place, your company can
better control the talent it solicits and eventually progresses
to the hiring stages. With targeted interview questions and
other recruiting assessments, your organization can control
its incoming talent pipeline and influence the engagement
levels of your organization as it intakes new talent.

When your company intakes new talent, you’re crossing

over from recruiting and entering the hiring process. The
hiring process includes onboarding, socialization, and
expectation setting. At its fundamental level, onboarding
involves three steps: 1) equipping the employee to
successfully start his/her first day at your company, 2)
equipping the employee to integrate with your company,
and 3) setting up the employee for long-term success.

By equipping the employee to successfully start his/her first

day at your company, you’re essentially ensuring that the
employee completes all necessary paperwork and
background checks to officially begin his/her term of
employment. By equipping the employee to integrate with
your company, you’re providing the employee with the
necessary equipment, business network, and support system
to better align with your organization and become a
functional, empowered contributor to the bottom line. The
necessary equipment can be a laptop, access badge, and
accompanying carrying case. The business network
represents colleagues, managers/reports, and access to
employee resource groups. The support system includes

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additional support provided by managers, mentors, and

others who genuinely advocate for, and support, the
employee’s success.

Equipping your employees with networks and support

systems will allow your employees to blossom with their
skills, their relationship building, and their continued
learning that ultimately lead to development and
advancement. This directly feeds into setting up your
employees for long-term success. Career mapping and
rapport with managers are two great ways to ensure long-
term success, but they’re not the only factors that should be
considered. In order to setup your employees for long-term
success, it’s vital to clearly communicate your company
vision and provide context for your employees’
contribution to that vision. Mentorship programs,
employee resource groups, and internal initiatives all
provide your employees with the stepping stones that, over
time, allow your company vision to shine through. With
proper expectation setting and vision communication, you
will establish processes and systems that need to be
transparently shared with employees so they can determine
how, or if, they want to advance themselves within your
organization.

Socialization and expectation setting are equally as critical

as onboarding. In fact, they’re byproducts of effective
onboarding programs. As new employees become
socialized with their environment, both through the work
itself and interactions with their coworkers, they will
become naturally more engaged in their work environment.
And with clear expectation setting, these employees can
guide their efforts towards your company’s strategic vision,
which will organically setup these employees for long-term
success. Onboarding, socialization, and expectation setting

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are key components of the hiring process that equip your

employee to ramp up, acclimate, and grow.

As your employees ramp up, acclimate, and grow, you

must take the initiative in advancing your employees from
within. Sure, outside hires have their place and can provide
unique perspectives and consequent insights to your
organization. However, as your organization embrace its
talent and reinforces its engagement-minded culture, your
organization must advance from within to ensure continued
engagement from your employees. As employees engage
themselves in onboarding, socialization, and vision
alignment (facilitated by expectation setting), they need to
see themselves, and their colleagues, rise up the ranks
whenever possible. Otherwise, your employees will
become less engaged, since they won’t see the connection
between their own engagement and their advancement
within your company.

Advancement isn’t just a promotion notion. In fact,

advancement doesn’t have to be related to formal
promotions at all. It’s your manager’s job to understand
her reports and their unique preferences when it comes to
engagement, advancement, and long-term goal setting.
Advancement can come in the forms of switching to a
different business unit that’s more aligned with the
employee’s interest, resulting in longer-term employee
satisfaction. Pay increases, added responsibilities, and
lateral reallocation can all indicate advancement without
the need for continued promotion past a certain point. It’s
not sustainable to promote everyone at any given time, but
it’s sustainable to continually engage employees by
providing them with the attention, care, and engagement
they individually require. As your managers become more
acquainted with their employees, they can devise more
creative advancement solutions that fit individual employee

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interests as well as the overarching organizational

objectives.

At this point, we’ve reviewed the process for mandating

your talent management pipeline from the beginning of any
employee’s career to the end of it, as far as your particular
organization is concerned. By developing systems and
processes that accommodate your recruiting, hiring, and
advancement objectives, you’ll develop a robust
infrastructure that maximizes employee engagement, both
from new and from tenured employees, as well as your
organization’s growth potential.

With this understanding of the talent management pipeline,

we’ll transition over to company culture.

Company culture allows your organization to sustain

systems and processes across all parts of your corporate
landscape, including talent management, operational
efficiency, and organizational effectiveness.

Company culture is a broad, complex concept that covers

all the values, expressions, and levers of an organization.
When applied to Tip #2, we’re looking at company culture
through the lens of engagement. More specifically, we’re
addressing engagement as a two-way street that paves the
way for highways to take form. In other words,
engagement can be used as a tool that brings added
synergies to all parts of your organization. Therefore, the
two-way street transforms into a highway filled with unique
cars that are all traveling in the same direction.

As a function of company culture, engagement is

responsible for creating this highway and for aligning all
the cars in the same direction. Engagement creates this
highway by synergizing the interactions between different

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departments and teams, as we’ve previously discussed.

Communicating a clear, holistic vision ensures that the cars
are aligned in the same direction. Two-way engagement
between managers and their employees will provide real-
time feedback on traffic conditions and new routes to
pursue.

The slightest change in speed can cause crashes, traffic

buildup, and congestion. In order to better navigate and
shape your company’s highway, you must leverage
engagement as a two-way interaction between your
managers and employees. At the front-line, your
employees have a better sense of road conditions and the
driving styles of nearby drivers. At a higher level, your
managers have a better grasp of what conditions may arise
miles down the road. As managers and employees engage
each other, exchange insights, and apply feedback, they can
work together to arrive at the desired destination more
efficiently and effectively than ever before.

As managers and employees engage each other, they may

uncover side roads and other paths that were previously
unidentifiable. Mutually beneficial knowledge transfer and
insight exchange create synergistic ideation opportunities
that help managers and employees create new paths that
lead to innovation, growth, and adaptation. When your
organization champions two-way engagement and embeds
engagement into all manager-employee interactions, you’ll
realize new paths and destinations that will propel your
business forward. As you uncover these paths and
destinations, you must remember to continually align with
your drivers and engage them to validate the feasibility of
pursuing these new paths and destinations. Again, it’s
critically important to maintain your feedback loop and to
align all the cars in the same direction.

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When some cars start slowing down or making U-turns,

managers must make immediate note and engage these
drivers to understand why they’re altering their paths.
Managers must adapt to any nuances observed on the
ground level and apply consequent insights to further refine
new paths and destinations. Every two-way interaction
facilitates further engagement and feedback that perpetuate
your organization’s inclination towards engagement and
empowerment.

