Purpose, Power And The Stories That Echo After You Leave The Room
- Mimi Kalinda
- Dec 29, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
LEANN Chronicle · Monday 29 December 2025
2025 has come to an end. You’ve closed projects, reviewed numbers and thanked the teams.
In the quiet moments, another question returns. What story did we live this year?
Not the one in the annual report. The one people tell each other in corridors, WhatsApp groups and family dinners.
In Echoes of Influence, Mimi Kalinda challenges leaders to think of purpose not as a slogan, but as a lived narrative. If your formal purpose statement and your everyday stories do not match, people believe the stories.
Today, as we close our December series, we look at purpose, power and the stories that echo after you leave the room.
Purpose as tagline vs purpose as operating system
Many organisations can recite their purpose on demand. “Empowering people to live better.” “Building a better future together.”
The words sound right. The question is whether they shape decisions when it is inconvenient.
Purpose as tagline.
Lives on posters and landing pages
Appears in CEO speeches and campaigns
Disappears in budget discussions and tough calls
Purpose as operating system.
Shapes who gets promoted and who does not
Influences which clients you say no to
Shows up in the stories people tell when no leader is listening
Echoes of Influence invites leaders to make that shift from decorating their strategy with purpose language to making purpose the story that governs power, trade offs and behaviour.
The hidden stories your organisation is telling
If you want to understand your real purpose narrative, listen for the stories that circulate informally.
The story people tell about how a crisis was handled
The story of who got protected and who did not
The story of who is allowed to speak truth to power
In African and global contexts, these stories often include layers of history, identity and inequity. Who is heard, who is ignored, who is expected to carry emotional labour.
As a leader, your job is twofold.
To hear these stories without defensiveness
To decide which ones you want to reinforce and which ones you are committed to change
That decision will do more for your purpose than any new slogan.
Three questions to align your story and your power
Echoes of Influence makes a crucial point. you cannot tell a credible story about purpose if your use of power contradicts it. Here are three reflection questions to take into your year end review.
1. Who is centred in our stories.
Look at your internal and external communication.
Are the only heroes senior leaders and headline clients.
Or do you regularly spotlight frontline staff, partners and communities.
If your purpose speaks of inclusion, but your stories centre only a few, your narrative and your values are misaligned.
2. Where do we acknowledge discomfort.
Purpose driven leadership is not comfortable. It requires admitting when you have fallen short, when trade offs were painful, when you are still learning.
If your stories only show success, you are signalling that there is no room for honest struggle. Your people learn to hide failures instead of using them to grow.
3. What future are we asking people to believe in.
Every strategy implies a future. Growth at any cost, or growth with integrity. Efficiency that dehumanises, or efficiency that frees people to do meaningful work.
Ask yourself. If someone listened to all my messages this year, what future would they think we are building. Is that the future I aspire to.
A purpose story from the continent
A regional insurer declared its purpose as “protecting what matters.” It sounded good, but internally the dominant story was different.
“When claims spike, leadership only talks about cost,” one manager said. “It feels like we protect our numbers more than our clients.”
Working with Mimi and the Storytelling and Leadership team, they began to surface real stories from clients and staff. The grandmother whose payout meant a grandchild could stay in school. The small business that survived a fire. The call centre agent who stayed on the line long after her shift to support a grieving customer.
These stories were simple and human. They were also powerful.
Leaders realised that when they made decisions purely on short term financial logic, they were contradicting the deeper story their people were proud of. Over time, they used those stories in decision making. “Which option best honours our promise to protect what matters, even if it costs us in the short term.”
The purpose statement did not change. The way they used it did.
Designing stories that echo into 2026
As you think about the year ahead, consider designing your own “echo stories.” These are stories you want people to tell about your leadership when you are not in the room.
Use this simple prompt from the spirit of Echoes of Influence.
Imagine it is December 2026.
A colleague is describing your leadership to a new joiner.
Complete the sentence. “What I appreciate about them is…”
Then ask yourself.
What stories would support that description.
What decisions would I need to make.
What might I need to stop doing.
Write down three specific situations in the next six months where you can act in line with that future story. A promotion decision, a client negotiation, a response to conflict.
Purpose becomes real one decision and one story at a time.
Closing the December series. Opening a new narrative
Over the past four weeks, we have explored key ideas from Echoes of Influence.
Humans are emotional. Why smart leaders still fail to connect
When numbers need a heartbeat. Turning data into stories people feel
The human advantage in an AI workplace. Stories machines cannot tell
Purpose, power and the stories that echo after you leave the room
Taken together, these ideas offer a different way to think about leadership. Not as the art of having answers, but as the discipline of shaping honest, human stories that people can believe and act on.
As you step into 2026, consider making a simple commitment.
I will pay as much attention to the stories I am telling and living, as I do to the strategies I am writing.
Your strategy may get you invited into the room. Your story is what will echo after you leave. #PurposeDrivenLeadership #LeadershipStorytelling #NarrativeLeadership #CultureAndValues #OrganisationalCulture #StoryStrategy #EchoesOfInfluence pasted
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