What’s Different about Life Leadership?

LIFE LEADERSHIP DIGEST – Article by Steve Trivett – 6/05/2023

Life Leadership seeks a new paradigm, one that empowers leaders to confront the challenges presented to them by a VUCA World. It adopts an open systems view of reality, that recognises the fundamental interdependencies that exist between all living things.

When we start to think “outside our box” we lose the security of long-held assumptions and beliefs. We are no longer in familiar territory. What was once clear and reliable becomes ambiguous and uncertain.

• How do we know when something we are seeing or hearing can be trusted?
• How can we blindly trust people we don’t know to deliver on a promise?
• How can we verify our assessments so that they are not just wishful thinking? 

When in a leadership role or when taking responsibility for the way we behave in everyday relationships, we bring what we believe is our authentic self to the situation. When we are being authentic we create more trust in ourselves and other people.  It’s about being honest with ourselves about what feels right for us. But when facing a complex choice we get confused and doubt ourselves. Unless we know what makes us feel good and confident that we are doing what we care about. There is fluency in our thoughts and actions that makes us feel confident that we are being ourselves. 

What’s of concern is how the VUCA World can undermine our capacity to engage in authentic trust. We engage in conversations that allow us to know when something feels right for us and we accept it. The predictabilities of a command and control culture, are breaking down. The consequences can be seen in the breakdowns in the normal flow of life we experience every day. Fewer and fewer events and relationships fulfil our expectations. Technology fails to deliver and people let us down. The stress this causes can be clearly seen in health and welfare breakdowns, social media and inequality are fostering divisions that are generating anxiety. Leaders need to embrace the messiness that humans create because they are just being human. The loss of humility and compassion is raising some fundamental questions.

• How do we face facts when we cannot accept them and remain stuck in old assumptions or beliefs? 
• How do we move on to consider alternative perspectives when we cannot accept that there are different ways of seeing things?  
• How do we take action to improve things when we cannot accept the uncertainties of life?
• How do we grow if we cannot accept that we have an innate capacity to learn and take care of what we really care about?

Tapping into the power of acceptance

Five basic assumptions or limiting beliefs are holding us back from leading our way through the chaos we are creating for ourselves. Both nature and human history show us how chaos provides an opportunity to create a new order. So what can we leaders do to create the conditions for a new paradigm to emerge? 

1. Embrace Uncertainty

We have to accept that certainty is an illusion. We want to be in control and see uncertainty as a threat or an exception. But, in the real world, uncertainty is ubiquitous. We remain stuck in our assumptions and beliefs until we see the power of uncertainty to drive us into continuously exploring possibilities for change.

2. Find Patterns

Simple problems have simple solutions as the relationship between cause and effect is easy to see. But complex problems present us with a web of interacting parts that make the connections between cause and effect unclear, even confusing. But even in complex situations, there are patterns of interaction or rules that hold the system together. The problem may never be solved, but by identifying and shifting the pattern the worst impact can be mitigated.

3. Generate Engagement

Something that’s generative has the capacity to adapt and renew itself. When there is diversity and energy among the “actors”, it is possible for them to find enough common ground to write a new “script” for a better future. It is accepting the differences that can make the difference and valuing the similarities that bring them together. 

4. Powerful Observations

In a VUCA environment, what appears as a fact can be misinterpreted. Seeing options and a bigger picture can give a more accurate view of reality than the validity and reliability of a precise measure. Leadership is a performance art that focuses on the possible. It’s about being able to see and think differently with a living system mindset. 

Life Leaders set themselves on a course of pursuing what they care about, knowing intuitively that they are in the right place. They can embrace uncertainty, knowing that they are doing what is important to them with an unshakable sense of purpose.