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Purpose-Driven Leadership: The Stories Behind a Purpose

A company can place its purpose on a website, include it in employee materials and repeat it during leadership meetings. None of that guarantees employees will experience it as real.

Purpose becomes meaningful when leaders connect it to decisions, priorities and everyday work.

Employees need to understand why the organization exists, how their responsibilities contribute and what the stated purpose requires from leaders when choices become difficult. Stories can make those connections easier to see.

In this episode of What’s Your Story?, Sally Williamson speaks with CeCe Morken about leadership, mindfulness and the stories behind an organization’s purpose. Recorded during a period of significant workplace disruption, the conversation explores how leaders can support employees, communicate with greater intention and maintain a shared sense of direction when circumstances change.

The immediate context may have shifted, but the leadership challenge remains: How do you make purpose more than a statement?

Purpose-driven leadership communication helps employees understand not only what their organization is working toward, but why their work matters. When leaders communicate a clear sense of purpose, listen closely, and connect business priorities to employee experiences, they create stronger alignment and trust. In this episode of What’s Your Story, Sally Williamson and CeCe Morken discuss how meaningful communication, mindfulness, and shared purpose can help leaders support their teams and move organizations forward.

These days, we’re all exhausted. And it’s not just the physical tiredness of managing kids, virtual schooling, shifting work locations in a house, or balancing disruptions as our personal lives and workspace converge. It’s a mental tiredness and fatigue, and the effects are pretty dramatic.

It’s a good thing that companies were already working on body and mind wellness. Wellness support and training has become an integral part of many company’s benefit plans and training initiatives. The added stress and uncertainty of the pandemic has intensified the conversations about mindfulness, meditation, and a company called Headspace.

On this episode of What’s Your Story, Sally’s guest is CeCe Morken, President and CEO of Headspace, and she’s here to share The Stories Behind a Purpose, her experience with how she found herself in this role, and how to manage, inspire, and support a team virtually.

More about CeCe Morken

CeCe Morken serves as President and Chief Operating Officer of Headspace. She is a highly accomplished technology industry executive with 35 years of experience building and growing organizations, from start-ups to global, publicly traded companies.

CeCe joined Headspace after 13 years at Intuit, where she led multiple business units. She served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Strategic Partner Group, responsible for the accountant, financial institution, and enterprise platform business generating $700M in annual revenue — in addition to leading both the Corporate/Government Affairs and Corporate Responsibility functions for the company. Morken was also responsible for building strategic partnerships between Intuit and financial institutions, government and educational entities, and enterprise platforms, and also responsible for expanding global engagements, which doubled the velocity of contracts in the target countries of the UK, Australia, Canada, and France.

Before serving in this capacity, Morken led Intuit Financials Services (IFS). She led this business through a technology and business model transformation that moved the business to the number one ranking in share and product design across online and mobile platforms, leading the industry in open platform designs. Subsequently, CeCe led the strategic decision to divest the business and close the sale to the private equity firm Thoma Bravo in August of 2013.

Morken is a graduate of North Dakota State University, with majors in Economics and Business Administration, and attended the University of Chicago Booth’s executive development program. Morken currently serves on the Boards of GENPACT and NDSU College of Business.

Morken has also been recognized as one of The Most Powerful Women in Accounting (2017), National Diversity and Leadership Most Powerful Women in Technology (2017 and 2019), and has received the Intuit CEO Leadership Award in 2011, 2014, and 2017, and the Bill Campbell Coaches Award in 2018.

Show Notes

Headspace: Improve health and wellness of the world. This organization helps people build healthy routines through mindfulness in an app.
- 46% of people over the age of 18 will have a diagnosable mental health issue
- 60% of those are untreated
Purpose of Headspace: Corporate social responsibility and working in service for the greater good.
- What is the impact of mindfulness thinking?
- How mindfulness has changed the workplace
Study by Headspace:
- 65% of employees report that most of the stress they feel is from work
- 42% state that work/life balance is the greatest source of stress
- 45% of those lose 2 hours a day because of stress
There has been an increase of CEO’s listing mental health and mindfulness as a priority in the workplace. With the emphasis on this from other companies there are positive results and improvement.
- Employers need to enable people to bring their whole selves to work. Virtual environment has mad that difficult
The Headspace work environment is one to model. They offer the following:
- Meeting breaks
- No meeting days
- Every other Friday off
Headspace offers support programs for companies and shares their best practices with their employees
- Offer flexibility for the caregivers in the family to prevent losing women in the workplace
Mindfulness isn’t about taking more time, it’s about being present. It’s not about time, it’s about frequency. Being purposeful with your time.
Headspace got big names like Sesame Street, John Legend, and other celebrities involved.
Headspace Outreach
- Working with Governor Cuomo\’s office giving all New Yorkers access to their app for free
- Worked with other states hit hard, early on, by the pandemic
- Made their app free to every unemployed person, all health care providers, and educators
Headspace provides content like: music, stories, sleep casts, etc. All offerings are backed by science and clinical studies.
Headspace worked with Sesame Street with the goal of helping young minds develop healthy habits.
Hundreds of thousands have taken advantage of their app.
CeCe shared a Storytelling meditation clip from the Headspace app on Wisdom: Mind, Body, Speech
- The clip covered intention, mindfulness, voice and body of speech.
How to manage, inspire and support a team virtually:
- Best practices for management:
  - Don’t just ask “how are you?” ask “really…how are you?”
  - Start the conversation with their development, not just the business outcome
  - Be a good role model – take breaks, set up healthy boundaries
  - Ensure that you’ve got clarity of common purpose and do “less” better
  - Remind people why you are there and what you are focused on.
  - Speed – don’t wait for normal – make a difference and take advantage of the situation and lean in more.
  - How you spend your time is important, pick your career for the right reason.
  - Find purpose in your work.
  - Do something that makes your heart beat faster every day.

