Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

The Geneva Center for Security Policy’s website is https://www.gcsp.ch.

Our host, Maureen Metcalf, posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8 . The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A by Steve Robinson; it’s available in hardback at https://amzn.to/460LnmQ, on Kindle at https://amzn.to/3RVXhZs, and as an audiobook at https://amzn.to/3xPjBgn.
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Paperback = https://amzn.to/3VEl7cU, Kindle = https://amzn.to/45JGm1L, and audiobook = https://amzn.to/3RPhC2y
• Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way by Mungi Ngomane. Hardback (https://amzn.to/48Doh6j) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/48YCRF4)
• Nerve: Lessons on Leadership from Two Women Who Went First by Martha Piper & Indira Samarasekera. Paperback (https://amzn.to/3tOtzg4) and audiobook (https://amzn.to/41OYdT5)

NOTE: As an Amazon partner, we may make a small commission from books you buy through these links.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Peter Cunningham is Head of Leadership at GCSP and Co-Founder of the Geneva Leadership Alliance, a network of associates and partner organisations working together to advance the understanding and practice of leadership for the benefit of peace and security worldwide. Peter has over 20 years of experience in leadership development, adult education, and executive coaching across private, public, and non-profit sectors. He is constantly seeking new, diverse, and innovative ways to bridge the study of leadership with the practice of leading, especially at international level and across cultural, geographical, political and organisational divides. Leveraging his diverse experience and background, he creates safe spaces for learning and encourages brave spaces for application, enabling people to learn leadership mindsets and practices in transformative ways and adapt them to their own work and life.

Patrick Sweet is Co-Director of the Geneva Leadership Alliance. Previously, he was regional director for Northern Europe at the Center for Creative Leadership, responsible for advanced leadership development programs in the region in close collaboration with EMEA CCL teams. He brings 25+ years of business, organisational and leadership development to the Alliance.

Dr. Sweet has been co-lead in several EU-funded programs focused on innovation and leadership, was European Developmental Lead for Korn-Ferry International’s European implementation of leadership assessment tools developed by Dr Sweet’s company, and has coached, consulted, and trained in Talent Management and Leadership Development with international, regional, governmental and non-governmental organisations in Europe for 25+ years; and in the U.S. prior to this. His Ph.D. is in Business Economics from Lund University, Sweden, with doctoral and graduate studies at the University of Southern California and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Transcript
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Maureen 0:08
Today, our guests are Patrick sweet and Peter Cunningham. So Patrick is working for the Center for Creative Leadership. He’s the co director of the Alliance for advancing leadership in peace and security. Peter is the co director for gcsp, CCl, Leadership Alliance, again, the Geneva Center for Security Policy. A mouthful, baby.

Unknown Speaker 0:33
So Patrick and Peter are partners. Me trying to read what gcsp does. Why don’t you guys tell us what you do? Sounds impressive, the Geneva Center for Security Policy and gcsp from now on. And it is a mouthful, I know. I guess bit of background that’s useful is that gcsp was, was set up, or founded in the mid 90s, and it was Switzerland’s contribution to NATO, the NATO’s targeted police program, okay, founded a number of institutions looking at issues around peace and security from a research, dialog and educational point of view, because that’s what they could contribute to NATO. So it was very innovative in the mid 90s, because it brought together diplomats and military, Hard and Soft security actors in the same room to talk about what were then, even though it sounds not that long ago, that long ago, state to state security issues,

