The World Has Changed. What About You?
I just attended a webinar with Peter Hawkins, one of the thought leaders in the coaching industry and I was struck by his observation that we are leading like 20th-century leaders instead of 21st-century leaders.
His point is that we're developing leaders in ways that prepares them for an outdated paradigm of leadership, and that we need to do leadership differently going forward.
I think we all know what that “outdated paradigm” is.
It’s command-and-control.
It’s having all the answers.
It’s needing things to be done your way instead of in the best way for the person who’s actually doing the work.
It’s roaring along toward your corporate objectives without taking stock of where your employees are at emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
A quote from Marshall Goldsmith serves us well here:
“What got you here, won't get you there.”
I am recognizing how drastically the world has changed. Drastically, and fundamentally. Humanitarian crises, climate crises, health crises, economic crises surround us.
This is not the same world we lived in during the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, or even the 1990s—although some of the red flags had begun to appear much earlier.
The world has changed. The world is complex, and we are in what appears to be a never-ending pandemic that is testing us all.
This is the context for leadership right now.
And what got us here as leaders will not get us through a pandemic.
It won't get us to solving big world problems.
And it won't get you to the solution of:
How do I lead my team now?
How do I lead a hybrid team?
How do I navigate the fact that some of my team members want to come back to the office while some don’t?
How do we do our work differently?
How do we serve our purpose more fully, while people on our team are navigating all sorts of personal challenges or struggles, and yet are still so committed to being part of the team and doing the work?
And / or, they're thinking about: What’s next for me?
Our leadership context right now is constant change, lots of disruption and a paradigm for leading that is dramatically different than it was even 18 months ago.
So, what does different look like?
I want to offer three simple ideas to help you think about showing up differently, recognizing that it's going to feel incredibly uncomfortable to show up differently as a leader.
Tip #1: Listen more and talk less.
I strongly encourage you to adopt this way of being.
Another way of thinking of it that is: listen more and tell less.
Contrary to how you might feel, listening is in fact doing something. Listening is an act of leadership. It can feel sometimes passive, like I'm not doing anything.
Trust me, listening is doing.
And it's actually what you need to do more of right now.
Tip #2: Pretend you know nothing – and get curious.
For this one, I want you to tap into your genuine curiosity.
Pretend you're not a skilled, equipped, experienced mid-career professional.
Pretend you are in grade one of leadership, or grade one of working, and that it's all new.
You don't know what to do.
You don't know what the answers are.
And you're super curious to understand how things work, how people work, how people are thinking.
That's the level of curiosity that I want to invite you to bring now to your leadership. Pretend you know nothing. Get super curious. About people, about process, about technology, about ways of working, about what could be done differently.
Does that make you nervous?
Let me reassure you that being curious doesn't mean you're making a decision. It just means you're willing to learn something new or see something differently.
It’s taking a page from Buddhism. This is what the teachers mean when they speak about beginner’s mind. Show up in every interaction open. Without a story about the past. Without your convictions about what the future should look like.
It is the ultimate blank slate.
So tip number two, get super curious.
Tip #3: Stay calm.
And underneath staying calm there’s some work. Staying calm requires a lot of self-regulation and self-management.
That means you taking care of you so that you can show up at work as a leader. So that you can show up in virtual meetings with an energy of calm. Because people will sense it from you.
Calm is contagious.
If you are modeling calm, if that’s the energy you’re putting out to your team, that’s what they’re going to pick up.
And that’s what they’re going to deliver back to you.
When everybody's calm, it allows us to think at a prefrontal cortex level.
This is a little neuroscience tip. When we stay calm, we actually access the most advanced and integrative part of our brain.
Better thinking will emerge when we stay calm.
So, use your breath. Stay calm as you arrive in meetings. Maybe even invite everybody to take a breath before you dive in.
To recap, I’m giving you three tips:
1. Listen more.
2. Get super curious.
3. Practice staying calm.
These three behaviours are just a few pieces of what leading in the 21st century of complexity and chaos is going to ask of us.
The world has changed, and you can too!
I believe in you.