Purpose Driven Leadership: The Need of Time

Today’s organizations are dealing with various issues and challenges. The rapid changes and volatile environment aren’t doing any favors when it comes to creating transparent purpose-driven management. How can organizations mitigate this thing? Here’s a take on how purpose-driven leadership can help the organizations around. 

Introduction

Tracing back the time, Nelson Mandela, the great South African leader once proposed to his fellow countrymen to move from the traditionalist methods to a new direction. His take was that the apartheid had created a barrier among the people of the nation and affected the whole idea of working together. He said, “ May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears,” and hence insisted that the people need to have a shared vision and understanding of how things should work if they were to create a unified South Africa.

The very soul of the aforementioned anecdote is to create a leadership that has sync when it comes to top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top. If we were to take a look at the organizational functioning of different businesses, the successful ones have one thing in common, and it’s well-defined leadership. The very question is how can we manifest the same to every modern-day business functioning. 

The case for Purpose-Driven Leadership 

Robert E. Quinn and Anjan V. Thakor in their case study for Harvard Business Review mentioned the merits of having a higher organizational purpose. They mentioned how this can align the organization in an aspirational way and create a higher purpose leading to deep learning, the ability to take risks, and create meaningful contributions. When you put this into perspective not only it leads to a higher return on experience but a very good return on investment on the economic front too. 

Leaders have a major role to play in the organization and how the teams work. It might seem like a thing easier said than done. Though, if you look at the life history of leaders throughout the globe, successful leaders are those who have unlearned the preexisting behaviors and moved to create a transparent purposeful behavior. One such instance is the creation of performance metrics that can count the singular metrics and factors that drive actions and performance. This creates a focused tangible model that encourages the teams to deliver and showcase thier output. 

What is Purpose-Driven Leadership? 

On a general note, purpose-driven leadership is a state where the leader-in-command prioritizes their purpose and values over other matters when it comes to business decisions. Whether it’s the CEO or senior-level managers responsible for leading the organization should always be supportive and persuasive of their purpose and values. A purpose-driven leader always acts as a guiding compass for the team. This leads to ethical and efficient organizational functioning. 

Over the past decade, the new trend of creating an impactful leadership and corporate culture has been imbibed. The leaders who previously relied on the bottom line of business are now looking to change themselves into good leaders. That in itself has led to an environment where profit isn’t the sole meter to judge the company’s leadership. After all, the onus of purpose is truly understood these days. 

How to get started? 

Here’s a process that can help build and manifest a purpose-driven leadership in modern-day organizations: 

• Understand and Enlist your Purpose and Values: In this fast-paced world, we’re often running at a full brink. This stops us from taking a look at our life and reflecting on the things we need to. Building a purpose-driven leadership starts from within itself. Careful contemplation of our activities and their future consequences need to be looked into. We should weed out the outdated viewpoints and look to build a purpose that can define success. This can be anything like creating a space for introspection, channelizing your energy, understanding the need of the organization. This can take time and may not be an easy ride but sure it can shore up your leadership abilities. 
• Build and Develop your Influence Circle: Creating a purpose-driven leadership isn’t an individual pursuit and will never be. You need a community to build on and get inspired by. Call this your influence circle or sphere of influence. Look to vibe around people with similar interests and thought processes. And how does this all start, by networking? It’s a vital trait that yet remains underrated to this day. Create a credible circle of influence and share what you demand from yourself and others. Also, listen to what they want. This creates transparency around and builds trust and following. 
• Change and Adapt: You need to understand that in today’s era, not everything can be by the books. You need to be adaptable to things and learn to change when needed. When you disrupt years of traditional thought processes and create a purpose-filled leadership, you are changing and adapting to the new traits. But once you’ve created a new system, you also need to understand that minute adaptation will always be needed and be prepared for that. Good leadership isn’t something that only flows from top-to-bottom but also something that understands the flow from bottom to top. A good leadership trait is always open to new additions to its circle of influence and adapting its traits for the betterment of the organization.  

Wrapping Up 

Building a purpose-driven leadership is different from creating a short-term heroic case. A short-term tangible decision that can yield a good quarter may seem like a good call to many, but laying the foundations for years of growth is the major need of current leaders. Creating a leadership influence that can put the organization into a new field of morality, authenticity, and trustability is something leaders should look at.