Once considered a solitary journey, achieving professional growth and success can be deeply enriched through building strong relationships with others. Cultivating trust and seeking support from collaborators is invaluable in helping you reach your career goals.
As both a mentor and a mentee, I’ve experienced the critical role that mentorship can play in helping individuals develop the skills and qualities necessary to become leaders. Effective mentors empower their mentees to find purpose in the work they’re doing, ensure they forge their own unique path to success and help them unleash their potential to achieve the impossible.
Mentors can come in a variety of forms, from leaders you admire, to a coworker who advocates for you. What’s most important is that they are individuals with whom you can be your authentic self behind closed doors. They tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. Your mentor should encourage you to think critically about your actions, develop a crucial sense of self-awareness, and identify your strengths and areas of improvement. Through regular engagement with mentors, individuals at all levels can learn different leadership styles to transform into a purposeful leader.
Throughout my career, my mentors have imparted valuable lessons that have played a crucial role in shaping my leadership style. These lessons have been instrumental in helping me guide and mentor others. Here are the three most impactful lessons that I have learned from my mentors, which have defined my leadership philosophy:
Lead with Your ‘Why’: Simply put – a purposeful leader must be engrossed by a personal sense of motivation which drives you and what you stand for. Early in my career, my mentors emphasized that finding my ‘why’ was critical to differentiating myself and reinforcing to key stakeholders I was a leader they could trust. It has served me well in my journey to operating an organization that cares about more than just the bottom line.
Develop Resiliency: I make it a priority to nurture resilience in all my mentees because I believe it is a critical attribute for purposeful leadership. In today’s constantly changing economic and societal landscape, leaders who can guide their organizations through adversity and inspire adaptability are more likely to succeed and retain top talent.
Discard the Traditional Leadership Model: As a mentor and purposeful leader, we are tasked with creating the benchmark of tomorrow’s leaders while meeting the diverse needs and demands of our stakeholders, including our employees. Being a “traditional” leader is no longer adequate to grow a business. Employees are looking to buy into their leaders’ philosophy, and consumers are motivated to buy into responsible brands that leave a sustainable impact. This can only be done once we establish a higher-order goal for our business that unites and clarifies our ambition in service of our financial targets. When married with personal and corporate resilience, purpose can be used to advance our mission and our bottom line in new and engaging ways.
Mentorship has defined my purposeful leadership at Pernod Ricard and in fact, it is what initially brought me to this organization – even as an industry outsider. Mentorship has empowered me to bring my whole self to work and lend my story to campaigns like Absolut Vodka’s #SexResponsibly, raising awareness around a crucial issue that our industry not only has the responsibility to address, but the power to change. The issue is one close to my heart, and I knew that my story would ground the campaign in the authenticity it deserved. Without the motivation of my mentors, I would not have had the confidence to take such a personal risk, and lead Pernod Ricard North America with purpose.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ann Mukherjee joined PRNA (Pernod Ricard) as CEO in December 2019. An industry outsider and woman of color, Ann is focused on delivering both ROI and ROR (return on responsibility). She’s advanced the business through ambiguity, driving a transformation rooted in the science of predictable consumer demand and guiding PRNA to record-breaking profits in 2021. Ann has launched award-winning brand campaigns and initiatives around consent, voting and hate speech. Ann has been recognized by Forbes 2022 ‘50 over 50’; Forbes’ Top 50 Most Influential CMOs; ADCOLOR’s Legend Award and was inducted into the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Hall of Fame.
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From neurology to organizational psychology, we constantly strive to bring you the latest in leadership development. That means we will occasionally explore leadership topics that are on the edge, outliers from the mainstream, but nonetheless may play a role in leadership development in years to come. That starts with today’s newsletter. It’s about the rising use of psychedelics among leaders not as recreation, but to help with decision making and other business issues. As we take this first step in exploring lesser-known perspectives on leadership, we understand some people are uncomfortable with the concept of psychedelic use, but believe keeping you informed is important.
Please note that microdosing is not for everyone, may not be legal where you live, can exacerbate certain conditions, and should always occur with an experienced, certified coach or therapist.
Microdosing, or taking “sub-perceptual” low doses of psychedelics, has many applications for people who are experiencing emotional distress and those who generally feel well. One lesser-known benefit of microdosing is enhanced leadership.
A sub-perceptual low dose of a psychedelic is low enough that you don’t experience classic psychedelic effects like visual distortions, hallucinations, intense emotional states, a strong body high, and deep introspection. However, this dose should still be high enough for you to “feel it” slightly.
You may experience an elevation in mood, creativity, mindfulness, focus, and energy. A microdosing regimen usually follows a routine such as dosing one day, taking two days off, then microdosing on the third day. You’ll typically repeat this protocol for a few weeks to a few months.
Many people experience mental health benefits following microdosing magic mushrooms or LSD, such as the alleviation of depression symptoms. 2021 research published in Scientific Reports revealed that microdosers report lower levels of anxiety and depression, and higher levels of well-being compared to non-microdosers.
The Relationship Between Microdosing and Leadership
Austin emphasizes that better leaders are desperately needed right now: “As the world evolves and we continue to develop new technology at a breathtaking pace, leadership demands are increasing.”
But what does it mean to be an effective leader? Austin explains: “Leaders need to adapt quickly to new situations and bring a creative, entrepreneurial problem-solving spirit to their endeavors. Microdosing can enhance both abilities.”
This connection between the microdosing experience and leadership is informed by Austin’s personal experiences, as he believes his “leadership path and overall character development are closely tied to microdosing.”
Prior to starting Third Wave, Austin had minimal leadership experience, but he cultivated that skill by starting and growing the company. Deriving benefits from a microdosing regimen, he discovered the many joys of leadership:
Articulating a vision that resonates with people
Contributing to a cause and mission greater than oneself
Being able to speak about uncomfortable topics
Cultivating the skills of social intelligence and public speaking
Empowering team members to be responsible, purposeful, passionate, and productive
Austin believes microdosing may also provide changes in thinking, feeling, and behavior that can prove beneficial when dealing with leadership challenges, namely, learning how to deal with criticism, and prioritizing self-care instead of overworking.
Managing the Ego
Leaders must be able to create a positive work culture where employees feel empowered to be their best selves.
“Leadership is evolving to be less hierarchical, dominant, and aggressive, and more about curating and cultivating space to allow the best people to step in and contribute,” says Austin.