Unknown Speaker 1:27
I guess, as the years have gone by since then, and as issues have evolved, as globalization has taken hold, as situations have got more complex around the world and there are many more actors involved in what we would call peace and security issues. It’s become a place where people from governments, diplomats, UN agencies, international, NGOs, down to local, civil society and people doing amazing things in their environment around the world in relation to stability, peace and security issues come together. They come to learn. They come to dialog. It’s a space where we create an environment where that can happen. Because it’s in Geneva, it’s a line of where almost everybody can come and engage. And that is not always the case in other places. Politically, not everybody has access to everybody else in the world today, but we provide a space where that can happen. The issues in that space are complex. They’re deep verticals, thinking for things like migration, nuclear disarmament, climate change, cyber security, all these deep vertical preventing violent extremism, for example, there are deep verticals, lots of expertise. And what we found in recent years is there is a an additional element that we needed to contribute, which is around, how do we empower these people with that knowledge to go out and impact their environment? And I guess we use the umbrella term of leadership, which is around, how do you affect and influence your environment around you with the knowledge that you have? So we brought in a portfolio, at least the work around developing leadership capability. It’s not something that’s been focused on traditionally in that space. It’s not something that is invested in. It’s not even something that’s often recognized as something of importance within that expert culture. Okay, now that’s changing in recent years, but it’s not changing necessarily in terms of having access to available learning and leadership development tools, products, services, and also the funding, because that’s the kind of expense of those programs, and the quality of what’s needed there is just as high as in is in the business sector, just as high as in the military. Higher the impact of the issues you’re dealing with are truly global. So the complexity of my thinking has to be high Absolutely, and my capacity to act has to also be high Absolutely. And it has to recognize capacities across different spaces as well as my own. And this is something that we’re particularly interested in. We’ll talk a bit more about, but that’s how the partnership with CCL was was formed, which is that if we’re going to do this in this environment where this kind of complexity is evident, where the need is so high, where we’re going to have to be creative in how we and what we bring to bear, we needed to do that with someone who really understood what there is known today about leading a leadership and that’s where CCL comes in, because they have 40 years they’ve been Thinking about this, so they bring a lot of expertise to bear. So that partnership has proven so far anyway, in the last two years, to be very effective. There’s a great mission alignment between the two organizations, and there is a great alignment around the purpose of what we’re trying to do. Great. Thank you. And Patrick, as the CCO representative. Do you want to add anything to what Peter has explained? Yeah, I sure do. First of all, it’s humbling to be brought into an organization like gcsp, who is struggling and leading others in the space that they do, to be recognized as being able to contribute as an asset in that and I can understand why.

Unknown Speaker 5:00
You looked at CCl, and we’ve talked about this and how we ended up there, because CCL has been creative Center for Creative Leadership in advancing our thinking about leading in a lot of different contexts. Primarily, it’s been on the corporate side, but we do a lot of work with government and a lot of work with non government enterprises, and in the past 15 years, we’ve been looking specifically at how to and this is where our mission truly aligned. How do we make some of this knowledge, this understanding about leading as a set of practices? How do we dealitize it? How do we make it available to more and more people who can actually use it now that actually means that you’re redefining leading and leadership in that same moment, because you’re taking it away from a senior cadre of leaders, and you’re talking about leading as something that actually should be accessible, as something to learn at every level of society, because we don’t just lead at the top. So I lead myself. I lead my community organizations and in my family, yes, I like starting with leading ourselves, because we don’t necessarily think about that, but particularly at this ILA conference, there’s a lot of discussion about leaders. And one thing that happens is that people start thinking about, I learn how to lead, I will be a leader. And we like to see some of that separate, and that the role is different than the practice. Some roles are responsible for leading, and they may have additional responsibilities and accountabilities with them, but you don’t have to have and we all know about influence, and we all know about informal leaders, you don’t have to have these roles in order to actually lead. And when we come to these really difficult issues of peace and security. It’s top down, it’s bottom up, and it’s from the center out there’s leading that happens at every single level, and therefore understanding how to lead ought to be and we’re working very hard as something learning how to lead is something that everybody should have access to. So we talk about what that means. But one of the things that we did at CCL was establish a laboratory in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with the specific intention of taking some of the things that we give to corporate, 50 corporate, 100 boards, and say, What about these essentials? Can we bring to people who aren’t in these boards, people who are working in communities who may or may not even be able to read, which is true. And so Peter and I talk about some of the ideas about being able to draw, and speak about leading with things in the sand. Literally. Are there some fundamental things that we can learn for everyone that moves leading forward without putting the burden of being a leader, without putting the stigma of leading or following on that. Let’s start with that. What are some of the fundamental things that everyone should know about leadership? I’ll take a stab at that, Pete, and then you can keep me honest.