Purpose-Driven Leadership: What Is Purpose-Driven Leadership?

Purpose-driven leadership connects decisions, communication and behavior to a clear understanding of why the organization exists.

That purpose-driven leadership gives people a way to evaluate priorities beyond short-term activity. It helps leaders explain what matters, where the organization is headed and how individual work contributes.

Purpose-driven leadership does not mean every decision is easy or universally popular. Leaders still manage competing priorities, financial realities and difficult tradeoffs.

The difference is that employees can understand the reasoning and see how the decision connects to what the organization says it values. This is purpose-driven leadership.

Purpose-Driven Leadership: Why Organizational Purpose Needs More Than a Statement

Purpose becomes weak when it exists only as polished language.

Employees are more likely to believe an organization’s purpose when they see it reflected in:

Leadership decisions
Customer commitments
Employee expectations
Resource allocation
Recognition and rewards
Manager behavior
Community involvement
Responses during difficult periods

If leaders communicate one set of values and reward another, the inconsistency becomes more memorable than the statement.

Credible purpose-driven leadership should help answer practical questions:

What deserves our attention?
Which opportunities fit who we are?
What behavior do we expect from leaders?
How should customers experience us?
What will we protect when pressure increases?
What are we willing to say no to?

Purpose-Driven Leadership: How Leaders Communicate Purpose

Purpose communication should move from the broad organizational idea to the work people perform every day.

A leader may understand the connection because they participated in developing the strategy. Employees further from that conversation may hear language that feels inspirational but abstract.

Leaders can make purpose more relevant by explaining:

What the purpose means
Why it matters now
How it influences business priorities
What employees should do differently
How progress will be recognized
Where the organization is still learning

Repetition matters, but repeating the same sentence is not enough. Leaders need to connect the purpose to different decisions and situations over time. This is purpose-driven leadership.

Purpose-Driven Leadership: Use Stories to Bring Purpose to Life

Stories give purpose a human context.

A leader can describe a customer whose experience reflects the organization’s mission, an employee who made a difficult decision based on company values or a moment when the organization chose its purpose over an easier alternative.

The strongest purpose-driven leadership stories:

Describe a specific experience
Include people the audience can understand
Reveal a choice or moment of consequence
Connect clearly to the organization’s purpose
Show the purpose in action
Give employees something they can remember and repeat

The story should not be included simply because it is emotional. It must help the audience understand what the purpose requires.

Purpose-Driven Leadership: Connect Individual Work to the Larger Mission

Employees may support the organization’s purpose while struggling to see how their role contributes to it.

People managers create that connection.

A manager can explain how a project supports a customer outcome, how an operational process protects trust or why a routine responsibility enables the organization to deliver on a larger commitment.

Consider the difference:

“We need this report completed by Friday.”

and:

“We need this report by Friday because leadership will use it to decide where customers need additional support next quarter.”

The task has not changed. The employee now has a clearer view of its significance.

Purpose-driven leadership should not be used to make every assignment sound dramatic. It should provide honest context about why the work matters.

Purpose-Driven Leadership: Purpose and Employee Wellbeing

An inspiring mission does not compensate for an unsustainable work experience.

Organizations sometimes use purpose to encourage additional effort while giving limited attention to workload, recovery or employee needs. Over time, that disconnect can weaken trust.

Purpose-driven leadership consider both outcomes and the people responsible for producing them. They set priorities, clarify what can wait and model the boundaries they encourage employees to maintain.

Supportive leadership can include:

Checking in with genuine curiosity
Discussing development as well as deliverables
Encouraging employees to use available time away
Reducing unnecessary meetings
Clarifying competing priorities
Modeling reasonable communication boundaries
Connecting employees with appropriate organizational resources

Leaders should not attempt to diagnose or treat mental health concerns. Their responsibility is to create clear expectations, listen, address workplace factors and help employees access qualified support when needed.

Purpose-Driven Leadership: How Mindfulness Supports Leadership Communication

Mindfulness can be understood as bringing deliberate attention to the present moment.

For leaders, that can affect communication in practical ways.

A leader who pauses before responding may recognize that an employee needs to be heard before receiving a solution. A manager who enters a meeting with greater focus may notice reactions that would otherwise be missed. An executive who creates space between urgency and action may communicate a difficult decision more thoughtfully.

Mindful leadership communication can help leaders:

Listen without preparing an immediate response
Recognize their own reactions
Slow down a difficult conversation
Remain present with the audience
Choose language more intentionally
Notice when the message is not landing
Respond rather than react

The purpose is not to eliminate pressure. It is to prevent pressure from controlling every communication choice.

Purpose-Driven Leadership: Model the Behaviors the Organization Values

Employees evaluate purpose through what leaders do.

If wellbeing is important, leaders should not consistently reward overwork. If collaboration matters, senior leaders should not tolerate behavior that prevents others from contributing. If transparency is a value, employees need honest explanations when information cannot be shared.

Leadership modeling makes purpose visible.

Leaders should ask whether their schedules, decisions and communication reinforce the organization they describe. Small, repeated choices often shape credibility more than major announcements. This is purpose-driven leadership.

Like what you hear? Hear more episodes like this on the What’s Your Story podcast page!