This requires “managing the ego,” according to Austin. Managing the ego means not reacting defensively when your self-image feels threatened, being open to honest feedback, and accepting criticism as an opportunity to improve. Self-aware leaders should be secure enough to admit wrongdoing without losing sight of their vision. “Microdosing can help leaders make this shift,” says Austin.
A Balanced Approach to Thinking and Feeling
An effective leader is someone who knows when to take an analytical approach to problems and when to follow their gut feelings.
To find this balance, however, and adapt these styles in light of changing circumstances, “requires a significant degree of honest self-reflection,” and many business leaders have found that microdosing enables such a mindset.
Microdosing can “facilitate a flexible balance” and adaptability with regard to the different attitudes we can take towards problems in business, according to Austin, and thereby help leaders adapt to an uncertain future.
Austin also used this balancing of two important ways of being when building Third Wave. He states:
“I have hired team members on several occasions by focusing solely on how their skill sets would allow them to contribute. Determining this fit was task-based—I had to create clear expectations of everyone’s tasks.
“At other times, the candidate’s values have taken center stage in the hiring process. I understand that my feeling and intuition of who the person was and my sense of the values that dictated their work were better predictors of success in the long run.”
Divergent Thinking and Creativity
Novel problems require creative solutions. Many business leaders find that microdosing improves divergent thinking, or the processing of creating multiple, unique ideas or solutions to a problem you are facing.
Leaders also succeed when immersed in finding new and better ways of completing a task, a process that they find deeply fulfilling. Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has called this process flow. “The adaptability and focus that go hand-in-hand with microdosing perfectly complement this concept,” says Austin.
Many entrepreneurs can also have some of their best creative ideas when in a microdose headspace. As Austin told Quartz, “I started microdosing in June 2015 and I did it for seven months, and through that I came up with the idea of the Third Wave.”
In 2020, Business Insider also reported on how company founders were generating new business ideas through microdosing. And a 2018 study found that “both convergent and divergent thinking performance was improved after a non-blinded microdose.” (Convergent thinking involves reaching one well-defined solution to a problem.)
On Tribal Leadership
In the book Tribal Leadership, authors Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright explain the state of leadership culture today and how we can shift toward one that prioritizes the common good. While the authors don’t discuss microdosing, Austin believes that this practice of using psychedelic medicine is relevant to generating compassionate leadership.
In Tribal Leadership, the authors argue that professional cultures in the US are mostly defined by the excellence of the individual, not the group. A more evolved kind of culture, they believe, is a collective of core values and group members working toward a shared goal.
When leaders embody this latter kind of culture, the benefits are myriad: new waves of creativity and success and reduced fear, stress, and friction. As touched on previously, by reducing the grip of the ego and encouraging creativity and flexibility, microdosing can help leaders see why a collaborative culture is much healthier and more productive than a competitive, egocentric approach to leadership.
Final Thoughts on Microdosing and Leadership
Austin summarizes the benefits of microdosing to leaders as follows:
The requirements to succeed as a twenty-first-century entrepreneur—the ability to find creative solutions that address complex or chaotic problems, the capacity to self-reflect honestly and incorporate feedback from several sources in your processes, and the power to tap into a flow state to produce your best, most meaningful work—are things that microdosing supports. Of course, microdosing alone won’t make you a great entrepreneur. Still, it does hold the potential to unlock the qualities that leaders need to develop and carry out their visions in a dynamic and fast-changing world.
Disclaimer: Psychedelics are largely illegal substances, and we do not encourage or condone their use where it is against the law. However, we accept that illicit drug use occurs and believe that offering responsible harm reduction information is imperative to keeping people safe. For that reason, this document is designed to enhance the safety of those who decide to use these substances.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paul F. Austin is one of the most prominent voices in the world of psychedelics.
As the founder of Third Wave, he has educated millions on the importance of safe and effective psychedelic experiences. A pioneer at the intersection of microdosing, personal transformation, and professional success, he has been featured in Forbes, Rolling Stone, and the BBC’s Worklife.
Paul helps others use microdosing as a tool for professional development and increased self-awareness by treating the use of psychedelics as a skill refined through mentorship and courageous exploration.
Learning how to master this skill will be crucial in the story of humanity’s present-future evolution.
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Dr. Ciela Hartanov, a futurist, organizational psychologist, human behavior expert, writer, and thinker dedicated to reinventing work, shared this article as a companion to her podcastPrepare for the Future with Foresight.
Exploring the Future, Today
Anticipating, preparing for, and shaping the future is essential as the world continues to be more uncertain than ever. The best leaders and organizations recognize that they need to keep themselves educated and on top of emerging factors that may influence business longevity. The Vitality Index from BCG shows that organizations who are most resilient over the long run continuously develop future growth options, proactively anticipating how emergent change will impact them. To do this requires a comprehensive and strategic innovation approach.
Humcollective provides a systematic innovation approach that 1. Scans the environment for signals of change and impactful trends 2. Develops strategies to capitalize on opportunities or mitigate risks and 3. Embeds the shift into strategic organizational plans and change initiatives.
For the purposes of this article, the focus is on sharing more information about Step 1: Scan, which leverages foresight as the foundation. Foresight uses trending and forecasting tools to move beyond the known. It is designed to help us better understand future possibilities in order to build the strategic plans of tomorrow, today.
Collecting Inputs
Innovation comes from seeing what others do not yet see and making sense of patterns in a new way. Thus, the first step is scanning the environment for signals of change — the early warning signs of a shift underway. The process of identifying and analyzing signals allows us to anticipate the development of emerging trends. A cluster of signals indicates a trend is forming. By analyzing the trends, patterns and relationships that may not be immediately apparent are identified. It is important to look at both the macro and micro trends that may have an outsized impact on your industry to inform decision-making and planning.
Macro trends
Macro trends (sometimes called Drivers) have longer lasting periods of influence and are a pervasive and persistent shift at the global level, often in technology, economies or other influences on society at large. For example, an important trend in technology worth watching right now is Web3, a new iteration of the internet that is more decentralized and self-regulated. Let’s say we want to understand Web3 more deeply and how it might impact your industry. We would conduct a comprehensive process of monitoring and analyzing signals, events, and advances in Web3 that could indicate a potential change or opportunity. Through the systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of information from a variety of sources, emerging patterns show how Web3 could impact an industry, organization or department.
Micro trends
Micro trends are faster acting and accelerate change. They give us quicker directional signals of what is changing and help us make sense of the macro trends. If we are exploring Web3 as an important technological driver, then we would look to micro trends in that area. For example, NFTs or the Metaverse, which are all part of the larger Web3 ecosystem but are having different impacts and show us different aspects of Web3’s impact.
