What is Common Purpose?
Common Purpose is about leaders. Not just elected leaders. Not just business leaders. Not just established leaders. But all leaders. From all sectors of society.
Common Purpose helps people in leadership and decision-making positions to be more effective: in their own organisations, in the community and in society as a whole.
We offer:
- a range of programmes for leaders of all ages, backgrounds and sectors
- a website for citizens who want to take the lead, people who dream of changing the world (or their part of it).
Very few people emerge from Common Purpose with their prejudices - or working practices - unchanged. As their perspective gets wider, their vision improves. As their vision improves, their decision-making gets better. They forge networks that can have a major impact on their organisation and the community (networks which no other experience can provide).
This can have far-reaching consequences. And can unlock leadership potential in a genuinely different way.
Common Purpose programmes produce people who lead beyond their authority and can produce change beyond their direct circle of control.
The programmes
Our leadership programmes are delivered in a unique way because they are rooted in the community. Why? Because this doubles the return on investment, resulting in better leaders and stronger communities.
The community is both our subject and our venue. Our participants don't just sit in meeting rooms doing exercises. They go out into the surrounding area and consider society's real issues and problems firsthand.
They visit prisons, housing developments, businesses, hospitals, plants. They discover that many of the issues they are grappling with are common to all sectors. They include:
- finding and keeping good people
- functioning effectively on limited resources
- capitalising on opportunities
- communicating their vision to others.
Together, they tackle live issues with the people who carry real-life responsibility for them.
The benefits of developing diverse leaders
We are committed to looking for leaders in unexpected places - and then exposing them to the information and the perspectives they need to be more effective. In the process, they meet new people, make new connections and find new ways of working with people who may not view the world in the same way.
Real - and sustainable - answers only emerge when the widest range of viewpoints come together. So, when we recruit participants to any of our programmes, we deliberately bring together people from different sectors, professions, backgrounds and positions.
Since Common Purpose was founded in the late 1980s, we have seen repeated evidence that our approach generates important benefits:
- participants gain new competencies and become more effective in a diverse and complex world.
- organisations benefit from stronger, more inspired, better-networked managers and senior managers who are closer to the community
- communities benefit from cross-sector understanding and initiatives as different parts of the community learn to operate more effectively together.
Since 1996, over 500 leaders from all over Ireland have completed one or more of our programmes.
They, and their organisations, consistently report better strategic thinking, better decision-making, dramatically enhanced leadership competencies and a greater ability to apply them in new situations as a result of their experience of Common Purpose.