Force for Good How to Thrive

1. 1Treat resilience as an IN-dimension discipline tied to Maslow's fifth level (self-actualization): the practice of sustaining potential without exploiting yourself short-term. Frame it as protecting motivation first, then building capacity to bounce back second — the two are separate but linked.
2. 2Build a motivation log and identify your 'five-a-day' — the specific inputs that reliably reenergise you. Log them daily so you know, empirically, what refuels your drive rather than guessing on bad days.
3. 3Borrow Olympic motivation: study how elite athletes and their coaches sustain drive through disappointment, because organizational life underestimates motivation compared to elite sport. Import a training-and-recovery rhythm rather than treating drive as a fixed trait.
4. 4Adopt the rule of the book's title chapter: 'give up on a good day, not a bad day.' When you feel the impulse to quit, defer the decision until you are refreshed and steady, so setbacks never trigger irreversible choices.
5. 5Anchor resilience in spiritual well-being through community — build or join a 'tribe' of purpose-driven leaders so the loneliness of pioneering new mountains does not erode your drive. This is the antidote to isolation.
6. 6Balance being driven to achieve the mission with caring for physical, mental and spiritual health; if you sacrifice long-term needs for short-term success you appear inauthentic and hypocritical, which itself corrodes motivation.
7. 7Install the thrival kit cadence: 10 minutes a day, one hour a week, one day a month of deliberate practice — a maintenance schedule so resilience is built before the setback, not scrambled for after it.

Blakey draws on his direct work with medal-winning athletes and their coaches, where the power of motivation is treated seriously and protected deliberately. Take a public-service leader in one of the charities he describes: staff overwhelmed by workload, closed referral pathways, and a video clip catapulted out of context into 24-hour news, destroying reputations overnight. On the bad day the clip breaks, the impulse is to resign. The resilient move is to defer — 'give up on a good day' — and consult the motivation log to identify which of the five-a-day inputs will steady the state first. The leader re-establishes contact with their tribe of purpose-driven peers (spiritual well-being through community) to counter the isolation, protects health rather than sacrificing it for a short-term reaction, and only revisits the question 'Why am I doing this?' once refreshed. If the answer still holds when calm, the commitment survives the setback intact.

• If you feel the impulse to quit, then defer the decision to a good day — never resign or abandon the mission on a bad day.
• If your drive is dropping, then check the motivation log against your five-a-day before assuming the problem is the mission itself.
• If loneliness or isolation is rising, then activate the tribe/community — spiritual well-being is the antidote, not more solo effort.
• If sustaining the mission requires sacrificing your long-term physical, mental or spiritual health, then stop — short-term sacrifice reads as inauthentic and is unsustainable.
• If the setback is a public, out-of-context attack, then separate reputation-shock from mission-truth before acting, because the two decay on different timescales.

• Underestimating motivation as a manageable input — treating drive as fixed rather than trained. Tell: no motivation log, no recovery rhythm, surprise every time energy crashes.
• Deciding to quit on a bad day. Tell: irreversible decisions (resignations, mission abandonment) made in the immediate aftermath of a setback rather than when refreshed.
• Confusing intellectual commitment with resilient practice — knowing the profit age is over but not converting that into behaviour change. Tell: the decision was made 'in the head' but the heart and spirit have no supporting daily practice.
• Grinding alone and treating isolation as noble. Tell: no tribe, no community, the leader picks up every burden solo and calls it dedication.
• Sacrificing health for short-term wins. Tell: the leader appears driven but inauthentic and hypocritical because private practice contradicts stated purpose.

• ▸Today's motivation level (1-10): rate your drive each morning
• ▸My five-a-day: list the five specific inputs that reliably reenergise you
• ▸Today's inputs used: tick which of the five you actually did
• ▸Today's setback/disappointment: name it plainly, one line
• ▸Impulse check: did I feel the urge to quit? Defer to a good day (Y/N)
• ▸Community touchpoint: which tribe member/peer did I connect with?
• ▸Health guardrail: one physical, mental or spiritual need I protected today
• ▸Why am I doing this? (only answer when refreshed): restate purpose in one line
• ▸Weekly/monthly cadence done: log the 1hr/week and 1day/month thrival practice

1. 1Locate the hope you generate inside the OUT dimension, not as a standalone tactic: your job is to help followers climb Maslow's hierarchy while recreating level three (belonging) within a purpose context, so hope becomes a new tribe rather than a mood.
2. 2Celebrate the past deliberately with a monthly celebration and recognition routine: ask every team member to submit feedback recognizing key achievements and personal contributions, then build these into a shared mind map that becomes a running 'good news' log over time.
3. 3Name a monthly 'hidden hero' from the extended team or wider community and email them the reasons for their selection — no prize, just the recognition, functioning as a deliberate random act of kindness.
4. 4Ground the hope in perceived integrity, not slogans: evidence purpose through your actual business decisions, your priorities, how you allocate and measure work, and your day-to-day behaviour — because staff 'have seen it all before' and will detect incoherence.
5. 5When individuals fail, forgive the individual while protecting the team and the mission — hold this messy, non-binary stance visibly so followers see fairness, which is what makes your hope believable rather than naive.
6. 6Protect your own batteries so the hope is credible: stop daily (eight hours' sleep), weekly (family/friends), and monthly (a day doing something different), because a leader running on empty cannot sustainably project hope.
7. 7Practise humour in the present as a leadership device — use a simple physical demonstration (like Bill Barry's torch) to make a serious point land without lecturing, keeping the tone motivating rather than heavy.
8. 8Counter the surrounding cynicism directly: name the incoherence and policy failure staff experience daily, then respond with the UP/IN/OUT model instead of joining the 'infectious cynicism and depression' it engenders.

