We’ve understood why we need a new approach to leadership to bring us through this time of change.
Now, to find out what that looks like, we need to ask ourselves a question:
What do we mean by ‘Leadership’?
At The Churning, we believe that the essence of good leadership is the ability to create two things: inspiration and results.
The best leaders are the ones who most inspire us. The best leaders are the ones who create the best results. And the truly great leaders are the ones who create both inspiration and results.
This means that if we want to find a new approach to leadership in times of change, we need to find new ways of creating inspiration and results in a changing world.
Which comes first?
At first glance it might seem to make sense to start with results — after all, there are so many urgent issues to deal with that we don’t really have time to think about inspiration.
But there will always be another crisis. And crisis creates stress. And stressed-out people don’t see the situation clearly, which leads to poor decisions, which get implemented badly, so the situation doesn’t get resolved, the can gets kicked down the road, and the churning just gets worse — both our inner emotional churning and the outer churning in the world.
If we truly want to create a new kind of leadership — one that creates lasting solutions in a changing world — then we have to start by finding new ways of creating inspiration and emotional engagement.
When we do this, several things will happen:
- We will see our situations more calmly and more clearly
- We will connect more strongly with who we are at our best
- We will become clearer and more certain about the outcomes we most want to create
- We will find more options for moving forward
- We will get better at choosing the way forward that aligns best with what we most want in the world, even when the situation is unclear and the outcome is uncertain
- We will become more inspired to make that choice happen
- And when we come to implementation we will be more focused, more enthusiastic, more efficient, effective, and adaptable to changing circumstances
All this will help us to create results that last.
If we want to lead ourselves, and other people, better through this time of change then we will need new skills and abilities, compared with leading ourselves when times are stable. Those new skills have to start from finding new ways to create inspiration — first in ourselves, and then in other people. Because only then will our implementation become effective.
We call this new set of skills and abilities, Inner Leadership. This is how we become antifragile: able to use change to become stronger and more valuable.
On a scale of 0–10, how do you rate your current ability to inspire yourself and others to move purposefully through this time of change? Do you want to improve that?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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Photo By Scott Robinson via StockPholio.net