Surface what gives your work meaning.
Individual reflection exercise: participants explore what drives them, what gives their work meaning, and where those motivations come from.
Finding Your Why opens the session with structured individual reflection. Each participant responds privately to three prompts designed to surface the personal dimensions of purpose: what energises them, what they value in their work, and what impact they want to have. This internal work makes the subsequent group discussion richer and more honest, because people have already located their own starting point before being asked to share it.
Participants surface their personal motivators and articulate what gives their work meaning, creating a foundation for the group conversation that follows.
Give people a few minutes of quiet reflection on what motivates them, then open up a light sharing round before you close. Model openness yourself, and don't rush the sharing.
Give people five minutes of quiet individual reflection, with the prompts on a whiteboard or slide. What is the part of your work you'd miss most if it disappeared tomorrow? When did you last feel genuinely energised by what you were doing, and what made it that way? What impact do you want to have on the people you work with?
Invite people to share one thing they noticed. Keep it light, with no pressure to share everything; the aim is to warm the room and give people permission to talk about what matters to them. To draw out quieter people, ask whether anything surprised them, or whether they found one question easier than the others.
Summarise and close the section. This exercise works best when you model openness yourself, so consider sharing a brief example of your own, and give the sharing phase the time it needs, since the quality of later conversations depends on people feeling heard here.
Use Finding Your Why when you want people to surface what gives their work meaning before any group conversation begins. Three private prompts help each person locate what energises them, what they value, and the impact they want to have.
Using this tool with a skilled facilitator means that discussions are focused, time is used efficiently, and the group moves toward consensus, making the session productive and impactful.