Bill Barry, an Olympic medallist and Team GB rowing coach, would bring a torch to joint presentations, switch it on, place it on a table and ask the audience, 'What will happen if I leave the torch on?' After a long silence, someone would answer, 'The batteries will run out.' The point was made without a lecture: a leader who never stops will drain their own reserves. This is hope-work through humour and honesty in the present — it lands the message about rest and sustainability while keeping the room warm rather than shamed. It pairs with the celebration routine, where a monthly 'hidden hero' from the wider community received an email naming why they were chosen; replies often said the feedback 'made my day.' Together these show the pattern: honour contribution (past), be light and kind (present), and followers regain faith in the future.

• If purpose exists only as words on a poster or screensaver, then treat your hope as not-yet-credible and go evidence it through a visible priority decision before asking followers to believe.
• If an individual fails or errs, then forgive the individual but only insofar as it does not compromise the team or the mission — hope is not permissiveness.
• If you find yourself striving and giving with no downtime, then you are drifting into the martyr pattern; stop daily/weekly/monthly before your 'batteries run out' and your hope becomes hollow.
• If recognition feedback keeps scoring high or celebrations feel routine, then widen the circle — name hidden heroes from the extended team and community to keep kindness genuinely surprising.
• If the surrounding culture is cynical and depressed, then respond with UP/IN/OUT rather than matching the mood, because a leader who joins the cynicism forfeits the beacon role entirely.

• Sacrificial hope: burning yourself out 'saving the world' — the tell is collapse (like the leader who fell in the aircraft aisle and spent six months recuperating) or an estranged partner and neglected children.
• Poster purpose: broadcasting hope you haven't evidenced in decisions — the tell is staff who've 'seen it all before' quietly disengaging while you talk.
• Binary judgement: treating followers like profit-world hired hands and taking 'ruthless action' on mistakes — the tell is a shrinking tribe and lost belonging instead of the recreated level-three community.
• Toxic positivity that ignores reality — the tell is you never naming the real incoherence and policy failure staff live daily, so your optimism reads as denial rather than credible hope.
• Martyr's 'poor me' payoff: giving and giving until you get sick so someone finally notices — the tell is that recognition only arrives when you're struggling, at long-term cost to your leadership potential.

• ▸Past — Celebration entry: one team achievement to recognize this month, named and specific.
• ▸Past — Personal recognition: which team member gets positive personal recognition, and for what.
• ▸Present — Hidden hero: one person from the extended team or wider community, plus the reasons for the email.
• ▸Present — Kindness/humour act: one light, human moment you introduced (a demonstration, a lightening of tone) and its effect.
• ▸Integrity check: one business decision this month that visibly evidenced the purpose (not a slogan).
• ▸Forgive/protect log: an individual failure you forgave and how you protected the team/mission alongside it.
• ▸Battery check: did you stop daily (sleep), weekly (family/friends), monthly (a different day)? Yes/No each.
• ▸Cynicism response: one moment you countered surrounding negativity with UP/IN/OUT instead of joining it.
• ▸Believability score (ban 7): rate how credible your hope felt to followers 1-10, convert any 7 to a 6 or 8.

1. 1Map your three legs honestly: UP (purpose, connection, service, joy), IN (motivation, resilience, spiritual well-being), OUT (forgiving the individual, protecting the team and purpose, becoming a beacon of hope). Score each leg before deciding where to invest.
2. 2Take the Chapter 7 self-assessment to identify which imbalanced persona you drift toward: the zealot (over-indexed on UP, burning others with the mission), the martyr (sacrificing the IN, neglecting self and home life), or the Pied Piper (over-relying on OUT charisma, leading followers without a sustainable base).
3. 3Name your Achilles heel as the over-used strength. Whatever leg you lean on hardest is the one that becomes your vulnerability, so treat your dominant strength as the risk, not the safe harbour.
4. 4Rebuild the weakest leg with the thrival kit cadence: 10 minutes a day, one hour a week, one day a month. Assign each practice to the leg it strengthens so the stool re-levels over time.
5. 5For the IN, protect motivation and resilience deliberately — run a motivation log and 'five-a-day', and root yourself in a community outside your profession where you can be yourself and be vulnerable.
6. 6For the OUT, rehearse the 'moment of truth' response in advance: decide how you forgive an honest individual mistake while still protecting the team and the integrity of the mission, because staff watch closely what happens when things go wrong.
7. 7Re-run the assessment periodically. Balance is not a one-time fix; the leg you neglect regrows into the persona you were trying to avoid.

John Blakey coached a passionate purpose-driven leader who regularly made long-haul flights to spread her organization's message and increase its impact. She over-relied on the OUT and UP legs — endlessly serving the mission and her followers — while starving the IN of purpose-driven leadership. The martyr pattern showed: she sacrificed her long-term sustainability for short-term reach. Boarding a flight back to the UK from the US one evening, she collapsed from exhaustion in the aircraft aisle and then spent six months recuperating. Her Achilles heel was her greatest strength: relentless drive without resilience or spiritual well-being. Contrast this with Sir Peter Fahy, who protected his IN by staying rooted in community — family, dogs, exercise, church where he could be 'Peter and not Sir Peter Fahy' — and school governorship as a counterbalance to policing. The lesson: the purpose-driven mindset cannot be sacrificial; it is, by definition, holistic.

