A Purpose-Led Approach to Leadership Development

As 2025 comes to a close, our recent winter blog series has focused on shining a light on a new approach to leadership in our sector. An approach which centres on purpose and which considers how we might utilise the three key pillars of purposeful leadership – clarity of purpose, empathy and transparency – across the sector to enable everyone to move forward in a way which centres resilience with integrity.

We’ve explored how this purposeful approach could lead to a new contract between those in governance and executive leadership roles and how that critical relationship centres on collaboration and partnership around a central purpose, not solely a transactional reporting relationship. We’ve also identified the importance of strategically considering organisational culture by ensuring that the values, behaviours, systems and processes that make up the way we work are aligned with our organisational purpose, as opposed to ideas and words that appeal.

When adopting this approach across the sector, we must think carefully about how we develop ourselves and our teams to embody this way of working. As such, this requires a new approach to what we would consider ‘leadership development’.

At Achates, we believe that leadership is valid at all levels and is not necessarily dictated by job title or seniority. A purposeful approach to leadership must therefore take a purposeful approach to leadership development. We must consider this work the responsibility of all within an organisation and not just something which is the responsibility of a privileged few with certain titles or designated responsibilities. That is to say that anyone can be a purposeful leader by embodying its principles. Genuine purposeful leaders see themselves as conduits for change – not as single individuals with sole responsibility for bringing about change. They manifest that belief in their behaviour and the ways in which they engage with colleagues, audiences, those more senior to them, and those more junior. They embody the spirit of purposeful leadership by upholding its three central tenets – clarity of purpose, empathy and transparency – in all that they do.

In recent years, we have seen the emergence of a new dialogue in the sector around what leadership means. Who gets to lead? How do they get there? We have also seen an increase in new models of leadership with a particular increase in co-leadership positions at Executive and Board levels. At Achates we welcome this conversation and celebrate the steps being taken by many of our sector friends to consider what models of leadership work best for their particular organisation to ensure it can best fulfil its purpose.

As we bring 2025 to a close and look ahead to a new year, it is natural that we will start to think about the future and consider what we might want to take into 2026 that will serve the sustainability of our sector and what we are choosing to leave behind in the year just gone.

It is vital that, whilst we think in this way, that we also consider leadership development – for ourselves, our teams, our peers. How can we support each other to move forward in a way that is truly purpose-led? How can we support all of those within our organisation – and within our sector – to develop the skills, tools and knowledge required to centre decision-making around the specific purpose of any organisation in which we are working. We must encourage an approach grounded in clarity of purpose, empathy, and transparency, and which reminds us to centre the work we are doing and the impact we are having with and for our priority audiences in the way we make decisions at every level of our organisation. By supporting our colleagues, our teams, and all of our key stakeholders to develop their thinking in this way, we will be supporting a new wave of purposeful leaders to make their way through the sector and, in turn, enabling true purposeful leadership to thrive as our sector evolves and thrives long into the future.

At Achates all of our work is centred on organisational purpose and Achates Community provides support, tools and resources to support organisations in moving towards a purpose-led approach. Our Purposeful Leader Programme (PLP) is our approach to leadership development in the sector and supports participants to think about the concepts of purposeful leadership within the context of real topics and challenges faced by those in the sector today and to develop the skills and tools needed to face those in a purposeful way.

In late November 2025, we launched PLP Advanced. This new programme – available to Achates Community members who have completed the first PLP programme – will apply the concepts of purposeful leadership to organisational culture, supporting participants to deepen their understanding of purposeful leadership and to develop an approach which adapts their organisational culture to align with purpose.

Access to these programmes is included in all Achates Community memberships, which is just £50p/m for cultural sector charity employees, or £500 annually when paid up front.