Raison d’être. Few terms are as powerful in the English language, which is why I tend to lean into the French. The phrase captures the importance of someone’s existence in the world, the reasoning behind their greater purpose. We all have one. Finding it often proves more challenging than we might like to admit.
Just recently, I was recording an episode of a podcast with an old friend and renowned transformational leadership guru, Josh Powers. During the course of our one-hour conversation, we meandered our way down the path of purpose. Specifically, how a sense of purpose is so vital to navigating the transition space between careers, and how the absence of the purpose can make that experience all the more difficult to maneuver.
As veterans, we could both acknowledge that military service drives that sense of purpose into you. However, there are times when it overwhelms individual identity, when someone’s entire identity becomes inseparable from their career. When the career ends, so does their sense of purpose.
This We’ll Defend
Military service is a uniquely singular experience. As a career Army leader, I drew my purpose from the service’s core mission: “to fight and win our nation’s wars.” There was no ambiguity about it. The mission was stated and restated countless times over the course of my career, enough so that it was ingrained as my raison d’être.
The other aspect of military service that cements our purpose is the concept of tribe, the sense of belonging and team that permeates everything we do. When you combine the two – purpose and tribe – it forges an indelible bond that transcends individual existence. It’s shared values, experiences, and, in many cases, misery. It’s what unites a Band of Brothers or a unit like the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. It’s what draws us together year after year for veteran reunions. It’s what defines us.
As Josh and I talked, we meandered our way down the path of meaning, recognizing that we shared the same perspective on our greater sense of purpose when we wore the uniform. Between us, we spent years in combat zones around the world fighting our nation’s wars and – when we were on the sidelines between deployments – often felt the same nagging pull to get back into the fight where we belonged. Military service drives that sense of purpose into you.
Navigating Transition
However, there are times when it overwhelms individual identity, when someone’s raison d’être becomes inseparable from their career. As veterans, we recognize the vital role of purpose in navigating the transition space between careers, and how the absence of purpose can make that terrain all the more difficult to maneuver. When our careers end, so does our greater sense of purpose. And that can make transition a rough road to travel.
In military terms, transition is a lot like a gap crossing. Most transition programs maintain a near side focus, narrowing the aperture to primarily emphasize those things necessary to prepare for that crossing. But it’s the far side that poses the greatest risk to a veteran. The standard issue transition program commits little to no emphasis on far side reconnaissance. The future often remains shrouded in uncertainty, and the newly-minted veteran – struggling to find a purpose and separated from their tribe – makes the crossing blind to what follows.
A Deeper Sense of Meaning
About a year after my retirement from the Army, I spoke to a group of future veterans as they prepared for their own transitions. Although I had been invited to speak about a specific – and largely irrelevant – topic, I realized that what I was saying wasn’t what they needed to hear. I paused my slide presentation and looked at the group of uniforms collected in the audience.
“There’s an old saying,” I said. “Experience is something you don’t have until after you need it.” With that statement, I left my presentation behind and spoke for over an hour about the things they would need to know that no one was telling them. “Find your purpose,” I said. “You need that same sense of purpose following transition, probably more than anything else.”
I confessed that I retired without that clear sense of purpose, spending nearly 18 months in search of meaning. It came to me one day when I was crafting a blog entry about the impact of my platoon sergeant decades earlier. He’d reminded me once then that my primary job was to take care of my troops: “If you take care of them, they’ll take care of you.” Everything else will fall into place. That deeper purpose formed the core of my leadership philosophy and truly defined my existence. I just needed a gentle reminder.
When I finished, there were questions. A lot of them. With those answered, I left them with one final thought: “A sense of purpose will give meaning to your post-transition life. What drives you? What inspires you? How can you continue to make a difference?” Find that purpose and you’ll land squarely on your feet.