• If you feel most confident about one dimension, then treat that dimension as your Achilles heel and audit it first, because over-relied strengths create the imbalance.
• If you are neglecting your own physical, mental or spiritual health to serve the mission, then you are drifting toward the martyr — stop and rebuild the IN before the collapse forces you to.
• If an individual makes an honest mistake, then forgive the individual, but only hand in hand with protecting the wider team and the integrity of the mission — never one without the other.
• If media, political or public pressure calls for a 'head', then remember other staff are watching whether you support the individual or throw them overboard; this is a moment of truth for your OUT.
• If your home life or team cohesion is fraying while your impact grows, then your life has become sacrificial rather than sustainable, and you will soon appear inauthentic and hypocritical.

• The zealot: so certain of the purpose that they burn colleagues who don't share the fervour. Tell — people describe the mission as inspiring but the culture as intense and unforgiving.
• The martyr: sacrificing long-term needs for short-term success. Tell — exhaustion, estranged partners, neglected children, or a literal collapse like the leader who fell in the aircraft aisle.
• The Pied Piper: leading through charisma and OUT-focus without a stable IN or clear UP. Tell — followers are energised but the leader has no sustainable base and no community where they can be vulnerable.
• Treating balance as a soundbite rather than a practice. Tell — purpose is easy to use as a soundbite but much harder to live and breathe; the calendar shows no daily, weekly or monthly thrival practice.
• Forgiving individuals without protecting the mission (or vice versa). Tell — staff become incensed either that wrongdoing went unchecked, or that an honest person was thrown overboard under pressure.

• ▸UP score (1-10): rate your connection, service and joy in the purpose
• ▸IN score (1-10): rate your motivation, resilience and spiritual well-being
• ▸OUT score (1-10): rate forgiving the individual, protecting the team, being a beacon of hope
• ▸Dominant leg / Achilles heel: name the highest-scoring leg you over-rely on
• ▸Persona risk: circle zealot / martyr / Pied Piper based on your lowest legs
• ▸Weakest-leg repair action: one thrival practice (daily 10min / weekly 1hr / monthly 1 day) assigned to it
• ▸Community anchor: name the group outside your profession where you can be yourself and be vulnerable
• ▸Moment-of-truth plan: how you will forgive an honest mistake while protecting the mission
• ▸Re-audit date: when you will re-run this assessment to check the stool re-levelled

1. 1Define thriving in three concrete dimensions before anything else, as Alisa does: UP (making progress on a worthwhile mission that aligns with your personal purpose), IN (protecting your energy, physical and mental health, and enjoyment), OUT (bringing people with you — inspiring staff, clients and stakeholders through positive relationships).
2. 2Name your destination first — 'If you don't know where you are going then any path will do.' Write down what thriving specifically means for you in the role, then work backwards to the practices that get you there.
3. 3Diagnose your leadership persona using the UP/IN/OUT self-assessment: zealot, martyr or Pied Piper. Identify which pattern dominates so you can target its specific risks.
4. 4Install the thrival kit as a layered discipline: 10 minutes a day, one hour a week, one day a month. Treat these as non-negotiable maintenance for energy and joy, not optional extras.
5. 5Run the 'trackdown' exercise using transactional analysis and the parent/child dynamic to surface the childhood experiences shaping your style — especially why you may be very hard on yourself and what 'pushes your buttons.'
6. 6Free yourself from resentment and grievance about how you have been treated; the passages name these as poison that must be released 'at some point' to keep thriving.
7. 7Protect the team without abandoning the mission: make explicit that staff won't be punished for honest mistakes while still upholding values and objectives — this holds when media, political or public pressure demands a 'head.'
8. 8Become a force multiplier — once you are a force for good in your own leadership, help others do the same to multiply your impact's scope.

The author was running a for-profit consultancy for seven years when it 'was no longer a joy' — the tell that he was surviving, not thriving. He had ticked every box of success: financial independence as a tech entrepreneur at 35, international managing director of a FTSE100 company at 39. At 42 he gave it all up to become an executive coach, his first step on the purpose-driven path, but was later tempted back into 'the old game' by growing his own coaching business — showing how deep and addictive profit-driven habits are. A 2011 Sunday newspaper advert headlined 'From a Life of Success to a Life of Significance' hooked him because it spoke to Maslow's threshold into self-actualization. The lesson he draws: significance and success aren't sequential phases — those who thrive find both in the same role, avoiding the 'self-sacrificial slog' he too often witnessed in others.

• If the role is no longer a joy and your energy is draining, then you are surviving, not thriving — audit the IN dimension before pushing harder.
• If media, political or public pressure calls for a 'head' after an honest mistake, then support the individual and protect the purpose rather than throwing them overboard.
• If you recognize the martyr pattern (doing so much you can't fit in what 'feeds your soul'), then run the trackdown exercise to make your childhood drivers conscious and mitigate the profile's risks.
• If resentment or grievance about your treatment lingers, then treat it as poison and free yourself from it — thriving requires releasing it at some point.
• If you've become a force for good in your own leadership, then shift to force-multiplier work: help others do the same to widen your impact.

