Purpose-driven leadership is not (only) about individual leaders
If you want to grow and develop purpose-driven leaders, create the conditions for them to thrive. Many organizations are investing in purpose-driven leadership by developing individuals. But it is not enough to just have leaders with the necessary skillset if those individuals operate in a system that rewards short-termism. True purpose-driven leadership requires a systemic approach and cannot be sustained by any individual. The right structural, cultural and incentive shifts must be made to accommodate a purpose-driven approach; otherwise, even the most inspiring leader will revert to the behaviors that are rewarded and demanded by the system around them.
Purpose-driven leadership is increasingly held as the gold standard for modern, human-centric, and high-impact organizations. The expectation is clear: leaders should embody the organization’s purpose, inspire their teams by connecting them to real-world outcomes, and make decisions that prioritize long-term, holistic value over short-term financial gain. But despite significant investment in leadership development, many organizations still struggle to make this a lived reality. Why? Because they’re only solving half of the problem.
The challenge of purpose-driven leadership
The existing approach assumes a capability gap: if we equip leaders with the right mindset and skills, then they will naturally make this shift to leading with purpose. But this overlooks a crucial issue: the system is rarely designed to support a purpose-driven approach.
Traditional explicit and implicit models of leadership are built on heroics, individual brilliance, hierarchy, and control. However, the myriad challenges that leaders face today, the climate crisis, AI disruption, emerging stakeholder expectations, political instability, and huge uncertainty, require a different kind of leadership. This world, in many ways an exploration into the unknown, requires a curious, resilient, authentic, collaborative, and courageous leader who is comfortable with uncertainty and can strive for bold innovation over treading the same, comfortable ground1.
This shift doesn’t just reflect a shift in skillset; it represents a change in environment. If organizational performance frameworks and structures still reward short-term delivery over impact, or if new ways of approaching problems are discouraged as dissent, then no amount of leadership coaching will create the desired impact.
From capability to conditions: leadership as a system
Leadership development today is largely positioned as a training problem. Its primary focus, through workshops, coaching, values and emotional work, is on developing the individuals themselves to lead in a different way. While these activities have value and all play an important role, they are insufficient alone. The assumption that if you develop individual leaders, they will naturally lead in a purpose-driven way is false when the system around them promotes different behaviors.
Even talented leaders will struggle to exhibit purpose-driven behaviors, such as considering a broad set of stakeholders when making decisions, if they are rewarded for doing the opposite or if their own leaders fail to role model the values. And while some exceptional individuals may be able to swim against the tide and overcome these barriers, they will either burn themselves out doing so or leave.
To truly activate purpose-driven leadership, we therefore need to flip our model and consider not just how we train leaders to be more purpose-driven but how we enable them to do so. How do we create the conditions for purpose-driven leadership to thrive? Without the right cultural signals, structural supports, and behavioral reinforcements, leaders will default to the factory settings of traditional leadership.
Purposeful leadership is, therefore, a system that must be created and nurtured.
What do we mean when we talk about purpose-driven leadership?
When we develop exceptional purposeful leaders, we look at seven characteristics. Each of these characteristics has a supporting mindset and behaviors.
Five conditions to enable purpose-driven leadership
1. Clarity on purpose and expectations
Leaders need clarity not only on what their organization is trying to achieve, but why it exists and how that purpose translates into their team's work and daily decisions. When this clarity is coupled with autonomy in how goals are pursued, it unlocks innovation and motivation.
In the SAS, unlike the regular army battalions, soldiers were encouraged to question orders and understand the purpose behind them. With the increased autonomy, it was necessary for these operatives to understand what outcomes were being aimed for so they could improvise and adapt as needed
Purpose becomes effective when it is understood and owned locally.
2. Role models and executive buy-in
People are most influenced by the behaviors they see rewarded. If executive teams and those who are promoted model authentic, values-driven, and human-centred leadership, showing vulnerability, prioritising well-being, and making decisions aligned with purpose, others will follow suit.
This often means unlearning behaviors that may well have driven success, and it is not easy. We have, however, observed that it can be a liberating experience, moving from “performing” leadership to living and breathing it.
At Unilever, Paul Polman famously removed quarterly reporting to ensure leadership was focusing on more long-term impact, signalling where the organizational priorities were.
If your execs aren’t walking the walk, purpose will remain a side quest.
3. Psychological safety and trust
Leading with purpose often means making difficult decisions and speaking hard truths. Leaders can only act this way if the culture allows them to admit mistakes, ask for help, and be candid about how they are feeling without fear.
Psychological safety isn't a nice-to-have; it's a crucial enabler of authenticity and innovation, but it’s also notoriously difficult to foster and measure.
When a leader shows up authentically, the power this has on motivation for their teams is incredible, but fear often stops leaders from doing this today. Leaders need safety in order to create that safety for their teams, too.
There are a few initiatives that can start to build this - celebrating or highlighting failure as a positive learning experience, creating spaces in meetings for teams to check in on how they are feeling and showing up, and regular, honest and constructive feedback are all things that we have seen work.
4. Performance and infrastructure alignment
Are leaders being evaluated on short-term outputs or long-term outcomes? Do your incentives reward ethical decisions, collaborative behavior, and developmental feedback?
Anglian Water, a pioneering organization in this space, has developed a set of Purpose Impact performance measures and a performance dashboard which evaluates holistic performance against environmental, social, and financial performance areas.
If you’re rewarding speed and efficiency, don’t be surprised if impact takes a back seat.
5. Coaching and ongoing leadership development
Even with all the right conditions, purpose-driven leadership is tough. It’s complex, ambiguous, and emotionally demanding.
Leaders need safe spaces to reflect, evolve, and grow.
Coaching, peer learning, and mentoring should be embedded long-term, not delivered as a one-off. LinkedIn, like Clarasys, offers weekly 1:1 coaching to every employee.
Leadership development is not just about going to the dentist - it’s also brushing your teeth and flossing every day, too. It’s a practice, not a programme.
The shift from leaders as heroes to leadership as a system
The myth of the heroic leader, a singular, transformational, and self-sufficient paladin who conquers all, is outdated. Perhaps instead we should think of leadership like gardening - yes, you need strong plants, but you also need the necessary conditions for them to grow. An oak tree will not grow in the desert, no matter how much you tell it to.
Today, leadership is collective. It sits at the intersection of individual capability and organizational systems and won’t emerge from training alone. It grows where systems align with values, behaviors are reinforced, and leaders feel safe to be real.
We should move from seeing leadership development only as a talent initiative and start treating it as a systems intervention. We must create systems that make it natural for leaders to lead with purpose, not exceptional.
Ask yourself:
- Have we made it psychologically safe for leaders to lead authentically and differently?
- Are we reinforcing the right behaviors at every level?
- Do our systems reward impact, authenticity, and collaboration?
- Are our senior leaders modelling what we preach?
References
1. This is explored extensively in Embracing Uncertainty by Margaret Heffernan (2025)
Ready to put purpose at the heart of your organization?
At Clarasys, we help organizations move beyond theory, embedding purpose systemically to unlock meaningful, lasting impact for people, planet, and profit. Whether you’re defining your purpose, mobilising leadership, or measuring value creation, our experts walk with you throughout the journey to make purposeful leadership a lived reality.
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