Ever found yourself questioning if the old-school 'boss knows best' leadership is still cutting it in our evolving work landscape? Well, grab your headphones because on this episode, I’m diving into the future of leadership, pitting the traditional hierarchy against the cool kids on the block - the inclusive and systems-oriented leaders. I'll also share the three must-have superpowers of future leaders, and of course, share some tips on how you can unleash these powers within your team.

Are you ready to shape the future of leadership?

Episode contents:
[0:00] Introduction and overview
[01:28] Outdated styles of leadership
[04:46] The problem with continuing to use this style of leadership
[o5:53] A better way of leading
[07:24] 3 key capabilities of leaders of the future
[07:44] Capability #1: Seeing the larger system
[[12:18} Cability #2: Creating containers for growth
[15:51] Capability #3: Shifting the collective focus
[18:47] I’m fired up about this!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Article: The Dawn of Systems Leadership

• Book: Unlocking Leadership Mind Traps, How to Thrive in Complexity

• Book: The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts

• Book: Framework Thinking, Unlock Your Potential Through Structured Decision Making

• Video: Thinking in Frameworks

• Free workbook comparing and contrasting outdated leadership styles with leaders of the future

Have a favorite podcast player? Here are direct episode links to:

Apple Podcast | Spotify

Transcript

(This transcript was generated with the help of AI - please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.)

In this episode, we're going to talk about leaders of the future. And I'm going to start by comparing and contrasting two distinct styles of leadership. And I will show you how we need fundamentally different types of leaders in order to meet the challenges of the future.

And then I'm going to share three key capabilities that leaders of the future possess and give you some specific ideas about how to build those capabilities.

Outdated Styles of Leadership

If you are like some of the teams that I work with, you may be struggling with trying to make progress on those goals that are important to you. You find yourself in fire drill mode where so many things are coming at you, it's hard to keep your eye on the big picture. 🚨

I call that  “whack-a-mole mode” when I'm coaching with clients because it feels like you're trying to literally whack away all of these problems and you can't even catch your breath. 

Maybe your team doesn't feel engaged or super excited about the future that you're trying to create together. Perhaps you find yourself settling for mediocrity or having to compromise on that original vision that you had laid out and maybe originally got excited about.

Often teams are facing burnout or there's this like attitude, that feels not attitude, it's more like a state of being that's a bit fatalistic. Like, “Why do we even bother? Nothing ever seems to change...”

Or maybe the trust on your team has been diminished and you can't seem to move past old hurts or failures.

Perhaps you have even tried different interventions along the way that don't seem to make any lasting change.

If that describes your team, I am willing to bet that you:

• have a hierarchical reporting structure where vision tends to get dictated from on high, or you're driving a predetermined change agenda that you're seeking commitment for, maybe sometimes even seeking commitment in ways that feel manipulative or coercive. It's like you're spending your time and energy trying to change the way other people think to get buy-in to do the thing you want to do.

•  I'm willing to bet that you see problems as obstacles you need to overcome. And you tend to get stuck in that short-term reactive problem-solving of the things that are happening to you, you lose sight of the longer-term value creation or the systemic changes that are needed to ensure long-term success.

• It's hard to keep your eye on both at the same time. So you pursue fixes that address symptoms of the problems that you can see and understand well, but you never address the root causes of the problem.

• I bet you try to keep things moving because there isn't really time to stop and reflect deeply, to learn some new skills, or focus on relationship dynamics that might be at play.

• I'm willing to bet you collect tools. You are constantly looking for different tools to put in your tool belt. Right? But you aren't prepared or committed to taking the time needed to practice with the regularity and discipline that are actually going to build your capabilities and the discernment to know which tool is needed in what moment.

• And I'm willing to bet that you are trying to keep the peace on your team at all costs. Maybe sweeping things under the rug and keeping conversations on the surface so nobody feels uncomfortable. Or some end up being this garbage dump of complaints because they feel like they need to be the place where people can vent or dump their complaints. And they end up feeling emotionally exhausted in the process.

I call this the outdated hierarchical style of leadership, the increasing complexity in which we operate means that this outdated form of leadership just isn't working for us anymore.

The problem with continuing to operate with this style

And the problem with continuing to pursue this style of leadership in complex environments is not just that you don't get where you want to go. By its design, it causes separation and burnout when what we really need is more energy, vitality, creativity, and innovation.

The increasing cynicism and burnout that we're experiencing is further evidence that this isn't working. In the U. S. people researching engagement tell us that like 70-80% of people don't want to be at work, they don't enjoy what they do. And my question is, how can we possibly create something impactful or generative coming from that headspace?

And the insidious part of this is that we make the ineffectiveness of our teams mean something about us as leaders, as though we aren't good enough. Especially for those who are conditioned as women or are minorities in the space. It just adds this layer of stress and emotional drain that you cannot afford to shoulder when your team is already struggling to perform at the level that you want.

A better way to lead

This is the episode where we explore a better way of leading.

• Leaders of the future know that the most compelling futures, the most compelling visions are the ones that we co-create together.

• They know that challenges can be a source of engagement and energy, and they see problems as opportunities for innovation.

• Leaders of the future recognize that complex systems sometimes exhibit counterintuitive data. So they build their capacity to sense what is needed and to nurture a collective intelligence of their teams and stakeholders, instead of just relying on data or information that can sometimes lead you astray.

