Using Storytelling to Elevate Leadership With an Emmy Award Winning Director

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Chris Nolan is a multiple Emmy Award-winning director, creative director, marketing strategist, branding story expert, and author who provided this article as a companion to his podcast Using Storytelling to Elevate Leadership.

This article is part two of a two part series. In a Chaos. There Is Creativity. Welcome to VUCA MAX… Part 1 was published on November 10, 2022.

Chris Nolan’s first podcast was Facing Uncertainty: It’s VUCA.

 

IN A CHAOS. THERE IS CREATIVITY. WELCOME TO VUCA MAX… PART 2.

In the last article, we discussed why we must reverse the normal business tendencies with innovation and creativity.  And why there is a great deal of frustration and failure that exists in organizations.

In this article, we attempt to bridge the gap between creative and non-creative universes, or those people who view themselves as more rational, left-brain non-creatives.

Many times, leaders who don’t know how mysterious and serendipitous and unpredictable the creative process is—and they can make too hasty a judgment about the value of ideas or who should contribute to ideation.

People in non-creative universes have exactly the opposite relationship to ideas—they immediately say “Is it relevant to what we’re doing?”  It’s as if you’re the head of Ivory soap: your job is to sell more soap bars and if you get distracted by someone saying “How about liquid soap?”—you say, “Can we stay on topic? How do we sell more bars?”

Below Malcolm Gladwell weights in on many of the arguments we discussed in the last article such as “embracing chaos” and “awkward strangers” on innovation teams.

I think that innovation and creativity flourish in environments that are messy, that permit mistakes that allow people to step outside of their roles that involve people who wouldn’t otherwise be thought of as natural teammates… Just when there is an acceptable level of chaos, I think that good things happen. The trick in encouraging creativity is being willing to tolerate chaos and that’s very difficult for us to do. It’s not first on our impulse.  – Malcolm Gladwell

In a world moving faster than we think, and disrupting business overnight, every new idea demands focus.  Not just marketing.  We must cultivate messiness and be comfortable with the unknown.

 

THE FUTURE IS MOVING FASTER THAN YOU THINK

According to Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler in their book, The Future Is Moving Faster Than You Think, every major industry on earth is going to be reinvented over the next 10 years.  Furthermore, we’re going to see more wealth created over the next decade than ever before in history.

In just a few years, all 8 billion of us on the planet will be connected. Just imagine the innovative potential of that mind meld.

Needless to say, it’s a critical time in business when we desperately need to energize our innovative assets and tap into our creative brilliance—right now!

Which is why the most important skillset, according to almost any study of the most important 21st century skillsets, is innovation.

In fact, an IBM study ranked it higher than global thinking and integrity.

A McKinsey & Company survey found that more than 70 percent of executives anticipate innovation will be a top driver of growth for their companies.

Yet, McKinsey also found most of these executives have been disappointed by their companies’ innovation efforts.

The reasons according to management consultants are: one, they aren’t utilizing the full power of collaboration within their whole enterprise, and two, as Gary Hamel says, leaders have ADD: Ambition Deficit Disorder. “They are too conservative, too risk adverse in their vision and innovation.”

Which brings us back to creative blocks. And the fact that a VUCA MAX world calls for counterintuitive, creative thinking. Which means doubling down on ideation even during downturns.  (For more information on VUCA MAX, refer to part one of this series).

After all, we need bigger thinking to overcome bigger challenges. That calls for what business expert Jim Collins calls BHAGS, Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Or what Google calls Moonshots.

 

BLESS THE MESS

I was fortunate enough to consult on several moonshot projects for Google, which is when I first heard of the concept of VUCA and learned about X, Google’s Moonshot Factory.

Astro Teller is the current CEO of X, Captain of Google Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory, and really the dominant thought leader in the field of moonshot breakthrough ideas.

He offers compelling reasons why we should both champion moonshots and celebrate the mess.

Teller says, “We spend most of our time breaking things and trying to prove that we’re wrong. We run at hardest parts of the problem first. Get excited and cheer. Hey, how are we going to mess-up our project today?”

Teller’s visionary leadership is also coupled with strategies to make them real. That’s why they are a called a Moonshot Factory.

A great book that delves into research from neuroscience and psychology on the benefits of messiness, disorder and even confusion to produce extraordinary creativity is Tim Hartford’s Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives.

 

EFFECTIVE SERENDIPITY

Additionally, the chaos of creativity calls for being aware of what AI and Neuro-evolution expert Ken Stanley calls Effective Serendipity.

In his AI research, Stanley determined that serendipity plays a much deeper role in innovation than we think, which has implications for human innovation over artificial intelligence.

This concept of evolutionary innovation is especially important during this age of machines and technology. Machines are tasked with a single run, based on past data and knowledge, that has a sole objective.

But true innovation is about creating things that don’t exist. In other words, you can’t really have an objective for something that doesn’t exist. And, in many cases, past data can’t predict foresight.

For example, some of the greatest human discoveries were serendipitous like penicillin, radioactivity, the telephone, plastic, anesthesia, rubber, and even rock & roll—the list goes on and on. Yes, there were stepping stones leading to these revelations, but in the end they were their own Blue Ocean.

Effective Serendipity is not quite controlled chaos, but a more intuitive view of the creative enigma. It’s an acknowledgement that happenstance, randomness, coincidence, accidents, and experimentation are part of the process. And like evolution, disruption helps you get there.

It’s also understanding of why exercising non-linear Human Agency in a technological world is so important. As the astronaut in 2001: A Space Odyssey found out when HAL, his ship’s main supercomputer, went bonkers: there are often times consequences and limitations to relying on technology to determine our future.

Like nature, creativity evolves and is messy. Recognizing how it works frees you up to experiment, to take risks, and overcome fear.

 

YES, AND

Another great example of chaos, adversity immersion, and messiness in action is improvisation.

“Yes, and…” is the first rule of improvisational comedy. The central idea being, regardless of what you may think about what someone states, you accept the idea and say “Yes, and…” and keep riffing on the idea, versus saying “No, but…” which would kill the collaborative jam.

This technique was used on Second City stages where some of the most inventive comedians (Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Tina Fey, Mike Nichols, and Amy Poehler to name just a few) honed their improv chops.

Eventually, innovation gurus began incorporating the formula into business in order to improve the brainstorming process. And when you think about it, improvisation is actually an intense version of the Adversity Immersion exercise.

Why? Because improve is a hot seat of chaos and messiness. First, you are thrust on stage while a random action, subject, or theme is thrown at you (by the awkward stranger in the audience) and then the troupe bats around discordant non-sequiturs that they try to make sense of by riding a roller coaster of “Yes, ands…”

The whole process is a fishy stew of messiness, chaos, and uncertainty that must be made into a tasty bouillabaisse.

Furthermore, by embracing chaos, disorder, and uncertainty, you not only become more creative, but you begin to develop antifragile resilience to change and the unknown.

 

FUTURE MINDSET MASTERY

All of which leads us to the ultimate creative goal: Future Mindset Mastery. The future demands that we embrace chaos, awkwardness, adversity immersion, and the uncomfortable, and celebrate the amazing opportunities in the disruptive process.

To get there, one of the things our VUCA MAX Future Mindset Mastery coaching program stresses is Future Back Storytelling. We want to get you from the possible to the impossible.

We do this through Future Scenario, Foresight Maps, and Story Ladders to create a mosaic of future ideas and actualize them into movie-like scenarios. The result is a portfolio of ideation from mutations to 10x moonshots.

