Embodying organizational values, focusing on belonging, and maximizing time are important steps in establishing a purpose-driven leadership culture.
By Maggie Mancini
Implementing a positive organizational culture is an important step in achieving key business goals. When leaders attempt to build or fix company culture, they often point to their desired outcomes: more teamwork, more collaboration, a focus on inclusivity and belonging, or a sense of psychological safety among employees. But, according to George Rogers, chief strategy officer at Lighthouse Research and Advisory, repairing and maintaining a purpose-driven culture means understanding the root cause of ineffective leadership. He explains, “Culture is how most employees feel, believe, and behave most of the time. Leaders try to fix the outcome because that’s what they see. But you can’t fix the outcome if you don’t understand the root of the issue.”
During Workhuman Live 2025, HRO Today sat down with Rogers to talk about purpose-driven leadership culture and the importance of aligning that culture with broader organizational goals.
HRO Today: During your session at Workhuman Live, you talked a lot about leadership culture and the connection between the health of an organization and the health of its leadership culture. How do you think that identifying and communicating the core purpose of an organization can improve leadership culture and make the employee experience more meaningful?
George Rogers: I think it goes beyond just having a core value or purpose. It’s my belief that what we don’t embody as leaders, we cannot expect from employees. So how do you embody those values? How do we embody what recognition is? How do we embody what a good culture looks like? It’s something we have to instill in ourselves, live it, and then be vulnerable enough and honest enough to grow as we make mistakes and move forward.
HROT: What would you say are some of the key benefits of establishing a purpose-driven leadership culture in the workplace?
Rogers: When it comes to being purpose-driven, it’s important to align what we do with why we do it. This can help provide a sense of fulfillment to employees. And when they have that sense of fulfillment, they feel like they belong. There’s a lot more connection there. People want to be where they have a sense of belonging. The psychological definition of belonging is feeling accepted, respected, and appreciated by a direct leader. When you have that, employees are five times more likely to say their organization is a great place to work.
HROT: How would you recommend measuring the impact of efforts around building a culture driven by purpose?
Rogers: Most leaders and most people in business think ROI just refers to a monetary value. But for me, one of the greatest resources is time. We can lose money as a company, and in most companies, we do. But the greatest ROI is not money, it’s time. How do we maximize the time we have, and how do we inspect the time that we’re using? The first measurement is time. How much time are we giving to our employees, and how much time are our employees giving to us? How are we growing those employees?
Then it’s retention. Our research finds that employees know within five days whether they’re going to leave an organization. What does our retention look like? Why has this employee spent so much time with us? We hope the answer is that we’re purpose-driven and that is felt throughout the organization.
We want our employees to be invested, but we first have to invest in them as well, and then hold ourselves accountable to inspect that we expect.
HROT: What are some best practices that you would suggest for leaders thinking about redefining their culture around having a purpose that’s aligned with both their leadership style and with employee expectations?
Rogers: At the core of every company, there’s a seed. If we were to take an apple, for example, right at the center of an apple there are seeds. At the core of every company, it’s important for leaders to identify what the seeds are that they’re hoping to plant. What do they desire their company to be? It can’t just be verbal, though. It has to be something strategically planted at the core. If we want to produce a culture of recognition that’s going to elevate our company, the desired outcome has to be at the core.
Who we are, where we are, and what we want to be when we get there; these are incredibly important things to define. What do you desire for your culture? For me, I want to have a culture where everyone feels a sense of purpose and fulfillment that goes beyond engagement. I think a lot of that comes down to recognition. It comes down to leaders supporting their employees and giving them that sense of fulfillment.
