Leading Self & Personal Capacities

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This slideshow focuses on personal capacities required for leading in a fast changing environment. It is being presented by Christopher Baan. Today’s complex sustainability challenges call for a new generation of leaders and a new paradigm of leadership. Sustainability leaders and change agents need to steer their way through complex change processes in an environment that is characterised by high stakes and high uncertainty. Increasingly, leaders need to be able to facilitate participatory processes and engage a wide variety of stakeholders. In most cases, the sustainability challenge requires engaging people in profound change, an inner shift in people’s values, aspirations and behaviours guided by their mental models, as well as an outer shift in processes, strategies and practices. Sustainability and CSR managers, change agents and facilitators need to be adept at engaging individuals and groups in a collaborative and dialogical manner, unearthing the group’s collective intelligence and assisting employees to gain a whole system perspective. Facilitating this type of transformation depends first on the authentic leadership of the facilitator.

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Leading yourself in turbulent times – personal leadership capacities & practice

Authentic leadership for a just, resilient and thriving world

Christopher Baan 25th April 2012

21st Century Network

We live in a period of accelerated and profound change …

… or transformation?

We live in a period of accelerated and profound change

‘It is the best of times, and the worst of times, the age of wisdom, and the age of foolishness.’ (from the opening to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)

THE EARTH

IS FULL

WBCSD&2009&

We are collectively creating results nobody wants…habitually recreating solutions from old way so of thinking…

• 

•  “We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

Collectively, we are creating results nobody wants…habitually recreating solutions from old ways of thinking…

Talking and planning lead to more of the same results… … a di!erent approach seems to be needed.

…Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born.

”I think there are good reasons for suggesting that the modern age has ended….

… It is as if something were crumbling, decaying

and exhausting itself – while something else, still

indistinct, were arising from the rubble.”

- Vaclav Havel

… and what do you see emerging around you, in the world?

What do you see dying…

A few observations

Scharmer&2011&

Cynefyn framework

COMPLEXITY EMERGENCE

“!e greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”   – Peter Drucker, 1980

We know a lot about leadership skills & competencies, strategy and the exterior aspects of leadership

but…

… what is the ‘root’ of our action and inspiration?

… what if the way we show up as a human being is the core of authentic leadership?

… what if it’s about engaging what already exists in you, with focus and purpose? What if it’s about nurturing who you really are?

“!e success of an intervention depends on

the interior condition of the intervener.”

–Bill O’Brien

(former CEO of Hanover Insurance)

Scharmer&2007&

#e Blind Spot of Leadership

Source: Who

Blind Spot: Inner place from where we operate

Process: How

Results: What

What if change is not about re-structuring, re-engineering, or re-organising, but

about re-perceiving – seeing the world with new eyes?

Our brains are overloaded, our multitasking is draining us….

What if the currency of the new (emerging)

economy is awareness, and the quality of awareness, that we bring to our work?

Bringing your whole self to the conversation/to work*

Think of a time at work where you had a peak experience; where you felt fully engaged and working in line with your values and deepest beliefs.

*including your good, bad, wise, confused, scared, hopeful self.

Authentic Leadership

‘Authentic leadership is an ongoing process of fully inhabiting oneself, one’s work, and one’s world.’ (ALIA institute)

It is about synchronising your awareness, intention and action, your vision and values

Authentic leadership (from last time: Chris Tamdjidi/ ALIA institute)

•  In order to develop oneself as a leader, one has to train body, heart and mind –  Body: Strength, vitality and presence. –  Heart: Passion, Ability to motivate and emotional intelligence –  Mind: Inner peacefulness, Wisdom, clarity of understanding –  INNER PATH as well as ACTIVITY IN THE WORLD

•  Congruence of vision and values –  Personal, team, organisation values supporting societal values –  Without vision it is not possible to motivate people – money alone is

not a vision –  Without values one cannot realise the heart of ones vision

•  Harmony of being, action and results –  Mindfulness, thoughtfulness and re$ection as part of leadership

process –  Ability to take decisions to the bene%t of all (people, results)

Personal capacities of authentic leadership

Personal leadership capacities are our internal resources that help us navigate our personal and professional lives with $exibility and adaptability based upon congruency of mind, body, spirit and heart.

#ey are fundamental ‘ways of being’ in the world.

Synthesis of research tools and theories into a model.

Personal Leadership Capacities

How do you cultivate these capacities?

•  Where you place your attention… grows •  Embodiment •  Practice

Essential and very useful practices of change agents (currently practicing)

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Closer up: Top 10 practices 94%

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61% 61%

56% 56% 56%

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Mentor/Circle Meditation Attention to Breath

Retreat Spending time in nature

Relaxation exercises

Mindfulness Reflective journaling

Silence Generative Dialogue

% Response: Practice 'Essential' or 'Very Useful' in your work % Repsonse: Currently Practicing

‘Conditions for success’

Conditions of success for developing capacities: •  Personal AND collective practices •  Combination of contemplative, physical and spiritual practice to align body,

mind, spirit

•  Quality of attention more important than kind of practice •  Integration in personal AND professional life

Conditions of success for practices: •  Mirroring quality

•  Its ‘a container you can’t manipulate’ •  Willing to do repetitively

Taking it home Start a practice… something that suits your needs. What do you yearn for? What’s inkling in your body?

Further resources http://www.thelotus.info (practice guide, video interviews with thought leaders, etc) Practice: the wormhole of transformation http://www.thelotus.info/%eldnotes Suggestions for starting a (meditation) practice: see www.susanpiver.com Noetic Institute: Transformation model: http://www.noetic.org/research/transformation_model/

Upcoming events

Facilitating transformational change towards sustainability. www.thelotus.info/what-we-do/workshops-training

If you want to become a leader, you %rst must become a human being.

Questions & Re$ections

www.thelotus.info

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