In the age of machines, information knowledge will be the domain of computers and bots.  Now, data is tremendously valuable, but computers don’t “think” the way humans do. Machines generate knowledge which they cannot explain and work by eliminating choices until there is the best choice.

Human beings—like nature—evolve. We compound and converge concepts. We kluge choices and mutate ideas. That’s why it takes a chaotic process to discover the unexpected discovery and create impossible breakthroughs.

In his book Beyond Knowledge, George Washington University professor William Halel tells us technology is driving a new age of higher consciousness. This calls for a Future Mindset Mastery that accesses our higher faculties and human agency.

It requires fostering key value shifts that catalyze the next stage of human evolution: an expanded focus on creativity and imagination, bolder vision, intuition, wisdom and exponential empathy for all—not just humanity, but animals, plants and the whole planet.

Future Mindset Mastery is how we reach the upper limits of human potential in an increasingly accelerating, complex, uncertain, and chaotic world.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Chris Nolan is a multiple Emmy Award-winning director, creative director, marketing strategist, branding story expert and author. He brings 25 years of branding, writing, directing and production experience in both entertainment and marketing to his content production company, 90,000 Feet, working for clients such as Disney, Google, and Toyota.

He recently directed and co-wrote with Mike Schindler, the documentary “It’s VUCA: The Secret to Living in the 21st Century”. Chris and Mike have followed up the film with a book and an extensive leadership and executive coaching program called VUCA MAX.

To preorder the book or for more information on the VUCA MAX program go to https://itsvuca.com or contact Chris at Chris@itsvuca.com.

 

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.

Additional Resources offered by our trusted colleagues and partners

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-Creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Make An Epic Career Change Today (Without Sacrifice!)

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Tammy Alvarez, CEO and founder of Career Winners Circle provided this article as. a companion to her podcast The Job I Love to Hate: It’s Never Too Late to Upgrade Your Career!. 

 

You’ve worked for years, maybe even decades, and you’ve found yourself stuck in a rut with no idea how to break the cycle and start doing something you love. But the minute you think about making an epic career change you get excited. The butterflies kick in, and you can almost see yourself in the center of all the action doing high-impact work that you love.

Pivoting careers is very different than getting the same job in the same industry. All the things you know about getting a new role won’t work when you want to make an epic career change. You’ve got to do things differently.

Fortunately, these things can be learned and perfected. Your sense of being overwhelmed can be replaced with a new approach so you keep those butterflies of excitement going. If you’re like most people, you believe that an epic career change will require you to take a step back. And nobody wants to do that. You’ve worked hard to get where you are and the thought of having to give anything up and ‘start over’ is soul-crushing. After all, the majority of people who try and make an epic career change do it wrong and end up making the ultimate sacrifice by having to move back a few spaces in the game of life.

You do not have to sacrifice your career happiness for progress.

You have spent a lifetime acquiring skills, perspectives, insights, and experiences that are amazing. Why do they suddenly ‘not count’ just because you start working in a new industry or new role? It sounds kind of ridiculous when you think about it – right?

Again, you can change careers the right way or you can do it the wrong way. When you learn how to leverage all your experiences and skills as an asset to your target career, the thought of taking a step back will be a distant memory.

Making that epic career change doesn’t need to whittle away everything you’ve worked so hard for. You can love your job, be excited about your career, and still have the income, influence, perks, and position you’ve worked so hard to achieve. Doing this isn’t hard, it’s just very different from what you’re used to.

 

Reinventing Your Career: 3 First Steps

When the time comes to re-invent your career, most people get stuck before they even get started, resulting in too many talented people sitting on the sidelines. If you fall in this category, you know that you’re missing out on your opportunity to make the impact you want and to have the career you’ve always dreamed of. And let’s face it: it gets extremely frustrating when this happens over and over again.

Here’s how the thought cycle goes: I want something different, and I am ready for a change! But…

What am I qualified for?

Who will want me?

Will my skills transfer?

Will I have to take a cut in pay or job title?

What will everyone think?

Do I have what it takes?

These doubts are how you get stuck before you even get started. It doesn’t have to be that way. The reason you’re not able to make that move you’ve always wanted is you’re asking the right questions at the wrong time. These are all excellent questions, but they should not come first. They actually come dead last.

Here are three questions you need to ask yourself before starting to think about how to reinvent your career:

  1. How much resilience do I have to make a career change? Changing careers is absolutely achievable but it’s not as easy as simply going to work for a competitor or taking a related role in the same industry. Every time you step out to do something you’ve never done before, it requires a ton of resiliency to both get the role and to keep the role. You should check in with yourself and make sure that now is the right time for you based on how resilient you are able to be at this stage of your career.
  2. What are you most passionate about? Have you fallen into the trap of chasing jobs for money, title, status, social expectations, and the like? If you suddenly find every day to be soul crushing, then it’s time to step back and re-evaluate what is most important to you. Take your whole self into consideration and narrow in on the things that really matter to you. This will not only guide your future decisions: it will give you the fuel you need for the long haul.
  3. How far and fast do you want to grow? If you’re not growing, you’re not reaching your fullest potential. Regardless of how much you do or don’t like change, falling into the mundane rut of the status-quo is a mind-numbing experience. Nobody wants that. Take stock of your growth trajectory both personally and professionally. Get really clear on the pace of growth you can sustain at this point in your career, and put yourself in situations where you can grow at a comfortable pace all the time.

Answering these questions is the first step in climbing out of the darkness of an unsatisfying job, and into a renewed career that lights you up!

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Meet Tammy Alvarez, CEO, and founder of Career Winners Circle. A comprehensive collection of coaching and training programs designed to strengthen leaders to grow their careers quickly and sustainably.

Her spirited “Break all the Rules” approach blends decades of C-Suite experience on Wall Street with a pragmatic, results-based coaching style. She helps business professionals like you create impact so you can love every Monday morning again!

She is an inspirational coach, trainer, and epic storyteller who delivers transformative learning experiences for her global client base. She believes the heart of every successful business is leaders who inspire courage.

 

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.

Additional Resources offered by our trusted colleagues and partners

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Five Trends Leaders Can Expect To See In 2023 (And How To Prepare)

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Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, wrote this article as a companion to her podcast with Christopher Washington, a learning ecosystem designer who serves as Executive Vice President and Provost of Franklin University, 5 Trends to Know: Leadership in 2023.

 

Traditionally, VUCA stood for volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous, but more recently a more positive acronym has emerged to represent the positive response to VUCA: vision, understanding, clarity and agility or adaptability. VUCA will define the coming years, and there’s an opportunity for leaders to shift the negative VUCA to the positive VUCA.

With every challenge, there is an opportunity. Moving our mindsets from negative to positive can be the biggest challenge for leaders. When considering leadership trends last year, I wrote, “We need to rethink how we lead and structure our businesses and lives for our people, organizations and communities to thrive. Most of us have mental models reflecting slower change and less complexity. It is time to update those models. Old models generate increasingly suboptimal decision-making and action.” This sentiment is even more true today. We must continue celebrating what works and adjusting what doesn’t work.

According to the documentary It’s VUCA: The Secret to Living in the 21st Century, one aspect of successful organizations is they are antifragile, meaning they get stronger under stress. For our organizations to thrive, we need to consider the system we operate in and determine how to make them antifragile.

Here are five trends I believe will have an impact on organizations in 2023, along with some prompts for leaders to consider in order to make their organization more antifragile:

Trend One: There will be a greater focus on sustainability and energy security.