Unknown Speaker 7:56
We do that ourselves. Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 8:00
Yeah, Mr. Coming out, one thing is in actually the way you framed the question, What about leadership? Peter described the environment we work in. We’ll have 30 people in a room from literally 30 different cultures talking geographical, geographic, geographic and professional culture.

Unknown Speaker 8:20
So if you throw out the word leadership in that context, it’s already on fire. Because if you talk to and these are things that maybe people can recognize, you talk to somebody from France and somebody from the United States and say, what is good leadership, you’re gonna get a different answer. And just talk to somebody who said, there aren’t even words born in Germany is pure. That’s not slightly charged.

Unknown Speaker 8:45
There you go. The way you phrase the question, what are the essentials of leadership? And if I said that, I still trim, but we’re really talking about centers of leading. And there are some essentials. One of the essentials we’re working on is, how do we get people to understand where others are coming from. When we start talking about leading, understand there is no one way. And the flip side to that is it’s not all contingent. The answer that you use a contingent style of leading whatever is required at the moment, situational. That’s not a good answer, because then you have to be everything for everybody. And then the flip side to that polarity is that there is an answer to leading. So we’ve been working on is finding what are the essentials of leading that apply at individual level, group level, organization level and societal level. Is there something that you can pick up through there that I can use to lead myself? I could use to lead my team. I could use to actually organize larger collectives. I know CCL does a lot with developmental psychology. Do you pull from those levels? Where do you come up with is it a competency model, a mindset model? Yes and yes in.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Some of the criteria we use to so if you think about it, what we’re doing at the moment and phase are actually is going and looking and understanding what is known about leading and leadership today, and what in that is particularly of relevance and interest to our community, to our environment. And some of the criteria, I guess, use to you that is what resonates when you’re in a highly diverse geographic, diverse group, where people are coming from very different worlds, what seems to be useful and valuable when you’re in an environment where people come from very different professional environments, a lot of the nature of the work of people in this space, you’re working across different sectors. You’ve got healthcare, people, working with military, working with politicians, working with civil society, working with Gorilla groups, or trying to with mediators, with and all of these professional cultures carry very different views as well. So multicultural, multi professional and complex environments. So the environment they’re in or that they’re trying to influence is complex. So I guess we use those three things as base criteria for what has already been developed and is out there and is understood that can be fairly easily transferable to what is understood and needed in those spaces. And then bringing in there, finding ways to bring in there, and sometimes adapting it, sometimes adapting the framing of it, because how it’s positioned, shareholders and profit and loss, those things maybe need to be reframed. But actually, the core issue that you’re trying to deal with is the same and similar stakeholders, certainly stakeholders, beneficiaries, funders and profit is we don’t blow each other up. For example, how do we coexist

Unknown Speaker 11:44
peacefully, like even being nicer? Yeah, if possible, exactly. And so. So it’s often about framing the type of developmental interactions that have been designed, often for other sectors, taking it across. But then secondly, I think it’s also, in the long term, attracting, and this is why this ILA opportunity is for us so great is attracting some of the great work that’s being done by researchers and scholars on leading and attracting them to focus their attention to this space, because of what you said earlier, which is surely is more complex and more challenging. So isn’t this where we want to be, furthering our understanding what it means. It’s your livelihood and mine that I don’t get to do my job if I’m

Unknown Speaker 12:27
Yeah, and these are the people who are in the room. So one of the elements is the criteria. What works with this diversity, right? And so what resonates is the word that Peter uses, which is much, much more accurate, what resonates with everyone how and one of the things that that we have to recognize is that when the people come in the room, they come with lots of elephants, there’s trauma. Success looks entirely different in that space. So if we’re talking about being a successful leader, that falls flat, because they don’t all share the same definition of success. It sometimes isn’t about them. It’s about peace. So success is actually when people are actually living and working together in a peaceful way. It’s not about making it up to the top of an organization. But then again, you have other career motivations within people. Some of those are there. It’s just that you need to contextualize everything. I work with cancer researchers, and one of those my favorite clients, talks all the time about it’s not about me, it’s not curing cancer, right? It’s not me against you. It’s us against this disease that we want to eradicate. For the people on the moon who happen to be values focus, so moving beyond just personal self interest, it is easier to get people to coalesce around the idea of peace than it is about making some stockholder more money. And so this is an interesting point you made, because it’s it has to be about both. And this is one of the challenges where you have a really compelling narrative, okay, by saving lives or peace or that which we can very easily coalesce around because for you to be effective in that space, it is also about you and your effectiveness. Okay, so this is a common frame that exists in the environment, which is the focus on the mission is so strong that making the space for the organization or production of leading in that work often gets second place in terms of attention and toying because those who are investing in funding that kind of work are funding it to see the results on the ground. They’re not funding it to see an organization shake itself, to be the best organization it can be to achieve the results of the land. So there is a inherent challenge in that environment that comes from having and it’s wonderful to have have such a strong vision, but there is also a cautionary element to that as well, and that that would be an absolute parallel to what I’m saying in the cancer work that we hire and train, boss, researchers and physicians and the leadership is an afterthought when something goes wrong. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Now let’s talk about what is this Re.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
They need when you show up, and what kind of projects are you working on? What’s most interesting to you? It’s all interesting. So interesting. Concrete exists. I think a useful example that we care is, is a feature that we did that was in support of NATO last year, and it was actually a great example of bringing together people who function and operate on the ground in some of the circumstances we’ve described, and some leadership experts, of course, many of them here are part of the IA community, in fact. So yes, it’s a good example to use, I think, in what was done. So what we set out to do was to see if we could identify what some of the characteristics or elements needing were that matters that made a difference in post conflict environments. So the virus that are in a post conflict state has defined also those who are most likely to go into conflict. So there’s a lot of sensitivity. There’s a lot of just open to thinking of so the war has been won or lost. It’s done. So there is currently no local office, and in man’s period of time, there is a lot of work being done around reconciliation, around institutionalization, building systems and structures that will sustain that. The assumption is Sun has been flattened. For example, mindsets, yes, okay, divides where we go, things there than now that exists, that didn’t exist before, in fact. But it’s also the most sensitive to complex that a warrant may seem obvious, but it’s we know that to be true. Leading there is, if you think about the UN mission environment, UN peacekeeping missions, where there is a civilian and military elements, there is a need to negotiate and engage with politicians and political level all the way down to community and local on the ground level. So this was to bring people together who engaged either from the international community point of view, for from a local perspective on navigating that situation and taking roles in leadership, either informally or formally, and these are pretty traumatized environments when you’re talking about locals, absolutely

Unknown Speaker 17:16
and to design a way to allow them to through the process elicit what it is that they do when it works, and to expose a group of leadership experts and scholars to those discussions, and for them to then in their in turn, play back what they understand about leading and leadership, and what we can learn from the conversation across the two discussion areas. And I want to say how brilliant, rather than us going in whoever the US is and saying, This is what democracy means, and you have to be democratic, or this is what, how we do it, the planting of our culture in an environment that isn’t susceptible to whatever, again, whoever our is that’s trying to make help, which is still very much a challenge in post conflict environments, because it’s unfortunately, still intentionally or unintentionally, still often the case, I’m afraid. And so this, this was a three day event, and it was quite carefully designed to to give as many people in the room to share as much useful information that they had to share, and it would work great. So these were short, five minute contributions on particular carefully chosen subjects, all related to that common theme, for three days. For three days, that’s a lot of conversation. So we love the conversation. It was really worrying. It was really moving, because there were many people had very many things to say. Some were quite surprising and different. Then there were some themes that came across. So can you share a couple of themes? What are you hearing? There’s a piece that happens when a peacekeeping force goes in. There’s something that happens when you bring about the stability in the moment that requires a certain kind of leading. It sometimes requires a certain objective, heavy handed role. You know what that’s about. You stop people from killing each other, and so that’s not a democratic process, per se, although when you do that, what is left is you set up a set of expectations. You’ve supported and not supported different groups to keep them apart. And so one of the elements we were looking at is, what about the way that happens when NATO or any peacekeeping force goes in, what actually helps or undermines the growth of positive peace afterwards? Because just coming in and killing people is the thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. But were there? Some of the key questions were, what about that and the way we organize that doesn’t necessarily lead to positive, sustained peace? And so one of the things that comes up is that inside these institutions, you have people who rotate. They have time.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
Where they go in for a mission, and there’s only so much you can take, and then they have to leave, and others come in. And so there’s a very human piece, a structural piece, where this rotation also leads to a lack of consistent memory about what’s happening just prior. Now the people, the local people have experienced don’t have that lack of memory. They know what’s there. But when an international force comes in and there’s a rotation, both within the humanitarian organization, they operate the same way or the military organizations, this notion that there’s a rotation going on, it’s very difficult to keep relationships solid, fundamental piece of leading it’s very difficult to keep empathy at the level that you had it at once, and to have trust when somebody comes in and may not really understand what has happened just before. Now, this is not to criticize these efforts that go in. They’re very good, and people put their lives on the line, but having them in the room say that, rather than people on the outside looking in and saying, Boy, is this a good thing, or is this not a good thing? So one of the things that we really need to figure out how to do is increase our cultural capital and memory through these programs. Because when we have rotation, it hurts. Another thing is that sometimes the decision criteria to come in is such that the mandate is NATO is not allowed to go in unless it’s gone kinetic, as they call it, right? It’s gotten physical. That’s part of the mandate. That’s late it actually. But in order to address that, you have to address the mandate of NATO. And so you people bring me down, say, and this shows up on the other end, because by the time it’s gone negative, that way, you’ve got such trauma and such difficulty that you can’t build, very easily rebuild empathy between people over fighting once you try to kill me, I