• Treating success and significance as separate sequential phases — the tell: postponing 'meaning' until after the next promotion; the passages insist those who find fulfilment find both in the same role.
• Sliding into the martyr persona — the tell: people close to you asking 'why are you doing so much?' while you can't fit in activities that feed your soul.
• Reverting to addictive profit-driven habits even after starting the purpose journey — the tell: being 'tempted back into the old game,' as the author was when growing his coaching business.
• Abandoning a staff member under external pressure — the tell: staff watching whether the organization supports the individual or throws them overboard, when underfunding or systemic failure was the real cause.
• Carrying unexamined grievance — the tell: being very hard on yourself and having your 'buttons' pushed without knowing why, because you skipped the parent/child dynamic work.

• ▸UP — Worthwhile mission: state the mission you're progressing and how it aligns with your personal purpose.
• ▸IN — Energy & enjoyment: name what protects your physical/mental health and what you're doing to enjoy the role.
• ▸OUT — Bringing people with you: name the staff, clients or stakeholders you must inspire and the relationships to build.
• ▸Persona diagnosis: mark whether you lean zealot, martyr or Pied Piper — and its main risk.
• ▸Trackdown note: one childhood experience shaping your style and the 'button' it presses.
• ▸Grievance to release: name one resentment about your treatment you commit to freeing yourself from.
• ▸Thrival cadence: your 10-min daily, 1-hour weekly and 1-day monthly practice.
• ▸Force-multiplier target: one person you'll help become a force for good.

1. 1Master the UP, IN and OUT of purpose-driven leadership first — force multiplication is the distal outcome that only compounds once you already thrive as a leader; do not attempt to inspire others before you can sustain yourself.
2. 2Identify your own gift or 'superpower' — the specific capability that lets you thrive. Frank's is building global networks; yours may be writing, coaching, philanthropy or community-building. The form your multiplication takes follows directly from this gift.
3. 3Write your 80th birthday speech as the anchor. Draft what you want to say about your impact, then work backwards: aim to say you were not only a force for good but also inspired other leaders to become one.
4. 4Set a five-year vision as the first step, then a ten-year vision as the extrapolation. Use concrete goals (e.g. B Corp accreditation, publishing, mentoring) rather than aspirations for legacy or honours.
5. 5Choose a path that matches your gift: B Corp accreditation, coaching/mentoring, community leadership, speaking, writing or philanthropy. Extrapolate the same gift that helps you thrive short-term into the long-term multiplier role.
6. 6Build trust over time so others give their time freely — force multiplication works when peers are inspired by a mission, not recruited. Seed the idea in newsletters, then put it on the agenda of your next leadership team meeting to gauge peer appetite.
7. 7Keep the goal at Maslow's level six: pursue the joy and service, let others bestow the accolade. Do not publicly chase legacy or honours — that pulls you back to level-four status-seeking and tempts you to compromise on joy.

Frank started in 2005 with an audacious goal: create a global visions community. His superpower is building global networks. Over 20 years he built Horasis — a 'mini-Davos' — around the mission to 'explore, define, and implement trajectories of sustainable growth.' He regularly attracts CEOs of major corporations, government ministers and heads of global charities, all of whom give their time voluntarily because of the trust they have built in Frank. He appears calm and assured, having mastered the UP, IN and OUT, and is now leveraging his impact on a global scale. The younger Frank of 2005 likely would not have believed what was possible — but because he was bold, Horasis became a force for good and Frank became a force multiplier. The lesson: not every multiplier builds a network; some write books, some become philanthropists, some become B Corp leaders, some coach — it depends on your gift.

• If you have not yet mastered UP, IN and OUT, then work on thriving as a purpose-driven leader before attempting to multiply — the outcome is distal, not a starting point.
• If a goal is an honour that must be bestowed (OBE, legacy, accolade), then treat it as a possible outcome of your work, not the goal — otherwise you drop from Maslow level six to level four.
• If your gift is X (networks, writing, coaching), then choose the multiplier path that extrapolates X rather than copying someone else's path.
• If peers give their time only when incentivized rather than inspired by the mission, then the trust needed for multiplication is not yet built — invest in the mission and the relationship first.
• If you are unsure how to start, then define a five-year first step and a ten-year vision, and seed the idea with peers before formalizing it.

• Chasing legacy or an honour directly — the tell is publicly self-referencing your legacy or setting 'get an OBE' as a goal; these can only be bestowed, and pursuing them compromises your joy.
• Copying another leader's path instead of your own gift — the tell is trying to build a network when your superpower is writing, producing forced, low-trust results.
• Attempting to multiply before you can sustain yourself — the tell is inspiring others while your own IN (resilience, well-being) is depleted.
• Treating success and significance as sequential phases — the tell is deferring 'giving back' to a later career stage; those who find fulfilment find both in the same role.
• Recruiting rather than inspiring — the tell is people participating out of obligation, not because they are moved by the mission, which erodes the voluntary trust multiplication depends on.

