In the last few years, the VUCA context of the previous four decades has given way to a BANI world – one that is Brittle, Anxious, Non Linear and Incomprehensible.
The challenges that this has brought are totally unprecedented, and they have left people feeling completely out of their depth. Organisations are struggling to cope with the new reality, and leaders are grappling with unforeseen challenges, professionally and personally.
We have brought up a generation of leaders who have been taught to always be strong and never show vulnerability, and who have been expected to have all the right answers, to give direction to the organisation and its people. These leaders, who sit in lonely places at the top of their organisations, were once very successful and had it all figured out. They had the rest of the organisation looking up to them for vision, inspiration and motivation. Now, they find themselves in the unenviable position of facing strange situations and daunting challenges, and in uncharted territory of not knowing what to do. Events are defying the logic they understood, employees are behaving in unexpected ways, and there are no precedents to fall back upon to solve these problems. Many of them are scared and insecure that their track record of success will now be ruined, and that they will go out at the bottom, in the last innings of their careers. And they do not know how or with whom to share their anxieties. Many of them also genuinely want to do the right thing, and figure out how to lead in the new context, but they don’t know how, and haven’t a clue where to even begin. All around us, leaders are struggling to stay afloat and survive. A few are expressing it, many are not.
Over the last one year, as I’ve engaged with organisations and had many confidential, one on one conversations with leaders, a few things have become clear to me:
- We are facing a context that is like nothing we have encountered before
- This is not temporary, but is here to stay
- Most organisations and leaders are struggling to survive this situation
- Tactical actions are being taken to try and solve problems in the short term
I have always believed that in adversity lies opportunity. That hardship can build character. So months of observation and reflection have strengthened my conviction that If we can leverage this situation to help organisations and leaders to pivot effectively, this can become a magnificent opportunity to create significant positive impact in the world. And we can enable leaders to go from barely surviving, to thriving in the BANI world.
It is my deep belief that the answer to this lies in building ‘Inclusive Leadership’, and I delineate this through THE POWER OF i model, which I have crafted in the last twelve months:
The model reflects the potential and power to create significant positive Impact in organisations and in the world at large, through Inclusive Leadership, by coaching and enabling leaders to
- Introspect deeply from within,
- Inspire diverse others, and
- Institutionalise the way, for sustainable and scalable impact.
So let’s talk briefly about each of these three leadership imperatives to unleash The Power of i .
INTROSPECTION from within
In the words of Aristotle, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”. So, if leaders hope to understand the super challenging new context, and find ways to overcome it and learn to thrive, they must begin with first cultivating a deep Self-Awareness. Leadership research for years has emphasised the importance of high self-awareness. But perhaps never has this been more crucial than now.
While deepening their self-awareness, leaders also need to develop Self Compassion, something that many of us have forgotten or failed to embrace in our lives. We have got caught up in the race to compete, and to become better and better at everything. This has led us to constantly evaluate ourselves and often berate ourselves for our shortcomings and our weaknesses. Organisational systems have grown to find people’s gap areas, development investments have been focussed on training people to get better at what they are not good at. Companies have strived for excellence and perfection, and ended up creating tremendous pressure on individuals to be superhuman. People feel insecure about their weaknesses, strain to hide their mistakes, and in a state of defensiveness, often play the blame game. Hardly a conducive environment for high performance or innovative problem solving!
Now imagine a situation where people accurately know their strengths and gaps, but instead of expending their energy on bridging the latter, they focus it on contributing through the former – their strengths. An ecosystem where each individual is accepting of and compassionate about his/ her own imperfections, and therefore feels no need to defend or compete.
So, the starting point of building The Power of I is to enable leaders (right at the top and then working through the organisation), to become more and more self-aware, reflective and self-compassionate. And to hand-hold them to become comfortable with bringing their whole selves to work – with their strengths and imperfections, their purpose and values, their aspirations and potential, and all their skills, experiences and perspectives.
Given the challenges of a Brittle, Anxious, Non-Linear and Incomprehensible world, the next step would be to enable leaders to build the following 5 capabilities:
- RESILIENCE to bounce forward,
- AGILITY to unlearn and learn constantly,
- COMPOSURE to accept daunting challenges one after another without crumbling,
- HUMILITY to accept that they don’t have the answers, and to collaborate to co-create answers with diverse others (who could even be much younger/ junior to them!), and
- INTUITION to formulate and follow their judgement in the absence of clear data/ answers
INSPIRING diverse others
Introspection to build deep self-awareness and self-compassion in individuals across an organisation would create a safe space for people to bring their whole selves to work. Done systemically and role modelled from the top, it would create a conducive culture to spawn diversity in the talent pool.
And in this beautiful environment, a powerful next step would be forming teams of people with diverse and complementary strengths, to problem solve together. Can you visualise the extent of innovation this could create? – on the one hand, unleashing individual potential by sparking happiness and a sense of security and self-worth, AND on the other hand, harnessing collective capability through effective collaboration.
Secure leaders with humility and self-compassion, would bring out the best in others as they would be accepting of diverse others, and would create an experience of inclusiveness for all. Rather than ‘manage’ differences, they would be coached and enabled to celebrate and embrace differences, in recognition of the fact that they are the fuel for innovation and hence success in this new BANI world.
To foster and build a culture of true collaboration, two capabilities would need to be built and encouraged across the organisation, as pillars of Inclusive Leadership:
- EMPATHY and
- LISTENING
Contrary to popular belief, in my experience, these can be taught and imbibed – they need focussed attention while hiring and on-boarding, role modelling by leaders, continuous feedback and coaching, until they become a part of the organisational DNA.
INSTITUTIONALISING the way
Enabling leaders to become more self-aware and self-compassionate, to spawn diversity and spread inclusiveness will certainly create a foundation for The Power of I, in an organisation.
However, in order to scale this beyond individual leaders, and create sustained Impact over time and geography, it will be critical to institutionalise Inclusive Leadership by acting on and investing in a couple of specific things:
- Articulating and socialising the Purpose and Values of the Organisation to reflect Inclusive Leadership
- Building Capacity, Mindfulness, Adaptability and Transparency in the organisation system
- Establishing Structures that enable and reinforce this (such as the diverse teams we talked about, working on strategic priorities in the organisation)
- Aligning People Processes to this core, so that the right behaviours are developed, recognised, rewarded and encouraged
- Actively creating a Pipeline of Leaders who exhibit and role model this leadership approach, and coach others to do the same
In summary, many leaders are struggling to survive in this super challenging, post pandemic world, so none of us is alone in this experience. However, rather than getting bogged down by this reality, let’s recognise, embrace and celebrate that there is a way to thrive and to create a significant positive impact in the world. If you would like to know more about how The Power of I can be built in your organisation, and how you as a Leader can spearhead this incredible journey of transformation, please visit https://powerofi.co.in