Company culture is certainly a beast that can’t be changed

overnight. But when it comes to engagement, every
interaction and conversation can create momentum for
further engagement and action. Embedding engagement
within your company culture is not an easy feat. It’s
accomplished by integrating your talent management
pipeline, operational efficiencies, and organizational
effectiveness to ensure that your managers and employers
are continually engaging each other meaningfully. In fact,
we’ll cover this point in Tip #3. As far as company culture
is concerned, I’ll leave you with this: Engagement must be
reinforced throughout your organization, in every
interaction between managers, employees, and customers,
for engagement to take hold in your organizational DNA.

We’ve covered a lot with Tip #2. We discussed the

importance of valuing two-way engagement between
managers and employees. We reviewed two ways in which
a company can create two-way engagement: 1) organically
create a company that endorses engagement from the
beginning, or 2) transition your company towards two-way
engagement by mandating your talent management pipeline
and commandeering your company culture.

After reviewing the talent management pipeline, we learned

that talent management is comprised of recruiting, hiring,

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and advancement. Engaged recruiters set the stage for

engaged candidates and future employees. Socialization
and expectation setting are just as important as onboarding
in the hiring process. Advancement from within isn’t just a
status or monetary promotion, but an elevation of your
employees’ perceived value. And as your employee feels
more valued, you’ll find that same employee more eager to
engage his/her work and colleagues, which creates a
virtuous cycle of awareness, recognition, and growth.

From a company culture perspective, we came to

understand the importance of leveraging both managers and
employees to exchange insights and perspectives that
uncover new paths of success for your company.

We left off Tip #2 with an extraordinary realization that

brings us into Tip #3.

Tip #3 To Improve Employee Engagement: Engage all

managers, employees, and customers. Across ALL
departments and business units.

Towards the end of Tip #2, we pointed out a key feature of

company culture, as relevant to engagement:

Engagement must be reinforced throughout your

organization, in every interaction between managers,
employees, and customers, for engagement to take hold in
your organizational DNA.

Not only does this “engagement embedding” position

engagement as a core value of your organization, but it
ensures that your employees and customers are aligned and
exchanging feedback that leads to continual improvement
in the bottom line, your company’s talent pool, and the
customer experience.

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With Tip #3, I want to emphasize the importance of

embedding engagement throughout your ENTIRE
organization. If you truly want to realize the benefits of
engagement, you need to ensure that every manager and
employee embodies engagement as a core value. Your
employees can transfer this engagement onto customers,
which will provide you with more insights and trends that
can materially impact your business operations and
processes. It’s unrealistic to expect complete customer
engagement, but it’s both realistic and necessary to expect
complete employee engagement as a requisite solution for
continued growth and realignment.

I can’t undersell the significance of communicating and

instilling engagement into every department, business unit,
and individual within your organization. Like much of the
other topics we’ve discussed, this is incredibly difficult to
achieve in practice.

Let’s start this discussion by understanding why Tip #3 is

so critical to your business.

Whether you’re a manager, employee, or business owner,

I’m sure you’ve seen different initiatives play out, and
quickly die out, in your company. For instance, maybe
your company creates a “Wellness Challenge” that’s set to
last for 90 days, with redeemable prizes based on your
weight loss goals, daily step totals, or some other metric.
But after 15 days into the challenge, the messaging
becomes lost in the sea of other pressing deliverables and
daily goals. Just as soon as the Wellness Challenge came
to life, it came to its death.

Comparable initiatives don’t have any issue in sparking the

initial flame. Rather, they struggle in maintaining that
flame and using it to properly cook whatever they’re trying

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to make. Whether it’s a Wellness Challenge or a more

business-oriented initiative, I’m sure you’ve experienced
various pushes from leadership that ultimately fell on deaf
ears at lower levels in your organization. The strategic
preparation work and leadership alignment completed in
advance will ultimately succumb to a lack of
communication, engagement, and feedback.
Accountability becomes nonexistent, and things stay the
same as they were before the initiative was announced.

That’s the issue – after “announcing” an initiative, you

can’t expect to realize tangible results until everyone is
aligned and committed to making that initiative real. Often
times the leaders are all onboard, but they fail to gather
their managers and reports onto the ship as well.

An initiative is either going to survive or die. There’s no in

between. Which means that your initiatives require an all-
or-nothing approach.

If you want an initiative to die out, then you’ll put it on the

backburner and ignore it. That’s simple AND easy.

If you want an initiative to survive, then you’ll need to put

it on your frontburner and the frontburners of everyone in
your organization. That’s simple, but it’s definitely not
easy.

For an initiative to survive and eventually thrive, every

person in your company needs to adopt, embody, and
exemplify the respective initiative. The tiniest of detractors
can totally counteract your initiative and influence others to
drop their adoption of your initiative altogether.

Going off of our initiative example, we can see that

engagement is an ongoing initiative that needs to be

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continually reinforced throughout your organization. From

the leaders, to the managers, to the front-line employees,
engagement must be on the frontburner of everyone’s
minds, behaviors, and actions.

Why?

When engagement gets placed on someone’s backburner,

his/her interactions with colleagues and customers alike
become less engaged. This represents a break in the chain
that carries negative consequences throughout the rest of
the chain. When one employee becomes less engaged in
his/her work, something will slip. Whether it’s the work
itself, or relationships with colleagues, or reporting
necessary insights to management, something will slip. As
one thing slips, more things will begin to slip in this
particular employee’s work performance, productivity, and
collegial relationships.

Just like one action of engagement creates positive

momentum, one action of disengagement creates negative
momentum. As one employee becomes disengaged in
his/her work and in his/her approach to work,
disengagement becomes a part of his/her attitude and
interactions with colleagues. As the employee in question
transfers his/her disengagement onto others, you will see
others react in two ways: 1) fend off the disengagement, or
2) absorb the disengagement.

If other employees fend off the disengagement, that’s great!

They’ll stay engaged in their work. However, from a
collective perspective, future work output will suffer
because true engagement can’t be fully realized. The one
break in the chain will impact the output of all the other
links that are still part of the chain. Because engagement
relies on integration and interaction between all parts of the

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whole, it’s simply impossible to totally capitalize on the

whole when one of the parts isn’t performing or interacting
optimally. This lack of optimal performance will
inevitably prevent other parts from optimizing their
performance, especially if they’re dependent on the broken
part.