The strain on the oil supply caused by the Russia/Ukraine conflict and the high cost of natural disasters has impacted businesses and government resources. According to a recent Forbes article, “The past two years saw record numbers of billion-dollar disasters.” In addition, geopolitical alignments are shifting as we watch how countries and continents align on taking climate action and how developed countries will support less developed countries to mitigate the impact on their populations. The United States government is investing significantly in energy security to address these pressures. As a result, the opportunity to expand climate-resilient businesses will grow substantially.

Ask yourself:

  • What are you doing to assess and manage your energy consumption?
  • Have your leaders been trained in environmental, social, and corporate governance leadership practices focused on your industry?

Trend Two: Inflation and food insecurity will continue to affect consumers.

Inflation is impacting nearly every aspect of our lives. For many, it’s most apparent at the grocery store. The United Nations’ Food Price Index remained virtually unchanged in October, with prices still much higher than pre-pandemic costs. A downward trend in food and fuel is required to ensure consumer spending remains healthy. There’s an opportunity now to build food systems that withstand climate-based shocks. This could include everything from strengthening food distribution systems to enhancing production capacity in areas impacted by drought.

Ask yourself:

  • How does reduced consumer buying power affect your business?
  • Can you create offerings that appeal to budget-conscious consumers?
  • Does your organization provide solutions to mitigate food insecurity or help those affected most by the rising costs of basics?

Trend Three: A growing investment in artificial intelligence and chip production could lead to new business opportunities.

With the passage of the CHIPS Act in August, we saw the U.S. government invest in “reshoring” chip manufacturing and invest in research and development to support the defense industry and competitiveness of hardware and software supply chains. According to McKinsey, “The CHIPS Act directs $280 billion in spending over the next ten years.” This investment will help the U.S. compete in the artificial intelligence space, which is important considering that the controller of the A.I. sets the values programmed into A.I.

Ask yourself:

  • What opportunities could “reshoring” create for your organization?
  • How are you using A.I. or robotic process automation to improve your competitiveness?

Trend Four: The Great Resignation and ‘quiet quitting’ will alter the workforce.

Amid the Great Resignation, many organizations are struggling to find and keep employees. If they can attract employees, they face the phenomenon of “quiet quitting,” when employees do just the minimum to accomplish the job. According to Gallup, “The ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is now 1.8 to 1, the lowest in almost a decade.” This means that “quiet quitters” now make up at least 50% of the U.S. workforce.

There’s an opportunity now for companies to take a new approach to engaging employees. Some companies are looking at utilizing employee listening technology for real-time sentiment tracking and considering structural changes like four-day work weeks.

Ask yourself:

  • How can you better engage your existing employees and attract new ones?
  • Which of the emerging approaches to talent could you experiment with?

Trend Five: There will be an increased need for leadership development.

I’ve seen firsthand how leaders are the most significant leverage point for success in many organizations, yet they often neglect their development to focus on delivering short-term results. This short-term focus will have an increasing impact that differentiates the successful from the unsuccessful organizations. There’s an opportunity for organizations to develop leaders committed to continuous development and systems that reinforce development.

Ask yourself:

  • How is your organization building its leaders’ ability to navigate the VUCA climate?
  • What additional leadership development investments would further elevate your organization?

In addition to writing about trends, I wanted to focus on the opportunities these trends provide. As leaders, we can position our organizations to be more resilient or, even better, to be antifragile. As we move into 2023, how can you help to build an antifragile organization?

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Maureen Metcalf is the founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute. She is an expert in anticipating and leveraging future business trends. Ms. Metcalf helps leaders elevate their leadership quality and transform their organizations to create sustainable impact and results. She captures 30 years of experience and success in an award-winning series of books used by public, private, and academic organizations to align company-wide strategy, systems, and culture using Innovative Leadership techniques. Ms. Metcalf is a Fellow of the International Leadership Association. She also serves on the advisory boards of the School of Strategic Leadership at James Madison University and the Mason Leadership Center at Franklin University. Ms. Metcalf earned an MBA from Virginia Tech. She can be reached at mmetcalf@innovativeleadership.com.

Christopher Washington is a learning ecosystem designer who serves as Executive Vice President and Provost of Franklin University.

 

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.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

The New Role of Leadership in a Hybrid Workplace

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Greg Moran, Board Member, Advisor, Teacher, Operator, and ILI Executive in Residence, shares his perspective on the podcast, The New Role of Leadership in a Hybrid Workplace.

This article, How Leadership Has the Power to Unite and Inspire, was originally published by Maureen Metcalf for the Forbes Coaches Council.

As leaders, we have the opportunity and responsibility to help our employees and organizations transcend personal differences and better align with our organization’s purpose. Leadership research out of Christopher Newport University suggests that political differences are a more significant sticking point, as only 28% say they are comfortable with a leader who holds opposing views, and only 34% would follow such a leader.

This data suggests that during a time of political division, organizations will struggle to accomplish their missions. Leaders need to help employees align with the organization’s purpose and values and transcend their differences.

I will use my organization as an example because we have colleagues with significantly different political views. We are working to find common ground that allows us to work together respectfully while honoring our differences as a path to providing greater value for our clients.

I imagine some people read this and think it sounds soft — that we need to tell people what to do and they will follow. I respect that the leader-follower relationship looks different for different leaders.

Here are some of the key leadership traits that can be tapped to inspire and unite those with different worldviews.

Be professionally humble: Care more about the organization’s success than your personal image.

As a professionally humble leader, I am committed to my organization’s purpose above all else. I have been revisiting my purpose as the CEO and asking myself if I am still committed to it. Next, am I living it? I work with an exceptional team, and they can tell when I am disingenuous with myself and with them. Next, I need to be clear about my values and the organization’s values and make sure we live them. I recently updated our purpose and values on our website. This exercise of publicly posting them creates accountability. I also asked my team to review and help revise them to know what they are and how they fit for us.

Unwavering commitment to right action: Be unstoppable and unflappable when on a mission.

Right action is an interesting phrase. Right, according to who? I believe our purpose and values help us determine what is right, but this is not enough. We need to engage with one another and have honest conversations — some are not easy.

We are also starting to talk about right today versus right to create the future we want to see. We are asking about the longer-term implications of our current actions. By looking through this lens, we can see where our focus is changing. We can be more disciplined in our choices and actions and eliminate some activities that require time and energy.

Be a 360-degree thinker: Take a systems view and see the interconnectedness of people and systems.

Like most organizations, we are facing changes in the work we deliver and how we work together. As we look at these changes, we evaluate the overall systems and how the changes will move us toward meeting our purpose and values or how they will move us away.

Be intellectually versatile: Commit to lifelong learning.

With the increased level of discord brought on by political polarization and the global pandemic, we are trying to understand our colleague’s perspectives. We also need to understand changing global trends. In some cases, we have worked together for decades and have not explored our colleague’s values. It is easy to focus on the work and not understand a valued colleague’s suffering because we don’t want to discuss taboo topics such as politics.

I suggest that we might want to seek to understand — to use the Steven Covey phrase. I am not suggesting we delve into political debates but instead ask the colleagues we value and respect probing questions with deep regard for their challenges, hopes and fears.

Be authentic and reflective: Focus on personal growth and emotional courage.

Reflection is one of the essential skills to allow people to grow and develop. This time in our history certainly requires the courage and skill to accept and support our colleagues who see the world differently. How many of us feel comfortable working with people who don’t share our worldview? Yet, if we are secure in our values and mission, we can generally find the strength to embrace people — even if we disagree with their beliefs.

Inspire followership: Connect with a broad range of people around a shared vision.