• ▸My gift/superpower: name the single capability that lets you thrive as a leader
• ▸80th birthday line: one sentence describing the multiplier impact you want to claim
• ▸Multiplier path: pick B Corp / coaching / community / speaking / writing / philanthropy — the one that extrapolates your gift
• ▸Five-year first step: the concrete first action toward becoming a multiplier
• ▸Ten-year vision: the extrapolated, audacious version of that impact
• ▸Mission others can join: the purpose that would inspire peers to give time freely
• ▸Trust-building action: how you will earn the trust that makes voluntary participation possible
• ▸Seeding move: where you'll first float the idea (newsletter, leadership team agenda) to gauge appetite
• ▸Level-six check: confirm this is pursued for joy/service, not for a bestowed honour or self-referenced legacy

1. 1Name the three forces explicitly before responding: post-modern (a change in the way we think — scepticism), post-pandemic (a change in what we have experienced — disconnection), future-fragile (a change in what might be possible — anxiety). Diagnose which one is loudest in your context.
2. 2Apply the emergency-driving discipline: split attention between 'what is immediately in front of the bonnet' (relentless daily challenges) and 'the potential hazards and opportunities in the distance' (your five- and ten-year vision). Do not let one crowd out the other.
3. 3Audit the post-modern scepticism directly. Assume purpose used as a soundbite will be seen through — verify you can 'live and breathe' it as a core principle rather than repeat it.
4. 4Address post-pandemic disconnection by treating the shift in what people value as permanent, not temporary. Design so the 'purpose-driven legacy is not lost as the world adapts to a new normal'.
5. 5Counter future-fragile anxiety by following the mantra 'focus on the things you can control' — the one thing everyone controls is themselves. Convert unfixable external hazards into a self-directed response.
6. 6Choose your prevailing paradigm consciously: treat the profit-driven age as ending in usefulness, not as evil, and step into purpose knowing 'everyone else will see you with new eyes and re-assess you accordingly'.
7. 7Anchor the whole landscape read in a 'seeing with new eyes' moment — surface the Proust reframe (discovery is having new eyes, not seeking new landscapes) so you recognise the change rather than wait to be told.

Take the foreword author, a chief constable of 34 years in Cheshire and Greater Manchester, describing today's public-service landscape. Staff feel overwhelmed by workload and the bleakness of front-line work; referral pathways to other overwhelmed organisations are closed, leaving fears for the welfare of those they help. There has been a catastrophic drop in confidence in institutions including policing, which crushes morale. Social media and 24-hour news catapult individual cases and video clips into public consciousness, often out of context, leaving staff feeling unfairly targeted — the post-modern scepticism and future-fragile anxiety made concrete. Rather than treat this as a fixable operational problem alone, the book's response is to keep eyes both on the bonnet (these relentless immediate pressures) and the distance (a force-multiplier future), leading through the UP, IN and OUT of purpose. The move is not to deny the bleakness but to give leaders a way to thrive inside it.

• If people treat your purpose statement with scepticism, then stop repeating the soundbite and demonstrate it lived and breathed — assume the post-modern default is disbelief.
• If a challenge sits entirely outside your control (institutional confidence, 24-hour news cycles), then redirect effort to the one thing you can control — yourself — rather than exhaust the team fighting it.
• If you find yourself only firefighting what is in front of the bonnet, then deliberately lift your sights to the five- and ten-year vision; if you only visioneer, then re-anchor in the relentless daily reality.
• If you step publicly into purpose-driven leadership, then expect immediate re-assessment by everyone around you and prepare to be held to the higher standard.
• If staff show disconnection or bleakness rather than open resistance, then read it as post-pandemic experience shift, not disengagement, and protect what they now value.

• Using purpose as a soundbite — the tell: your language about purpose is fluent and frequent but your decisions still optimise only for profit; people go quiet rather than commit.
• Treating the post-pandemic shift as a phase that will pass — the tell: you frame 'new normal' language as temporary disruption and plan to revert, and the purpose-driven legacy quietly evaporates.
• Fixating on hazards you cannot control — the tell: leadership meetings dominated by news cycles and institutional-confidence lament, with staff morale sinking and no self-directed action.
• Ignoring one half of the bonnet/distance split — the tell: either constant crisis response with no five/ten-year vision, or grand future talk while front-line staff feel abandoned in the bleakness.
• Assuming the audience will grant you credibility — the tell: you announce a purpose pivot expecting applause and are surprised when everyone re-assesses you critically instead.

• ▸Post-modern scepticism present: where is your purpose currently met as a soundbite rather than believed?
• ▸Post-pandemic disconnection present: what do your people now value differently, and what legacy risks being lost?
• ▸Future-fragile anxiety present: which fears about what is possible are dominating morale?
• ▸In front of the bonnet: the relentless immediate challenge demanding response this quarter.
• ▸In the distance: the five- and ten-year force-multiplier vision you must not lose sight of.
• ▸Controllable vs uncontrollable: list what you can control (self) versus what you cannot, and reallocate effort.
• ▸Live-not-soundbite test: one concrete decision this month that proves purpose is core, not marketing.
• ▸New-eyes moment: the reframe that made you see the changed landscape rather than wait to be told.
• ▸Re-assessment readiness: how you will respond when others re-evaluate you on stepping into purpose.

1. 1Elicit your values before you draft any purpose statement: name specific moments in your leadership when you felt most alive or most in conflict, then trace the underlying value each moment reveals — this is the 'values elicitation in action' that grounds purpose in evidence, not aspiration.
2. 2Distinguish the two wolves you feed daily: the parable frames purpose as an active choice between competing intrinsic drives. Decide explicitly which wolf you are feeding this week and cut the input that feeds the other.
3. 3Draft your purpose as something you can serve, not just state. Test it with the question the passages surface — 'Why am I doing this?' — and rewrite until the answer holds under fatigue, not only on a good day.
4. 4Build a staying-connected mechanism into your calendar because purpose decays without contact. Use the thrival kit cadence: 10 minutes a day, one hour a week, one day a month — reserve these before other commitments claim them.
5. 5Convert purpose from soundbite into practice by naming a concrete act of service each week: a decision where you chose the higher calling over expedient profit, and record what it cost and returned.
6. 6Track the joy signal. The passages tie connection, service and joy together — if service to purpose produces no felt joy over time, treat that as data that your stated purpose is borrowed, not yours, and re-run the elicitation.
7. 7Protect the purpose in your team, not just yourself: assign a 'values guardian' role in recurring meetings to feed back where the team honoured its values or drifted.