On the other hand, if other employees absorb the

disengagement from the detracting employee, then the
entire chain will break. Massive losses in productivity,
performance, and collaboration will impede business
growth. Disengagement will become the norm, and neither
the managers nor the employees will actively work to
reclaim the prior culture of engagement and collaboration.
As disengagement spreads, different business units will
suffer and fail to properly synergize with one another.
Once the organization begins to fail, the downfall cannot be
stopped unless somebody takes massive action to reignite
the flame of engagement.

These words may sound dramatic or exaggeratory, but I

assure you that disengagement from one employee carries
over to other employees. Whether indirectly through
individual work performance or collectively through
impacted interactions, disengagement can be felt
throughout different teams, business units, and the
overarching organization. To keep disengagement at bay,
it’s critical for organizations to engage every single
manager and employee. Through this constant
engagement, every single worker will stay aligned with
company goals and take action to perpetuate those goals in
his/her daily work.

When your company engages all managers, employees, and

customers, across all departments and business units, your
entire organization will become more engaged than ever

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before. In order to run an engaged organization, every

single stakeholder needs to be engaged with one another
and with the company itself. If one manager or employee
isn’t engaged, you won’t be able to truly operate a fully
engaged, synergized company.

Tip #3, while simple, is crucial in creating an engaged

organization. All moving parts, all workers, and all
interactions must embody engagement at its fundamental
level. One bad apple will spoil the bunch – just like
Quality Assurance can mitigate defects, your company’s
leadership can mitigate disengagement by aligning
managers and employees with your organization’s vision,
goals, and values. As long as engagement comes across as
a core value that truly takes shape within and amongst
different teams, your organization will live and breathe
engagement in every single business activity.

We’ve learned one key point from Tip #3: Engagement is

part of everyone’s job description. Whether explicit or
implicit, every worker in your company is charged with
engaging his/her work, colleagues, and cross-functional
teams. Once your organizational leaders, managers, and
front-line employees embrace engagement, there is
NOTHING stopping your company from realizing the
synergies that engagement brings to different departments,
business units, and your company as a whole.

And how can your organizational leaders, managers, and

front-line employees embrace engagement? By following
the principles outlined in Tip #2! In order to make
engagement a two-way street, it’s critical for your company
to enhance its talent management pipeline and commandeer
its culture. Once engagement becomes a two-way street
throughout different departments and business units, your
organization will fully embed engagement into every

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employee and interaction! Tip #3 builds off of Tip #2,

which both illustrate the importance of implementing
engagement into every thought, action, and behavior.

You’ll find that all of these tips build off of one another and
integrate with one another. Tips #2 and #3 exemplify the
synergies that exist between all the tips we cover in this
chapter. After we review the remaining tips, we’ll take
some time to connect the dots between the tips. If
engagement relies on relatedness and synergies, it’s only
fitting that the tips on employee engagement signify the
same!

Now I’m about to introduce you to Tip #4, which may

appear counterintuitive at first. It may even appear in
direct contradiction to what we just discussed in Tip #3.
But bear with me – Tip #4 will make a whole lot of sense
as we dive deep into our pool of employee engagement!

Tip #4 To Improve Employee Engagement: Don’t

“over” engage.

Throughout this book, we’ve discussed the importance of

engagement. In Tip #3, we discussed the significance of
engaging every leader, manager, and front-line employee
throughout your respective organization. Tip #4 doesn’t
stand to counteract what we’ve learned in this book; rather,
it serves to complement our methodology and
understanding.

With Tip #4, I’m cautioning you not to take things

overboard. Too much of a good thing can easily turn that
good thing into a bad thing. We don’t want “over”
engagement to curtail your organization’s engagement
efforts, which can easily result in disengagement, apathy,
or decreased productivity if exerted exceedingly.

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Hyponatremia is a condition caused by drinking a large

volume of water in a short period of time, which can be
fatal in extreme circumstances. Water is a vital part of the
human body, but if consumed improperly, can result in
death. Similarly, a misuse of engagement can easily derail
all the benefits that engagement provides.

Let’s get down to the meat and potatoes with this tip: Let
people do their thing! Too much feedback, too many
“engagement” meetings, and too frequent manager-
employee interactions will lead to wasted time and
counterproductive engagement efforts.

Feedback is a valuable tool when leveraged properly. If

you try and engage the feedback loop more often than
needed, you’ll waste time and relationship-building efforts
by asking for unnecessary, irrelevant feedback that
provides no new or valuable information for immediate
application. Over time, when you engage the feedback
loop too often, you’ll discourage meaningful dialogue and
lose out on optimizing feedback quality. Just imagine
having to give feedback to a manager, or a coworker,
several times throughout your day. Maybe you do that
already, but is it really necessary? With all your different
activities, and the nature of your work, there’s a natural ebb
and flow of action, feedback, and realignment. There’s no
need to provide weekly feedback on a daily basis, just like
there’s no need to engage a weekly feedback loop every
day. Your quality of feedback, and the relationship with
your manager or coworker, will deteriorate over time if you
“over” engage the feedback loop, thereby wasting your
time AND the other person’s time. Nobody likes their time
wasted, and everyone appreciates the person who can save
them from a meaningless exchange.

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Onto the second point, which doesn’t need much

explanation: Too many “engagement” meetings will waste
time, bring down morale, and encourage disengagement. If
there’s one thing we have enough of already … it’s
meetings. How many times have you asked yourself why
you’re even at a particular meeting, or why you have to
meet with a specific group on a regular basis? When you
schedule or attend meetings that aren’t particularly relevant
or value-adding to every person in the room, you’re going
to experience wasted time and hardened feelings about
meetings. Every consequent meeting will encounter
comparable sentiments of wastefulness and reluctance.

When looking at “engagement” meetings, we’re looking at

all the meetings and working sessions used to either
formally or informally measure, evaluate, and discuss the
overall level of engagement within your organization. We
previously discussed the use of “engagement groups” that
help gauge and realign engagement throughout your
organization – any meetings held by these types of groups
are also included under the “engagement” meeting
umbrella. The simple solution to preventing overuse of
“engagement” meetings is to evaluate why and how often
you’re meeting. If you can’t justify the why, then cancel
the meeting! If you can’t justify the meeting frequency,
then cut the frequency! And if you can’t justify the
presence of certain “regulars” to these meetings, then tell
them to take a hike! Trust me, they’ll appreciate not having
to attend another meeting. As long as you explain to them
why they don’t need to be there, they’ll be sure to
understand and move on with their day.

