LeAD Labs Member Spotlight: Darnell Mauricio

From military leader to passion and purpose researcher.

LeAD Labs has seen so many wonderful researchers, coaches, and leaders pass through our doors as students, consultants, and participants. We’re pleased to have a platform to share all our bright leaders with everyone.

This month, we sat down with one of the most pleasant humans you’ll ever meet: Captain and PhD candidate, Darnell Mauricio. 

Darnell has served as an Officer in the U.S. Army for the past 8 years as a medical planner, medical logistics officer, evacuation officer, and patient administration director. He currently serves as the LeAD Labs Data Management Specialist while working on his Ph.D. in Psychology with a focus on Organizational Behavior here at Claremont Graduate University. 

Darnell and his family at Disneyland!

There are so many topics to discuss with Darnell, but today, we picked one of the dimensions of our LeAD 6PLeadership Framework: Passion & Purpose! Darnell’s passion is working with leaders to help them deepen their purpose and ultimately help them pursue their full potential. In his research, Darnell is conducting a qualitative study to explore how purpose develops in minority leaders and a longitudinal quantitative study on how leader self-views interact over time during and after a leader development program.

So, without further ado… Enjoy this refreshing perspective on Passion & Purpose from Darnell!

What does Passion & Purpose mean to you?

I believe Purpose is fluid. It's not like you get one or two in your lifetime! When you're pursuing your Purpose, it's always evolving and being influenced by interactions and experiences. 

From a psychological perspective, Purpose serves as a transcendental and meaningful goal that drives our actions. Passion, on the other hand, serves as the underlying emotion that motivates us to continue the pursuit of our goals and Purpose even when things get hard. By having both Passion and Purpose, leaders can pursue action that is not only personally meaningful and motivational but also allows them to understand the repercussions of their actions and leadership.

When I think about my Purpose, one sentinel experience that comes to mind is my experience in the Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC). When I was a cadet, I disclosed that before joining the program I underwent therapy for suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt. Now, this information was only supposed to be seen by the instructors of the program, but somehow it was leaked to my peers and the upperclassmen of the program. During my second year in the program, I started receiving anonymous emails from other cadets stating that, “based upon depression in your record, the only reason the cadre [instructors] are allowing you to stick with the ROTC program is to assure yourself in the future that they will have no choice but to let you go.” And, “unnecessarily continuing with the ROTC program was at my own discretion.” Ouch.

After receiving these emails, I had one leader pull me aside, encouraging me to participate in programs like “Pershing Rifles” and take on leadership positions within the program. He continued to check in on me and mentor me when it felt like other cadets in the program had given up on me. He built a safe space where I could continue to develop and, at the end of the day, it’s because of him and other mentors like him that I’m where I am today.

His leadership development taught me that everyone has something to offer. He continued to mentor and develop my passion and purpose, laying the groundwork for my interest in studying leader development. How he treated me at my lowest moment helped pull me back, giving me the encouragement to keep pursuing my goal of being an Army officer. 

He saw potential in me, which inspired my Purpose to help others recognize their Passion and Purpose.

How does your experience in the military impact your Passion & Purpose?

As you can imagine, my military service showed me the extent of how good and bad leadership affects individuals. In this context, leadership can mean that someone gets to come home to their family or not. Knowing this, it has become my purpose to ensure that train and develop leaders so that they stand ready to pursue their passion and purpose while also taking into consideration the passion and purpose of their followers. I believe we can lay the foundations for good leaders to develop and share ideas that can increase the chances of the service members in our military coming home safely.

When I first joined the Army, my Purpose was to serve and protect the country. It’s evolved away from looking outward to the greater society and zoomed inward on developing individuals with the organization. I saw, firsthand, how this wasn't being done well at the higher ranks. To compensate, I had to act as that conduit to foster that development in more junior people. Many soldiers enter with an inkling about themselves and what they want to do but don't know what else that means beyond serving. 

While mentoring younger folks was where I began exploring this new iteration of my Passion and Purpose, I’ve more recently found myself interested in helping to foster continued growth for more seasoned officers who have been in the field for a long time. Why? Well, I’ve experienced that having leaders who are not only passionate and purposeful about what they do, but able to surface passion and purpose within their followers, build relationships that help decrease the effects of depression, anxiety, and PTSD, while also establishing personally meaningful relationships with their service members.

It’s funny because by going back to graduate school, I’m also in this process of rediscovering myself all over again from the bottom up. But, ultimately, this shared experience only helps me connect with leaders and continue to facilitate confidence and development. I love saying, “You have a skillset, and I want to see you flourish.”

What burning research questions do you have for the development of Passion & Purpose?

There is already some research on how being purposeful in your leadership and leadership development makes you enact certain leadership behaviors. But, we haven’t spent much time understanding how that passion and purpose develop within leaders. Because of that, I hope to discover and connect the fields of purpose development with that of leadership development so that we can better understand how we can train leaders to discover their purpose.

I would also like to research how we can train leaders to utilize these same skills to discover the passion and purpose of their followers so that they can better connect their followers to the organizational mission. (Think talent management in organizational behavior!)

What does the current literature on Passion & Purpose indicate?

Current literature on Passion and Purpose indicates that they both serve as driving mechanisms for leaders to pursue development. Additionally, having a better understanding of one’s passion and purpose is correlated with increases in an individual's overall health, resilience, and motivation.

How do you try to develop your Passion & Purpose?

Interestingly, I originally wanted to be a clinical psychologist but wasn’t accepted into school for it. This seemingly dead-end proved to be a rich path because it led me to find my Passion and Purpose in industrial organizational psychology. I realized I could do what I wanted to do as a clinical psychologist but in a different way, by building relationships, and helping people.

Now, I do a lot of my development of Passion and Purpose through self-reflection and engagement with others. I spend time reflecting on my experiences throughout the day and the experiences I had with some of my service members while I was with my various units to see what I worked and didn’t work. I also try to spend time engaged with others in conversation and learning from them and their experiences. Through my interactions, I’m able to continue to hone my core values and further understand what it is about helping others and mentoring others that I am so passionate about.

How can others develop their Passion & Purpose?

Consider this: when you talk to someone, what gets you fired up? Reflecting on what you genuinely enjoy, what could you talk about 24/7, and never get tired of, are key indicators for what you find purposeful and passionate about. See if there are ways to connect that away from the current context that exists for you towards some other area of your life. 

This might seem like a reach, but think about TikTok influencers. These people tap into what they are passionate about and find a platform outside themselves to build community and purpose around it. 

And lastly, remember that Purpose can be small, and that's OK! For instance, my mom loves taking care of her family––that is her true Passion in life. Now that I am grown and our relationship has changed, she has brought that Passion to her care of my daughter, finding a new purpose in her role as a grandmother.  

Everyone has Passion and Purpose already. You don’t need to look for it anywhere else than your own life.