If people don’t follow us, we aren’t effective as leaders. If followers don’t want to follow leaders with different political beliefs, we need to find ways to inspire them. We must open ourselves up to challenging conversations to understand others and their diverse views. These conversations will require all of our emotional intelligence to build relationships that allow us to work together to meet our mission.

Be innately collaborative: Seek input from diverse points of view to create novel solutions.

This behavior is where we test our ability. If we have done each of the previous actions well, we can bring people together who see the world differently and feel safe to share different perspectives. We need to synthesize those differences to create new and better outcomes.

As leaders navigating the dynamics associated with an emotionally charged election and political unrest, we need to bring our teams together to meet our purpose and create stronger leader-follower relationships and teams.

Resources

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible,  iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.  Stay up-to-date on new shows airing by following the Innovative Leadership Institute LinkedIn.

 

About the Author

Maureen Metcalf, CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, is dedicated to elevating the quality of leaders globally.

Emotions and Leadership

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Terri O’Fallon, an applied researcher, teacher, coach, and consultant focusing on Learning and Change in Human Systems, shares her expertise on the podcast Do No Harm: Ethics for Leaders. 

 

This article was written by Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute.

If you’re looking for well-being, get in touch with your emotions: people who express three times as many positive emotions over negative (or challenging) emotions have a greater sense of well-being. Well-being, in turn, helps us as leaders.

You want to be the best leader you can be; that’s why you’re reading this.  Recognizing, naming, and navigating our emotions is key to that improvement. It’s not as easy as it sounds, though. Terri O’Fallon, the founder of STAGES International, has profound insight into the importance of understanding and managing our emotions. Through her research, Terri identified this pivotal approach to cultivating a sense of well-being for ourselves and those we lead.

 

Why is it essential for leaders and organizations to foster positive emotions?

Fostering positive emotions is vital to leadership success. A positive work environment creates a sense of loyalty and trust among employees, leading to increased productivity, creativity, and collaboration. A positive workplace can also reduce stress and increase job satisfaction, boost engagement, and enhance motivation. Naturally, higher well-being also reduces burnout, which in turn leaves you less susceptible to The Great Resignation.

As with anything valuable, it takes effort. Here are three steps to get you started:

  1. Recognizing and labeling your own emotions
  2. Looking for possibilities of harm, and adapting plans accordingly
  3. Practicing generosity of heart by giving away something you are attached to.

 

1. Recognizing and labeling your own emotions

Recognizing and labeling your emotions is the critical first step in developing self-awareness. It can be done by taking a moment to pause and check in with yourself, noticing how you feel. From there, consider what emotions are present and how they affect your thoughts, behavior, and attitude.

Once identified, labeling your emotions helps you become more conscious of them. As you do this, look at the differences between concrete emotions, such as anger, and more subtle emotions, such as disappointment or joy. Differentiating between the two types helps you gain insight into how your emotions impact your behavior, and how to manage them. This greater self-awareness fosters better decision-making.

But your emotions are only the start; it is essential to recognize the feelings of those around you. Being able to identify the emotions of your team helps you build better relationships, as well as a better understanding their points of view. Remember to be mindful of the non-verbal cues people give to identify their feelings more effectively. Noticing body language, facial expressions, and vocal tone can help you gain insight into the emotions of those around you.

With practice, recognizing and labeling emotions can become a powerful tool for personal (and team) growth and development.

 

2. Looking for the possibilities of harm and adapting plans accordingly

Very few people or organizations intend to do harm. So why does it happen? Often, it’s simply because we didn’t consider the ripple effects of our decisions.

Leaders must be cognizant of the effects of their decisions and actions to avoid harm. They should continually ask themselves if there is the potential for unintentional consequences and, if so, be willing to adapt plans accordingly.

In addition to looking for the potential for harm, consider the ethical implications of your decisions. Strive to make decisions that align with your values, the values of your organization, and society’s values. Ethical decision-making involves not only considering the potential for harm, but also considering the implications of decisions on the greater good: the environment, workers, customers, and other stakeholders. Transparency and accountability are part of ethical leadership, too.

 

3. Practicing generosity of heart by giving away something you are attached to

Practicing generosity of heart fosters trust among team members, the community, family, and friends. Generosity of Heart is simply the capacity or willingness to give away something you are attached to. This could be a physical item, such as a beautiful gift, or something intangible, such as an idea or concept. It can be difficult, and requires vulnerability. However, by giving away something meaningful to you, you demonstrate that you are open-hearted and generous.

Giving away something you are attached to also shows a deeper appreciation for the person or people receiving your gift. It shows you are so thankful for them, you are willing to share something special.

It’s counter-intuitive, but generosity of heart also demonstrates self-love. By giving away something meaningful to you, you prove to yourself that you are willing to make sacrifices for the greater good. It is a reminder that you have the strength and courage to look beyond yourself as you make decisions.

 

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to take the first step, and unlock the power of positive emotions. They’ll foster well-being in so many ways. It’s so much easier for your team to have a sense of well-being if you have one, too!

We’d love to hear how you apply Generosity of Heart to achieve well-being, generosity, and growth. Leave us a comment, or send us your questions at info@innovativeleadership.com .

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Terri O’Fallon PhD is an applied researcher, teacher, coach and consultant with a focus on Learning and Change in Human Systems. Change is related to finding practical developmental interventions for leaders who engage with developmental structural and soft changes. Terri has her PhD in Integral Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is the co-founder of STAGES International, an organization that focuses on how the STAGES (developmental) model can support insights into our own growth as people, leaders, guides, coaches, and the kind of impact these insights can have on our influence in human collectives.

Maureen Metcalf is the founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute. She is an expert in anticipating and leveraging future business trends. Ms. Metcalf helps leaders elevate their leadership quality and transform their organizations to create sustainable impact and results. She captures 30 years of experience and success in an award-winning series of books used by public, private, and academic organizations to align company-wide strategy, systems, and culture using Innovative Leadership techniques. Ms. Metcalf is a Fellow of the International Leadership Association. She also serves on the advisory boards of the School of Strategic Leadership at James Madison University and the Mason Leadership Center at Franklin University. Ms. Metcalf earned an MBA from Virginia Tech. She can be reached at mmetcalf@innovativeleadership.com.

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.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Growing Up Biden

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 Valerie Biden Owens: political strategist, the first woman in U.S. history to have run a presidential campaign, and the author of Growing Up Biden provided this article as a companion to her podcast Growing Up Biden: Family Lessons on Leadership. This interview is part of the International Leadership Association Series.  This series features guests from the International Leadership Association 2022 Global Conference held in Washington, D.C., in October 2022.

 

An excerpt from Chapter 1 of Growing Up Biden:

Our parents drilled it into our heads from birth that we were to take care of one another. In my mom’s words: “Family is the beginning, the middle, and the end. Period.” They taught us that we were a gift to one another. “There is nothing closer than brothers and sisters,” my mom would say.  No matter what our disagreements might be, we had to straighten them out at home. God forbid if one of us turned on another. Once we were outside, we were Bidens, and nothing could come between us.

These dicta weren’t written down anywhere – writing this book might be the first time I’ve seen them set down in black and white. But they didn’t need to be transcribed. We all knew precisely what was expected of us.

We were expected to tell the truth – no matter what. The truth might be embarrassing or ugly or sometimes even shameful, but my parents made us understand that truth is the only option. They would be there for us, no matter what – so long as we told them the truth. If you’re going to be late, call. If you are in trouble, call. If you want to get out of trouble, call. No questions asked.

