Purpose Over Paycheck

I’ve had the incredible honor of mentoring several colleagues as they navigate their professional careers and a common theme to prohibit growth in something they are passionate about seems to always be when the paycheck outpaces the purpose. Having faced this dilemma my self many times, it’s a difficult place to be. Having gone from a service leadership position to academia many years ago, it meant a significant pay cut to the point it that it became unsustainable!
We have a system built that rewards the physical labor of our nurses, but does little to ensure the talent can grow beyond bedside. Too little investment, too little foresight in what nursing can be. Designed in a hierarchical fashion that keeps nursing suppressed.

There’s a quiet crisis in too many organizations: talented people being paid just enough to be dependent but do far less than they’re capable of. The very reason people are hired is suffocated for sake of conformity! Innovation and change agents isolated to appease the status quo and organizations inability to embrace new challenges, high performers attacked, so others can remain comfortable in their mediocrity. All under the banner of change is slow… the organization isn’t ready for you… you need to give the organization time to catch-up!

Leaders often think compensation equals satisfaction, that if the paycheck is strong enough, people will stay silent; and it’s the message that is heard loud and clear by many new leaders. But, money doesn’t mute purpose for long and creates an inner turmoil in those seeking greater impact and purpose. Don’t get me wrong I believe compensation should equate the talent and at the end of the day we all need to pay our bills! But, eventually, even the best talent begins to fade when it’s not being used. The paycheck keeps them in their position, but the talent untapped, never to have seen its potential or impact!

It’s a strange kind of exhaustion and frustration, being paid but underutilized, secure but unfulfilled. You start to feel the weight of your own potential pressing against the walls of a role that’s been made too small by those who choose to keep you and control you.

Then comes the decision:
Do you stay for the comfort of the paycheck, or do you go where your gifts can actually work, even if the numbers shrink on paper?

Leaders should remember this: when people start choosing meaning over money, it’s not about disloyalty, it’s about survival.
Because when an organization stops feeding purpose, it starts starving its people. When it chooses control over freedom, when it can’t see the future and stops supporting the talent, the talent start looking elsewhere to feed their needs.

So to the professionals wrestling with the choice, your value isn’t measured by the size of the check, but by the space you give your purpose to breathe.
And to the leaders reading this, talent doesn’t just leave for higher pay. It leaves when it’s not allowed to make an impact.