As you spend your time this holiday weekend with friends and family, football, and maybe just a bit too much food, consider setting aside a morsel of time to reflect on the past year.

What has made you feel thankful? What has made you feel angst? What have you learned about yourself as a person and as a professional? And, if you’re ready to put on your philosopher’s hat, how has your purpose evolved?

To get you in the mood, we hear from Kellogg’s Nicholas Pearce on the importance of reflecting on your purpose as an individual and as a leader.

Plus, we discuss a potential conversation starter about politics and science for your holiday dinner.

Ask the deep questions

Figuring out your current purpose—or, as Pearce refers to it, your life’s work—is no easy feat. But a sound place to start is by asking yourself the fundamental questions, such as, “Who am I? Why am I here? Am I running the right race?”

“Our life’s work is deeply connected with who we are and why we’re on the planet,” Pearce says in a podcast. “So, we have to start asking the deep questions of purpose and identity in order to get to life’s work.”

According to Pearce, your purpose boils down to what you currently feel most called to do—taking into account your preferences, values, and life situation—and the kind of impact you feel most called to make.

“It’s the work that we cannot not do,” he says, “the work that you are uniquely called to do in this moment and season in your life.”

For leaders, Pearce emphasizes that it’s also critical to inspire that sense of meaning and purpose across your organization.

“As leaders, we have a significant role—not in making purpose for people, but facilitating the realization of the purpose that our people are coming to us with,” he says. “And as organizational leaders, it is incumbent to not ask our people to leave that part of themselves in the parking lot, but rather to bring that part of themselves into the company, into our daily work … to be their authentic, fully present selves.”

Listen to more from Pearce in an episode of HBR On Leadership.

Who funds science?

Talking about politics over Thanksgiving may be dangerous territory in some households. But if that’s not the case for you, consider this conversation starter.

There’s a presumption in the U.S. that Democrats generally stand behind science, whereas Republicans tend to be more skeptical of its worth.

Yet after analyzing 40 years of data on federal funding for science research under Republican or Democratic leadership, a team led by Kellogg research assistant professor Alexander Furnas and Dashun Wang, the Kellogg Chair of Technology and a professor of management and organizations, found a different result. In fact, the U.S. government provided more funding for science and research under Republican presidencies or when the Republican party was in control of the House of Representatives.

And Republicans’ greater financial commitment to science was not simply a result of targeted spending for agencies like the Department of Defense. Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives funneled more money toward science research in the CDC, NASA, NIH, and NSF, for instance, than did Democratic lawmakers. And the proportion of funds that Republicans distributed to different areas of science research was relatively similar to the distribution under Democrats.

The data emphasizes that, despite recent cost-cutting at American scientific agencies, U.S. political parties have typically agreed on science funding as a national priority.

“What’s happening right now is a really strong break from the historically strong bipartisan and robust Republican investment in science that has fueled an incredible amount of innovation and economic growth,” Furnas says. “A departure from that could threaten that prosperity.”

Read more in Kellogg Insight.

See you next week,

Abraham Kim, senior research editor
Kellogg Insight