What if success isn’t the same thing as fulfillment?

https://youtu.be/T6B3qyE1_Aw

Why Success Alone Isn't Enough—and the Four Elements That Make Work More Meaningful

In this episode of Culture Conversations, Megan Robinson sits down with entrepreneur and executive coach Diana Patel to explore what fulfillment really looks like at work and why success alone doesn’t always create it.

Diana shares four elements that help shape a more fulfilling experience: purpose, people, process, and peace.

Tease Key Insights

Fulfillment Is More Than Success

Fulfillment isn’t just about reaching the next goal. It comes from finding meaning in the work itself and understanding why what you do matters.

Purpose, People, Process, and Peace

Diana’s framework focuses on four areas:

Purpose: the deeper meaning behind your work

People: the relationships and impact connected to it

Process: finding value in the journey, not just the outcome

Peace: maintaining a sense of well-being along the way

Leaders Have a Role to Play

Organizations can support fulfillment by listening to employees, creating space for reflection, and building cultures where people feel connected to their work and one another.

Why This Matters

As AI takes on more routine tasks, the human side of work becomes even more important.

The opportunity is not simply to work faster, but to create more room for connection, listening, judgment, purpose, and meaningful work.

Listen Now

Diana offers a simple place to start: pay attention to the story you tell yourself about your work.

Instead of only asking, “What am I doing?” ask: “Why does this matter?”

Sometimes the task doesn’t need to change. The meaning behind it does.

Listen to the full episode and consider: Are you waiting for fulfillment to come from your next achievement or cultivating it in the work you’re doing today?

Diana Patel

Founder and Executive Coach

Diana Patel is an entrepreneur and executive coach passionate about cultivating fulfillment and creating immersive experiences designed to expand your perspective, reconnect you with purpose, and sharpen executive intuition.

With over 20 years of experience in leadership development, Diana helps business leaders (often in tech and biotech) discover, develop, and share best practices through 1-on-1 coaching, keynotes, and workshops. Early on in her career, she co-founded a biotech company and had the unique opportunity to cross-collaborate with physicians, engineers, lawyers, biologists, and investors. Diana writes about business, leadership, and meaningful work, with her articles appearing in publications such as the Learning Guild and Training Magazine.

She's lived in 3 countries and 7 cities, and her mantra for business and life is “we are better together.

Email: diana@dianapatel.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dianabpatel

Website: dianapatel.com

Read the Whole Episode Here

Hello and welcome to Culture Conversations, the podcast where we explore the people side of work. I'm your host, Megan Robinson. For years, I've found myself deep in discussions about workplace engagement with industry experts.

Now I get to share this wisdom with all leaders, new and experienced on their journeys to build cultures that maximize potential. We spend so much of our Let's make it a place where our teams can grow and succeed. Hello and welcome to Culture Conversations.

I'm Megan Robinson, and I am so excited to have my guest with us today. She is brilliant. We're going to dive deep into creating and cultivating fulfillment.

I know this is something that everyone is thinking about or struggling with, or maybe it's been kind of on the fringe, so you haven't thought about it yet, but you probably should be. So this is really going to look at that fulfillment from that professional, from that personal perspective and dive deep into it. Welcome, Diana.

Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much, Megan, for having me. This is exciting.

We always have such incredible conversations. I was so excited that you wanted to be on the podcast to really share your perspective on cultivating that fulfillment and what that looks like for everyone. If you don't know Diana, Diana Patella is an entrepreneur and executive coach.

She's passionate about creating fulfillment and creating immersive experiences designed to expand your perspective, reconnect with your purpose and sharpen your executive intuition. With over 20 years of experience in leadership development, Diana has helped business leaders often in the tech and biotech spaces, discover, develop, and share their best practices through her one-on-one coaching, through her keynotes and workshops. Early on in her career, she co-founded a biotech company and is a unique opportunity for cross-collaboration with physicians, engineers, lawyers, biologists, and investors.

Diana writes about business leadership and meaningful work with her articles in publications such as Learning Guild and Training Magazine. She's lived in three countries, seven cities, and her mantra for business and life is, we are better together. Quite the bio.

How does this... Well, thank you. Thank you. It's an honor to be here and just thank you.

Yeah, of course. Before we jump in, what were the three countries? The three countries are the United States, Belgium, and Switzerland. Ooh, those are good countries.

I'm a little jealous. Okay. Sorry.

I'm sure you found a different version of fulfillment in each one of them and a different definition as you've really had that global experience because that does change our perspective dramatically. You brought the topic of cultivating fulfillment. I want to kick it off with just, why did you choose cultivating fulfillment as that focal point for your work in our discussion today? Well, I actually center all of my work around cultivating fulfillment and I'm very intentional about those words.