We were expected to stand up to bullies. If we were getting pushed around, Mom told us to punch that bully right in the nose if we had to, so long as it was a fair fight. (These days, of course, we don’t advocate for schoolyard fights, but in my parents’ day, things were different.) Dad taught us that the greatest sin of all was the abuse of power.

We were expected to treat everyone with dignity. “No one is better than you, and you’re no better than anyone else,” Mom said. We knew to be kind to kids who wanted to be our friend, especially when that kid was “less than cool.”

We were expected never to despair. “It’s not how many times you get knocked down,” my father used to say, “but how quickly you get up.” Our family would have many opportunities to discover this truth on our own. Failure, darkness, tragedy were inevitable in life. But giving up? That was unforgiveable.

This ethos taught us everything we knew about what it meant to be a Biden. And it was on our little shoulders to make our family proud.

 

Growing up with this ethos, developing a sense of confidence was inevitable.  In Chapter 13, Valerie writes:

To be any kind of leader, you need a hell of a lot of confidence. Confidence is the number one prerequisite for success in life. But to be a woman leader – to make tough decisions while often facing discrimination, disrespect, and doubt – you occasionally need a booster shot. I think that because of my parents and my brothers, I was lucky to have been given that booster shot.  Joe told me that I could be anything I wanted to be, and he told me frequently enough that I eventually believed him. My husband Jack continues to reaffirm that.

I’d venture to say many women don’t have the same experience, so I’ve tried to pass on that booster to those who might need it. That’s in part why I founded Owens Patrick Leadership Seminars in partnership with my dear friend Michele Pollard Patrick, a certified protocol officer and business etiquette consultant. Our work focuses on coaching women to develop and project confidence in a business environment, as well as in more formal social settings. While confidence is sometimes innate, more often it comes as the result of practicing new skills, just like anything else.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Valerie Biden Owens is the first woman in U.S. history to have run a presidential campaign — that of her brother, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. She also led his seven straight U.S. Senate victories and has been his principal surrogate on the campaign trail.

Valerie is Chair of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware and a partner at Owens Patrick Leadership Seminars. Valerie sits on the Advisory Board of the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children. For 20 years, when Valerie was not managing or advising President Biden’s campaigns, she served as Executive Vice President of Joe Slade White & Co., a media consulting firm. She has worked extensively with Women’s Campaign International, teaching women how to organize and develop communication and political skills. Valerie has also served on the National Board of the Women’s Leadership Forum of the Democratic National Committee and has served for 35 years on the board of The Ministry of Caring.

In 2015, Valerie delivered the keynote address for Harvard Law School’s International Women’s Day celebration and was one of 50 women presented with the law school’s international “Women Inspiring Change” award. In 2021, she was named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 Women Who Are Leading the Way in Impact list.

She is a graduate of the University of Delaware. She is married to Jack Owens, an attorney and businessman. They have three children.

 

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.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One.

Leading in Circles: The Inevitable Circular Economy

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Christoph Hinske, associate professor at the School of Finance and Accounting at SAXION University of Applied Sciences, covering Systems Leadership and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, and Maureen Metcalf, CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute, provide this article as a companion to their podcast Leading in Circles: The Inevitable Circular Economy wIt summarizes the recently published book that Christoph edited, The Impossibilities of the Circular Economy: Separating Aspirations from Reality

 

Introduction to Chapter 10: Circular Economy Leadership In Organizations by Christoph Hinske and Maureen Metcalf 

There is no doubt that new technologies, governance structures, values, and interaction dynamics are fundamental to implementing the Circular Economy. However, it is leaders who build and run the organization on this foundation. The chapter discusses how applying well-tested leadership frameworks provide a crucial piece of the puzzle required to turn the Circular Economy from an impossibility to a probability.

Using the Innovative Leadership Mindset and Competency model, this chapter discusses the leadership needed for the Circular Economy. The authors argue that the leadership required to succeed in a Circular Economy is fundamentally different from traditional leadership. To succeed in the Circular Economy, leaders must evolve how they think, their presence as leaders, and what they do to progress circular economies successfully. In addition, they must understand the complexity of the underlying cause and effect behind interactions between actors, events, and structures and whether these influence their actions and strategies.

Furthermore, the chapter claims that the Circular Economy will not deliver against its promises if leadership mindsets and behaviours remain unchanged. While the Circular Economy advocates are overpromising its impact, working on leadership mindsets and associated behaviours is essential to move this critical agenda forward and improve its environmental, economic, and social effects.

Christoph commissioned a comic to walk readers through crucial elements as part of the book. The images below represent a subset we thought you would appreciate. The open-source version of the book and the comic are available for download at no cost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mr. Christoph Hinske is an associate professor at the School of Finance and Accounting at SAXION University of Applied Sciences, covering Systems Leadership and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. In his work, Christoph observed that our rapidly transforming economies force leaders to be systemic since they need to act in complex, ambiguous ecosystems. Consequently, his research focuses on empowering leaders to change their strategic and operational models from linear to circular to ecosystemic. He observed that 80 of organizations, intending to transform their models to be more systemic, continue doing the old stuff, using new fancy words. They still apply the same tools, mindsets, and frameworks developed to build linear success.

Maureen Metcalf is the founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute. She is an expert in anticipating and leveraging future business trends. Ms. Metcalf helps leaders elevate their leadership quality and transform their organizations to create sustainable impact and results. She captures 30 years of experience and success in an award-winning series of books used by public, private, and academic organizations to align company-wide strategy, systems, and culture using Innovative Leadership techniques. Ms. Metcalf is a Fellow of the International Leadership Association. She also serves on the advisory boards of the School of Strategic Leadership at James Madison University and the Mason Leadership Center at Franklin University. Ms. Metcalf earned an MBA from Virginia Tech. She can be reached at mmetcalf@innovativeleadership.com.

 

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.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One. Also, stay up-to-date on new shows airing by following the Innovative Leadership Institute on LinkedIn.

The open-source version of the book, The Impossibilities of the Circular Economy: Separating Aspirations from Reality is available for download at no cost.

Art, Leadership… and the Art of Leadership

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Laura Gibson, the Art Curator at the Center for Creative Leadership provided the following article as a companion piece to her podcast with Ren Washington, a Leadership Solutions Partner at the Center for Creative Leadership, Art, Leadership… and the Art of Leadership. 

Whether on vacation or in professional development, at an office building or a home office, we intrinsically know that our experiences are shaped by our environment. What we don’t often realize, however, is exactly how that plays out. We rarely take the time to ask, what about our environment makes us comfortable? Uneasy? Relaxed? Tense? Things like the chair we sit in, the temperature of the room, and even the art on the walls can shape our sense of time and experience in a particular space.

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people learned that feeling comfortable in their own space played a role in how they fared through a global lockdown. We took stock of our surroundings. We looked over our shoulders and made changes to what became our backdrops for virtual meetings. To make our time working from home more pleasant, we upgraded the things in front of us when we could.

As people now return to working in the office and continue to use home workspaces, employers are recognizing that, more than ever, environment impacts experience.

Connecting Artwork to Development

At the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), we recognize the interconnectivity between creativity, innovation, leadership, and purpose. To that end, we have embraced an element of our environment – the art on the walls of our physical buildings – and its impact on leadership development.

Art is baked into our programs. In fact, one of the exercises we often use with participants is asking them to select an image they feel resonates with where they are in life or represents how they’re dealing with change. Artwork is used as a tool for “mediated dialogue,” and putting pictures in the middle helps people illustrate, then articulate their feelings. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Our Greensboro, N.C., campus has taken this one step further and features the work of local and regional artists to help shape our visitors’ experiences. It began as simply filling a need – we were a brand-new nonprofit many decades ago that lacked art on the walls but had no budget to decorate – but has since become a key part of the culture of our global headquarters.