Finding the right frequency and composition of

“engagement” meetings is critical. It’s important to place
continued value on the quality of engagement solicited, the
quality of feedback presented, and the quality of ideation in

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realigning and applying feedback. Often times, less is

more. Especially when it comes to meeting frequency and
the length of the meeting itself. Make sure to both
minimize time required and to maximize insight provided,
and you’re on your way to keeping your “engagement”
meetings productive and positive. Not to mention, the
meeting members will probably look forward to these
meetings, as they will see immediate return in their own
productivity and realignment to organizational objectives.

The third point covers manager-employee interactions.

More specifically, it covers the negative impacts of
unnecessary manager-employee interactions. In most
businesses, relationships are crucial. Whether these
relationships are between employees, with customers, or
with different communities, they all rely on continued
engagement and realignment to best serve everyone
involved. However, there is a LIMIT to the number of
optimal manager-employee interactions in a given day or
week.

Of course, the optimal number itself does not exist.

Depending on industry, function, and marketplace,
different businesses require different frequency levels of
manager-employee touchpoints. When the frequency starts
becoming too high, it’s time to readjust and to reduce the
expectations around manager-employee interactions.

How do you know when too much is too much?

You’ll experience it firsthand. Whether it’s a quick water

cooler chat that lasts thirty minutes too long, or a daily
standing conversation with your superior that lasts twenty
minutes too long, you’ll feel the negative ramifications of
the interaction frequency. You can only engage others for
so long until they feel smothered. In fact, if you engage

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employees too regularly, either through meetings or one-

on-one interactions, you’ll take time and focus away from
the work “they love, or at least tolerate,” as coined by Kyle
Elliott. In turn, the bottom line will suffer as a result of
“over” engagement in manager-employee interactions.

We can simplify our three points into one takeaway: As a

leader or manager, you must find the sweet spot between
engagement and meaningful dialogue that optimizes work
productivity and minimizes unnecessary resource
expenditure (i.e. time, attention, and effort). Once you find
this sweet spot, it’s critical to both maintain it and evaluate
it as workplace trends change and as your organization
develops. The sweet spot today may be different than the
sweet spot tomorrow, so it will become increasingly
important to prioritize engagement and meaningful
dialogue as the tools that optimize work productivity and
minimize unnecessary resource expenditure.

Like I said before, I encourage you to let people do their

thing! As managers and employees become more engaged
in their work, they’ll naturally become more engaged with
their coworkers and in their relationships with others.
Instead of talking about engagement until you’re blue in the
face, it may be wiser to simply let engagement happen and
lead by example. The more you engage, the more
opportunities you provide for others to engage as well.

With deliberate, minimal inorganic interventions to help

spark and maintain engagement (in the forms of formal
feedback, “engagement” meetings, and frequency of
manager-employee interactions), your organization can
continue to synergize and build out its organic engagement
infrastructure both from the top-down and from the bottom-
up. As you put more trust in your core values, especially in
engagement, you’ll realize that your workforce will

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naturally realize these values in their work, relationships,

and additional value-add.

From Tip #4, we’ve learned the importance of not going

overboard with engagement. There’s a right way to
engage, and then there’s a wrong way to engage. The right
way to engage has been captured all throughout this book,
so there’s nothing left to stop us from engaging deliberately
and intentionally in all parts of our lives! As far as wrong
ways to engage, we’re primarily looking at engaging too
little or engaging too much. When you engage too little,
you’re simply not putting in enough purpose, passion, and
persistence into your job, your personal life, and your
relationships.

When you engage too much, you’re trying to cook with too
many ingredients all at once. You end up killing the flavor
and delivering a bland product to all your house guests. As
we’ve covered in Tip #4, “over” engagement wastes time,
effort, and relationship energy. Just like too much water in
your body can cause you harm, too much engagement can
cause harm to your organization, your employees, and your
customers. You must find the sweet spot, or an appropriate
balance, between engagement and meaningful dialogue
when it comes to optimizing your engagement
infrastructure.

Let’s now move onto the fifth and final tip, which will help
bring all of the other tips together. Tip #5 will also signify
the multifaceted nature of engagement, from professional,
to personal, to social. Just like we discovered in the
“personal development” part of this book, we’ll find that
true employee engagement incorporates the professional,
personal, and social as well.

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Tip #5 To Improve Employee Engagement: Leverage

engagement outside the workplace.

Throughout this entire book, we’ve emphasized the

integration of profession, avocation, and relationships.
We’ve examined the synergistic benefits of bringing our
full selves to both our work and our play.

When it comes to employee engagement, it’s important to

extend engagement past the 9-5 of the workday. If your
organization only engages employees during “working”
hours, your organization is missing out on leveraging all
the unique talents and value that each employee contributes
to your company’s livelihood.

By understanding how your employees like to spend their

time outside of work, you can develop a strategic plan that
aligns employee behavior, both inside and outside the
workplace, with your organizational initiatives.

For instance, imagine that you just started a desserts-by-

delivery company that primarily serves the local college.
Whenever you’re contacted with a late-night cookie
request, your baker customizes the confection and your
driver delivers the warm cookie, with a glass of cold milk,
to the customer.

The business is doing okay, and your customers appear

satisfied. They talk about your brand on social media and
they post pictures of their cookies for all to admire. These
pictures receive a lot of likes and attention whenever
they’re posted.

Your baker is one of the best talents in the city, and your
driver works incredibly hard to deliver milk and cookies
within 15 minutes of each order request. Your business has

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developed its niche in the marketplace, but it doesn’t seem

to be growing at the rate you anticipated.

After hiring a branding consultant and a life coach, you feel

confident that your business will skyrocket. But, after a
few months, the business continues to stagnate. And
despite your rapport with both employees and their
continued work performance, you come to work on
Monday morning with two voicemails in your inbox. After
listening to the messages, you throw down the phone and
slam your fists into your desk. You’ve just found out that
your baker was offered a staff position at the local college,
and your driver has moved on to a competing desserts-by-
delivery company.

Within the next two weeks, your business crumbles. You

can’t find an adequate baker in the area, and you fail to
come up with a supplemental stream of income in the
meantime.

Just as quickly as your business started gaining traction, it

died out. You’re left without money, and you’re instead
left with added pressure and stress that weigh down your
future entrepreneurial efforts.

So what went wrong?

Your employees were great at what they did, and your

customers were active ambassadors of your brand on social
media.

However, you didn’t truly engage your employees or their

talents. You didn’t know it at the time, but your driver was
earning top marks as a graphic designer at school.
Meanwhile, your baker was also an expert in breakfast

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pastries and sandwiches, which could have expanded your

business offerings and enhanced your revenue streams.