An action verb, cultivating fulfillment over happiness or success. I believe it's something that really weathers the highs and lows that the connotation we have with happiness and success doesn't. It's just this grounding purpose.

You said happiness, success, and fulfillment are different. What's that difference? Tell me where that... Because I'm seeing a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram. I think that happens a lot with business buzzwords in general.

A certain value will mean something to a different person. I love how you're digging into the definition already. I've just been very lucky to be surrounded by high achieving, successful people.

I've noticed, especially with a lot of my clients, that sometimes they will have this more quiet, is this it? It's this idea that once we achieve something, then we'll be happy. Once we achieve this, the next thing, then we'll be able to consider ourselves successful. Fulfillment, it's not this, if then.

It's the foundation by which the happiness and success means something. To define fulfillment, I think of it... I'm guessing you like alliteration too, culture conversations, the name of your podcast. I have four categories, the way I think of fulfillment.

It's about purpose, having a deeper meaning within your work, people, the connections you make, the service you give, how you help other people, process. It's not just about the outcomes. It's about enjoying the moment, enjoying the process.

Finally, there's this peace associated with fulfillment. It's this personal sense of well-being, peace of mind that even if things aren't going the way you'd like them to go, that you are confident in what you're putting forward. It's this peace of mind as well.

You have purpose, people, process, and peace. A couple of piece. Yeah.

Which one do you think people miss the most? That is a really good question. I think it is different for everyone. I think people often focus in on purpose and people when they think about fulfillment.

I think process may be the one that's lost the most, right? Because you often think about the outcomes, the if-then, this is fulfillment, this is success, this is happiness. But what about all the ways to get there, right? There's this great book called The Gap and the Gain. I'm sure you've heard of it, right? The gap of where we want to be and we sit in that space instead of thinking of the gain of where we've come from.

I think it's this navigating the balance between those two where we're still looking for how to help people more. What's that next step in happiness and success for us, but really enjoying the journey along the way. It's funny you said that because when you were mentioning it's enjoying that process and being in that space and not just focusing on those outcomes.

I always joke, my mother tells my father, it's about the journey, not the destination. I am my father's daughter. I'm like, hell no, let's get there as fast as we can.

That's very common. I'm sure that you see it. When you talk about enjoying it and trying to be in that space, I always think of the, is this it? Once you arrive at that place and it's always that joy that you get from that process, not necessarily where it is that you're going.

So I work very hard on that. I will say personally, I definitely look at, and this is way more personal normally than we go, but that life and what you're doing and what those actions are and are you enjoying where you're at? Not to say that you don't have to trudge through some of it and not all of it is enjoyable, but can you find, even with that peace part of it, can you find that peace in it? So I do think of, actually I will say my father, who never enjoys the process, who the process is always labeled as work and laborious and painful and undesirable and something he has to be grumpy about. And this man's retired.

I know. I look at it and say, you are making that work. You're making that process more painful for yourself instead of trying to enjoy it and being in that space.

And so those are the lessons I'll say I take from that. But I also think of business and professionals with that process piece where it's all process. And I've been looking at my processes.

I just got off of a call actually with someone else where we were talking about what their processes were, where the challenges were in the process. Not just, hey, let's make the process less painful. Does the process achieve our goals? Is the process doing the right things? Where are the challenges in it so that we can make it a better process so we can enjoy our day-to-day work? Because that's where most of us spend our time is in the process piece.

Well, I mean, you just look at your podcast and success of it. I was looking at all the roster people you've had, and I see some familiar faces. And you so kindly asked at the beginning, what do you want? What would help to get through this podcast? What would you like to do? And I said, let's enjoy it, right? And I love that question.

And I love what you're saying about really enjoying as well. It's doing well in the process, but it's enjoying it too. It's keeping that balance between future state.

And I'm not saying don't focus on goals. You have to have those goals and those outcomes, and making sure that you're not just living for that future state and in that present. Otherwise, it would just pass you by, right? Personally or professionally.

Yeah, 100%. And I will say personally, obviously, things go by very, very quickly for both of us right now. But professionally, time will disappear.

You're like, wow, where was I 10 years ago in my career, or in my business, or five years, or two years? How did a year go by? Everyone looks at that time, that continuum is positive or negative. It's working for them, or it's fulfilling them or not fulfilling them. Yeah.

So, because I love this balance, where do you see that fulfillment happen in organizations? What does that look like? That's a really good question. I think that kind of comes to culture too, right? How does fulfillment overlap with culture? And I was thinking about this, and I think it's a lot of the same thing, right? Culture, you can think of those business buzzwords, the manuals, the values on t-shirts and up on the wall. But culture really is, it's a collection of how people feel.