Art has become a way to welcome the community into our building and learn about what we do, with three local art exhibitions annually, as well as a permanent collection. It has kept the building fresh for employees and supported local businesses. And it’s also a reminder of our commitment to our broader community and the people within it.

What we didn’t realize, at first, was the impact the artwork was having on those who attended our programs. Our in-person program participants often show up on a Monday, not knowing exactly what to expect and usually not knowing anyone in the room. At the end of the week, they are asked to give us feedback on their time with us. Surprisingly, the art surrounding their experience is often at the top of their list. It contributes to a retreat-like environment that provides an opportunity for reflection and development.

One recent illustrative example was a call from a former program participant who wanted to know the name of an artist whose art we had displayed in our buildings during her time at CCL nearly a decade before. During that conversation, she commented on how the art made her feel at home as soon as she saw it, and that she would stand in front of it during breaks. The personal transformation she experienced in the program continued to positively impact her career over the next decade. Now, she wanted a piece of art to serve as a reminder of her time at CCL, the things she learned, and her continued growth. (Thankfully, we had records and could provide her with the artist’s name!)

The environment created with art positively impacts the experiences of our program attendees, during their time with us, and for years beyond.

The Impact of Artwork on Leadership

From altering mindsets and perspectives to creative problem-solving and emotional connection, art may offer aspiring leaders more than they realize and even more than perhaps they thought they needed.

  • Art is an act of perspective-sharing and community- and consensus-building. By taking in another person’s view through their creation, a leader can spend a moment reflecting on a different perspective. You don’t have to LIKE a certain piece of art, but you can certainly learn to appreciate its value as coming from a perspective that is not your own. You can loosen your grip on a single idea as you explore the color of a painting or the curve of a sculpture, and suddenly your mind opens just a bit more to that differing viewpoint. Especially in the equity, diversity and inclusion space, one of the ways we learn about organizations and its people are the cultural artifacts (e.g., the things on the wall in the office, behind our little boxes on Zoom screens) to see the tapestry that weaves us together and informs our path forward.
  • Art can provide a mental “break.” Stepping away from a routine or a problem that is becoming a struggle is important. Many get up from their desk and “walk it out.” Stretching your legs is a proven way to engage the body and let the mind relax. Artwork can serve the same purpose. It offers the brain an opportunity to take a detour, a chance to take in something creative and different. It might be a soft landscape that is a reprieve from stress. It might be a bright abstract that sparks renewed energy. Whatever the response, art can encourage a person to return to a task refreshed.
  • Art is an emotional conduit. Looking at art often creates an emotion. Executives are known to be pragmatic, and emotional reactions may be seen as weakness, although this is far from the truth. As our colleague and CCL faculty member Mike Mitchell, Ph.D., often notes, leaders who are in touch with their emotions can be more self-aware and able to recognize the emotional needs of others. Emotional intelligence is important for effective leadership. Being surrounded by artwork that evokes different emotions allows people the opportunity to recognize an emotional reaction, and deal with it in appropriate ways.
  • Art can be a connection – to your goals, and to others. One of the ways that we bring the hard work of professional and personal development to life is making our goals visual and visible. And by putting them in observable places, whether it’s an image or something that someone sees when they walk into the office, they can spur moments of connection or shared accountability.

Like an artist, a leader must draw on their own unique personality, values, social identity, and vision. As with art, organizations must arouse creative energy, provide inspiration, and promote self-expression and out-of-the-box-thinking by building an inclusive leadership culture of belonging.

Art is just one reflection of how an organization can inspire creativity within its environment to foster a nurturing space for learning, collaboration, innovation, and leadership to flourish.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Laura Gibson is the Art Curator at the Center for Creative Leadership, having taken over the program in 2005. In her role, Laura secures artists for rotating exhibits and receptions open to the public, as well as managing CCL’s permanent art collection. She is passionate about the impact the art has on staff, participants, and the community.

Ren Washington is a Leadership Solutions Partner at the Center for Creative Leadership. In his role, Ren is committed to helping clients address their most challenging and complex issues around organizational change and innovation, equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), executive presence and image, influence, and resilience. 

 

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.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One. Also, stay up-to-date on new shows airing by following the Innovative Leadership Institute on LinkedIn.

The Bonobo Sisterhood: Ape Society’s Lessons for Your Leadership

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Diane Rosenfeld, lecturer on law and the founding director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School and author of The Bonobo Sisterhood: Revolution Through Female Alliance, provided this article as a companion piece to her podcast The Bonobo Sisterhood: Ape Society’s Lessons for Your Leadership. It is part of the International Leadership Association Series.  This series features guests from the International Leadership Association 2022 Global Conference held in Washington, D.C., in October 2022.

“Women’s leadership means doing what needs to be done without waiting to ask for permission.”

-Diane L. Rosenfeld

This was a quote of mine in Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World by Marie C. Wilson, President of the Ms. Foundation.

In my recently published book The Bonobo Sisterhood: Revolution Through Female Alliance, (HarperCollins, 2022) I make the case for women and girls to learn self-defense and to defend one another, like the our evolutionary cousins the bonobos do. It is the first book to apply the bonobo model of behavior to humans, and it is essentially a hopeful book that invites us to step outside of patriarchy and to create a more peaceful, harmonious social order.

I was invited to the International Leadership Association Conference through my close friend and colleague, Betsy Myers. She moderated a plenary panel on women’s wisdom on which I was honored to sit. The panel turned out to be an example of the power of female alliances; and hopefully we inspired the audience to explore the book to inform their own leadership initiatives, whatever those may be. At the conference, I had the chance to sit down with Maureen Metcalf and talk at length about the ideas in the book.

Having just returned from a two-week stint teaching in Italy, I am now vividly aware of how truly international The Bonobo Sisterhood is and will be. Below is the introduction. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it leads you to reading the book. Feel free to contact me with your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you!

 

Excerpt from the introduction of The Bonobo Sisterhood: Revolution Through Female Alliance, (HarperCollins, 2022):

Bonobos are living proof that patriarchy is not inevitable.

Our most closely related evolutionary cousins, the bonobos, are peaceful, loving, food sharing, freely sexual, and xenophilic, meaning they love strangers, they do not fear them. Why? Be­ cause in their female-led social order, they have nothing to fear.

Here’s how it works: If a female bonobo is aggressed upon, she lets out a special cry, and other females-whether they know her, like her, or are related to her-rush immediately to her defense from wherever they are. They form coalitions instantaneously with remarkable speed. Together they fend off the aggressive male, biting his ear or toe, and send him into isolation. When he returns, in a few days or later, they all reconcile, and he does not aggress again. And here is the most significant takeaway: evolutionarily, bonobos have eliminated male sexual coercion.

This model of collective self-defense changes everything.

I first learned about bonobos from Richard Wrangham, a Harvard University anthropologist, when we were on a panel together in 2004. He explained that primates use male sexual coercion to control females as reproductive resources. For example, male chimpanzees batter fertile females; male orangutans force copulation with lone females; male silverback gorillas commit infanticide, abduct the infant’s mother, impregnate her, and add her to their harem. We humans hear about this violence and consider how brutal nature is, but we don’t question its logic because it fits with our expectation of male behavior. We think of male violence as our legacy, our evolutionary destiny. Bonobos invite us to think again. It might be that bonobos prevented patriarchy from ever taking hold. They might represent a “pre-patriarchal” social order that stopped violence from becoming the organizing principle of society. And it produced instead a harmonious, peaceful, cooperative, and joyful community. This book contends that such a society is not only possible, it is proven by the existence of the bonobos. Bonobos look very similar to chimpanzees, so much so that they were not recognized as a separate species until 1929. They are found only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and are less studied and less well known than chimpanzees. Nevertheless, the fascinating and developing body of work being done around bonobos reveals possibilities for peaceful coexistence between males and females that we might never have thought possible.

