Led by Purpose – What makes our leadership development #UniquelyUnilever

The people who inspire me, the people I admire most, and the people that have had the biggest impact on me personally, all have something in common.

They have a strong sense of purpose, which lives in what they do, and which is about something bigger than just themselves. They aren’t perfect, and don’t focus on being perfect – their focus is on the bigger picture. They are part of that bigger picture, but it is not about them.

Letting purpose drive me forward

We all know people like that – parents, teachers, mentors, friends – who have been inspired by a purpose to make a difference. One of those people got me thinking about my own purpose. I was 22 and the career I had been following, in the Army, had been cut short by a sporting injury. “When you pick your next career”, the advice went, “think about what you love and what you want to learn about. If you follow those you will always be motivated and interested.” That advice changed my life – I realised that I love human beings, and wanted to learn about how we can create organisations and communities that help people to really thrive.

Purpose is the answer to the question “why”, and in my case it inspired a clear “what” – I decided that I would run an outdoor education centre to give deep learning experiences to those that needed them. I thought that it would help to get some business experience, and knew about Unilever’s reputation for strong values and great training, so I applied for the Unilever Future Leaders Program, and got accepted.

I never left. What I did do, with a lot of support from successive bosses in Unilever, is take part in creating not-for-profit organisations that delivered experiential learning to fantastic young leaders around the world. The reason I stayed at Unilever is because over the years, I had the chance to do jobs that expressed and developed my purpose. In many places and situations - doing a business turnaround, setting up a new unit within the business, developing resilience through mental health programs, doubling the number of apprentices we employed, signing Unilever up to the Living Wage in the UK – I have drawn on that original purpose. Now, as Unilever’s Chief Learning Officer for the last 2 years, I am responsible for helping others to find that sense of purpose and express it in whatever they do.

Nurturing the next generation of purposeful leaders

For nearly 10 years, Unilever has been putting its top leaders through a leadership program that supports them in identifying their purpose, and putting that at the heart of their work. For the last few of those, drawing on the very same leaders for support, we have been passing on the opportunity to people across the business.

So far over 12,000 people at any level and in many countries have had the opportunity to reflect on their purpose and create a simple statement to remind them of it, through a workshop run by internal facilitators and leaders. We hope to get to 30,000 this year. After the workshop, people use that purpose to plan their careers and development. How does that work? By identifying the experiences that would fulfil that purpose and then the development they would need to get that experience and to succeed in it.

Why are we so passionate about doing this? Because the world needs purposefulness. Purpose – a focus on "why" – creates a better “what”. Our world faces existential threats – from climate change, inequality and poverty – and we are only going to solve challenges such as these if we tune into our compassion and awareness of what really matters to us. Businesses have a crucial role to play, and to play it well they need to have purposeful people, united by a shared purpose, enabled by purposeful leaders. That is our goal.

Want to benefit from industry-leading leadership development? Keen to integrate the causes that matter to you into your work? Then follow Unilever on LinkedIn and discover how you might fit into our purpose-driven organization.