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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Listen to the Intro
Purposeful summary
Jennifer Dulski
Are You a Manager or a Movement Starter?
21 mins
What is Purposeful about?
Purposeful (2018) is an exciting guidebook to getting your big ideas for change off the ground. Drawing on her experience at Change.org, author Jennifer Dulski shows how popular movements get started, how they build a following and, finally, how they enact real change in the world. Dulski offers plenty of real-world examples, from how leaders inspire loyalty to the best tactics for getting powerful decision-makers on your side.
Table of Contents
Purposeful
summarized in 7 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 7
To start an exciting movement, you need to be purposeful in your actions.
There’s no shortage of great leaders and managers working today. But the real shining stars are the ones who go the extra mile and use their leadership skills to ignite a genuine movement.
People are attracted to movements because they offer a sense of purpose, something we all look for in life. When we see others driven by an exciting purpose, it’s easy for that excitement to spread and catch on. Before you know it, large numbers of people are uniting and bringing about change.
Manal Rostom is one of those shining stars who used purpose to ignite change. Rostom is an Egyptian Muslim woman, and for years she’s worn a hijab, a religious veil or headscarf that covers the neck and hair. But one day, Rostom began to feel a growing public resentment toward the garment, with many media outlets publishing anti-hijab articles. It got so bad that Rostom wasn’t even allowed to enter some public spaces in Dubai because of her hijab.
Fed up with the negative perceptions, she decided to start a Facebook group called “Surviving Hijab” as a place where Muslim women could share their experiences and support one another. It turned out to be a popular idea: in just a few months, the group attracted 40,000 members, and today there are around 500,000.
With such a positive response, Rostom saw an opportunity to go a step further. As an athletic woman, she often received annoying comments from people wondering how she could run while wearing the extra layers of clothing. Rostam was sure there were other women who could benefit from a change in the public perception that hijabi women can’t pursue sports.
So, in 2015, she contacted the head of Nike’s Middle East division, Tom Woolf, and asked why there weren’t any Nike ads in the Middle East featuring hijabi women. After a productive meeting, it was decided that Rostom would become the first woman to wear a hijab in a Nike ad. But it didn’t end there. Later that year, Rostom was also made the coach of Dubai’s Nike women’s running club. And then, in 2017, Nike released a whole line of athletic wear called Nike Pro Hijab.
In addition to being a leader, Rostom is a movement-starter, and it all began with a clear purpose: to show the world that faith isn’t something that gets in the way of a woman’s accomplishments. As it turned out, many people shared this feeling – so much so that a world-changing movement formed.
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Best quote from Purposeful
Even the biggest movements in history were sparked by relatively small but critically important actions of key people along the way.
—Jennifer Dulski
Who should read Purposeful?
- Business leaders and managers
- Entrepreneurs and pioneers
- Change enthusiasts
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