To say I was riveted while learning about our bonobo cousins would be a wild understatement. At that point in my career, I had spent more than a decade as an activist legal scholar and lawyer searching for ways to end male sexual violence. I had tried to do this through asking audacious questions to expose the underlying inequalities of our legal system and social order: “Why Doesn’t He Leave?,” for example, became the title of my master’s thesis at Harvard Law School challenging the deeply flawed societal expectation that sending women to battered women’s shelters is an acceptable approach to domestic violence. But my new insights into bonobos opened a whole new world of possibilities to eliminate male sexual coercion and with is the underpinnings that cause, support, and perpetuate patriarchal violence.

Patriarchal violence is the term I use to describe the amount and type of male coercion necessary to preserve a male-dominated social order.

Richard and I were mutually compelled by our respective fields, so we created and cotaught a course on theories of sexual coercion to more fully explore the potential of bonobos to inform human law and society. Teaching this class with Richard gave me the opportunity to test the hypotheses about the power and potential of female alliances to change the world. The book you are now reading is the result of that inquiry.

That the idea of female alliance was born of a collaboration with a male colleague is not ironic – though at first glance it might appear to be. Female alliances don’t exclude males; quite the opposite. And we will see more of how and why in the coming pages, where I invite everyone to join in new coalitionary forces to thwart, once and for all, the power of violence to shape the world. I call these alliances the Bonobo Sisterhood. This sisterhood excludes no one, and all are welcome as long as they abide by the Bonobo Principle. It is a two-part principle, and if you agree with it, you are part of the Bonobo Sisterhood.

The first part, No one has the right to pimp my sister. With pimp I include any form of patriarchal violence from gaslighting to economic, emotional, physical, sexual, and psychological abuse.

The second part: Everyone is my sister.

For now, though, we have to start where we are, in a world saturated with patriarchal violence.

Every day in the United States, three to four women are killed by their estranged husbands or boyfriends. Black women are at a 40 percent higher risk of being killed.  LGBTQ people experience intimate partner violence at rates comparable to and even higher than their heterosexual counterparts.

The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) conducts a day-long survey once a year to offer a snapshot of domestic violence in the United States. Here’s the snapshot from a single day in 2019: Because of domestic abuse and the threat of domestic homicide, almost 43,000 women and children were refugees from their own homes. They were running for their lives, forced to seek emergency shelter, forced to go into hiding. They were escaping from domestic terrorists who had been holding them hostage with threats and violence. That same day, more than 11,000 requests for shelter services went unmet, and 7,732 of those were for domestic terrorism refugees. Perhaps if we recognized them as refugees, we could see domestic violence as a crisis.

This violence is the backdrop of our everyday lives. Part of why we view patriarchal violence as inevitable is that until now, we have not had a proven way to eliminate it. We’re taught to rely on laws or law enforcement to protect us. But the moment we delegate our safety to someone else, we give up our power to them. Bonobos show us that uniting with other females and allies, coming physically to one another’s defense in numbers, will shut down aggression.  We have a way out.

The anthropologist Amy Parish, a leading expert in bonobo studies, has said, “Bonobo females live the goals of the human feminist movement: behave with unrelated females as if they are your sisters.”

And everyone is your sister.

This approach excludes no one. It includes everyone.

The Bonobo Sisterhood is the missing piece that changes everything. And it’s possible that in a butterfly politics sense, Ashley Judd is the bridge that connects it all. When she courageously came forward publicly against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, she reignited the #MeToo movement. Women from all over the world came forth with their own experiences, showing the extent of the problem, and uniting survivors around the world. The Women’s Marches, the largest in history, showed our willingness to protest this untenable situation. What was lacking was a solution, and that’s what this book proposes: a collective self-defense to protect ourselves and our sisters. This would be unlike anything that has been tried or conceived of to date, at least on a large scale. And it is something we can begin to create tomorrow.

The energy of the Bonobo Sisterhood is palpable, tangible. I had the wonderful opportunity of giving a keynote speech at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in upstate New York. The night before my talk, my Bonobo Sisters and I went out to an Italian restaurant. The women knew one another only through me and had only just met the day before. You would never know that from the intense, ecstatic, joyous, hilarious bonobo bonding that took place at that dinner. We were all supercharged by the excitement of having a new theory of life; a new way to confront the status quo and make it so much better. Everything I learn about bonobos gives me hope, as humans with the capacity for sophisticated language, morality, law, and the ability to articulate rights backed by a collective self-defense. We can choose to be bonobo. We choose love over fear; abundance over scarcity; peace over war; sexual choice and freedom over coercion.

As we embark on this journey, please know that I am coming from a place of inclusion, love, and respect. The frame of patriarchal violence is premised on male supremacy over females. All our gender relationships take place against this background; and all will change when that changes. The Bonobo Sisterhood gives us the framework for comprehensive gender inclusion. And our new lens on equality among women allows us to transcend racial, ethnic, class, geographic, and other divisions. Through this change in focus, we consciously choose to be bonobo; to share in our abundance in creating a new social order.

I offer you this book with the hope that the bonobos light up your inner power to change the world.

Welcome to the Bonobo Sisterhood. Let’s begin.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Diane L. Rosenfeld, JD, LLM, is a lecturer on law and the founding director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, where she has taught since 2004. Rosenfeld has appeared in major media outlets, including ABC’s Nightline; Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall; Katie (with Katie Couric); CNN Headline News; Fox and Friends; the New York Times; the Washington Post; the Boston Globe; the Chicago Tribune; and NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition. She is featured in the award winning documentaries The Hunting Ground; It Happened Here; and Rape Is…

Rosenfeld served as the first senior counsel to the Office on Violence Against Women at the US Department of Justice and as an executive assistant attorney general in Illinois. She is the recipient of multiple awards for her teaching, mentoring, and change-making legal policy work.

She lives outside Boston with her husband and their dog.

Her latest book is THE BONOBO SISTERHOOD: Revolution Through Female Alliance.

 

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.

Check out the companion interview and past episodes of Innovating Leadership, Co-creating Our Future via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify,  Amazon Music,  Audible, iHeartRADIO, and NPR One. Also, stay up-to-date on new shows by following the Innovative Leadership Institute on LinkedIn.

 

Opportunity in Uncertainty

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Dr. Ciela Hartonov. futurist, organizational psychologist, human behavior expert, writer, and thinker dedicated to reinventing work provided this article as a companion piece to her podcast  Opportunity in Uncertainty.  

 

Lessons on leadership in the wake of crisis

In the 17th century, the Great Plague of London sent Isaac Newton, then in his 20s, home from Trinity College in Cambridge back to the family estate. He stayed home for more than a year, doing some of his best work in mathematics and the study of gravity. He took the moment of pause to advance his profound and groundbreaking work. If Newton’s moment of reflection produced such genius then — given what we’re seeing in our own uncertain times — who knows what we can reimagine? How might we take this moment to see something anew?

I’ve been taking my own pause to look at how the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on different leadership styles in ways no one, I believe, could have anticipated. The crisis will turn out to be one of the greatest change agents in our lifetime, giving us license to re-examine several aspects of the way we live, treat one another, and build flourishing businesses and communities.