In peer group leadership gatherings at The Trusted Executive, the UP is kept alive through structure rather than sentiment. Every meeting opens with a red-amber-green check-in: each leader posts in the chat whether they feel green, amber or red on physical health and mental readiness. If someone logs 'red', the group immediately asks how they can help, which converts a stated value of care into an observable act of service. Roles are then assigned — a 'values guardian' watches for where the team honoured its values or failed to, and feeds this back, so purpose stays a living entity under scrutiny each session. A 'treasure hunter' captures nuggets of wisdom and replays them at the end, reinforcing the joy and meaning of the work. None of this is rocket science, but naming the objective honestly and building it into the meeting's opening keeps connection, service and joy present rather than assumed.

• If you cannot answer 'Why am I doing this?' without referencing profit or status, then stop and re-run values elicitation before restating purpose.
• If your purpose survives on a good day but collapses on a bad one, then it is a soundbite — rebuild it from your hardest lived moments, not your aspirations.
• If service to purpose consistently drains you and never produces joy, then treat it as a signal the value is borrowed and reselect which wolf you feed.
• If a team decision honours the value in words but not in the choice, then the values guardian, not the leader alone, names the gap.
• If staff have lost belief in the three-year plan, then scale the horizon down to something they still believe in (the daffodils will come up) and rebuild hope from there.

• Treating purpose as a one-time declaration: the tell is a purpose statement written once, framed on a wall, never revisited — the passages warn purpose is 'much harder to live and breathe' than to state.
• Using purpose as a soundbite for external audiences while daily decisions run on profit: the tell is that colleagues can quote the purpose but cannot cite a recent decision it changed.
• Skipping values elicitation and borrowing a purpose that sounds noble: the tell is no felt joy and quiet exhaustion in service — the joy signal is absent.
• Assuming purpose sustains itself without a staying-connected cadence: the tell is that the thrival kit practices (daily/weekly/monthly) are the first thing dropped when the calendar tightens.
• Demanding long-horizon purpose from an exhausted team: the tell is a sea of blank faces when you present the three-year plan — you have outrun their surviving supply of hope.

• ▸Alive moment: a leadership moment you felt most alive — one line
• ▸Value revealed: the intrinsic value that moment exposes — one line
• ▸Which wolf: the value you are actively feeding this week vs the one you are starving — one line
• ▸Purpose statement: your higher calling, tested against 'Why am I doing this?' on a bad day — one line
• ▸Act of service this week: one concrete choice serving purpose over expedience — one line
• ▸Cost and return: what that act cost you and what it returned — one line
• ▸Joy check: did serving it produce felt joy? green / amber / red — one line
• ▸Staying-connected slot: the daily 10-min, weekly 1-hr or monthly 1-day time you have reserved — one line
• ▸Values guardian: who will feed back where the team honoured or drifted from this value — one line

1. 1Reframe your inner life as a diet, not a luxury: schedule the IN alongside your operational duties. Feed the three sub-dimensions deliberately — motivation, resilience, spiritual well-being — because leaving any one to chance erodes performance.
2. 2Keep a motivation log for one to two weeks: record each hour and note whether it raised or drained your motivation. Look for the 'radiators' (what tops you up) and 'drains' (what depletes you) — these are unique to you.
3. 3Extract your 'five-a-day': the five specific radiators that reliably boost motivation, then build all five into every working day until they become automatic like cleaning your teeth.
4. 4Re-score your motivation honestly on a 100-point scale, not a 10-point one. If you tell yourself you're 10/10, ask whether you're really 10/100 — Olympic athletes motivate through daily grind, and you must too.
5. 5When you hit a disappointment, apply the '12 tips' for bouncing back and make a conscious call on giving up: decide whether this is the moment to stop or to persist. Losing hope saps vitality and kills your appetite for risk, so protect it.
6. 6Nourish the body — diet, exercise, rest — and acknowledge the ego still has needs (recognition, belonging, self-esteem) even after purpose displaces it. Put your own oxygen mask on first.
7. 7Invest in community, not just team: join or build rituals that bind people, establish boundaries and codify best practice. A community nourishes you differently from a team and offers a glimpse of oneness that sustains the spirit.

Working with a board leader in the NHS, the author used a motivation log to map the leader's energy hour by hour. The data surprised them: motivation levels were noticeably higher on days the leader listened to at least one hour of rock music. Rock music was that person's radiator. Other leaders in the same work revealed entirely different formulas — one topped up on walks in nature, others needed solitude, some needed the buzz of people, some Italian food, some a sport 'fix', some fiction or a leadership podcast. The lesson: each leader's motivation formula is unique and needs careful design and refinement, and far more lies in the detail of each hour and minute than expected. The leader then designed the working day to build those radiators in deliberately rather than leaving motivation to chance.

• If your motivation feels adequate but you've never measured it, then re-score on a 100-point scale — assume you're closer to 10/100 than 10/10 until proven otherwise.
• If an activity consistently lifts your energy in the log, then treat it as a radiator and build it into every day; if it drains you, then remove, reduce or reschedule it.
• If you're hurt by a follower's words or actions, then choose joy — the deep internal reservoir — rather than happiness contingent on their behaviour, because that joy is both the fuel and the prize.
• If you face a disappointment, then run the '12 tips' for bouncing back before deciding whether to give up; give up on a good day, not a bad one.
• If you feel lonely or disconnected, then seek community with rituals rather than another team meeting — community nourishes what a team cannot.

• Treating self-sustenance as self-indulgence and cutting it first when busy — the tell: you can name every operational KPI but have no strategy for your own motivation.
• Measuring motivation on the wrong scale and declaring yourself fine — the tell: you say '10/10' without evidence and never notice the slow drain.
• Chasing happiness from external circumstances instead of the internal joy of purpose — the tell: your mood swings entirely with followers' praise and criticism.
• Confusing team-building for community — the tell: you have plenty of meetings and 'fun' events but no rituals, boundaries or shared best practice that bind people over time.
• Ignoring the ego and body because purpose is supposed to have replaced them — the tell: you neglect diet, exercise, rest and your needs for recognition, and burn out while claiming to be selfless.

• ▸Hour/activity: log each block of the day with what you were doing.
• ▸Motivation change (+/-): mark whether it raised or drained you.
• ▸Radiators identified: list activities that reliably top you up.
• ▸Drains identified: list activities/people that deplete you.
• ▸My five-a-day: the five radiators to build into every working day.
• ▸Motivation score /100: honest current reading, not out of 10.
• ▸Resilience note: last disappointment and which of the 12 tips you'll use.
• ▸Community ritual: one recurring practice that binds you to others.
• ▸Joy check: what am I choosing joy over today, regardless of circumstances?

1. 1Separate the individual from the mission before you react: decide whether the issue is a forgivable human imperfection (extend grace) or a breach of the team's purpose (enforce a boundary). Staff watch closely what happens when things go wrong, so make the distinction explicit.
2. 2When someone falls short as a person, forgive the imperfection openly — treat individuals fairly rather than making an example of them, especially when social media or 24-hour news has catapulted a case out of context.
3. 3When the mission or wider team is threatened, draw firm boundaries: name the purpose that overrides the competing pressure and hold to it (e.g. protection of vulnerable people overrides convenience; social purpose overrides maximizing financial surplus).
4. 4Become the Chief Fun Officer: build a deliberate strategy for pumping fun into the workplace, because fun creates connection, connection bonds the team, and a bonded team powers the purpose-driven mission whether remote or in the office.
5. 5Match fun to the person — a wild awards night for one, a quiet walk in nature for another — but ensure it involves other people, since connection is the antidote to post-pandemic loneliness and disconnection.
6. 6Be a beacon of hope by finding the smallest thing people still believe in and building a survival plan around it; use celebration, humour and kindness to renew energy and turn back cynicism.
7. 7Show up in the human moments — stand alongside staff and the public at their lowest points — because these moments demonstrate humanity and purpose more powerfully than any target hit or building constructed.

Coaching the CEO of an NHS hospital trust before a post-pandemic winter, John met an exhausted, demoralized staff who had lost hope. The CEO said they no longer believed in the three-year plan, the one-year plan, or anything beyond getting through the winter. Rather than force a grand strategy onto blank faces, John kept scaling down until he found the one thing they still believed in: 'Do they believe the daffodils will come up again next spring?' 'Yes, of course,' the CEO laughed — and at that rock-bottom point they had finally encountered hope. 'Project Daffodil' was born: a short-term survival plan the executive team could confidently own and implement over the winter. Spring came, the daffodils appeared, and though it had not been pretty, the trust had survived and a fragile hope had been restored. The lesson for leading others: you engage followers by meeting their reality, then rebuilding hope from the smallest genuine belief upward.

• If the failing is a personal imperfection, then forgive the individual and treat them fairly; if it threatens the mission or team, then hold a firm boundary.
• If a course of action would maximize financial surplus but betray the core purpose (more/better homes, supporting vulnerable residents), then let purpose override it.
• If staff can't believe in the three-year plan, then keep scaling down (one-year, this winter, next spring's daffodils) until you find a belief you can build hope on.
• If morale is draining and cynicism is spreading, then respond with the OUT — connection, fun, kindness and celebration — rather than joining the infectious depression.
• If you're choosing where to spend your leadership attention, then prioritize the human moments alongside people at their lowest, because those are what stick and what prove your purpose.

• Making an example of someone for a human imperfection — the tell is staff going quiet and vulnerable when things go wrong, because they watch closely and conclude no one will be forgiven.
• Treating purpose as words on a poster or screen saver — the tell is 'staff have seen it all before'; it must be evidenced by priorities, resource choices, how work is measured, and your own perceived integrity.
• Herding people back into the office to force connection while denying their new-found autonomy — the tell is compliance without engagement, morale and productivity still dropping.
• Skipping fun as 'not real leadership' — the tell is no laughter, the dead asynchronous 'send-pause-receive-pause' rhythm on Teams/Zoom, and an unbonded team.
• Pushing a grand plan onto exhausted people who've lost hope — the tell is a sea of blank faces thinking 'how can you expect me to contemplate three years when I haven't come to terms with last week?'