And I think fulfillment, it's hard to define if this is really a feeling or a need or something even more than that. But culture and how fulfillment happens at work is in a big setting around cultures, people who are fulfilled, they're more creatively engaged. They're more generous with their time.

They get along with people better, right? They're fulfilling that alliteration, right? Purpose, people, process, peace. And so when you're building a culture based on fulfillment, you get more done and you enjoy it as well. I'm thinking a lot of this purpose, people, process, peace perspective, to add an extra P in there.

Because I hear a lot oftentimes with organizations that purpose, people, process, no offense, not new, not unique. A lot of people talk about purpose, people, and process when it comes to organizations or development or strategic planning or any of those things. It's very common.

And I love looking at it from a personal perspective, because I think that's how you're really looking at that alignment between the two. How does that align? And the peace is kind of where I'm honing in on is, are you, can you tell me more about the peace, peace? Yes. Yes.

And I think this, and backtracking a little bit in this, hopefully we'll answer your question. There's a newsletter where I feature people who are cultivating fulfillment at work. And so I'm seeing common themes throughout this.

And the peace, it's definitely one of these pieces that you cultivate, right? I use the example of brushing your teeth a lot. Like you can't brush your teeth today and be set. You can't work out today and be set.

It's not, you can develop this piece today and then be set. You're continuously cultivating it. And another story or analogy I like to use is, a lot of us know certain things we can do to cultivate peace, whether it's just taking three deep breaths before a big presentation.

We know a lot of those things that can cultivate peace, but we don't always actually do them. And my favorite analogy or metaphor for that is, everyone knows broccoli is healthy, but you only get the benefits if you eat it, right? And so that's where this cultivating peace comes in. It's not like you think it, okay, now I'm developing this peace in the workplace, right? It's you take those actions to cultivate it, whether it's the deep breathing, practicing gratitude.

A lot of these things we all know how to do, but actually creating the space and taking the time to do it. So it's more intentional with the time to make sure that you keep cultivating that peace or taking the actions and steps that bring peace for you. Because I'm having a hard time defining what peace, whether you have it or don't have it.

And it's sounds like it's very fleeting. And going back to your first question at the beginning of this, like why cultivating fulfillment? And when I first started centering my work around this, it felt almost so silly, so lofty, right? Like even now, sometimes when I say it, I'm like, Ooh, that's just, it's abstract, right? And I like that challenge in it as well too. It can be ephemeral, it can be fleeting, but when we hold onto it in a grounding way and we continue to work on it, it becomes less of that, right? And I mean, life is fleeting, right? Everything changes.

The only constant is change. And so I think there's a lot of parallels there as well. What do you think organizations can do? And I don't know if you've thought about this in depth or not, to really bring that peace portion to the forefront.

What does that look like? That's a really good question. I think a lot of that would have to do with listening. So creating these feedback loops to understand what people are feeling, what people are thinking, and adjusting.

So it's this continuous feedback loop. We're listening, we're experimenting, we're seeing what works, and then finding a tripwire or a point to listen again and see if that worked. And then hopefully the feedback loop goes like this and goes up, right? In an upward trajectory.

That's the goal. But I think it comes down to listening and it's the leaders at the top. When they listen to the stories they're telling themselves, the stories they're telling others, and then the stories they're telling each other.

So going back to that listening piece. Yeah. I love how tangible that is, because to me, that peace part fits squarely in that culture aspect.

And culture is, you could say, hard to define or a little fleeting or a little nebulous. And I feel that the culture that supports peace or doesn't support peace is where you see a lot of the challenge. A lot of the attitudes, beliefs, the processes are that move very quickly, the without reflection, without listening.

I see that balance almost, that listening with reflection. And listening is one of my favorites. But if there's not that reflection or there's not that action, then it's, instead of that upward spiral, it's that downward spiral.

And I think particularly as we move to hybrid work, as we've moved to digital spaces, that opportunity for reflection is shrinking. And I'd even say, I'm struggling with this personally, the AI note takers and the different tools that we use are almost these band-aids or these opportunities to not listen, to not pay attention. Because we have notes later, because we have something doing it, we're no longer actively engaged in those conversations.

I love that you mentioned AI. And I think this is where fulfillment is going to become even more important, because AI, it's taking our notes. It's taking care of a lot of the systems and processes.

We don't have to anymore. And I think that fulfillment is going to become even more and more important as we have the luxury to find more meaning in our work, more peace, when a lot of the work is being done by AI. And I love what you're saying too about the other side of it, where we also have to watch that it doesn't take away the things that make us uniquely human, the listening, the compassion.

