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My Leadershift in a VUCA world
by Alison Lalieu
Two years can feel like a lifetime, it can also pass by in a flash! I'd like to tell you a story, one about a professional person, wife and mother of four wonderful children, who found herself at the helm of a coaching organisation with a passion and vision for shaping a new flavour of leadership, one infused with connectedness, caring and inspiration.
From very humble beginnings, fuelled only with a very powerful 'why' and a love of people and learning, she donned a corporate hat and undertook a shift that shaped her into a leader who strove to remain calm in a crisis. She endeavoured to have the agility to think fast and clearly in an empathic yet creative way, and make decisions with laser focus having considered multiple perspectives without losing sight of her vision.
Yes, I am speaking about myself, and leaning into my own vulnerability with honesty, to share the ups and downs of my journey and some of the insights gained along the way. I have truly experienced a transformational leadershift, learned so much from my coaching clients, my colleagues and the amazingly talented leaders and organisations we have the privilege of working with every day.
A leadershift doesn't just happen with the snap decision to start showing up in a new way. It crystalizes over time as we take intentional steps to grow self-awareness, challenge and champion both ourselves and those around us, holding on to a deeply held belief that we can achieve things even when they don't seem possible. It's an omnipresent optimism that enables us to experiment, to take risks and be more responsive and purpose driven in the face of uncertainty.
It's a pioneering approach in a world that has become one globally connected network, with instantly accessible and sharable information touching billions of people every minute (around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today), and more coming online every minute. Along with this connectedness has come a much faster paced and interactive world, opening up new opportunities as well as challenges.
Challenges of a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) nature. If you haven't heard of VUCA, it is thought to have derived from military vocabulary1, and was introduced by the U.S. Army War College to describe the unpredictable world resulting from the end of the Cold War. It has since been used in emerging ideas in strategic leadership in a wide range of organizations globally, and it commands a leadershift. So why did I start paying attention to shaping up my own leadership to new ways of thinking and responding, and why might you start thinking about your own leadershift?
Every week we hear about new research and scientific discoveries which only ten years ago would have been unimaginable. Artificial intelligence, robotics, 3-D printing of human organs, Amazon space docking stations storing stock, driverless cars and drones hovering above our cities - the way we live and work is transforming in ways that are unpredictable, yet at the same time, exciting.
Who would have thought that leaders will need skills to enable them to debate the ethical questions raised by robotics and automation - the privacy implications, issues of transparency and fairness, along with the potential for in-built biases in the algorithms that are involved in making decisions that affect our lives. How trusting would you feel with a robot with a scalpel in its hand at your next surgery? 2
Leaders now need to feel comfortable with the fear stemming from uncertainty and the unpredictability resulting from ever evolving business strategies, and start turning their thinking towards the opportunities that are presenting with optimism, a constructive, visionary and learning mindset. Envisioning robust planning giving way to pivotal experimentation, and stuck bureaucracies to agile responsiveness. The once cyclical change management process with a beginning, middle and end has given way to the reality that the change cycle may never be completed, and that pivoting several times during the process is the new normal.
From our coaching experience, organisations are prioritising their search for leadership programs that help their people to think differently, have better conversations and make wiser and braver decisions. Increasingly they are turning to cutting edge neuroscience (understanding the brain better to boost performance, emotional intelligence and the neurochemistry of conversations) to help leaders understand how to become more agile and innovative in their thinking and better able to navigate change.
Uncertainty breeds fear, so it's no surprise to see global organisational trust scores at such low levels3. Leaders need to be highly skilled in the people side of business, fuelling connection and building trust through accessing their Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and ability to communicate using power-with rather than a power-over language. Balancing the overwhelming demands of 24 hour connectedness whilst looking after relationships and nurturing talent is not easy, and only those leaders with high levels of EQ will be able to navigate this path masterfully.
I recognised early on that I would need to develop all of these skills, and so began a leadership learning journey that saw me enrolling in many courses, traveling to many cities and countries, networking with fascinating people and absorbing information like a sponge.
Reflecting on my own leadershift has led me to five key insights that I'd like to share with you:
All roads lead to the brain's Prefrontal cortex (PFC)
The PFC is the area of our brain that sits behind our forehead, and is involved in our planning, abstract reasoning, decision making and short term memory. Key to making a leadershift is the need to understand and nurture the PFC - a fussy and demanding part of the brain! Judith E. Glaser, American author, academic, organisational anthropologist and founder of the Creating WE Institute4, describes the PFC as the youngest brain, providing us with mastery in higher functions such as envisioning the future, stepping into the shoes of others (empathy) and making judgements. Few leaders recognise the limitations of their PFC - it's small, takes up a lot of our daily energy reserves and needs a good amount of sleep to function well. Sleep is important for our PFC to think of creative solutions - it makes no sense to work huge hours, become exhausted and cognitively impaired. I have learned to prioritise my sleep by leaving all digital distractions in another room at night, rather journaling quietly or reading a novel as a wind-down period of reflection.
Our best thinking cannot last very long, and if accuracy is important we should actively avoid multi-tasking or attention switching. Performing multiple tasks at a time with accuracy is virtually impossible, so I am trying to catch myself task-switching (which is using more brain energy and taking me longer to complete things). Disabling all pops up on my laptop and phone was a great place to start, as well as focusing on setting aside 'email response' time in my daily calendar rather than responding to every message as it popped into my Inbox.
I have also learned to prioritise my priorities, and to schedule the most attention rich tasks into chunks in the morning when I have a fresh and alert mind.
Emotions are key - they keep you moving in the right direction!
It is widely recognised now that while our Intelligence Quotient (IQ) may get us the job, it's our EQ that helps us to get through times of uncertainty and change. Our EQ helps us navigate difficult decisions well and have skills to motivate and influence people through building the kind of trusted relationships needed to help them better cope with change.
Joshua Freedman, the Chief Executive Officer of Six Seconds5, a global non-profit organisation dedicated to Emotional Intelligence, describes EQ as our ability to be smarter with our feelings, 'more aware, more intentional and more purposeful'.
It comes as a surprise to many that emotions are neuropeptides, strings of protein produced in response to a trigger and serving the critical function of providing us with the information we need to help us make decisions. It is said that as we make about 35,000 decisions every day of our life, the data we receive from our own and others' emotions helps us to balance our thinking and our feeling to make the best decisions that we can in the moment.
Over the past few decades, many no-nonsense, data driven CEOs have risen through the leadership ranks and still today regard EQ as soft and fluffy, irrelevant and a sign of weakness. Once leaders get promoted, they often find themselves in environments that erode their EQ, as they spend less time in meaningful interactions with their teams and lose the human-to-human touch.
In my coaching experience, leaders who work on growing their EQ as they rise up the corporate ladder significantly outperform their peers. The good news is that EQ is learnable, and as our EQ competencies grow, we show up in new and better ways in our personal and professional leadership.
"In hard times, the soft stuff often goes away. But Emotional Intelligence, it turns out, isn't so soft.
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