Micro trend scanning comes from many places — first hand observations of human behavior, expert analysis and interviews, scanning communities of interest across the internet, varied and global news reports and many more. The result of this process is an organized collection of curated trends about your area of interest.
Making Sense of the Inputs
Once a trend collection has been completed, the information becomes valuable when it is turned into patterns and themes. At this stage, we begin to ask the question: What is all this telling us? This begins the process of understanding potential consequences of the emerging trends.
To start to make sense of the inputs, three dimensions are explored: Time, Impact, and Probability. By looking at the time horizon of the trend, the impact it could have across many dimensions (society, politics, business, etc.), and the level of certainty of its unfolding, a business can begin to map the most important issues now and over the long term.
Once you have scanned the environment by collecting inputs and made sense of them, you are ready to move to Steps 2 and 3 in the innovation Strategize and Shape. This is where scenarios for the future are developed and acted upon in the context of your business. While we are not exploring these steps in this article, you can learn more about the end-to-end innovation process by reading a case study about how Google used the process to reshape their learning agenda.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Ciela Hartanov is a futurist, organizational psychologist, human behavior expert, writer, and thinker dedicated to reinventing work. She helps leaders create a revolution inside the modern workplace, one aimed at breaking a system that promotes work practices that have existed since the industrial era. She was part of the founding team of The Google School for Leaders and Head of Next Practice Innovation and Strategy at Google, where she developed projects designed to shape the future of leadership and work. She currently runs humcollective, a boutique strategy and innovation firm that helps companies, executives, and teams make sense of the forces shaping the future and prepare strategically.
RESOURCES:
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https://www.innovativeleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Ciela-Pic.png263468Jenna Reikhttps://www.innovativeleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ILI-Anniversary-Logo.pngJenna Reik2023-03-30 18:18:002024-11-25 20:09:28 Prepare for the Future with Foresight
I often say that mis- and disinformation only succeed in a vacuum. When people cannot access good, quality information, they turn to what is available – and in today’s media environment, what is most available are lies and conspiracy theories.
In the world of 50, 40, even 30 years ago, the media ecosystem was highly centralized. Information sprung from one location and was disseminated by trusted sources. Legacy media like national and local newspapers and trusted cable news programs provided an authoritative source for factual information. These outlets served as trusted gatekeepers. They determined what was newsworthy information and what would make it into the collective consciousness of the audience at large.
Today’s reality is much different. The current media and information ecosystem is increasingly decentralized and Americans are more and more getting their news and information from social media. These platforms operate on algorithms that reward emotional and salacious content and exploit personal biases. On top of that, legacy media is shifting. Local newspapers are dying at an alarming rate and national publications put their content behind paywalls and target elite audiences, leaving the average American consumer behind.
This dangerous perfect storm has allowed for the rise of those information vacuums in which disinformation thrives in the form of online echo chambers.
People do not live in news deserts – information and news is readily available all over the internet. Rather they are trapped in these echo chambers that feed and are fueled by social media algorithms. Social media is adapting to our changing news consumption behaviors and traditional media outlets are not. Algorithms that are set to feed off of people’s biases create a streamlined flow of bad information into echo chambers, aided by the attention economy—the more you engage, the longer you stay, the more ads that can be sold to the consumer. On top of this, social media users are being served salacious and emotional content because reactivity leads to better performance of posts.
The solution to this is to shatter these echo chambers and fill the vacuums on social media with good, quality, and factual information. In the absence of algorithmic reform and increased regulation of the big social media platforms, we need solutions that play their game to increase the volume and quantity of this good information online.
We can get more people engaged in their local communities and civic responsibilities by giving this information a fighting chance on social media. Let’s make local news and information compete in the algorithm, and use engagement to drive the trusted news that traditional media outlets and trusted journalists are producing in front of the average citizen.
Good information and quality reporting needs to be packaged in a way that works with algorithms and will engage audiences. Graphics with topline information and skimmable yet informative headlines and informative video clips are easily shareable and effective content pieces. They are also more accessible for the average citizen who may find themselves trapped in an information echo chamber. They are not placed behind a paywall and aren’t boring long-form articles that are written for the pundit and academic classes.
We can adjust how news is distributed so that it’s easily readable in someone’s newsfeed, or as they’re scrolling through Instagram, or checking their emails in the morning. It’s also important to innovate and adapt these strategies to changing trends on social media platforms. For example, with the rise of vertical videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, reporting should adapt to match demand from social media users and younger audiences.
Not only are legacy media outlets not adapting to this new reality and media ecosystem, our leaders are also slow to adapt. In order to communicate effectively with constituents and get ahead of dis- and misinformation, leaders need to meet constituents where they are getting their information. They too can break through the echo chambers and get good information into the algorithms.
This idea that the best way to break echo chambers and fight disinformation is by getting more good info in circulation online allows for individual agency as well. We all have the power to share more good, factual content which we interact with on our social channels.
Fighting the information war in the new and evolving media ecosystem is a systemic effort. It’s going to require adaptation and evolution from media, government, and individuals. But a world with more good info is possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tara McGowan is the founder and Publisher of Courier Newsroom and CEO of Good Information Inc, a civic incubator that invests in immediate solutions to counter disinformation online. A former political strategist with an early career in journalism, Tara has seen firsthand how America’s information crisis has contributed to the rising threat of authoritarianism and the deterioration of social trust.
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https://www.innovativeleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Screenshot-39.png830830Jenna Reikhttps://www.innovativeleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ILI-Anniversary-Logo.pngJenna Reik2023-03-22 13:11:412024-02-26 20:09:54How Disinformation Shapes Your World
Brenda Hampel and Erika Lamont, founding partners of Connect the Dots Consulting, a boutique management consulting firm with deep expertise in leadership onboarding, coaching, and team effectiveness share this article as a companion to their podcast Onboard with Care: Welcoming a New Leader.
Ainsley was excited and nervous. She was starting her new role as senior leader of a sales team for a large, prominent medical device supplier. It was her “dream job” with its scope of responsibilities, opportunities for advancement and being a leader in a purpose-led organization. She had completed all her pre-hire requirements and was ready to get started, but hadn’t heard from her new manager, Richard, since she accepted the job. She tried reaching out a few times but got no response; her HR contact assured her that “everything was fine” and she would have time with Richard in her first week to talk about getting her up to speed.