Unknown Speaker 21:52
am going to be reasonably reticent of that’s where some of the reconciliation work is so interesting that it’s not an eye for an eye the intent of true reconciling in a way of recovery. So in that line, what is it that we do in the front end that gets in the way of the reconciliation, even though we’re trying to do good things, it’s all right. It’s all good

Unknown Speaker 22:20
intended. There are lots of things that are well intended.

Unknown Speaker 22:26
Another example about the emerged out of that event was the release of funds when there is an international response to a crisis, and how the imbalance is currently between where those funds go to large international institutions should go in and respond compared to the small, smaller regional on the grounds civil society and other actors who are actually often better placed to respond and then sustain the response needed. So when the funds go to the international community, they do not go to the people on the ground, who will be there once the crisis is being declared over, to understand the culture, and you understand the environment and the culture. And one of the reasons for that disconnect is that sometimes those who are closest to it, maybe we just don’t have the understanding of what it takes to mobilize and lead. In other words, there’s a reason that you just don’t throw resources and money out to a group that may or may not be ready to receive them, even though they’re the right ones to receive them, which is where we were getting very strong signals that on the humanitarian side, the NGO side, there are people who really are good, very well connected, have all of the right things, but then they don’t have this basic understanding of Leading and mobilizing in ways that large organizations do, and that’s part of our purpose, is to say we can’t send that. We can’t send them to Geneva, we can’t send them to Boston. We can’t send them away for a leadership development program. We need to be able to bring in pieces that work in different cultures, that resonate for people at all levels. So does your program say something happens in Puerto Rico as an example, and we need to get stuff there, because 80%

Unknown Speaker 24:09
of the population has no water. How would you respond to something like that? Our work isn’t in their response phase. Our work is in my turbulence. It’s ongoing. The challenge with the response phase is in those there are, there is no time made to stop reflecting to a step back from and so we’re thinking about learning and leading. Really need to happen is around in the States, and the time around those issues when there is time, arguably, although that’s the challenge in itself, when there is exactly in before we get to that situation. So it’s really ongoing level. And as much as possible, people are working those environments, either because they live there, because they’re sent there, and finding the time to focus on this is one, well, biggest challenge.

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Challenges in helping the funding aspect of all of this recognize when those right times are and being able to then respond. So there’s another example that takes it out of the peace side and the conflict side, where an organization is responsible for humanitarian aid, one that we work with came to us and said, We have offices around the world, from Panama to

Unknown Speaker 25:24
the Balkans to South America to Africa, and we really need some help in understanding how we can be more effective as an organization. And inside of that, we think that we need some leader development inside of that, and they’re responsible for housing and assisting millions, literally, of displaced people, refugees. And it’s not about post conflict all the time. That’s that can be starvation, that can be any number of situations. And this organization is very good at its logistics. So as Peter’s saying, we don’t come in and tell them how they’re going to distribute their things better. They’re good at that, but they are taking the time right now the setback, and say, we think we can do better. And so what would you say to do that? And so we would like to have, as they say, a common language of leading across our organization, across all these cultures. And so one of the things we are challenged with is both greeting a client or organization like that, understanding their challenge, but then saying stamping one kind of leading across that global organization with those different cultures is probably a mission, impossible if you take a standard, traditional competency model base, okay, so if I if they want to have an assessment of what is a really good leader across our organization. And what are those competencies? They will see that the variation from Panama to Rwanda is pretty, pretty big. Yeah, so you can so we have to look at it differently. And so what are some of the essentials there? And so it changes our definition of what leading is, but we have to meet where they are, because, just because we’re thinking about leading and they’re thinking about leaders and competencies, we have to take time to both educate ourselves. What is it that we can do? So we are working on a global assessment of leading at the team level, okay, where the collectives are the target, not to the individuals. What do effective teams do? Some cultures are calling to focus, right? Assuming more more so than others, more so than us, we define collective as shared work. So what does leaving look like when it happens? Really well, among people who have shared work, right? So Peter and I have shared work. We’ve got things that we have to deliver together. I can’t deliver them with and vice versa, or at least our organization is that way. And so there are teams around the world, but the way they do it in one part of the world might be different than others. So we’re looking at things called direction, alignment and commitment. These are not individual characteristics. These are characteristics of the teams. These are characteristics of the collectives. And so how does DAC direction, like jets, actually produced here and versus there? So we can then go back and say, across the board, you can find advantage in developing these team processes, rather than going in and saying, You need a leader who knows how and has competencies to do A, B and C, because these things are produced in between people, as opposed to by a person telling others to do it. Spring is the season for I do and Worthington jewelers is celebrating with its biggest bridal event of the year. March 10 through the 21st buy one, get one, 50% off all wedding jewelry with over 1500 styles in their showroom and unlimited custom design options. I have no doubt you’ll find the perfect rings that say forever. Don’t miss out on the spring bridal event, march 10 through the 21st only at Worthington jewelers, where Columbus gets engaged

Unknown Speaker 29:00
back to Peter’s point. We’re working with them at a moment, while they’re taking time to step back and do this assessment. We’re not intervening when they’re actually building, let’s say, a village for a particular in Puerto Rico, for example, afterwards they’re going to go into they’re going to do that, and they do that very well for displaced people. But getting leadership training in the middle of that is probably not no but they can reflect afterwards and say, what about this? Went well and they do. And what about this? Can we do better? And they do, and what about that? Can we share across the organization? And so we’re helping them frame that one of our challenges is these are activities that are not well understood. So we’re learning ourselves. So let’s come back on that note, because I’d love to hear more about what you’re learning. What I’m taking away is that the two of you are co creating, pulling from the best literature and research and anything else, a series of

Unknown Speaker 29:58
practices, process.

Unknown Speaker 30:00
Is

Unknown Speaker 30:01
frameworks that will resonate in organizations that didn’t necessarily exist because the world’s different than it was, and what used to be a best practice may not apply in this context for a global humanitarian or post conflict environment, and certainly different in Ethiopia than Detroit, even if you don’t have time to teach leadership in advance and intervention, especially because they’re already quite experienced at this, you can still do an after action review and start the learning process with the reflection process. Is that accurately stated? Yeah, so that’s the learning on my constituent side. What I was alluding to was that because the nature of the way these things are transpiring, not only in our space, but even in corporate space, it’s very turbulent. There are things that we’re learning that we have to in our adaptation of what other people do. We recognize that there are things that we are beginning to understand that we can work to advance, which was part of our mission, to advance understanding of leading in this kind of activity. And so there’s a couple key areas of learning that we are really working on ourselves. So what are those that the obvious

Unknown Speaker 31:20
students come to mind and have come up in this conference in the last day or two, repeatedly. Is the first one is around an ability to create stasis environment where the right kind of dialog can happen at the right time. There is so much about leading, which is about speaking to versus that

Unknown Speaker 31:42
amongst and enormous feeling. And when you say dialog, I think of the David Bong worm and that I am listen to each person, and I speak into the circle also. But in that process, I am willing to be changed by the dialog.

Unknown Speaker 32:00
There is the dialog itself, and then there is creating space where dialog like that and others can happen. What that looks like, obviously, is somewhat situational, but it’s a phenomena. It comes up time and time again, and it’s, to a greater or lesser extent, recognized as a leadership capability. But what we do see is, when

Unknown Speaker 32:25
it is, when it happens, it has an impact. It has an impact in a lot of the spaces we’re working in. So it’s ability to recognize what kind of space is needed to create the space, and then to shape the dialog in that space to whatever the situation demands, is a set of leadership capabilities that either individual or a collective can bring to bear, but that is a key area of focus for us to be able to bring to the table and put into our portfolio. The second one you touched on something about you said both lead, both individual and collective, even if an individual, even if a leader, is capable of doing that, some places the collective kid doesn’t pick it up. So I just wanted to move that and say it really is a collective characteristic. Having a good dialog really depends on two people, right? Even if I’m really open to listening to you, but you feel a distance, or for some reason, there’s a barrier that is structural in some way, cultural, cultural Exactly. So there is a collective characteristic there. So one of the other things we’re learning about is we really need to understand these collective elements, that they go beyond the individual. And so those and those pop up, because when you work with different cultures, the collectives look different because the norms are different. But I cut you off here. I absolutely agree. And the second one just is another example, but again, because it’s come up so many times in the last few days at the LA conference. Here our paradoxes of polarities,

Unknown Speaker 33:59
and we’ve been spending quite a lot of time. Barry Johnson, who’s done a huge amount of work on leveraging polarities. How do you apply yourself to polarities? What does it even mean to recognize what a polarity is and the fact that there are two opposing truths and that maybe it isn’t we need to do one or the other, but actually we need to be able to hold both. And what does that look like, and how do you do that? And I think in when it comes to turbulence, in particular, the phenomenon of polarities or even multilaters, if you want to go there and being able to leverage those and recognize that there is value in continuity and there is value in change, for example, and there is challenge in both as well, and the fact that you can actually achieve leverage on both sides. And it isn’t just an either or it isn’t just we need to stay the same or we need to change, we need to leverage the best of both of those, and that is a higher order

Unknown Speaker 34:57
leading phenomenon. And.

Unknown Speaker 35:00
We learned a bit about vertical development here on the conversation as well, and certainly, to be able to even to go there requires those involved to have achieved a certain level of development around their own thinking. So let’s for listeners who don’t know what polarities are and vertical development, I know for people who have listened to all hundreds interviews they’ve worked this.