You failed to fully engage your employees because you

ignored all other parts of their lives outside of the office.
You could’ve leveraged your driver’s graphic design and
social media skills to make more waves with your
branding, as opposed to relying on a branding consultant
who wasn’t familiar with your business landscape. You
could’ve leveraged your baker’s specialized knowledge to
diversify your business and bolster earnings, as opposed to
relying on a coach who was unable to provide you with
sound strategies for optimizing both your business and your
life.

It’s all about people, process, and technology when it

comes to modern-day business. Since you didn’t properly
engage and manage the people in your business, you
weren’t able to align your process or technology with a
sustainable business model. Your inability to fully engage
your employees resulted in your business’ demise.

Outside of this specific example, let’s look at the benefits

of engaging employees outside the workplace, in addition
to inside the office.

Companies that engage employees outside the workplace

have distinct advantages in building trust, loyalty, and
community. In return, employees will become more
engaged with their work and with their play, as they start to
see the realized benefits of a company that organically
integrates their personal interests into the workplace.

One perfect illustration of out-of-office engagement is

when employers donate emergency funds and resources to
employees who are adversely impacted by natural crises,

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like hurricanes or flooding. This act of engagement

directly benefits the employee and indirectly benefits the
company.

From the employee’s perspective, he/she receives the

resources required to alleviate hardship on the home front.
More importantly, the employee receives an emotional
boost that radiates throughout his/her entire life. This
simple act of donation empowers the employee to care for
his/her family, individual needs, and overall livelihood. In
return, the employee becomes automatically more engaged
with his/her organization. For one, the act of reciprocity
influences the employee to return the favor to the employer.
For two, as the employee’s home life regains stability, the
employee can more quickly contribute back to his/her
functional role at work.

Another illustration of out-of-office engagement is when

employers offer referral bonuses to employees who refer
their business network to the host organization for hiring
opportunities. Once the referral is hired, the referring
employee is handsomely paid a referral fee.

Whether the employees recruit their network during or

outside of work hours, the company is ultimately deploying
out-of-office engagement by engaging its employees’
external social and business networks. The company
directly benefits through this engagement, as it will
enhance its talent management pipeline and transform its
employees into brand ambassadors. Likewise, employees
will directly benefit. They not only receive monetary
compensation, but they also enrich their working
environment as they collaborate with gifted individuals
from their own network. Employees benefit by enhancing
these relationships without having to start from scratch,
since they already know the new hires personally and built

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those relationships previously. Instead of starting from the

ground, the employee and new hire can advance quicker
together and collaborate more effectively, which will
benefit their individual interests and the company’s
performance.

One more conversation point, and example, is social media.

Most employees engage their social media both during the
workday and during personal time. Social media’s
transparency, accessibility, and immediacy have impacted
how, and how frequently, people communicate with one
another. Whether it’s YouTube or LinkedIn or Twitter –
any social media platform offers immense opportunity for
branding, marketing, and networking. Of course, if
managed improperly, your social media platform may take
you down before you’re able to build yourself up.

Instead of banning social media use from the workplace, I

encourage you to leverage social media as a value-add to
your business and to your employees.

Let your employees post about what’s exciting them at

work. Whether it’s a project or a renovation to the
cafeteria, your employees are more likely to engage on
social media when there’s something to bring to the table.
Obviously there’s a limit to what’s appropriate to post on
social media in the context of work, but that’s no excuse to
refrain from posting about work or office-related
happenings. As your employees share their professional
and personal lives with their social networks, your
company will benefit from your employees’
ambassadorship and engagement with potential customers
or fellow advocates.

From an organizational perspective, your company should

invest in social media to the degree that it makes sense for

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your business. Remember – engagement is a two-way

street. If your employees are posting about exciting
projects or other workplace happenings, they want their
followers to engage these posts and provide their own
input. So why not engage your employees’ social media
accounts with a company account?

Wendy’s approaches social media in a unique way.

Whether on Twitter or Facebook, Wendy’s often responds
to its customers with sass and humor. And the customers
love it! The company’s responses often go viral and
provide an incredibly powerful marketing platform that
attracts consumers to its brand. Wendy’s engages its
consumers during working hours and outside working
hours because social media doesn’t have a 9-5 schedule.

Similarly, you should engage your employees, and their

social media, both during and outside working hours. The
more you engage your employees’ social media throughout
the day (and nights, sometimes), the more opportunities
you create for branding, loyalty, and connectedness.
Branding that will benefit your company’s marketing
efforts. Loyalty that will craft a bond between your
organization and your employees. Connectedness that
integrates company and employees at work, over social
media, and throughout different parts of the day.

As an organization, you can cultivate your employees’

passions and interests by engaging their outside-of-work
pursuits. The most effective strategy to cultivate, integrate,
and leverage these passions is simple: Ensure that managers
are constantly seeking input from their reports. This input
shouldn’t come only from formal meetings or touchpoints;
rather, managers should rely on their natural interactions
with their employees to acquire additional insights on
employee interests. Through organic interactions and the

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nature of each manager-employee relationship, managers

can engage their employees on a deeper level by moving
past the professional and blending the personal and social.
As managers seek input from employees on their passions
and interests outside of the office, they can aggregate this
information, organize it, and leverage it for business
application. As employees bring their full selves to work,
as indicated by their holistic engagement with management,
your organization can utilize more data points and insights
to ideate, transform, and realign accordingly.

Tip #5 emphasizes the connection between work and play,

as we’ve reviewed throughout the entire book. Specifically
with Tip #5, we learn that organizations themselves, and
their employees, need to engage meaningfully both inside
and outside the workplace. Managers should engage their
employees to discover extracurricular interests and passions
that provide valuable perspective for business use.
Organizations should engage employees outside the
workplace, primarily through social media and online
presence, to grow their bond and connection with
employees. In return, employees should engage their
managers and overarching organization by bringing their
full selves, and personhood, to every interaction both
during and outside of work.

Engagement will drive tangible value for your business and

your people. During business hours, after business hours,
and before business hours. Your employees are people
from 9-5 and from 5:01-8:59. Don’t limit their personhood
to the workplace – let them contribute to your organization
with all their interests, activities, and passions. When you
engage your employees, you allow them to reciprocate and
engage you, your colleagues, and your organization more
meaningfully and productively, which leads to better
business performance and company culture. Oh yes, and

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better employee engagement of course, which is at the core

of any successful culture! Empower your employees to
bring their full selves to work – their professional, personal,
and social.

