Better Leaders. Better Futures.

The Time for Societal Leadership is Now!

For many, 2010 was a sobering and thought-provoking year, and the early months of 2011 have been little different. Never, perhaps, has humanity been so in need of profound, insightful leadership in all walks of life. And yet, we've fallen considerably short in meeting the need as individual and collective societies.

Reflecting on the significant challenges of the past year, and the growing buzz (or outright doomsaying) about the forthcoming challenges that humanity will face on many economic, social, and environmental fronts in 2011, we are struck by the fact that many of these issues come down to changing our attitudes toward what the Foundation terms "societal leadership".

Societal leadership is not yet another formulaic approach to learning leadership, but a call to change the way that we -- as individuals, communities, organizations, and nations -- think about the role of leadership in society. Equally important, societal leadership includes what responsibility we accept for changing the way our social fabric works. 

Leading The Way: Reflections

On Thursday November 11 and Friday November 12, I had the privilege of attending a conference in Calgary hosted by Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley on the topic “Leading the Way: Building a Sustainable Future.”

As has been my experience with all of their published work, this conference was nothing short of inspirational and, in some cases, transformational. The conference was a beautiful and comfortable space of learning and dialogue, consequently unlocking the collective intelligence of the group through techniques employed by the Art of Hosting such as: check-in, Circle, WorldCafe and OpenSpace.

The depth, meaning and diversity of the discussions were indicative of the overall passion of the 450-odd participants. To reduce this conference into a short blog piece would not serve it justice, but I have chosen to reflect over a few posts on one area of each of Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley’s presentations, pieces that really stuck out to me.

Creativity and leadership

Do great leaders have to be creative?

We think so, even though we don't include creativity as a separate "C" in our 4C Leader Framework. Instead, we tend to embed creativity as one of the role-specific competencies that a leader must have as part of his/her core set of skills.

That said, creativity has now nudged past factors like integrity and global thinking as essential for leaders in a new study by IBM, and highlighted in a May 2010 FastCompany.com article. At the same time, factors that we'd consider to be an integral part of the 4C Leader Framework -- like Character and Conviction -- are still well represented by underlying attributes like integrity, openness, humility, and fairness.

 

Creativity itself, however, must be balanced by a strong view toward applying that talent in the pursuit of innovation. Not surprisingly, the IBM study found that creative leaders themselves were 81% more likely to rate innovation as a "crucial capability". It is this mixing of the creative impulse with the discipline of the innovation process that serves to highlight the capabilities of the authentic societal leader in our view.

As an example, ideas are emerging as an increasingly valuable social media object, meaning that they serve as the focal point for creating value for society through creative interactions with others. Today's social media tools allow ideas to be shared at a moment's notice with a wide group of other creative people, and for the ideas to be enhanced accordingly.

At the same time, we agree with the viewpoint that many emerging ideas need to be taken through a formal collaboration and innovation process to turn them into more useful initiatives, as the following diagram illustrates:

Rather than stifling creativity, the linkage to structured collaboration and innovation is a strong, essential complement to the ideas process. The Foundation's core Knowledge Transformation & Action process is part of this structured collaboration and innovation chain, in that we seek to ensure that key ideas for improving societal progress and well-being are put through a process to ensure that they can have adequate impact within target communities.

Creating a new leadership dialogue

Key to creating Better Futures is finding ways to develop Better Leaders. That, in turn, requires that we have a new form of broader societal dialogue about the nature and needs of true societal leadership.

A helpful step in this direction is the short (6 minute) video written by Nitin Nohria and Amanda Pepper of Harvard Business School's Leadership Initiative. They collaborated with the visual thinking experts at XPLANE to help people talk about the value and importance of leadership, and how it can (and must) be used to address some of society's most pressing problems. Watch the video here:

"It is my desire to inspire people of all ages and social demographics to think about leadership on a broad level, contemplate what it means to them and what individual impact they can have when it comes to leading," says Nohria.

Not surprisingly, many of the historical figures selected by Nohria and Pepper overlap with those societal leaders that the Foundation has previously highlighted in its own presentations. But they also highlight a fact often overlooked in the discussion: which leaders are most relevant to the next generation of leaders, who will bear an increasing burden to address the challenges and legacies that today's leaders will leave behind?

While figures like Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and others may resonate with members of the Baby Boomer, Gen-X, and other more recent generations, do they (or will they) resonate similarly with the young leaders of tomorrow? And, from where will the next generation(s) draw their leadership inspiration: from popular culture, politics, business, or broader civil society?

Viewpoints on what constitutes good or great leadership can be highly contextual, so it is important to continuously evaluate leadership attributes that have stood the test of time, and which continue to be relevant to each succeeding generation. Faces associated with the traits will come and go, but the traits themselves largely should be enduring and relatively consistent. From there, the next obvious challenge for all is to find ways to expand these attributes more broadly into society.

Although leading by example has the possibility of creating a new generation of inspired societal leaders, we also have to find ways to grow these attributes more systematically and consistently. The world of tomorrow will need more and better leaders than that of today.

How do you view leadership attributes? Watch the video and provide us with a comment using the submission form below, or e-mail us your thoughts!

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The Societal Shockwave Initiative: Connect, Inspire & Accelerate Progress

They are among us every day: business, political, social and cultural leaders who are taking courageous steps to change the way our society works for the better.

They are societal leaders focused on building societal good, on balancing and harmonizing natural, economic, and socio-political systems. They are creative and passionate, seeing new angles on old problems and taking concrete steps to envision and realize strategies and actions for societal progress.

The LeadWell Foundation's new Societal Shockwave™ initiative connects and supports these societal leaders in a deliberate, action-oriented collaboration process focused on accomplishing profound positive changes in our broader societal well-being.