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By Angel Howard
Therapist, coach, speaker and author
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The leadership industry has mastered influence. It has yet to answer the more important question: influence for what?
There’s no shortage of executives with impressive titles or founders with enormous platforms. Influence, by any measurable standard, has never been more abundant. So why does it feel like almost nobody is actually leading? I would argue that we have become remarkably good at measuring what leaders accumulate, while all the time paying far less attention to what becomes better because they lead.
The numbers can attest to that fact. Gallup’s global research found that only 20 percent of employees were engaged at work in 2025, while the resulting productivity loss was estimated at $10 trillion globally. Manager engagement fell sharply too. If leadership is producing so much growth, why are so many people experiencing work as something to endure?
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Numbers certainly matter within any organization. Businesses need revenue. Margins and targets matter. A nonprofit still needs funding to keep its doors open. But the mistake comes when the metric becomes the mission. External goals can tell you whether you are moving; internal purpose, however, tells you whether you are moving in the right direction.
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is accelerating our work by unprecedented standards, making human leadership more urgent than ever. The Microsoft 2026 Work Trend Index shows 15 times more active agents operating in Microsoft 365 than just a year ago, while only 26 percent of surveyed AI users say their leadership is clearly and consistently aligned on AI.
While AI can automate complex workflows and generate options in seconds, it cannot replace human judgment. It cannot decide who may be harmed by a decision or what kind of organization we want to build.
That remains a human responsibility.
Purposeful leadership begins with a simple marriage of internal purpose and external goals. I can set a target to grow sales by 10 percent this quarter while holding an equally serious internal intention to build a team that communicates better and develops the confidence to make good decisions without waiting for permission. The target measures performance, while the intention shapes people.
Gallup found in 2025 that U.S. employees with a strong sense of purpose at work were 5.6 times as likely to be engaged as those with a low sense of purpose. Evidently, purpose has measurable consequences.
Clarity of Purpose and Responsibility Needed
So what does purposeful leadership require?
First, clarity. You have to know what you are trying to change before you can expect anyone else to move with you. You also have to know your intention before you walk into the meeting or sit across from the board. A leader who has never checked in with himself can easily mistake urgency for importance.
Second, responsibility. Every decision has a radius. It reaches employees, families, customers, and communities. A senior leader sitting comfortably at the top of an organization may never see the frustration created several layers below, yet the frontline eventually sends the consequences back upward through customer complaints, turnover, quality problems, and lost trust.
I have seen the opposite kind of leadership too. The strongest leaders I know make themselves available to the frontline. They ask, “What do you need? What is getting in your way? What are we missing?” They understand that communication silos can inevitably destroy an organization. Leadership should make information travel, not hierarchy harden.
Third, action. Purpose means little if it never changes behavior. You cannot tell your team that you trust them and then punish every calculated risk. You cannot demand initiative while making every decision yourself. A powerful leader creates enough confidence for people to think, act, and recover from mistakes.
Managed but Not Trusted
This is where the ripple effect becomes real. A leader walks into a room carrying an emotional state, whether he recognizes it or not. Anger, fear, and confidence can all travel. So can trust. I have learned to ask myself a surprisingly useful question whenever an emotion suddenly rises: Is this mine? That small pause can prevent one person’s frustration from becoming another person’s burden, then another’s, until an entire workplace is carrying something that started with one unchecked moment.
A leadership culture driven by ego, metrics, and distance produces people who feel managed but not trusted. A leadership culture grounded in purpose produces something very different: people who feel trusted to think, confident enough to take calculated risks, and connected to the value of their work. One approach can shrink people to their performance; the other can expand their sense of what they are capable of, and that confidence does not stop at the office door.
That is why I believe the leadership question has to change. Stop asking, "How successful can I become?" Ask instead: "As a leader, how can I create natural success through self-motivated people?"
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I challenge every executive and board member to bring this question to the table. Define the goal, but be equally clear about the purpose behind it. Ask who will feel the consequences of the decision, then examine whether your own behavior reflects the answer you expect from everyone else.
Leadership worth following begins there, with the willingness to measure success not only by what the organization achieves, but by what people become capable of because you led them.
If your leadership cannot survive that simple equation, you do not have a strategy problem; you have a purpose problem, and that is exactly where your next chapter must begin.
Angel Howard is a somatic movement therapist, executive coach, speaker, author, and professional dancer and founder of WildHeart Expressive.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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