If it's taking all the notes, where do we fit in? How can we level up that task so it means something more? How can we make connections where AI won't see the connections? And this is total derail the conversation, but I do look at the skill sets. And I will say the professional skills, the leadership skills are the things that AI is not taking. And I think when you bring this point of fulfillment, and I love the word luxury, because we are putting the pieces.

I mean, even when we were talking earlier about that process element, the people element, no, nothing's taking that. We still have to be intentional about it. And it's becoming a more prominent or more challenging piece for some organizations.

The purpose has always been there. And we've seen organizations without purpose and without that alignment, without goals, without vision. But the process piece is something that, as you even said at the beginning, is the least paid attention to, is the least acknowledged.

And now with other tools and technology that's changing what those processes look like, that fulfillment is intentional. And how we spend our time, I think, needs to be so much more intentional with what we are doing, what we're not doing, how we're operating in it, so that it adds value for ourselves, adds values for the companies and the world at large. Yeah.

And we have a lot more opportunity to enjoy the process, right? When we can plug in, hey, I do this, right? It is an opportunity. Oh, I love that. So what are some tangible things that people can do to start cultivating their fulfillment right now? Because I love, I'm obsessed now, I want to use cultivating for everything.

It's a beautiful word. Well, I'll link onto that word and give you an example of something people can do. So cultivating, you may think of, when you say cultivate, you often can think of cultivating a garden, right? So I'll leave you with a story.

So if you imagine a gardener, every gardener, one of the tasks of a gardener, they have to pull weeds, right? So if that gardener asks himself, why, why am I pulling weeds? Well, it's to maintain a garden. So he's leveled up from a task to a job. But if, and I've told this story before, but no pun intended, but if he keeps digging deeper, you know, why, why am I doing this? Well, maybe it's to create a beautiful garden.

Now he's leveled up to a career. But if he keeps asking that five whys exercise, why, why am I doing this? Well, maybe it's to make the world a better place. And here he's leveled up to fulfillment, to a purpose, right? To a calling.

And in that same story, where he's making the world a better place through the garden he's making, he's still pulling weeds, right? So I want to share this story, because I think one of the first things we can do to cultivate fulfillment is to notice those stories we're telling ourselves. So even just like going through email, cleaning off your desktop, like ask yourself why, like, instead of I have to do this, use the language of I get to do this, right? And why, why am I doing this? Right? Why is it? It's not, it's not to go through email. It's not to clear your desktop, right? It's, there's a deeper meaning in your work.

And if, if you don't know what it is, ask why and, and dig deeper. Again, no pun intended, but that would be the, the introspection I would recommend for, to begin to cultivate fulfillment. Notice, just notice the stories you're telling yourself before you even try to change them.

Start noticing those reels that are going on in your mind. I love that. Going back to that first thing we talked about the reflection, you are reflecting on that.

And particularly, I love connecting that with the behaviors. Here's something that I'm doing. Why am I doing this? I've switched all of my have tos to get tos a long time ago.

Actually, my mother-in-law was complaining, Oh, I have to go pick up groceries. Oh, I have to go get the grandkids. Oh, I have to clean my house.

I said, no, no, no, Debbie, you get to, you get younger. Megan was kind of a jerk. She still to this day will not say have to in front of me.

My, I, I've reframed it for my husband. Everyone on his team hates it. It's like, Oh no, you get to mop the floors today.

But it is, is a shift and understanding that why that purpose piece probably being that first element and getting more of those fulfillment pieces aligned is a wonderful first step. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for having me. Well, you know, there's only so much we can do in the time that we have. So if you are interested in learning more about Diana and her work, we have all of our contact information in the show notes.

You can definitely reach out for LinkedIn or your website, dianapatel.com or go ahead and email you as well. I'm so excited. What were some key takeaways that you want to leave everyone with? I think that cultivating fulfillment, it's the journey.

I think we really, really impressed upon that. It's the process and it's not, I guess I would add, it's not a straight line journey, right? So, uh, be kind with yourself. I love it.

Be kind with yourself. I will say for me, cultivating and being that verb and that action verb, um, where it is something that you get to take action, you get to have a say in it and that you have momentum because it is a personal journey and it's one that no one else can really do for you. And so that autonomy with that, that accountability of cultivating your own fulfillment.

Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of culture conversations.

I'm your host, Megan Robinson, founder of e-leader experience, a professional leadership development company. Today, we shared actionable ideas to navigate the evolving workplace landscape, compete for talent and build cultures that maximize potential. If you're looking to learn more about how to support your organization's leaders, you can learn more about our work at eleaderexperience.com. Now get out there and contribute positively to your organization's culture with your own conversations.