On her first day, Ainsley shows up at the office and is greeted by the front-deck receptionist who leads her into a conference room. Then a series of HR folks come in and out of the room with additional paperwork and some company information. The last person shows her to her office and politely leaves after a brief tour of the department. Richard is not around and who she thinks are some of her team members are looking at her curiously.
What happened?
Some call it new leader onboarding, or executive transition, others may refer to it as leader “integration” or executive “assimilation”, but what we know from our more than 20 years’ experience, is that the “Sink or Swim” approach to leadership transition is NOT a successful strategy.
The data still report that between 40 and 60% of leaders who are either entering a new organization or are internally promoted will fail. The most shocking thing about this statistic is that it hasn’t changed much in the last ten years! Organizations are not getting better at onboarding new leaders and teams and business results are taking the hit for this lack of attention to an important part of an organization’s talent life cycle.
What we do know is that companies who onboard their leaders with purpose have a 90% likelihood that their teams will meet their 3-year performance goals, and experience 13% less attrition than if the leaders received no onboarding support.
The model we have adopted and leverage begins with Pre-start, the time during which the new leader has accepted the job, but not yet officially started through about the first six months. This timeframe can be longer or shorter depending on the organizational culture – in larger, more mature companies, leaders are “new” longer than in smaller, start-up cultures.
We know from our work that new leaders need:
Knowledge – about the company, its culture, their roles
Relationships – strong trust built with the manager, team members, peers, and other stakeholders
Feedback – actionable data about how they are integrating into the organization
But, so many organizations, like Ainsley’s, don’t have a formal process for onboarding their new leaders creating a huge missed opportunity for the leader, team, and broader organization.
What can organizations do to start to address this gap that causes millions of dollars in turnover, disengagement, and misalignment?
Start with these 5 steps to up your leadership onboarding game:
One: Get Real about Objectives
Consider the big picture when forming your onboarding objectives for your leaders. What are the “pain points” that new leaders typically encounter? Turning those into measurable objectives can help turn-around your onboarding experience. For example, structure in Ainsley’s pre-start phase would have eliminated some of her anxiety and stress. It may have also offered the opportunity to build relationships with her boss, her peers or team members.
Two: Make a Plan
Even if your organization doesn’t yet have a structured process, you can create a plan for your individual new leaders. If you are the HR partner, you can have a conversation with the boss to determine the things that the new leader should focus on in their first 90 days, and with whom they need to build relationships. Help the new leader understand why she was hired and what the organization’s expectations are for her. With everyone on the same page there is less room for ambiguity, and it increases both accountability to and transparency of what is expected.
Three: Prepare the Team
When a leader’s role has been vacant for a while or there is an interim manager, the transition for the team to a new leader can be tough. As soon as it’s appropriate, let the team know who has been selected, what the leader will bring, and allow for questions or concerns to be shared. If someone on the team applied for the role and didn’t get it, then a separate conversation is critical. Facilitating a version of a New Leader Integration exercise is also helpful.
Four: Give Actionable Feedback
Often new leaders are not given feedback and are left to guess how they are fitting in. We created a 360- tool that is launched at about the 45–60-day mark to capture this early feedback and help leaders course correct. Many leaders with whom we worked, have said that this feedback “literally saved them”. The report shares perceptions of key stakeholders to provide a snapshot of that leader’s onboarding. The conversations that happen after the data is shared has helped hundreds of leaders see gaps and make changes to address them before the organization decides that they “are not a good fit”. It’s important to note that onboarding feedback is different than performance or development feedback.
Five: Leverage Professional Coaching
Most new leaders are hesitant to ask for onboarding coaching out of concern they will be viewed as less competent or needy. This mindset is starting to shift, however, and leaders can—and should—advocate for themselves, especially if it has been awhile since they changed roles or if the role is high-risk/high reward for the organization. Other factors to consider are how long the role was open, if any current team members wanted the role, and if significant changes must be implemented. All these conditions can be potential showstoppers for even the most seasoned executives, and cause churn for the leader, her team, and the organization. A coach will bring process and structure to the onboarding experience while supporting both the new leader as well as his boss in managing the transition successfully.
Transitioning into a new role doesn’t have to be painful or costly. Organizations that are intentional about leadership onboarding will reap the benefits many times. Leaders will be able to make the impact they were hired to, teams will thrive and grow, and company goals will be realized faster, potentially exceeding expectations.
Ainsley had to experience the “hard side” of leadership onboarding and won’t have the springboard for success that she could have if her new company had provided more thoughtful planning for her entry. Unfortunately, she is in the sink-or-swim lane now.
ABOUT THE GUESTS:
Erika Lamont is an executive coach, author, speaker and founding partner of Connect the Dots Consulting. Connect the Dots is a boutique management consulting firm providing deep expertise in leadership onboarding, coaching, and team effectiveness. Erika brings a distinctive blend of operational experience and leadership development skills to her client base. Erika has held leadership roles inside large organizations such as Riverside Methodist Hospital, part of the OhioHealth Corporation, and Bath & Body Works, a division of The Limited, Inc.—experience that has been advantageous to her coaching practice.
Erika is a Master Certified Executive Coach (MCEC) and an active member of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches. She is also a certified coach for Marshall Goldsmith’s Stakeholder Centered Coaching and blends her own leadership experiences with the proven methods of best-practice coaching. Erika graduated from Miami University with a BA in Political Science, has two adult daughters, and currently lives with her husband in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.
Brenda Hampel – Strategic thinker. Trusted Advisor. Business leader. Nationally recognized leadership author, speaker and senior executive coach. Brenda Hampel brings these accomplishments and skills to provide senior leaders with the tools, insights and customized solutions that empower their leadership capabilities and strengthen their organization.
Prior to co-founding Connect The Dots Consulting over sixteen years ago, Brenda had already earned industry-wide respect as a premier senior level coach. Today, she continues to help corporate leaders, and academic medical center senior level executives develop and apply strategies to navigate the complex challenges leaders face in their real-world environments.
Having co-authored three well-received books — all published by McGraw-Hill — on topics ranging from onboarding to talent assessment, Brenda remains an influential thought leader in the industry. But her most fulfilling work remains helping senior level management improve their organization through highly effective leadership skills gained from customized solutions that are the hallmark of her impressive approach to coaching.
Brenda, a proud graduate of The Ohio State University, is certified as a Marshall Goldsmith’s Stakeholder-Centered Coaching methodology, and is further certified in multiple assessment tools. When not helping corporate and academic leaders strengthen and expand their leadership skills, Brenda relishes time with her family, often in challenging outdoor activities.
