From previous posts, I would expect that it would now be obvious that I am perhaps a little renegade in my approach to courageous leadership!
This post is no exception. I acknowledge upfront that everything is perception and very much depends on which context you are sitting in when discussing any subject.
With that said, I often feel uninspired by models which attempt to explain our human condition. The reason why I do is because most that I have come across attempt to define people through what they do, ie the strategies, beliefs and values which a person lives and behaves by.
Though this can be extremely interesting and intellectually satisfying, and also often provides a way for conventional corporate business to measure success and return on investment, it still only ever comes from a paradigm of ‘managing, fixing, changing or improving’ . In other words, how can we use this information to improve or ‘deal with’ the dysfunctional behaviours which turn up in our people/company?
As a non-conventional leader, I would not be satisfied with the norm in that regard. I would be looking to the foundation of any particular issue and look truthfully at how I could transform it rather than fix it up. I’d want a transformation approach rather than a continual band-aid approach which came from moving a few pieces of ‘problem’ around in the hope that things would be better.
Courageous leadership for me is where you realise that transformation, rather than fixing, is preferable and that happens from a contextual place rather than from a content shake up. So in simple terms, make a shift in the context of each individual and sit back, be present and watch how the content changes automatically.
I feel it is vitally important for me to be clear in saying that there is nothing essentially wrong with the conventional approaches that focus on the content – only that you acknowledge the limitation and ask yourself as a leader, what it is you are really looking to create?