Empowering Students to Articulate Personal “Purpose Statements”

Since purpose-driven leadership is a mechanism for positively impacting society, business schools pursuing societal impact must educate students about purpose. Future managers and leaders will be responsible for shaping purpose in their organizations and integrating organizational purpose with the individual purposes of organizational members. A starting point for this work is for students to engage with their own individual purpose. In this Experiential Exercise, we outline our method for helping students draft a one-sentence “Purpose Statement” that reflects their current thinking about the impact they hope to have on the world. Articulating this statement helps students to gain greater awareness of their goals, identities, and potential for societal impact, setting the stage for their ongoing development as purpose-driven agents of positive change.