Lead Into the Future Today (LIFT) is brought to you by Louise Mowbray of Mowbray by Design, the creative Conscious Leadership Consultancy. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here:
This week I thought I would expand on a perilous trap we’re all guilty of falling into, which is all about shutting down our natural curiosity when we think we know something.
From a leadership perspective, we’re not talking about honing a skill, technical knowledge or expertise. This type of knowledge is updated regularly in our fields and staying on top of new developments is relatively easy.
What I’m referring to is how we think, our mental models, mindsets and lenses on the world.
If we are to lead effectively today, with an understanding of how our world of work is evolving, how we think is either the stumbling block or the elixir.
There are some key leadership traits and thinking styles worth developing now. You’ve no doubt heard a lot about them and if you’ve got them, wonderful - in the words of Curtis Mayfield, Keep On Keeping On. And if you know you haven’t quite got there yet, start now. There is no time like now.
Agile Thinking and Emotional Agility
Futures Thinking, Systems Thinking and Sensemaking
Creativity and Innovative Thinking & Action
Emotional Intelligence, Self-Awareness & Empathy
Conscious Communications
“Don’t make up your mind. “Knowing” is the end of learning.” Naval Ravikant
I thought I’d share thirty, short, rather surprising minutes of my life with you, which may resonate and bring some of these leadership ‘thinking and being’ styles to life.
Last week I happened to be on LinkedIn when a notification popped up telling me about a Live session that was being held by one of my contacts. I had the time, am interested in the topic and so joined the session.
Four white men, each an expert in their field talking about the state of play in our world of work. The first thing that struck me was the lack of diversity on the panel. A few years ago, this might have been a more subtle, subconscious observation. However, in today’s world, we’re all much more aware when a panel, board or leadership team isn’t diverse and I noticed it right away.
At one point, one of the speakers - an older, well-known businessman, made a few comments about recent events being black swans. I wrote in the chat saying that we should be cautious about labelling events as ‘black swans’ just because they seemed to be improbable at the time. When the host read my comment to the panel, the older chap sniped “thanks for telling me off, mother”. I was floored. I think we all were by the looks on people’s faces.
His original comments had displayed his lack of futures thinking, sensemaking and curiosity about what’s going on in the world and the latter displayed his unconscious bias and lack of emotional intelligence, self-awareness and a whole lot more.
One of the other panellists immediately stepped in and the host then revealed that we are both members of a global action-based think tank, exploring ‘grey swans’, connecting the dots and attempting to make sense of the world. He went quiet and eventually, with no apology, muttered something along the lines of needing to explore grey swans. Why? Because his fellow male panellists said something that made him re-think his stance.
A clear case of old-school thinking meets unconscious bias, all in one wondrous package. It made me wonder about the culture of his organisation and how difficult it must be to work in that type of environment.
I also felt a deep sense of compassion. On the surface of things, until this point, he had been saying all the right stuff, however, he clearly got stuck somewhere in his emotional development and leadership thinking and the world has moved on.
And whilst this may seem to be an extreme case of outdated thinking, if you’re a woman reading this you will, no doubt, have countless stories of your own to tell. And if you’re a man reading this, you will know of colleagues, past and present, who are fast becoming irrelevant through their inability to adapt and change.
The knock-on effects of outdated thinking are vast. How are we to attract and retain the most diverse talent, foster cultures that drive agile thinking, creativity and innovation, navigate uncertain futures and be able to breathe and avoid burn-out amid relentless change? The future is definitely faster than we think and it takes no prisoners.
We can all be forgiven for believing that understanding something we hear about all the time equates to 'getting' it. And yes, the world is noisy - we’re inundated with advice and training on who we need to be and what we need to do, to thrive.
However, there is only one way of really knowing if all of the training and advice have had an impact:
When the chips are down and you're under pressure, your buttons are pushed or you’re really stressed, ask yourself: "how did I behave"? This is how we know if we’ve ‘got’ it.
When what we know aligns with who we are, growth and progress are effortless and in the right direction.
Please feel free to comment and share your insight with us and if you know of someone who would also enjoy this edition of LIFT, why not share it?
Until next time, take good care of yourself.
Best, Louise
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