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Our guest, Betsy Meyers, shares her insights about two key leadership questions:
1. Why is it that some leaders challenge and motivate us to be our best selves, while others drain our spirit? What are the key ingredients of leadership necessary for getting results with the modern workforce and customer?
Becoming an effective leader—someone who is able to rally others around a cause, who inspires others to collaborate towards a common goal, who can bring people together to make a powerfully positive difference in the world—starts with leading ourselves. The bedrock of leadership is honest self-reflection and a personal commitment to the lifelong pursuit of unblinking self-knowledge.
Being an effective leader often has less to do with knowing the answers, and far more to do with being willing to ask the important questions— and listening to the input, experiences, and perspectives of those around you. The answers are most often right in our midst, just waiting for a leader to recognize, articulate, and act on them.
And finally, good leadership at its core is about the positive feelings it creates. Imagine a world where people felt valued, appreciated, and understood, both at work and at home. It’s a beautiful thought and a leader can truly make a difference when they connect to their hearts and embrace our shared humanity.
2. As we elaborate on the topic of feelings, let’s clarify what that really means. How is leadership about feelings? This statement sounds a bit soft. How can leadership relating to feelings drive results?
Advanced degrees, years of experience, an important title, or access to power do not guarantee that you will be a successful leader. Leadership is about how you make people feel—about you, about the project or work you’re doing together, and especially about themselves.
Why? Because people do their best work when they feel good about themselves and what they’re doing. When people feel valued, appreciated, heard, supported, acknowledged, and included, they are motivated to bring their best selves forward. This is how initiatives get launched, profits are made, and the work gets done. It’s not just about being nice, it is about being effective.
Most of us don’t think of feelings as being the key to leadership success. It seems almost counterintuitive. But think for a moment about the times in your life when you have been most productive: were those also the times when you felt most valued, supported, and appreciated?
The ILI team wanted to elaborate on Betsy’s comments because they strongly support the idea that how people feel at work drives performance, improves customer experience, and ultimately contributes to profitability.
There are several frameworks ranging from the Gallup Engagement framework to Jim Ritchie-Dunham’s Harmonic Vibrancy framework that prove statistically that people who feel good about themselves while at work and feel good about the people with whom they work, are more engaged in the mission and deliver tangibly better results.
Here are a few examples of research studies that support this:
A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that happy employees are 31% more productive than their unhappy peers. The study also found that happy employees take fewer sick days, have lower turnover rates, and are more likely to provide excellent customer service.
Research conducted by Gallup found a 23% difference in profitability between companies with highly engaged employees and those with low employee engagement.
A study by the University of Warwick found that happy employees were 12% more productive than their unhappy counterparts.
A report by the World Economic Forum found that companies that prioritize employee well-being outperform their peers in terms of financial performance.
According to a study by the University of California, Riverside, happy employees are more creative and innovative, leading to higher levels of innovation and a better ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
How employees feel impacts the bottom line – it is part of a path to profitability! By creating a supportive and positive work environment, companies can increase productivity, reduce turnover, and improve customer service, leading to increased profits and long-term success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Betsy Myers is on a mission to improve leadership by developing leaders and teams who infuse passion and purpose into their organizations by leading from both the head and the heart. Betsy’s insightful keynotes and workshops have inspired and offered practical guidance to executives and managers around the world who want to level up their leadership, retain top talent, and achieve results in the modern workplace.
Betsy is a renowned expert on emerging leadership trends and women’s leadership and is the author of Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You. She currently serves on the Council on Advancing Women in Business for the Export-Import Bank of the United States and has extensive experience in the corporate world, government settings, and in higher education.
Previously, she was founding director of the Center for Women and Business at Bentley University and executive director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School. A senior adviser to two U.S. presidents, Betsy served as President Clinton’s Advisor on Women’s Issues and was Chief Operating Officer of President Obama’s 2008 National Presidential Campaign. She also held leadership roles in the U.S. Small Business Administration.
RESOURCES:
Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.
https://www.innovativeleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/How-do-you-feel.png11161444Jenna Reikhttps://www.innovativeleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ILI-Anniversary-Logo.pngJenna Reik2023-03-16 20:36:122024-02-26 20:04:48Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You
The healthcare industry is one of the most challenged industries in the world. Particularly in the wake of COVID, healthcare leaders face a multitude of hurdles: medical staff burnout, insufficient patient rooms in hospitals to meet demand, less access to healthcare for many people, rising operating costs, and so much more.
They may feel insurmountable, but Mass General Brigham — a Boston-based integrated healthcare system — uses three core steps to meet those challenges, and create a more effective, efficient, and equitable system of care in the process.
Step 1. Gather leaders together to create a common vision
Forging a common vision pulls a team’s perspective away from their own silos. By understanding the larger mission and goals of the organization, every department has a “north star” to point their actions to the overall healthcare system’s success. That generates consensus, and every employee, from custodial service to the O.R.’s most elite surgical team, can see how their work contributes to this shared vision of the future.
To ensure the success of the vision, include all stakeholders in the process. Bring together different perspectives from across the organization. Communicate the vision across your entire organization. It’s up to leaders to create a culture of accountability and support for the vision, too. This can include setting up clear performance metrics, providing resources and incentives for achieving goals, and recognizing those who contribute to the success of the vision.
Step 2. Begin with the end in mind: think, design and act from the patient back
The core mission for any healthcare leader centers on one goal: the best possible outcome for every patient. Key to that is challenging the narrative of “we’ve always done it this way,” and finding new approaches to solving both new and enduring problems.
The COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be an unexpected accelerator for such change. It forced people to work remotely, think differently, and suspend what they thought was required in order to provide the best patient care. At Mass General Brigham, for example, virtual care visits went from a few thousand to over two million in just one year. Working back from patients’ need to continue seeing doctors despite quarantine, Mass General took existing technology, innovated with it, and implemented today’s more robust virtual visit system.
Step 3. Accelerate the implementation and use of existing technology to deliver care
This flows directly from Step 2’s COVID lesson. Seeing existing systems and technologies in a new light can have tremendous benefit for patients. Focusing on the common goal helps your team envision ways to reshape treatments, procedures, and delivery of care through both research and innovation.
An added bonus: if your healthcare team is already thinking in new and innovative ways, they’ll be more prepared to continue serving patients well in the next crisis.
Dr. Anne Klibanski has proven the value of these steps as President and CEO of Mass General Brigham. Through her leadership, and her team’s dedication, they have created an integrated healthcare system that has the patient at the center, and are constantly working to shape a better future for their patients.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Dr. Anne Klibanski is President and CEO of Mass General Brigham, a Boston-based integrated healthcare system that includes internationally known Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, nationally recognized specialty hospitals, seven community hospitals, a health insurance company, physician networks, community health centers, home-based care, and long-term care services.
Dr. Klibanski’s vision for Mass General Brigham is to build the integrated academic health care system of the future with patients at the center, by transforming care, improving outcomes, and expanding impact locally, nationally, and globally. She has led clinical integration of services across the system, spearheaded the development of new digital platforms to achieve digital care, and overseen the increased investment in leading-edge research since assuming the role in 2019.
RESOURCES:
Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.
Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, wrote the article as a companion to her podcast with Mark Palmer and Edmund (Eddie) Moore, Is Your Organization Designed for the Future?Mark Palmer is a thought leader, author, consultant, and entrepreneur specializing in organizational change management, leadership development, strategic performance, and workforce solutions innovation. Edmund (Eddie) Moore is a strategist, organizational architect, and facilitator of change. Eddie works with executives and leadership teams to harness their wisdom, envision what’s possible, and develop practical solutions for successful transformation.
As we navigate the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) world, the pace of leadership development must change. We have heard the phrase “lifelong learner” for years, maybe even decades, and it means different things to different people. Therefore, I want to explore how leadership development and company goals align during rapidly changing times.
How we prepare our leaders is a strategic differentiator for organizations. Outdated and ineffective leaders damage the organization, employee engagement and longevity, culture, client satisfaction and, ultimately, economic impact. As we face an economic downturn across most industries and geographies, we also face significant change across most industries. According to the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2023, “the world is facing a set of risks that feel both wholly new and eerily familiar. We have seen a return of ‘older’ risks—inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, capital outflows from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare—which few of this generation’s business leaders and public policy-makers have experienced.” With this volume of change, organizations must continually refine their definition of future-ready leaders and a future-ready organization and invest in those changes.
Successful leaders and organizations must regularly elevate their leadership to accomplish their missions and thrive. They must solve problems and create paths forward to lead in their fields. This means they are elevating themselves and enabling their organizations.
With workforce changes such as significant turnover, retirements and older employees returning, we need to recalibrate how we look at leadership. For example, we see younger employees getting leadership opportunities sooner because of COVID, and they’re often leading more-seasoned employees, some working part-time or with adjusted schedules.
We have discussed the leadership life cycle as the path leaders take over their careers. In this article, we are expanding that definition to include how companies need to look at leadership development in the future, especially in complex times. Previously, progressive organizations built performance management systems that included leaders. Those systems were updated on occasion. However, many prior structures and processes are breaking down, and companies need to rethink them and create adaptable systems that can evolve as needs change.
How do you evolve the leadership life cycle?
The leadership life cycle includes organizations attending to the following elements:
The definition of future-ready leaders. Refine the mindsets, behaviors and training to support leaders in building those mindsets. This means integrating topics such as anti-fragile resilience and teaching leaders to build a more substantial capacity to bounce back from disruption. How are you sensing the environmental changes and updating your leadership models?
The vision of a future-ready organization. How we structure, govern, plan, and run our organizations has changed since the advent of tools like the internet, cloud computing, and remote work. With advances in robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, and other technological advances, we need to evolve how we run our organizations. Leading and running are intertwined. How are you reevaluating your mission and vision in a changing landscape? What is your strategic advantage in 2023 and beyond? What does an organization that is successful at this vision look like?
Organizational structure. Many companies are accomplishing work differently now than in the past. In addition to the work task composition changing, companies need to realign much quicker to meet market changes. As evidence of this, the tech industry let go of nearly 100,000 people so far this year. For most of these companies, the cuts result from reduced revenue and don’t necessarily equal reduced work volume. Companies must be agile in realigning the work, which can mean realigning the organizational structure. Do our traditional reporting ratios still work? How do we account for contract labor, outsourced teams and flexible project teams in our organizational structures?
Measurement. Leverage existing tools and processes to identify emerging leaders. As the criteria change, we need to continue to evolve our tools. The tools must consider operational characteristics, not just experience or personality type. While experience is an important measure, companies can quickly and reliably determine fit-for-role when combined with operational DNA. This means roles are assessed to create profiles. I assert that the missing link measures operational DNA as a critical fit indicator. This is a new approach.
Succession planning. As leadership changes, we need to identify the criteria for future leader success and build a pipeline that reflects future-ready leader criteria. This means we must intensify our training efforts—even when facing recessionary pressures. Companies that invest in training consistently outperform those whose leadership investment ebbs and flows with profitability.
Alignment. Each component needs to be continually aligned to ensure success. Culture is a significant part of this alignment. What culture are we creating? Are we deliberate about the unwritten rules and the messages we send to our people about what we value, who we are and how we operate?
These elements work in harmony to form the leadership life cycle. First, companies must evolve to meet and optimally respond to client expectations. Leaders need to evolve to meet company goals. Finally, these elements must be considered together to optimize results significantly as change accelerates and companies face economic headwinds.
Where do you start?
While doing a full-scale evaluation is generally the most effective approach, for many organizations, this is too much to take on in the short term. Instead, I strongly recommend a comprehensive review of organizational strategy, values, operating principles and alignment for companies with resources and appetites. Determining where realignment is needed in the organization can better enable it to accomplish its mission. You can then map changes over time.
For organizations that need to take immediate action, we recommend mapping key roles and testing both current and emerging leaders. This process can help you identify gaps for current leaders and build your bench of future-ready leaders. This is where we look at fit-for-role using operational DNA. As a note, the criteria for future-ready leaders will continue to evolve as the world evolves, so this is a living process.
ABOUT THE GUESTS:
Mark Palmer is a thought leader, author, consultant, and entrepreneur specializing in organization change management, leadership development, strategic performance, and workforce solutions innovation. He is a co-founder and managing partner for Hire Direction, a data-driven organization solutions consultancy and 2022 recipient of Forbes America’s Best Management Consulting Firms. Mark was co-founder and Chief Product Officer for LaborGenome, and lead innovator for talent alignment modeling technologies. He is co-creator of the Position Success Indicator (PSI) and DEV:Q (Development Quotient) organizational performance metrics. Mark is also an advisor and consultant with the Innovative Leadership Institute (ILI), focusing on leadership coaching, team building, and organizational effectiveness. He was a founding member and facilitator for Integral Institute, an international think-tank created to combine progressive organizational research with practical applications in both the public and private sector. Mark has over 25 years of experience working with clients to optimize strategic alignment, team effectiveness, and organization systems.
Edmund (Eddie) Moore is a strategist, organizational architect and facilitator of change. Eddie works with executives and leadership teams to harness their wisdom, envision what’s possible, and develop practical solutions for successful transformation. His point of view for improving organization performance and leading change is holistic and centers on engaging those most impacted and accountable for results. He uses proven practical approaches for: assessing culture, visioning, refining strategy and metrics, setting priorities, clarifying leadership behaviors, mapping value added work processes, optimizing organizing structures, aligning management practices, reward mechanisms and developing implementation roadmaps. Eddie works with high energy and commitment for achieving sustainable change, so the organization’s efforts have an impact and make a difference.
RESOURCES:
Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.
https://www.innovativeleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/cycle.jpg16722508Jenna Reikhttps://www.innovativeleadershipinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ILI-Anniversary-Logo.pngJenna Reik2023-03-02 16:04:262024-11-25 19:38:45The Leadership Life Cycle: Transforming Organizations To Thrive During Difficult Economic Times
Facing overwhelmed calendars, ‘quiet quitting’ team members, and competing agendas with colleagues, many leaders can feel like their day is a battle to be heard, accomplish important work, and feel valued.
When this is the case, the leader’s experience is like a ‘thermometer’ – their mental and emotional state goes up and down according to circumstances and other people’s actions. Being the thermometer makes you feel powerless, causing burnout or resignation.
Leaders always have more power than they think they do, and can access this power by shifting from being the thermometer to being the ‘thermostat’. When you are the thermostat, you set the tone, you have a vision and bring people along toward it.
The word power comes from the Latin root posse, which means “to be able”.
Being in your power is the ability to ‘stay good in you’ and then to make it better for everyone around you.
Being in your power transforms your leadership from reactive to transformational.
Here are 3 mistakes that keep a leader from being in their power and using their power as a force for good:
1. You leak your power.
As humans, we are biologically wired to focus on what we can’t control so we can track threats and respond to them promptly. When we act from this factory setting, it keeps you as the thermometer.
For example, Keisha was a leader in a finance function which had a lot of holes in its system. Her SVP and business partners would reach out to her from 7am to 11pm. She was overwhelmed and spent her days ‘fighting fires’. She got to the point where she was ready to leave.
Where was her power? We sorted out the aspects of the situation she could control, her 50%, and distinguished those from the aspects of the situation she couldn’t control, the other 50%. She became impeccable for her 50%, maximizing what she could control.
She started to approach the situation as the thermostat: she gathered the involved parties into a series of meetings, presented her vision of a root cause fix, and systematically got buy-in for her vision from her peers and the CEO. She stopped reacting to every request because of her need to please and pressure to prove herself. She elevated the contribution of her team members, freeing her up to lead strategically.
Keisha started maximizing what she could control, and led all parties in the cross-functional problem to a company-wide solution. The CEO put her on the fast track to be the CTO successor, and she now has dinner each evening with her husband.
2. You give away your power.
Many leaders source their self-confidence from the feedback they get from others in their job. It’s important for every leader to be responsive to feedback on how they can be more effective in their role. However, this is different than the inner feeling of confidence you have about yourself as a person. When a leader tries to derive their inner self-confidence from their job, it drives them to act with behaviors intended to get validation or prevent negative feedback, rather than make their best contribution.
I coached a Chief Human Resources Officer who felt pressure to transform her company’s culture to be more inclusive, and also to make a final call on return to work decisions. She had brought up her point of view to her executive peers a few times and couldn’t get heard. She believed that they were looking to her to have all the answers, and was concerned she would be judged for not being able to make the impact expected of her.
For her upcoming executive team meeting, she planned to put together another PowerPoint about the corporate scorecard to try to get buy-in for her ideas. In our coaching we strategized a different approach. Instead of playing her small game (worrying whether her peers thought she was living up to expectations) she played her big game.
This time she made a safe space for a conversation about why the leadership team was not acting on decisions that reflected their stated values. She took responsibility for her own contribution to this and invited her peers to reflect on how they were leading as well. This courageous act sparked a series of authentic conversations that led to a transformation that became part of the DNA of the organization.
She didn’t give away her power worrying what others thought about her. Instead, she thought about the contribution she was there to make and her legacy. She was the thermostat, setting a new temperature and standard for communication and role modeling on the executive team.
3. You overlook the power you already have.
Your power goes beyond the tasks written in your job description. As the leader, you create the weather on the team – you can set the tone, shape the vision, and use your attention and social capital to support people and initiatives. You also have relational power.
Kathy was a leader in an engineering firm and noticed attrition of top talent and especially women engineers who as a group were the highest revenue producers. She raised the good solutions to the 2 owners of the firm who had not acted on them. She felt powerless. She was the thermometer: second-guessing whether her vision was right, resenting the owners, and questioning whether to stay at the firm or leave.
She came to see she had so much more power than she thought. She led an initiative to improve the culture at the partner level and started to stem the tide of resignations.
She had the power of persuasion, aligning her ideas with the vision of the board and the owners so she could unlock their energies in the service of a vision that was in the best interest of the future of the firm.
3 months later they agreed to reduce their ownership by 30% and distribute it amongst the highest revenue producers – and they put Kathy into the CEO position.
She was the thermostat – bringing everyone along toward a culture where more people could thrive, and toward a vision in which the firm’s reputation and valuation would increase, along with the share of ownership for their high performers.
As I share in my book In Your Power, a leader in their power raises everyone around them!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sharon Melnick, PhD is the leading expert on guiding leaders to be in their power. Informed by 10 years of research Harvard Medical School. battle tested with over 40,000 professionals at Fortune 500 fast growing companies. She is the author of a best selling new book In Your Power: React Less, Regain Control,Raise Others.
RESOURCES:
Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.
Do you want the next ten years of your life to be epic?
That’s the question at the heart of the Decade Game, a framework I’ve invented to help women discover a deeper and more powerful version of themselves that’s truer to their life’s purpose.
At its core, the Decade Game is simple. It’s a continual practice of make-believe. You are both the designer and player of a game with an epic quest. The magic of your design is that it continues to evolve as life unfolds, integrating all parts of your life.
The secret sauce of the Decade Game is that there are 87,600 hours in a decade. Even if you sleep eight hours a night, it leaves over 50,000 hours of awake time. Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 bestseller Outliers popularized the “10,000-hours rule,” originally coined by the Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. This rule posits that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any field.
So, let’s do the math. In the Decade Game, you can become a world expert in five distinct yet related domains of mastery in ten years and still sleep eight hours a night. These domains of mastery are the heart of the game and cover the five main areas of your life: Self, Others, Craft, Learning, and Contribution. They are the games within the Game. Below, I’ll explain why each pillar is important and how you can begin your journey toward mastering each.
1. Self
The heart of the model is YOU, the Self pillar. Your job is to do your psychological, physical, emotional, spiritual, and self-care work to construct your rehabilitation and remembrance of your best self. What is my internal journey of transformation over the next ten years? What do I need to learn and experience to be in the right relationship and integrity with myself and my faith? What is the transformation work of my heart, body, and soul that I am committed to practice and master? How would I feel if I was not afraid?
Remember when you would go into a toy store looking for a great new game? The name of the game gave you an idea of the type of adventure you would be on. Each pillar needs a customized name, a title, for the way you would describe what the transformational shift would look and feel like if you were able to win in that game of your choosing.
The name you give your Self pillar describes the seismic shift in the quality of your own presence at the end of a decade if you finally let go of the negative core beliefs that no longer serve you. You are answering the “Who Am I?” question, “For me, I am…”. And the title should be a delicious, juicy, and inspiring You. One player of the Decade Game, a software designer named Priya, rose to the challenge with the title “I Adore Myself.” What a declaration of sufficiency and power!
2. Others
When you show up as your best self, then you are able to be in “right” relationship with the people you love. This is the second pillar of Others. Ironically, it is hardest to be your best, most evolved self with the people you love the most. That is where our deepest wounds lie.
For many, this is the hardest pillar of all. This is the place to put into practice your own internal work of self-forgiveness, compassion, unconditional love, healthy boundaries, and emotional intelligence.
This pillar requires you to answer tough questions. What is my transformation work with my family, friends, and colleagues? What is the repair work? What is the forgiveness work? Where am I doing their work instead of letting them do their own work? What are my healthy boundaries? How can I create conditions in the way I relate that invites them to be their best selves?”
Your Others pillar should be named for how you want to show up in a way that invites the ones you love to respond accordingly. You are answering the “Who Am I?” question, “For you, I am…”. The name will reflect the enhanced and transformed quality of your presence for them that is the result of your intentional work. A Decade Gamer with a large extended family after 3 marriages named her pillar, “I am Oasis”.
3. Craft
While your Craft may relate to your job, it cannot be reduced to it. Instead, your Craft represents how you choose to offer and package your unique skills, talents, techniques, knowledge, and gifts as your signature “work” in the world. It reflects your commitment to be a master craftsman in your field of interest—a master that can inspire others and can be counted on to bring “a thing of beauty” into the world.
Ask yourself, what is your unique offering that reflects both the genius of what you do and how you do it in a way that brings forth goodness into the world? How are you a master craftsman amidst other colleagues who have similar technical skills or training, e.g., how do you differentiate? What is game-changing about what you want to “do” in the world? The objective of this pillar is to be fully equipped to grow in mastery in your career and/or your community.
Naming this pillar should be fun and illuminate a game-changing capability or capacity that isn’t mainstream today but will be an important agent of transformation. Maybe your Craft is to help build a capability that doesn’t exist today but will be essential to transform the current state of technology, or healthcare, or education, or communities. After all, many of the cool job descriptions today did not exist a decade ago. Name this pillar for the coolest job title you can think of for your decade business card. One entrepreneur who loved leading leadership teams into the unknown entitled this pillar “I am an Expedition Guide”.
4. Learning
The fourth pillar is the domain of Learning. Although the act of learning is a key component in Self, Others, and Craft, it takes on a different meaning here. This is where you place all the experiences you want to have purely for the love of adventure, curiosity, pleasure, and erudition, like travel, art, hobbies, and reading.
This is also the domain of unlearning, unknowing, and decolonizing your understanding of the world as you knew it so as to relearn from a deeper place of wisdom. This pillar guides you in an open inquiry. What gets my creative juices flowing? What hobbies have I ignored or experiences have I foregone because I was too busy?” What would I love to learn if only I had the time? This domain expands your horizons by being curious about what the world can teach you.
To name your pillar, start by listing all the “elective courses” of the experiences you would love to have and the people/places you want to learn from in your imagined curriculum and fieldwork. Then name this pillar the title of your imagined PhD program or dissertation that describes your newfound mastery. Examples have included PhD in Compromise Through Gardening and Dr. of Shamanic Wisdom
5. Contribution
Contribution is the last pillar of mastery. In your first four pillars, you are building your own mastery. Here you are scanning for other masters in the form of leaders and/or organizations that are building their mastery in service of a purpose that is complementary to yours. And they need your masterful gifts, talents, and wisdom to be complete.
Who are the impactful leaders and organizations that are doing great work in…? How can I focus my philanthropic approach over the next decade? Where can I contribute my superpowers to other master change-makers who need them? In this domain, you are contributing your best self to society-at-large. Where am I willing to be “all in” with my “4W’s – my wealth, wisdom, work and worldly connections”?
This domain of mastery is most easily named by giving it the title of your imagined granting foundation or nonprofit that would reflect and telegraph to “grantees” the areas you are committed to invest in. Past examples include, a) What Would Greta Do.org, b) Olive Branch.org, and c) CommunityTable.org.
Fit the Pieces Together
These five domains of mastery are distinct yet connected. Mastery in each influences the journey of mastery in the other pillars. They each pave the way to your decade destination.
To increase your chances of experiencing an epic decade, you need to devote an equivalent amount of effort to name and pursue excellence in each of these domains instead of over-privileging one at the expense of others. For you overachievers, don’t get anxious. You don’t have to be working on each domain at the same time. You have all the time in the world—50,000 hours—to fit the puzzle pieces together in a masterful way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Carolyn Buck Luce is one of America’s most respected and accomplished voices on Women’s Leadership and their relationship with power. She is the author of the recently published EPIC! The Women’s Power Play Book. A gifted strategist and executive coach, Carolyn has spent the last five decades of her career building highly effective cultures, businesses, teams, and leaders in both the public and private sectors. From a diplomat in the USSR, to a Wall Street Banker, to healthcare futurist and management consultant, throughout her career, Carolyn has focused on helping courageous leaders make the difference they dream of.
RESOURCES:
Ready to measure your leadership skills? Complete your complimentary assessment through the Innovative Leadership Institute. Learn the 7 leadership skills required to succeed during disruption and innovation.
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