That was the last tip. We’ve covered five key insights in
enhancing employee engagement for your organization.
These insights are:

1) Don’t put a box around engagement.

2) Make engagement a two-way street.

3) Engage all managers, employees, and customers. Across

ALL departments and business units.

4) Don’t “over” engage.

5) Leverage engagement outside the workplace.

I mentioned this briefly before, but I want to emphasize this

point again: All five of these tips are interrelated and build
off each other. You can’t just pick and choose a couple
that may work in the short-term. All five insights engage
one another and integrate to form a holistic approach to
enhancing your organization’s employee engagement.
Sure, it’s unreasonable to expect immediate improvement
in all five areas immediately; however, like our prior
discussion on engagement at an individual level, we know
that improvement in one area can carry over synergistically
into the others.

So how do these five tips relate and build off each other?

Let’s look at them in order.

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Don’t put a box around engagement. This means you

shouldn’t limit engagement to predefined notions or
expectations. Let engagement develop organically and let
it run freely throughout your organization.

Make engagement a two-way street. Once engagement

organically permeates throughout your organization, you
need to systemize it in order to synergize it. From manager
to employee, and from employee to manager, you must
leverage engagement as a multifaceted, dual tool that
provides valuable input and decision-making from the top-
down AND from the ground-up.

Engage all managers, employees, and customers. Across

ALL departments and business units. As engagement
becomes a two-way street with your managers, employees,
and overarching departments, you need to keep charging
forward! In order to truly optimize employee engagement,
you must socialize and institutionalize engagement with
every person and every business unit within your
organization. It’s all or nothing – if you’re unable to
normalize engagement throughout all fabrics of your
company, you’ll come up short in truly adopting employee
engagement as a practical, sustainable value and benefit to
your business.

Don’t “over” engage. As you normalize engagement

across functional lines and down the chains of command,
you need to remember that engagement should “pull”
people and not “push” them. You should pull people in and
achieve their buy-in, as opposed to constantly pushing them
to embrace engagement. There’s a delicate balance
between meaningful dialogue and engagement, which
offers a sweet spot for your manager-employee
interactions. It’s all too easy to talk something to death
before it has the opportunity to live; instead of beating a

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dead horse with the principles of engagement, it’s best to

exemplify engagement in your actions and daily behaviors
in the workplace. In shorter words – lead by example and
walk the walk!

Leverage engagement outside the workplace. All the prior

tips come into play with this final insight. In order to
leverage engagement outside the workplace, you need to
embrace engagement through different social media
platforms and other creative outlets. You must bridge the
engagement gap by utilizing reciprocity and intention to
create engaging interactions between manager and
employee, and vice versa. You should instill engagement
in all managers, employees, and functional areas to
capitalize on the synergistic and compounding effects of
engagement. And, of course, we must remember that
there’s a sweet spot between meaningful engagement and
wasted efforts. With all these tips in mind, we can
effectively leverage engagement outside the workplace as a
way to enhance connectedness, loyalty, and branding.
Additionally, organizations can benefit from identifying
and cultivating their employees’ extracurricular passions,
interests, and skill sets, which can be transformed into
tangible gains for business performance and job
satisfaction.

All five tips are related and engage one another to drive
extraordinary employee engagement for your organization.
With these tips in mind, it’s time for you to apply them to
your organization, as appropriate, so you can initiate
massive synergies and progress for your business. Go
confidently to your boss, or to your leadership team, or to
your reports, and take advantage of what we’ve just
reviewed! You now have the playbook to cultivate
employee engagement as a living, breathing corporate
value that touches all stakeholders and business outputs.

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With corresponding impacts in human capital (your people)

and business performance, there’s no reason to ignore
employee engagement any longer. Now that we’ve
identified the beast of employee engagement and learned
the five ways to attack it, we can confidently enter
whatever organizational jungle we face. We can tame the
jungle with our toolkit and create the forest of our dreams,
all while keeping perspective of the forest itself as we work
tree-by-tree.

Let’s wrap up this chapter by tying it back to the beginning,

where we realized the importance of aligning employees
with company directives, with one another, and with their
individual interests.

At the company directive level, the employee complements

the organization as a whole. At the “one another” level, the
employee complements his/her colleagues. At the
individual interest level, the employee engages his/her own
work output and the meaning behind his/her work. These
three points account for the company, for the employees
collectively, and for the employee individually.

Throughout all five tips, we’ve integrated these three levels

into our analyses. For instance, Tip #1 reinforces the
company directive level. The active choice to enable and
empower engagement throughout your organization (by not
putting a box around engagement) will allow all employees
to align with your organizational goals and directives. Tip
#2 reinforces the “one another” level, particularly between
manager and employee. Since engagement becomes a two-
way street between manager and report, you’ll find
enhanced synergies and output at the “one another” level of
your organization. Tip #3 reinforces the individual interest
level, since it emphasizes engagement for all individual
managers, employees, and customers, across all

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departments and business units. As all stakeholders across

your organization become more engaged in their own
functions and with one another, they can optimize their
individual levels and “one another” levels to deliver
unexpected synergies and value throughout the
organization, which feeds into the company directive level.
As all parts become unified and integrated, you’ll see that
the company directive, “one another,” and individual levels
are aligned and engaged simultaneously with one another,
which lets engagement breathe life through every action,
interaction, and strategic realignment.

Tips #4 and #5 also serve all three levels, which again

reinforces the holistic nature of all five tips and the three
levels themselves. The tips to avoid “over” engagement
and to leverage engagement outside the workplace both
reiterate the importance of balancing meaningful
interaction with engagement across multiple forums.
Whether in the office or at play, the principle of balanced,
integrated engagement will help realize synergies at the
company directive level, create bonds at the “one another”
level,” and optimize both productivity and satisfaction at
the individual interest level. In avoiding “over”
engagement, you can better regulate engagement at each
level and between levels; similarly, in leveraging
engagement outside the workplace, you can better inform
and refine the output of all three levels both individually
and collectively.

With the five tips, three levels, and the beast of engagement
itself, we can see the power of alignment, synergy, and
intention. All three of these concepts are interrelated and
contribute significant gains in organizational goals,
teamwork, and individual performance.

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We’ve now covered the basics of employee engagement.

We’ve reviewed the five tips. We’ve connected these tips
with the three levels of engagement that directly impact
your company. And, we’ve successfully captured and
domesticated the beast of engagement, which will allow
your business to keep on roaring.

