The Next Generation: Leadership for the future.
Welcome to the third instalment of our trilogy of blogs exploring how our new programme THRIVE: Passion, Purpose, Performance is leading the charge in a new vision for executive education.
In this series of blogs, Programme Director Chris Coghlan and Programme Leader Dr Jutta Tobias Mortlock talked to us about how their new programme THRIVE is offering a very different experience of leader development to traditional executive education.
Before we dive into this instalment, let’s briefly meet Chris and Jutta.
Chris My background is within the health, fitness and sports science arena, and my passion is creating learning experiences for individuals that are progressive, that put people on their learning edge - right on the edge of where they are comfortable.
Jutta Before becoming an academic I was a business analyst, but I’m now a Social Psychologist and my expertise is in behaviour analysis. I specialise in understanding what gets people to change their behaviours, so I bring the science into THRIVE - science is my superpower!
PART 3
Q: What will leader and organisational success look like in the decade ahead?
Individuals
Chris: I'd like to go back to those words we talked about before, awe and magic, because I think people can start to leverage the human advantage, the things that are less easy to describe that humans can do for themselves and for each other, that can’t be replicated by technology.
Jutta: Success would be if we're feeling more connected and more interconnected. But we’re talking about having more real human connections, because in some ways we’re all a bit overconnected but in the wrong ways through technology and social media. So success would be feeling more connected with fellow humans, and leveraging all the creativity and innovation which those connections generate.
Organisations
Chris: Organisations are really beginning to tap into the difference that humans can make, when humans are given the opportunity. There’s a growing recognition that it’s human’s that create and maintain healthy cultures and communities, and this is something which so many organisations are looking to improve.
Jutta: There’s a recognition that for organisations to be successful they need their people to have healthy behaviours, and to feel alive, because that’s when the organisation is healthy and alive too.
Chris: This is also linked to building organisations with purpose, building cultures with purpose, and the people who find their purpose within that. For organisations the magic happens with the alignment of their people to the organisation’s purpose. Those people who have a defined purpose in what they’re doing can see the results and how their contribution impacts on the organisations success. It’s a feeling of community, and belonging, and that every single one of them matters.
Jutta: And for the individual, what’s important is to find your fit in the world.
Chris: Organisations also need to think about where to use their human advantage to create the most value. There’s a need to recognise the interplay between the value that humans add and the value that technology can offer. Organisations need strategic leaders who have the energy to change the paradigm. With THRIVE what we offer is a toolkit for leaders to help them navigate these complex and interdependent dilemmas which organisations are facing.
Q: What are the outcomes of this holistic approach to leader development?
A paradigm shift
Chris: I think it's a move towards much more human-centric leadership and human-centric organisations, with a focus on making the world a better place. Ethical comes into it, but it’s wider than that.
Jutta: Referencing back to the last question, redefining success is a big part of what the output or outcome should be, so redefining success, redefining fit, helping people see with clarity, and enable people to shift paradigms.
Chris: To be able to change paradigms you actually have to see reality. You have to recognised and understand that need, and then you have to have the energy to change, to be brave and to do it in a different way.
Jutta: Yes, and we're not necessarily defining that new paradigm, but we're helping people define it for their context.
Chris: Precisely, we don't know what that is. What we're doing is creating a space for them to use their genius, their magic, their human advantage to find and set their new paradigm.
Jutta: We talked about fit before, and clarifying what fits and what doesn’t fit, and what works and what doesn't work is transformational. So many of us continue doing stuff that doesn't work, and often it’s because it’s our subconscious narrative and story. I feel that the next generations coming through want to focus on what works, and maybe they see more clearly than we do this tension in how we’ve been working.
Energy management for sustainable performance
Chris: I think aligning your energy to what really matters to you is key. On THRIVE we talk about reconnecting with your purpose, and this reflects the experience we all have in life, where distractions and tangents can drain our vitality, often without us really noticing. Of course on the flip side we can also draw inspiration and growth from our experiences, so it’s about acknowledging and aligning all those influences, and finding the balance which enhances rather than drains our energy.
We are all exposed to so much drama in the world, the vast majority of it we can’t affect or influence, and that is energy sapping. So what happens when we start to ignore some of that drama, and draw our energies away from things we can’t change. This can be hard, trying not to let your energies be absorbed by all the distractions around us. But if we can be present, and conscious of the things which make a difference for us in our lives, that can be very powerful.
Jutta: In terms of energy management, there can be a tension between the micro and the macro influences, the internal perception and external perception, and where the interface between these comes. Those juxtapositions between our inward energies and our outward energies reflect on our reality. Most of us struggle to some extent with these micro internal conflicts, and everybody experiences to some extent the macro kind of overwhelm of everything that’s happening in the world around us.
Chris: Understanding that we have the power to pick and choose how we allow those things to influence our energy, to decide what you're going to let in and what you're going to consciously keep out, is huge. Taking yourself out of those distractions, consciously, is a challenge for most of us; with 24 hour news feeds, with reality shows, with social media and mobile phones that are our constant companions.
What we work on in THRIVE is how to step back from all of that, and how to make the choices that will allow your energies to flow where you direct them, instead of being sucked into the void of noise that saps our focus and our energy.
In the bigger picture, we need to be asking how we as a community, as a society, as a global collective, can solve the world's biggest challenges if we’re distracted, if we’re not fit and healthy, and lack the energy to do those things.
To find out more about the THRIVE: Passion, Purpose, Performance programme download the brochure here:
