Rethinking Leadership Development In A Complex World
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Rethinking Leadership Development In A Complex World

In my close to a decade of working with leadership development, it is remarkable how little innovation has taken place in the realm of leadership development. Most leadership and organizational development programs are cut from the same cloth. However, the conventional view of what it means to be a successful business, what great leadership looks like, and what is required for a leader to succeed is increasingly challenged and rediscovered – and consequently is the idea of what impactful leadership development looks like.

However, what is missing are more concrete and in-depth stories and examples of what it means to break away from tradition, and engage in new kinds of leadership development that better meet the complexity of our reality.

I have therefore asked for, and been granted, permission to share and report from a 12-month leadership development program I am currently doing with Ace Metal Crafts Company in the US, that colors outside the lines of what conventional leadership development looks like. Ace Metal Crafts Company is a manufacturing company, which has been at the cutting edge of business for many years. At a time where the word trust was persona non grata in the world of business, CEO Jean Pitzo decided to anchor the culture of the company in trust. She has since pushed the bar for what business, culture and leadership can be and look like – and that includes the role of personal development for impactful leadership and successful business.

Her recent initiative is to bring the leadership group along for a journey into discovery of new ways of thinking and being that can better equip the leaders, and thereby the company, to handle the complexity and challenges of our constantly unpredictable, interconnected and changing world. Some of the questions that have come up concerns managing business growth in an environment of labor shortage. How to grow sustainably? How to better equip leaders and the culture to thrive and meet future challenges? How to think more strategically in everyday life.

Jean has invited me to lead her and a group of 8 leaders into unknown territory. And we have started a journey with emphasis on personal development, spiritual intelligence and transformation of consciousness that departs from much of what is considered ‘normal’. The intention is to share about what we do, how we do it, why we do what we do, and also how I personally work and guide a journey where our starting point is a direction, an intention to discover and learn, and trust in the process. By bringing this deeper insight into our process, the hope is that we can inspire more leaders to open up to new ideas of what leadership and business development can be in an unpredictable and complex world. This first article introduces the broad principles of the journey we have embarked on.

The limits of traditional leadership thinking

In short, traditional leadership development is characterized by being oriented towards a specific goal and one dimensional in its approach. It will often consist of a clear concept or model that can be repeated with only little changes or tweaks from client to client. It is typically anchored in a particular value system, introduce an identifiable thinking along with a model oriented towards achieving specific change. It often positions itself within specific areas of expertise such as strength-based leadership, agile leadership, purpose-driven leadership etc. Likewise, it is also what is seen in initiatives like the ‘feedback sandwich’ which gives the model for ‘effective feedback’. It is fairly simple to teach, understand and has a clear goal in sight promising specific results (i.e., any person can take on the concept and teach others). This makes it feel like a safe, manageable and hence popular route to go for a company when investing in leadership development. And that can have its time and place.

 However, these fixed models are very limited in their ability to meet and accommodate the complexity of the reality we live in, and what transformation truly requires. Neither can they accommodate the uniqueness of the context they are used in. With its model- based approach it has an inherent narrow view of reality.

The reality is that we are unique, multidimensional beings that interact in complex system.

Same same, but different

When I travelled around South East Asia in my youth, I picked up a very useful phrase. Same, Same but different. It is a useful phrase to convey how two things can look the same, but at a closer look are different. All companies are same, same but different.

 There are shared challenges across the board, but when we look closer, all companies and leaders are unique, and so are the circumstances around the challenges they face. Moreover, they are constantly influenced by change, making no day alike. Using a fixed model for unique and ever-changing circumstances inherently limits the scope of impact.

 Just to touch on a few points; In any leadership group you will have people with different levels of complexity thinking and action logics depending on their stage of inner development. How people perceive, understand and are able to implement ideas of, for instance, efficiency, innovation, trust and followship depend on their stage of development. The stage of inner development also influences how the leadership development is perceived and reacted to by each person, as well as the ability to take on and implement learning (An organization also moves through stages of growth facing similar variables).

Moreover, unique personal stories and life experiences exist in any group, just like people will be affected by different life situations and circumstances. This impact learning capacity as well as openness to change. Consequently, each person’s unique needs and challenges have to be considered to support any growth beyond knowing new material.

Additionally, in every change or developmental journey both the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspect of a person is participating. Each level of our being will be impacted by and will in return impact the learning experience for both participants and the facilitator. We need to ensure that new learning is as much as possible accounting for and embracing all different planes of consciousness.

These are just some of the variables that impact the success of any endeavor seeking transformational growth. When leadership development is able to accommodate or consider these variables, it increases impact.

And it is possible to engage in leadership training that can meet and accommodate the complexity of the nature of reality. However, it is a more courageous route that requires a bigger investment in resources.

Bringing spiritual intelligence into business and leadership

What characterize the journey I have embarked on with Ace Metal Crafts Company is a very broadly defined goal of ‘an intentional energy shift’ of the company culture brought about by ‘growing leadership capacity through transformation of consciousness’. We have no plan, no specific goals, and we don’t know what will unfold or what material we will focus on.

At the very basic level, we have decided on a format of monthly group sessions followed up by a 1:1 personal coaching session, including buddy-meetings amongst the participants in between sessions. We know the group format includes some teaching of principles, group discussion, and meditative and reflective-exercises.

The deeper and more intangible part is a multifaceted approach that takes into account different dimensions of leadership and business. This includes, but is not limited to:

An energetic perspective: All is energy. Just as each person is an energetic entity with its unique energetic imprint, so is any organization. At the root of anything that we see in physical reality, we find an energetic imprint at the root. For an organization this means, that it is a living, breathing being comprised of and characterized by specific energies that manifest in certain behaviors, thinking and patterns – and consequently results. When you change the energy, you change the results.

We are prone to intellectual and emotional interpretations of the what’s and why’s of our shared reality, and they will differ from person to person. An energetic perspective takes you underneath all of what one believes is happening and why, and instead direct you to the deeper root cause well as opportunities for success. Thus, an energetic perspective can effectively give insight into the root of imbalances and opportunities in a person, a team, relationships, cultures, results which needs to be addressed for change to occur.

Custom made material: Life is constantly evolving and changing – nothing stays the same. Consequently, we cannot make a plan for what the developmental journey will be like, what kind of content will be included or how the session will run.

Every time we set something in motion it impacts the consciousness of the group. Every group session will bring up new hidden challenges as well as new opportunities and insights. Likewise, the leadership training does not take place independent of everything else that is going on, but it connected to all other aspects of the business, life and doing and being of people. The preparation for each session will need to take this into account. This requires listening to the current state of the individuals and the group, as well as the larger context and adjust the course and the content accordingly to fit the moment. This means that we cannot know what the next group session will look like or what we need to focus on before we approach the actual date, and consequently the material as well as the process of the session will not be known until the days prior.

Supporting the strategy of the business: Again, leadership development does not exist in its own separate bubble. The content created needs to also support the strategy of the business. This means, to also take into account how the specific needs of the group and the company at large can be combined – and how they shift and move together in the journey.

 Being practical and relatable: Much leadership training takes place outside of the everyday challenges of leadership. We go away off site, learn some new tricks and tools, and then come back to implement. How much really stays and how much fades into the background and become a distant memory? Also, often times what is being impacted is the thinking level of being – but not the rest of a person’s consciousness, which often continue to work in its own set ways.

Therefore, leadership development should not just be about ‘development’ but also be applied to real life situations. For Ace Metal Crafts Company I asked the group to identify a long list of challenges, which we will use as a developmental tool in the group sessions (more in later articles). This among others gives people the opportunity to learn about themselves through the challenge, to learn about their colleagues’ point of view, practice dialogue, learn new ways to problem solve in a setting that helps them to go beyond how they usually approach challenges, engaging deeper levels of thinking. We do not seek to solve the challenge within the session, but it supports personal development, and helps bring new perspective to take further in other settings.

Accommodating different stages of developmentAs mentioned earlier, people are typically at different stages of development and different levels of openness to, and capacity for change. This means that people will understand the material in different ways and need different approaches to learning. Some have access to a more complex and abstract thinking than others, for some science is more important than for others, some needs more direction, some needs tough love, others need space to come up with their own solutions. Though it is possible for me to specifically assess the stages of inner development of all participants to get a clear picture of where everyone is at, we have chosen to not do this in this program, but as a facilitator I am aware of the signs signifying different stages of development within the group and the need to accommodate that.

Learning how to grow:Learning something new is a short-term objective, learning how to grow will continue to sustain any personal development beyond any leadership development program. An integral part of the developmental work is to teach fundamental practices that support continued self-inquiry and self-development. What is popularly known as a ‘growth mind-set’. It is easy from an intellectual point of view to understand ‘how to grow’. It is a different story to implement and engage in self-development practices, and learn to spot own blind spots. As an example, integrating practices that teach people to recognize and question one’s own assumptions and beliefs, and how to transform them will continue to serve people for the rest of their life.

Understanding how reality is formed: An important part of the developmental work is to consider one’s understanding of how reality is formed. Most people go through life in reactionary modes, rooted in external reality. The more we are able to shift focus of awareness from external to internal reality, we start to expand our view of, among others, cause and effect. We begin to see and integrate the knowing that external reality is an effect of inner causality. An important element in the program is to reconnect people to their inner knowing and true power to create reality, and increase awareness of who we are being the unfolding of external reality.

Composing great music

All of the elements above are at all times either implicitly or explicitly at play. We might play a great song knowing 3 keys on the piano – if we can play all the keys, we can begin to make beautiful music. This is the intention we set out with – learning how to make beautiful music out of a world that never stands still.

 The next article will explore growth and the impact of the process set in motion, and where it takes us next.

To learn more about how the developmental journey at Ace Metal Crafts Company evolves, and to receive other inspiration, you can subscribe here.