There you have it, businesspeople! Go out and increase

your organization’s employee engagement today! You
won’t regret the consequent developments in performance,
satisfaction, and collaboration. Now that you’re armed
with a playbook of tips, principles, and actionable ideas,
there’s nothing stopping you from better engaging your
work AND your play. With all that we’ve covered in this
book, from your personal mission to organizational
engagement, you can add tremendous value to your own
life and to your organization.

The path to a better you has just begun. ENGAGE it and

embrace your journey – one stepping stone of engagement
at a time.

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Citations

[1] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236330/declining-
global-productivity-growth-
fix.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_con
tent=morelink&utm_campaign=syndication

[2] https://www.inc.com/andrew-thomas/3-big-reasons-
why-purpose-leads-to-profits.html

[3] Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S.

Dweck

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Thank You Shoutouts!

Before all else, I give glory to God for putting this book
into existence. Without God and His influence in pulling
me to complete this book, I wouldn’t have been able to
write it or spread the insights that He has provided me.

Next, I want to thank my family. My father, Richard, my

mother, Ginny, my sister, Emily, and my brother, Ben. All
of you continually support me and encourage me to push
past my self-imposed limits. I’m grateful for each of you
and the insights you’ve provided me over my life. Without
a doubt, your influence and impact have certainly shaped
the contents and principles in this book.

Next, I want to thank my community of editors and

supporters. When I completed my first draft of this book, I
asked my network of friends to read the draft and provide
insights (essentially, I opted for a crowdsourced revision
process, so I could receive actionable reactions and insights
from the people who were most likely to read the book
post-production). I’m amazed by how many people read
the draft and provided extraordinary insights into reshaping
and enhancing this book. I am grateful for each one of you
– without you all, this book wouldn’t be nearly as holistic
or meaningful as it is. With your help, you’ve transformed
this book and added significant value to it. In no particular
order, I thank all of my friends who helped edit, advise, and
support this book:

Renee Becker Bourbeau, Elaine Jacques, Tony DeGonia,

David Creel, Theresa Magwojo, Lena Skully, Rosemary
Knecht, Gary Rau, Cathy Yost, Jay Cadmus, Shigy
Mathew, Olga Kirshenbaum, Win C., Rachel Smith, April
Hall, Karin Hurt, Jackie Becker, Yvanne Komenan,
Andrada Anitei, Jeanisa Moore, Renee Vidor, Darren

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Parker, Tricia Verst Prues, Jeremy Ruditis, Michael Mann,

Trevor Maloney, Cory Warfield, Kyle Elliott, Mark Metry,
Brigette Hyacinth, and Yellowlees Douglas.

Please accept my apologies for anyone I missed in this list

– I assure you that I am grateful for every single person
who’s helped transform this book into reality.

Next, I want to thank Casey Baldwin. He provided me

with the knowledge of values, expressions, and levers that I
integrated into this book. He also provided me with the
Uber illustration that I expressed previously in this book.
Thank you for giving me powerful insights and visuals,
Casey.

Next, I want to thank Cory Warfield. Not only for his

mentorship, but also for inspiring Tips #4 and #5 in the
employee engagement section. For Tip #4, Cory reiterated
the importance of avoiding excessive communication. He
outright provided me with Tip #5, which was instrumental
in finishing this book. Thank you for all that you’ve done
for me, Cory.

Next, I want to thank Kyle Elliott for allowing me to

leverage his phrasing of “work you love, or at least
tolerate.” This phrase significantly helped the flow and
continuity of this book. Thank you, Kyle. I also thank
everyone whom I quoted in this book, as their words
materially enhanced the book’s content.
Next, I want to thank Jackie Becker for titling this book,
Engagement: The Path To A Better You. A book is only as
good as its title, and I strongly believe that Jackie came up
with an engaging, effective title that helps captivate the
reader. Without a title, the book is incomplete. Thank you,
Jackie, for completing my book and for encapsulating its
content with seven immaculate words.

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Last but not least, I want to thank YOU. For reading this
book and taking a chance on me. I truly hope this book
enhances your engagement levels in all parts of your life.

Thank you to everyone listed above. And for all of you

who’ve touched my life in one way or another, I thank you
as well for helping refine my perspective. Thank you to
anyone I failed to list above – I do appreciate you all, and I
can only blame my memory for its shortcoming in recalling
your names.

God bless you all  It’s been my genuine pleasure to share

this book with you. It truly takes a village to raise a book,
and I’m grateful for EVERYONE who’s helped me along
this incredible journey. I hope your journey has been
enriched by this book’s contents, as every single one of you
has enriched my own journey. I’m truly grateful for all of
you! May your light shine as you continue to shape the
world and progress along your path. And may you serve as
someone else’s guide, just like Joseph served you
throughout this book 

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Exhibit 1: The Sliding Spectrum

Bobby Freddie Fred Frederick Joey Joe Joseph

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Exhibit 2: An Ordinary Sudoku

For your pleasure 

Brought to you by https://www.memory-improvement-

tips.com/printable-sudoku-puzzles.html

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Exhibit 3: An Extraordinary Sudoku

P P
P P P P
P

P P P
P P P
P P

P P

P P P

Small Square:
Your 3 P’s Current Input more P’s
Engagement to enhance
Level Engagement
Level!!
Large Square:
Your three
overarching Rows/Columns:
lifelines Engagement
across lifelines

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Exhibit 4: The Crux of Your Mission

The WHY Mission

Lifelines Professional Personal Social

Three Three Three

The HOW Unique Unique Unique
Components Components Components

The 3 P's Purpose Passion Persistence

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Exhibit 5: Professional Lifeline Focus

The WHY Mission

Lifeline Professional

Vocational Business Mission

The HOW
Ambition Network Fulfillment

The 3 P's Purpose Passion Persistence

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Exhibit 6: Personal Lifeline Focus

The WHY Mission

Lifeline Personal

Avocational Mission
The HOW Mindset
Ambition Fulfillment

The 3 P's Purpose Passion Persistence

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Exhibit 7: Social Lifeline Focus

The WHY Mission

Lifeline Social

Level of Mission
The HOW Relationships
Influence Fulfillment

The 3 P's Purpose Passion Persistence

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Exhibit 8: Mission Setting Map – K.N.O.C.K.

Worksheet

Keep listening and learning: What are you hearing, and

what are you understanding?

I hear:
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Therefore, I understand that:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

I hear:
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Therefore, I understand that:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

I hear:
________________________________________________

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________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Therefore, I understand that:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Notice personal behavioral trends: What trends emerge

across your learnings?