In the past few weeks we’ve seen leaders rising up who give clues to what leadership traits we may want to embrace in our very near future: Jacinda Ardern with her empathy-driven clarity, Angela Merkel with her science-backed responsiveness. What do all these leaders have in common? They balance crisis management with a deep resonance for the human experience inside the trauma. They are demonstrating, in a word, sensitivity. Not just the emotional equity that is usually associated (and often disparaged) with this term, but the deeper ability to adapt and respond.

Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum says, “We need leaders who are emotionally intelligent, and able to model and champion co-operative working. They’ll coach, rather than command; they’ll be driven by empathy, not ego.” I couldn’t agree more.

We can thrive in uncertainty if we learn to embrace sensitive leadership. Sensitive leadership is the practice of building capacity for responsive action, by using the ability to attune to the nuances of a situation. Leaders with acute perceptual skills (including emotion detection) are the ones who are better equipped to manage through unexpected shifts.

Let’s return to Jacinda Ardern, who has received much press and praise and is a model of sensitive leadership. After the 2019 Christchurch shootings in New Zealand, the public went into a state of shock and uncertainty. Ardern responded with a radical combination of emotional empathy and direct action to an event that was unprecedented but nonetheless required leadership response. As Harvard historian Nancy Koehn stated: “Here is a leader who’s very conscious of both the emotional responsibilities of a leader — to help a nation heal and come together — and at the same time [saying], ‘I’ve got to act.” At this moment, there was no playbook, but Ardern detected what was necessary and took sensitive action.

The Value of Sensitive Leadership

Sensitive leaders understand that trying to control organizations, people or external forces is futile. They move away from a mindset of hierarchy and control to one of embracing the true nature of organization and human systems: they are made of interconnected, interdependent pieces that are always adjusting and adapting. As the saying goes, the sum is greater than the parts.

Our current times are thankfully helping us rediscover this interconnection; when we stay home, we protect others from infection. Our actions have an immediate impact on others. We are remembering that we must not act as individualists, because our fates are linked. Even when it is not blatantly observable, these interconnections are undeniable, both in organizations and society at large.

This is partly due to our biology. We have something called mirror neurons, which allow us to imitate others, reflecting others’ body language and emotions. Mirror neurons are the invisible tissue that are essential for building connections for social life. Part of the reason isolation is so difficult is that we are physically linked to one another. This moment presents the possibility that interconnectedness may not just be a necessity, but may even be our unique human advantage.

According to Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and the author of Sapiens, our species’ ability to adapt more successfully than others is due to our skill in leveraging human interconnection for cooperation. Sensitive leaders accept that this necessary reliance is not a deficit but an organizational truth. It is what can lead to outsized innovations and deep emotional connection at work, where we spend so much of our waking lives. Human wiring grants us the ability to band together, to make sense together, and to create progress.

However, our current organizational systems and traditional leadership practices are not designed to accept, let alone leverage co-creation. Sensitive leaders realize that organizations built on the industrial era tools of hierarchy, goal setting, and efficiency are reaching the end of their utility. This is because the world is increasingly unpredictable and complex. Never has this been more painfully obvious than now.

We are learning that the world works beyond direct cause and effect. A focus on binary ways of thinking — right, wrong; yes, no — have left us struggling to cope with a new reality, one where more unexpected challenges are likely to come. An ever-emerging environment requires increased awareness, consciousness, and cooperative action. These situations call for sensitive leaders: those who can nudge, who are comfortable following non-linear paths, who can make decisions in the absence of clear facts, and who can leverage interconnections to cooperate.

For those of us (leaders or otherwise) who have been told (and who hasn’t?) that sensitivity is a deficiency, this may come as a surprising invitation. The truth is that sensitivity has been associated with irrationality and over emotionality for far too long. Sensitivity can provide us with so much more than empathy. It allows us to more deeply understand a situation and to respond with care and decisiveness. In fact, original references to sensitivity from the 13th Century defined it as the capacity to gain perspectives. It is not a deficit, but rather a unique human super power.

COVID-19 has taught us that we can no longer ignore the presence and power of the unexpected, complex and interconnected. As technological conditions, climate change and interconnected forces are multiplying, we urgently need more sensitive leaders.

How to Build Sensitive Leadership Skills

Leaders can build sensitivity skills by developing the capacity to sense, reflect and respond. Based on my years in the leadership development field, I believe that cultivating and expanding sense-reflect-respond capacities is now the single most important obligation of leadership. Based on the science of managing complex environments, forcing a space between thought and action allows us to see fresh perspectives and ways forward. Practiced over time, we learn to attune to elusive dynamics and subtle clues in unfamiliar territory, to ask new questions to unlock possibility, and to make choices even in the absence of a “right” way.

Here is how the three steps work:

Sense: The first step is absolutely critical and often overlooked. This is the ability to notice weak signals. It may sound simple or trite, but when the world is moving fast and attention is scarce, we often ignore the small signs. In attention-hogging environments, leaders have to work harder to sense evolving dynamics. A sensitive leader notices changes in the environment, reacting to sights, sounds, and smells when others may not. They tune into subtleties with more frequency.

By looking at what is happening within individual thought patterns and also what is going on contextually in the environment, they are able to cue into the need for change before being forced into it by catalytic circumstances. The more we notice and examine, the more able we are to deepen our understanding and create more choices for action. This practice of noticing builds the foundation of sensitive leadership.

Reflect: This is the spot between noticing and action. It creates the necessary liminal space to determine next steps. Highly sensitive individuals process information deeply, which requires reflection and deep questioning. Asking ourselves different questions can reshape how we think.

In the emergent era, one cannot lead unless they are wise, and wisdom comes from integrating across multiple intelligences (rational, emotional, social). Practicing reframing helps us see something in a new light and disrupt our default solutions, coming up with new and creative solutions.

Respond: Responsiveness means altering behavior in the face of changes to the environment. This is not just action-planning; it is about being versatile. Responsive leaders evolve alongside the changing conditions around them and take action in face of uncertainty. We can see new possibilities for action when we break free from the chains of habitual thinking. Leaders who take action while accounting for multiple truths and stories are at once more inclusive and equipped for the future ahead.

This cycle of sense-process-respond can happen rapidly and it must be on repeat. Since the 1990s, brain researchers have come to realize that the brain — even the adult brain — is far more adaptable than anyone ever imagined, and this gives us a tremendous amount of control over what our brains are able to do. We now understand that there’s no such thing as a predefined ability. The brain is adaptable, and training can create skills that did not exist before. We can embolden our powers of sensitivity.

COVID-19 has reminded us, with shocking clarity, that our life and time on this earth are precious. It is neither infinite nor guaranteed. The dangers of today call us to move past complacency and focus on what matters most. We now have the opportunity to quickly prune away the normalized leadership practices that no longer serve us. Let’s take this moment to reimagine what types of leaders we want to follow: leaders who role model sensitive leadership, building the strength to embrace their own senses decisively, and allowing others to do the same.

Maybe this time will give us enough pause, just as it did for Newton, to have a breakthrough. Maybe we can reinvent our relationship to sensitivity — this long overlooked, deeply human, powerful trait.

Enhancing our innate human capacity for sensitivity is a way forward to ensure that our organizations, societies and communities are malleable, emergent and adaptive. We each can take the call to tune into our sensitive nature, so that life both inside and outside of the organization becomes more whole and humane.

 

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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Additional Resources offered by our trusted colleagues and partners

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Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash