Leading on Purpose
- Jun 7
- 4 min read
By Aja Chavez, LMFT, LPCC
VP of Adolescent Services at Mission Prep Healthcare
I did not start my career as a leader. I started as a teacher, then a counselor, then a therapist in private practice. Each transition taught me something important: the external title changes, but the internal work of knowing who you are and what you stand for never stops. Now that I oversee residential behavioral and mental health programs for some of the most vulnerable young people in the country, the stakes are high, the complexity is real, and the only way I have found to navigate it with any integrity is through intentional leadership.
Intentional leadership is not a buzzword. It is a daily practice of asking yourself whether your actions are aligned with what you say matters. It is the difference between managing a team and actually guiding one. And in behavioral health, where the humans we serve are in genuine crisis, misaligned leadership does not just hurt productivity. It can compromise care.
What Frameworks Help Leaders Stay Aligned with Their Vision?
For me, alignment starts with clarity of purpose, and that clarity has to be something you can articulate simply. When I stepped into my current role, I asked myself a foundational question: what is the one thing I want every person on my team to feel when they show up to work? The answer was that they were doing meaningful work inside a structure that supported them. That became my north star.
From there, I use three practical frameworks to stay aligned. The first is regular values auditing. At least once a quarter, I sit down and ask whether the decisions I made that month actually reflected the values I claim to hold. The second is role clarity mapping, making sure every person on my team understands not just their job description but how their role serves the larger mission. When people understand the why behind their work, they make better decisions on their own. The third is what I call a vision-to-action bridge. Any new initiative or program we launch has to trace a clear line back to our core mission of providing excellent, compassionate care to adolescents. If it cannot pass that test, we slow down and reconsider.
These frameworks did not come from a business school textbook.
They came from years of doing therapy, where I learned that transformation only happens when people understand where they are, where they want to go, and what is blocking the path.
How Do You Identify Misalignment in Business Early?
Early misalignment rarely announces itself loudly. It shows up in the quiet friction of everyday operations. People start communicating less. Decisions get made in silos.
High performers start disengaging. When I see these patterns, I treat them the way I would treat an early clinical symptom: with curiosity rather than alarm, and with a sense of urgency.
One of the most reliable early signals is when people stop asking questions in meetings. In a healthy team culture, people challenge ideas because they feel safe enough to do so. When that stops happening, something has shifted. Either they have lost trust, or they have lost the sense that their voice matters.
Another red flag is when the stated priority and the funded priority are different. If leadership says clinical excellence is the goal but every resource conversation defaults to census numbers, people notice. That gap between what you say and what you fund is one of the fastest ways to erode trust at every level of an organization.
My approach is to name it directly. In my experience, ambiguity is far more damaging than a hard conversation. When I see misalignment forming, I bring it into the open as quickly as possible. Sometimes that means a difficult conversation with a direct report. Sometimes it means going back to senior leadership and asking for clarity on competing priorities. What I will not do is let it simmer, because in a behavioral health environment, that cost eventually lands on the clients we are supposed to be serving.
What Habits Support Clear and Confident Leadership?
Confidence in leadership, at least in my experience, does not come from certainty. It comes from preparation and self-awareness. I have never walked into a difficult conversation feeling one hundred percent certain of the outcome. But I have learned to walk in grounded, because I did the internal work beforehand.
The habit that has helped me most is what I think of as reflective bookending. At the start of my week, I identify the two or three things that will require the most from me, whether that is a tough personnel issue, a regulatory review, or a program launch. I think through what I want to accomplish, what I am afraid of, and what I need to stay true to myself in that moment. At the end of the week, I reflect on what actually happened and what I would do differently. Over time, this practice has made me significantly more decisive, because I am not processing in the moment. I have already done some of that work.
I also believe deeply in transparent communication as a leadership habit rather than just a value. Transparency is something I practice with intention, not something I default to only when things are going well. When our team navigates uncertainty, I say so. When I make a call I am not entirely sure about, I say that too. It builds a culture where people feel equipped to handle real information, and that is the kind of team that performs well under pressure.
Finally, I protect time for stillness. I am a trained therapist. I understand, at a clinical level, what chronic stress does to a nervous system. Leaders who never pause are operating in a perpetual state of reactivity, and reactive leadership rarely reflects anyone's best thinking. Whether it is a morning walk, a quiet cup of coffee before the calls start, or a few minutes of reflection at the end of the day, protecting that space has made me a better leader and a better person.
The most important thing I have learned across two decades of working with people in various capacities is this: clarity is an act of service. When you are clear about your vision, your values, and your decisions, you give everyone around you permission to do their best work. That is what intentional leadership looks like in practice. Not perfection. Just purpose, consistently chosen.
Connect With Aja
Comments