Measurement is an important part of all our lives, both for defining our objectives and for tracking our progress towards them.
Creating inspiration and becoming antifragile might be more difficult to measure than many other things but it still matters. After all, it’s good to quantify our strengths and weaknesses. And it’s also important to measure our progress as the tools of Inner Leadership start to make a difference.
So the book asks us to rate our abilities at each of the seven skills or competencies that enable us to generate the inspiration that makes us antifragile: the seven skills or abilities that enable us to shift our inner state from ‘Churning’ to being able to use change to become stronger and more valuable.
We start in the bottom left hand corner of the picture, in a state of ‘Churning’.
From here, the tools of Chapter 1 show us how to become ‘Centred’ and ‘Grounded’: connected with what matters most to us and who we are at our best. This is the first skill or competency we need, our first step along the journey.
No matter how skilled we are at taking this first step, the second step is then to shift our inner state to feeling ‘Confident’ or ‘Sure’. We do this by being able to make clearer sense of the situation. Chapter 2 brings us two ways to achieve this.
In Chapter 3 we realise that every challenge contains opportunities and we learn how to find the ten types of opportunity that might exist in any situation. Now our inner state shifts to ‘Optimistic’: and we have taken the third step in learning to use change to become stronger and more valuable.
Our fourth skill is the ability to choose our best way forward, even when the situation is unclear and the outcome is difficult to predict. The tools for this are covered in Chapter 4. And once we have learned to use them, our inner state becomes ‘Directed’.
In Chapters 5 and 6 we review our purpose and our values and create an inspiring description of the outcome we have decided to create. This enables us to inspire ourselves and other people to long to make it happen. Now our inner emotional state becomes first ‘Determined’, then ‘Inspired’.
Finally, in Chapter 7, we learn to maintain and build our inspiration in the face of the obstacles that inevitably arise. With this skill in place we are now ‘Ready’ for whatever comes our way.
Each of these steps, on its own, is simple and straightforward. Combined in the right order they become a transformational staircase that anyone can climb. And the more you build your abilities at each of these seven competencies, the more antifragile you will become — more able to lead yourself and other people through change, in ways that make you stronger and more valuable.
If you want to use change to become stronger and more valuable, why not begin now? Rate your current ability, on a scale of 0-10, at each of the seven competencies. Then ask yourself what a ’10’ would look like for each skill. Where do you want to be, in relation to that, in a year’s time? Where would a small improvement make the biggest difference to your life right now? What action will you take to achieve that change?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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