Vishen Lakhiani argues that companies should engage with employees' personal visions, not just align employees to company vision. He describes Mindvalley’s onboarding exercise called the "Three Most Important Questions," where employees write future-self goals (a "blueprint to someone's soul"). He gives multiple success stories (Luminita Sobia, Amer/Amir Ahmad, Jason Campbell, Ronan) whose personal goals were supported and led to public success. Lakhiani cites external evidence (a Gallup poll of ~10 million employees) that caring supervisors improve workplace performance, and promotes Mindvalley Mentoring for Business as a way to scale this approach.
Questions this video answers
July 19, 2019.
Approximately 1.2 million shares.
"15 Things to Give up to Be Happy."
He joined from Sudan at the age of 22.
Foreign Policy magazine listed it as one of the must-read books of 2013.
Chapters
For the longest time, companies have told employees that you got to be engaged with the company vision. But what if we flip that? What if companies were engaged with an employee's vision of themselves? Bill Jensen said that this was going to be a trend for companies of the future. And he said that one of the best examples of this was what we're doing right here at mindvalley with a concept called the three Most Important Questions. When you join mindvalley as a newbie, we have all our people do an exercise where they dream about their future selves and they write down the experiences that they want in the future, the growth that they want, and how they want to contribute to the world. All of these pieces of papers essentially become a blueprint to someone's soul. When you look at the three most important questions, results of any individual, you see who they are and what they're about. Now imagine all of these on a wall, a giant wall where everybody can see what each of their PE intends to be in the future. And imagine if the entire company was supporting each other, not just in business goals, but in helping each other attain their personal goals. People gather on this wall and see that they have common peers who might want to say hi to Himalayas, and so they organize a trip. People see that they have peers who want to take part in sporting events. So they go and train together. And one of the most remarkable things about this process is that for, for whatever reason, the crazy ideas that people write down tend to come true in an almost magical way. We can't even explain it. This lady, Luminita Sobia, wrote down that she wanted to be a best selling author, that she wanted to travel the world and be a photographer. While working at Mindvalley, she wrote a blog post on her personal blog called 15 Things to Give up to Be Happy. Nothing happened for the first six months. Then people started sharing it. It ended up becoming the most shared personal growth article probably in the history of Facebook. 1.2 million shares. She got a book deal from Penguin. Today she travels the world, writes books and is a photographer. Amer Ahmad joined us from Sudan at the age of 22. He wrote that he wanted to speak around the world. He wanted to be a best selling author. While at Mindvalley, he wrote a book. That book ended up being picked up by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the must read books of 2013. Today Amir speaks at Ivy League universities and even speaks at massive events like the Oslo Freedom Summit. Jason Campbell said that he wanted to someday be a public speaker and inspire people all around the world in sales and entrepreneurship and marketing. He was once at an A fest, helping with logistics, making sure the sound check was happening and the stage was set up right and we had a speaker who felt sick at the last minute. Jason begged me to put him on stage and I thought, okay, what could go wrong? I put him on stage. He ended up being voted best speaker. Today, Jason is the host of Mindvalley's mentoring channel on making a better impact at work. Ronan wrote down that he wanted to be a world class sportsman and speak on a TED stage. He ended up competing in the Viper challenge. Came out one out of 20,000 people. Next thing you know, he was invited to speak at TEDx in Kuala Lumpur and later on in Paris. Today he's our health transformation coach in the company. And all of it started with his three most important questions. So imagine if companies operated that way. Imagine if when you joined a company, you knew that your bucket list, you're going to be able to start checking things off because of the energy, the peers, the way the company supports you. When you do this, everything else starts growing. People stay longer, they're more excited, they contribute more to a company, they're more engaged. In fact, Gallup did a poll of some 10 million employees and they found that people who answered yes to the following question were the best people at work. And that question was, does my supervisor or someone at work care about me as a person? If people can answer yes to that question, every other dimension of human performance elevates because we feel cared for, we feel supported. You might want to check out Mindvalley Mentoring for Business where we're bringing in the world's best mentors to now come and give powerful, meaningful, life transforming insights to people in companies and governments all around the world to help you grow and become the best version of yourselves. So you can check off the items on your bucket list.
