Purposeful leadership

Exploring the concept of purposeful leadership, this research draws on findings from surveys, interviews and focus groups to identify links between purposeful leadership, ethical leadership behaviours and various employee and organisational outcomes. Our research also investigates how organisations can nurture an environment where leaders can be purposeful.

Purposeful leadership: What is it, what causes it, and does it matter?

The construct of purposeful leadership diagram

There's been considerable interest in the notion of purposeful organisations in recent years, driven by growing levels of distrust and disillusionment with what are often regarded as the short-termist, financial imperatives driving contemporary firms. Typically, the attributes of purposeful organisations – societal responsibility, values and ethics – are simply translated into the qualities that characterise their ideal leaders. But what type of leaders do purposeful organisations really need?

In this study, we answer this question by conceptualising a new construct of purposeful leadership, which includes the extent to which a leader has a strong moral self, a vision for his or her team, and whether they take an ethical approach to leadership marked by a commitment to stakeholders. We also investigate the impact it has on various employee and organisational outcomes.

The research is based on case studies from five organisations in different sectors and a survey of a representative sample of the UK working population. Detailed methodology is provided in the technical report, which you can find below, along with an infographic and discussion paper.

If you’re interested in finding out more about what leaders and their followers said at the case study organisations, take a look at our interview with Patrick Brione, Head of Policy and Research, IPA.

Download the reports below

Purposeful leadership discussion paper

Download the discussion paper

PDF document 196 KB

Purposeful leadership technical report

Download the report

PDF document 1 MB

Infographic: Enablers and constraints of purposeful leadership

Download the infographic

PDF document 193.6 KB

Explore our video highlights

Report

What is purposeful leadership?

Ksenia Zheltoukhova, Research Adviser for the CIPD, unpacks the meaning of purposeful leadership.

Report

Why is purposeful leadership important?

Wilson Wong, Head of Insight and Futures at the CIPD, underscores the importance of this concept.

Key findings

Prevalence of purposeful leadership diagram

Purposeful leadership and its constituent components - moral self, commitment to stakeholders and vision - are important in influencing a range of employees outcomes.
Only 21% of managers in the UK rate themselves highly as purposeful leaders.
There is a link between purposeful leadership and employees’ perception that their leaders behave ethically, although the relationship is complex and varies across organisational contexts.
The links between purposeful leadership and the extent to which employees believe their ethics and values fit well with those of their organisation vary across the case studies.
Enablers of purposeful leadership centre around having clear policies in place, role-modelling from senior leaders, training, and organisational culture.
Constraints against purposeful leadership centre around time and resource pressures, leading to the prioritisation of business or organisational interests.

Professor Katie Bailey on some of the key findings from the purposeful leadership study

Transcript

0:00
[Music]
0:09
we had a charity organization from a
0:12
care sector we have a central government
0:15
department we had a County police force
0:18
and a major UK retailer and in addition
0:21
to this we did collect some data as well
0:23
from National Farm pull of working
0:26
people via a questionnaire survey and we
0:28
also did some interviews in another
0:31
manufacturing organization so we've got
0:32
quite a wide range of data from
0:34
different types of organisations people
0:36
doing very different types of work one
0:44
of the things that really stood out for
0:45
me in terms of what we discovered was
0:47
that only 21% of people within the
0:50
working population rate themselves
0:52
highly of purposeful leaders and I think
0:55
that that's really quite a concerning
0:57
finding if people aren't able to be
1:00
purposeful as they go about their work
1:02
so they're not they haven't got a strong
1:04
vision for their team they're not really
1:07
committed to their stakeholders around
1:09
the organisation in the organisation and
1:12
they don't have a very strong sense of
1:14
their own moral self those people are
1:17
rating themselves low on these three
1:19
things that that is really quite an
1:21
important finding for organisations and
1:23
I think it represents quite a
1:25
significant barrier to creating
1:27
purposeful organisations so we're
1:30
hearing a lot these days about the need
1:32
for organisations to be purposeful to go
1:35
beyond short-term profit making and to
1:37
really think about the place of
1:39
organisations in society and what they
1:41
can contribute to the greater good and
1:44
if we have leaders in organisations who
1:46
don't have a strong sense of their own
1:48
purpose then this is going to really be
1:51
an impediment to organisations
1:53
developing that sense of purpose that we
1:55
really need in society today
2:02
one of the questions that we asked as we
2:05
went round the organization's was what
2:07
factors enable the creation of an
2:10
environment that fosters purposeful
2:12
leadership and some of the things that
2:14
really came out from that were things
2:16
like the importance of having a really
2:18
good whistle blowing policy that people
2:20
felt empowered and enabled to use we
2:23
also found that it was really important
2:26
that employees felt that their leaders
2:28
set a very good example in terms of
2:30
being purposeful themselves so where
2:32
people felt that their leaders weren't
2:35
themselves being purposeful or ethical
2:37
and it was much more difficult for that
2:39
environment to be created that really
2:41
encouraged individual employees to be
2:43
purposeful and ethical in their own work
2:45
and I think also another thing that
2:48
people talked about quite a lot with the
2:50
importance of training and development
2:51
so people welcome to the opportunity to
2:54
go to development workshops and so on
2:57
where they could really learn about the
2:58
organization's ethics the way that they
3:00
worked with the wider community and
3:02
society so that they could really see
3:05
how they could divert their own sense of
3:07
purpose and ethics as they go about
3:09
their work
3:09
[Music]
3:17
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