• ▸Individual imperfection to forgive: name one person's shortfall you will extend grace to this week.
• ▸Fairness check: how will you ensure this individual is treated fairly, not made a public example?
• ▸Boundary to enforce: which purpose is being threatened, and what firm line protects the team/mission?
• ▸Override decision: name one choice where purpose must override financial or convenience pressure.
• ▸Fun strategy: one specific way you will pump fun into the team this week (matched to who they are).
• ▸Connection audit: where are people laughing? Where is the workplace lonely or disconnected?
• ▸Smallest belief (Daffodil): what is the one thing your exhausted team still believes in right now?
• ▸Hope plan: the short-term, ownable survival step you build on that belief.
• ▸Human moment: name one lowest-point moment where you will stand alongside staff or the public.

1. 1Locate the UP dimension of Blakey's framework: it is the top vertex of the triangle, the axis on which you 'discover, connect with, serve and feel the joy of' your higher calling. Joy of Purpose is the third movement in that sequence — connection, service, then joy.
2. 2Define your purpose first via values elicitation. Name the intrinsic values Maslow lists at the sixth level — truth, goodness, excellence, fairness, justice — and identify which you would make a 'courageous stand' for. Joy is accessed by honouring these, not by improving circumstances.
3. 3Separate the reservoir from the weather. Confront reality using Dalio's formula (Dreams + Reality + Determination), and accept that the context is 'uncontrolled chaos', careers destroyed overnight, infectious cynicism. Joy is the state you choose amid that suffering, not once it lifts.
4. 4Stay in service to purpose. The joy is downstream of serving the wider good; you feel it by acting on the mission, not by contemplating it. Evidence it in 'business decisions on priorities and choices' — purpose on a screen saver produces no joy.
5. 5Use the 'thrival kit' (Chapter 6) tools daily to sustain the state — Blakey frames these as what 'can profoundly change your daily experience of being a purpose-driven leader'. Joy is a practice repeated, not a one-time realization.
6. 6Answer the recurring question 'Why am I doing this?' explicitly. When status is stripped and loneliness sets in, the reservoir of joy is what makes the new mountain worth climbing while 'everything else is boring and stale'.
7. 7Convert the joy into a 'beacon of hope' for others (the OUT dimension), which recreates belonging within purpose and replenishes your own energy reserves — the private state becomes a renewable public resource.

Blakey frames Force for Good as opening with 'A moment of joy' and the B Corp movement's strapline, 'making business a force for good.' A leader running an ambulance trust or a water utility faces the reality drawn in the passages: individual video clips 'catapulted into the public consciousness, often out of context', reputations 'destroyed overnight', staff 'feeling unfairly targeted', and 'infectious cynicism and depression'. The circumstantial case for happiness is absent. Yet by operating at Maslow's sixth level — standing for fairness and the wider good — the leader accesses joy not from the circumstances but from honouring the value. They choose to 'respond with the UP, IN and OUT model' rather than 'join in the infectious cynicism'. The joy of purpose here is precisely the state that lets them become a 'beacon of hope' while surrounded by 'uncontrolled chaos'. That is the distinction: not a happy situation, but a chosen reservoir of well-being drawn from service to a higher calling.

• If your sense of well-being rises and falls with quarterly results, public opinion, or your status, then you are running on circumstantial happiness, not the joy of purpose — reconnect to an intrinsic value instead.
• If purpose is 'only words on a poster or screen saver', then no joy will follow — it must be 'evidenced by business decisions on priorities and choices' before the reservoir opens.
• If you feel profound loneliness after stepping onto the purpose-driven path, then treat it as confirmation you are 'climbing a new mountain', not as a signal to retreat — use the OUT dimension to build a new tribe.
• If you catch yourself running on 'a big, audacious dream combined with superhuman willpower' alone, then you have skipped Dalio's reality component — joy built on self-delusion collapses into 'short-term fireworks'.
• If everything in the old game now feels 'boring and stale', then that emptiness is the sixth level calling — the only fulfilling work now is the purpose-driven one.

• Treating joy as an outcome to earn once conditions improve. Tell: you keep saying 'I'll feel better when [the crisis / the numbers / the press] settles' — the reservoir never opens because it was never conditional on circumstance.
• Using purpose as a soundbite. Lee McDarby's warning in the passages: 'purpose is very easy to use as a soundbite but much harder to live and breathe as a core principle.' Tell: staff who 'have seen it all before' show visible cynicism because behaviour and 'perceived integrity' don't match the words.
• Boosterism — skipping reality. Tell: relentless positivity that 'ignores the reality of life on the front line'; the joy is performed, not accessed, and 'eventually brings the whole business into disrepute'.
• Expecting the whole tribe to share your joy. Tell: frustration that followers 'don't get it' — but stakeholders operate 'at their own level in Maslow's hierarchy'; assuming shared sixth-level motivation drains rather than sustains joy.
• Isolating in the loneliness rather than converting it. Tell: energy reserves deplete and cynicism creeps back because you stayed private with the UP and never engaged the OUT to become a beacon of hope.

• ▸Intrinsic value I stand for: name one of truth/goodness/excellence/fairness/justice this act honours.
• ▸Higher calling served: the wider good this decision advances (not the profit it protects).
• ▸Current brutal reality: the specific chaos/scrutiny/cynicism I am choosing joy amid.
• ▸Evidence of purpose in action: the concrete business decision, priority or resource choice that proves it isn't a screen saver.
• ▸Circumstantial vs. chosen check: is my well-being riding on outcomes (circumstantial) or on honouring the value (joy)? — mark one.
• ▸Thrival-kit practice used today: the specific tool/technique I applied to sustain the state.
• ▸Loneliness converted: one act that turns my private joy into a beacon of hope for another.
• ▸Why am I doing this: my one-sentence answer today.