Unknown Speaker 35:24
Let’s start with polarity, big definition, and then vertical development definition. Yeah, I’ll take the example I used before, which is continued, continuity and change. In so many organizations, there is a talk of change. We are here today, and we need to change. We need to change to survive or to profit or to increase the scale of our work, or whatever it may be, it’s from true conversation a frog. True conversation suggests that where we are today isn’t good enough, and where we need to go tomorrow is better, as we know, in a complex system, that’s not the whole truth. We understand that there are things about where we are today there are actually things to be proud of, things to hold on to, and things to not let go of, and in our in our well intentioned direction, to go from one place to another, to be where we want to be for the future, we can easily let go of those, or we can let go of the people that are holding on to those because they’re not going to jump on the bandwagon, because they’re not recognizing the value of where we’re going. So it’s an ability to engage a collective around the recognizing what is the value in in continuity, where we are today. What are the good things about that? What are the downsides to that? And then to then also look at, what are the good things about where we’re going, and where we like to get to, but also acknowledging that there are potential downsides to that if we over focus on the change to neglect, or I hope I’m doing very justice here to the neglect of what we’re proud of today. And you shouldn’t apply this to say you can apply this an individual level. I want to be an authentic leader and I want to be a an adaptable leader. Can I do both? The answer is yes, I need to be purposeful about that many you can take that to an organizational level, and you can take that to a science, societal level. And if you listen to Petraeus, General Petraeus interview this morning, you’ll recognize a number of polarities that he was navigating. And many people in those times of environment school recognize their own. I think so then let’s add in the vertical development discussion. Because I think where you were going is most people are not aware of polarities, or talk about polarities, but that at a certain level of developmental maturity we see in either or we don’t see both ends of the pole and the nuance of how to balance and manage those tensions, you’re either changing or you’re staying with saying you’re either right or wrong, whatever polarity you want to use, without going into the long lecture of vertical development, what do you want to say about how vertical Development ties to polarities? To make your point. Vertical development is a developmental model. It means that in leading you can develop yourself horizontally and learn many different things to do, but you also need to develop your cognitive capacity to do more complex things. And one of the most complex things to do for humans is to hold two opposing truths in our heads, because we’re wired for plain slate. We’re wired for making quick assessments of good bad, either or things. But when you’re working in in a social environment, there are many things that just don’t boil down to there getting a collective or getting an individual to learn to embrace and see that there are some things like breathing. There are some things that actually work as an energy system. Change and continuity work in energy, getting people to understand not only the concept, but then to be able to work with it in a way that’s constructed. We see people who can work with it very well, destructively. I don’t use any particular leaders, but if you want to understand the power of polarity, just look at when things go bad, when people decide deliberately to leverage polarities in a negative way. That same energy, that same power, can be used to leverage polarities in a positive way. And that’s a very advanced skill. We probably don’t like calling it an advanced skill when we look at it being used in a negative way, but if it’s being done consciously, which I believe it is, in this circumstance, it’s a high skill. There’s an element of vertical development that says, at some point we need to we gain capability to think and do things in a more complex way, without a long definition what vertical is and polarity thinking really is a little bit more complex. I have to actually be able to hold two things or more in my head at the same time.

Unknown Speaker 40:00
Nine and begin to say that they both exist and they do create tension. So when we look at the verbal framework, it depends on whose data you use. It’s about 10% of the population who can innately do this. Well, I would say with polarities, one of the things that attracts us to it is that there’s hard work we can do polarities. It’s not that far away. Almost everyone has experienced I’ll give you an example. The first example is, as a parent, do I love my child unconditionally, or do I hold them accountable for their behavior? And hopefully you do both correct. Everybody gets that flat out without question. I want to be loved and not accountable Exactly. So even though we talk about vertical development, put it in there. I don’t want to put don’t want to put clarity so high up on that thing that we say that’s only 10% of the population. I think everybody, everybody has this understanding of tensions and knows that they can work with it. Taking it from your parent child relationships into a functional change, continuity relationship is a different conversation, well within the grasp of far more than 10% so as we were wrapping up, we were talking about what you were learning. What do you want our listeners to take away from this conversation? I would say that one of the things excites us most about being in the ILA and being able to contribute to the function scene is that those who lead influence engaging in the kind of scenarios we’ve talked about. I really do think this is where we can further our understanding of what leading and leadership means. But to do that, we need to research those phenomena in this space. And this is a call to the ILA community to say, Come and further the work of these leaders through your work, by researching what it even means to do and to practice in these kind of environments, because I think that’s where we can do some great work. And I would say beyond the ILA community, to our listener community who may also be doing research but didn’t get to come to the conference or don’t belong to ILA specifically, including some of the business community. Yeah, one is the leading that we see, leading is a is both an individual and a collective, and we over focus on the individual side of it. So there’s something, there’s, I would hope people would take away, is to understand how much of leading is a collective enterprise and where we really need to make our progress right now, and we see organizations that do that in innovation, in other areas where we can make the most progress, particularly in our space, is understanding the shared aspect of leading, and not emphasize the leader aspect, but emphasize the practices, the collective practices, not just individual practices. But what about leading is shared in the team, and how do you bring those forward, and what can you do to make those practices work better? Thank you. And in closing, if someone wants to connect with this work, learn more, contribute in some way. What is the contact information, the website. The other collateral material, how would they learn more? I think yes, reach out to the gcsp website, Geneva center, security, policy, you’ll find those on there. And please do cool. Thank you. Thank you both for your time. Enjoy that

Unknown Speaker 43:22
you

Unknown Speaker 43:25
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