1. 7.
2. 8.
3. 9.
4. 10.
5. 11.
6. 12.

Organize information: Which actions are aligned with your

character, which actions are not aligned (and, at the same
time, undesirable), and which actions can be realigned?

ALIGNED NOT ALIGNED REALIGNED

OR DESIRABLE READY

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Clarify your strategic plan: How will you structure and

prioritize your actions? What do you want these actions to
accomplish for your life?

To better leverage my Aligned actions, I will:

1.

2.

3.

To eliminate my Not Aligned and Not Desirable actions, I

will:

1.

2.

3.

To transform my Realigned Ready actions into Aligned

actions, I will:

1.

2.

3.

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For my life, I want these actions to

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________

^THIS IS YOUR MISSION STATEMENT!! This

identifies what your engaged and aligned actions will
accomplish in your life.

Knuckle up: How can you enhance your actions to better

realize your mission?

When I execute (insert action), I receive feedback from

other people, the environment, and my own reflections.

Feedback from others:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Feedback from the environment:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Feedback from my own reflections:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________

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________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

With this feedback, I will realign and enhance my actions

to better realize my mission by:

(This is where you provide your action plan for realigning

and enhancing the particular action in question.)
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

When I execute (insert action), I receive feedback from

other people, the environment, and my own reflections.

Feedback from others:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Feedback from the environment:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Feedback from my own reflections:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________

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________________________________________________
__________________________________________

With this feedback, I will realign and enhance my actions

to better realize my mission by:

(This is where you provide your action plan for realigning

and enhancing the particular action in question.)
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

When I execute (insert action), I receive feedback from

other people, the environment, and my own reflections.

Feedback from others:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Feedback from the environment:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Feedback from my own reflections:

________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________

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________________________________________________
__________________________________________

With this feedback, I will realign and enhance my actions

to better realize my mission by:

(This is where you provide your action plan for realigning

and enhancing the particular action in question.)
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
__________________________________________

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Book & Networking Recommendations

I highly recommend you check out three insightful

books from three extraordinary authors:

1) “Purpose Driven Leadership,” by Brigette

Hyacinth – If you’re looking for additional
insights on employee engagement, leadership,
and team-building, you will find pure nuggets of
wisdom in Brigette’s holistic analysis of
leadership.

2) “Love Beyond Boundaries: What Love Can Do

in a Crisis Situation,” by Jeanisa Moore – If
you’re looking for a faith-based, powerful story
that empowers you to overcome any obstacle
that life throws at you, you will find serenity and
strength in Jeanisa’s personal story of
unwavering belief.

3) “Keys To The Kingdom Of Success: Helping

You To Achieve Your Goals,” by Jeremy Ruditis
– If you’re looking for actionable insights on a
variety of success-related topics, you will find
both breadth and depth in Jeremy’s content.

All three of these books will enrich your life and offer
you invaluable perspective on leadership, love, and
success.

Additionally, I highly recommend you connect with

four gifted, service-driven influencers and visionaries:

1) Brigette Hyacinth – Prolific author, speaker, and

influencer, Brigette is a world-renowned thought

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leader and authority who brings the human

element to all things digital.

2) Cory Warfield – Founder and creator behind

ShedWool and MentorYou, Cory is an authentic,
transparent leader who serves others through
mentorship, advising, and social media
awareness.

3) Mark Metry – Founder of PPMC Network, VU

Dream, and Humans 2.0 Podcast, Mark is a
purpose-driven content creator who collaborates
with industry leaders to offer relatable insights
to the masses.

4) Kyle Elliott – Award-winning speaker and

successful life coach, Kyle helps people find jobs
they LOVE and continually offers career
development insights to 50,000 + followers.

All four of these individuals will elevate your potential

and help guide you along all the different paths of your
journey!

Finally …

I’d love to connect with you directly! You can add me

on LinkedIn, subscribe to my website at
www.kylecrooke.com, or email me directly at
kyleocrooke@gmail.com. Make sure to subscribe to my
website to receive updated content and additional
information on future book releases! I can’t wait to
network with you and continue to serve you 

I’m currently working on my second book, Timeless

Testimonials, which will provide daily, applicable

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insights related to business, personal development, and

self-growth. With a mix of personal stories, sound
principles, and guiding questions, Timeless Testimonials
will empower you to tackle your days with rigor,
perspective, and energy.

Additionally, I’m partnering with Trevor Maloney to

launch a webinar series geared towards self-
development. We’ll launch over the next few months,
with a focus on the Indian, African, and North
American markets. Our webinars offer unique
methodologies and insights into leadership, engagement,
mindset, and energy. As our webinars scale up and
expand to different topic areas and markets, we’d truly
love for you to connect with us and attend our seminars.
You can email me with your interest and I’d be happy
to chat about our various webinar offerings with you!

In addition to webinars, I’ll start offering career and

life coaching services. From a career coaching
perspective, I can provide you with guidance on
résumés/cover letters, interviewing, and career
planning. From a life coaching perspective, I can advise
you on mission fulfillment, goal prioritization, and
optimal performance.

More important than any of these opportunities, I want

to serve as a resource for you. If there’s anything I can
do for you, please reach out to me and let me know. I’m
driven to serve you and add value to you, and I hope
this book is the start of a long-term connection between
us.

If you enjoyed this book, I’d really appreciate if you’d

leave me with feedback on an Amazon review or over
email. I’m always open to feedback and would love to

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understand your reactions to this book, as I look

forward to providing you with more books, resources,
and content in the future to help guide you along your
life’s path. Life changes, paths change, and
perspectives change. But the way you see yourself as a
child of God and, therefore, as a person of worth,
should never change.

I wish nothing but blessings and best of efforts to you in

your continued journey. Thanks for letting me play a
small part in it 

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Author’s Note

The contents of this book are copyrighted and

protected. Kyle Crooke is the author of Engagement:
The Path To A Better You, and all the text/visuals in this
book belong to him, unless otherwise cited properly
from another source. Please do not repurpose or
distribute this book, or its contents, without the
author’s consent.

Thank you ALL for reading! I truly hope this book

added value to your perspective on engagement. I look
forward to connecting with you and seeing this book’s
principles come alive in your life! Thanks for taking a
chance on me – I’m truly excited to see where you grow
from here and continue on your journey 

Please feel free to reach out to me at

kyleocrooke@gmail.com – I’d love to chat with you and
exchange ideas, as well as receive your feedback!

Talk to you soon! God bless 

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