• Leaders of the future know that facing the truth of our current reality is the fastest way to move through it to a more compelling vision of the future, and they know how to craft a compelling vision of the future that is connected to individual personal aspirations of their team members and the stakeholders that they're serving.

• They see change as an incremental, iterative, experimental process.

• And they're committed to the health of the whole, which requires them to be committed to their own personal learning and growth and evolution.

• And leaders of the future know that there is strength in their own ignorance. They're willing to be vulnerable and open-hearted so that they can see reality through the eyes of different people and get much-needed perspective - a perspective that helps them know how to move forward or think about something more creatively.

The 3 Key Capabilities of Leaders of the Future

Now I want to explore the three key capabilities that leaders of the future possess. The first is the ability to see the larger system. The second is creating containers for growth. And the third is shifting the collective focus from reactive problem solving to co creating the future.

Let's start with the first one, seeing the larger system. This is about the ability to transcend your default, egoic patterns that create these mental filters that limit what you pay attention to, what you see, what you make things mean. So think about letting go of black-and-white thinking or us vs. Them type of ways of framing the world, mental models about the way the world works.

This has to do with your ability to direct your focus of attention and to be able to see multiple perspectives and really hear what people are telling you as objectively as possible. We're humans, so there's no way to be 100 percent objective, but knowing that we tend to color or see things through a particular lens of the world. The more you understand about that lens, the more you can start to peel back layers of the onion and get more objective.

Part of seeing the larger system is the ability to discern between complex and complicated problems. Knowing this, being able to tell the difference between the two, is going to help you figure out the next best step for you and your team. Okay, let's talk about what I mean by complicated and complex here.

Jennifer Garvey Berger wrote a book called Unlocking Leadership Mind Traps, How to Thrive in Complexity. I'll have a link in the show notes for you if you want to go find it, but she was the person who introduced me to the difference between complicated and complex and her book will go into detail more if you want it.

• Complicated problems are predictable, but tricky. This is where expertise and experience are your friend. Complicated problems are reducible. You can break the problem into their component parts. You can look for a root cause. And complicated problems tend to be linear- so causality is clear. And one hour of work creates one hour of return. Okay, that's complicated problems.

• On the other hand, we have complex problems that are unpredictable in nature, and that means that expertise and experience are not your friend, because you're going to rely on the what happened last time or your past experience to try and predict the future, but it's not predictable in a linear way. Complex problems are entwined, which means the relationships between the parts create the outcome. There may not be a root cause to get to the bottom of. And they're non linear, so causality might be unclear. And a huge amount of effort can create a small gain, or a small amount of effort can create a big gain. You just don't know.

And Jennifer shares that the good news is that humans evolved to be brilliant at handling ambiguity, uncertainty, and change. We have this genius for living in complexity. And these days we need that more than ever, right? Because complexity is ramping up faster than ever. As the pace of change increases, as we have more and more global relationships.

The bad news is that facing complexity dulls our genius, just as we need it the most. When we tap into what she calls our complexity genius, we're able to create the conditions for intentional evolution in ourselves and in those around us.

Another element of being able to see the larger system is cultivating your ability to think in frameworks.

Frameworks are going to help you simplify and understand the world around you. It's like a structure that can help you get some clarity on what you're seeing and then some ideas about how to put your ideas into action.

In the book, Framework Thinking, Unlock Your Potential Through Structured Decision Making, they define framework thinking as,

"a method of structured decision making that involves breaking complex problems down into manageable parts, analyzing each component individually, and then piecing together everything for an optimal decision."

And this is important because as the authors of The Great Mental Models in Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts shares,

"the quality of your thinking depends on the models that are in your head. And when you learn to see the world as it is, and not as you want it to be, everything changes, the solution to any problem becomes more apparent when you can view it through more than one lens, you'll be able to spot opportunities you couldn't see before, avoid costly mistakes that may be holding you back and begin to make meaningful progress in your life."

One of the best tools for learning to see the larger system that I know of is systems thinking, and you can use sketches of systems maps as invitations to start to explore together what components go into this, how can I see the interrelationship of the dynamics and patterns for growth or stagnation or something else?

So that is seeing the larger system, the first of the key capacities.

 The second is creating containers for growth. And for this, I want to go beyond creating a safe space for experimentation and risk-taking without penalty or fear of reprimand, as people typically think about psychological safety on teams. I want to extend the idea of creating containers for growth to starting to think about creating a generative social field for us to operate within.

Okay, so “what does that look like? What do you even mean by that?”

The first component of this is the ability to have generative conversations so that you can hear from other people's point-of-view. This is not just empathy and understanding where people come from, this goes beyond that to compassion, where I can not get swept up in your story or, lost in the emotionality that I'm having related to your story, but I can be a grounded container and vessel for hearing the truth of your perspective and staying rooted in my own boundary personhood.

Generative conversations require containers that are mutual and more transparent, where you can put your ego aside because you don't have to operate in such a defended way. People aren't trying to prove themselves and they're not overly focused on their image or the next promotion. Instead, the focus is on the good for each other, and more importantly, the good for our customers and the value that we're creating on our way to this compelling future vision that's tied to my personal aspirations, right?

Another element of this container for growth is reflection built into this - both on a personal level, my ability to reflect on what's going on and what's needed, but also time and space to reflect in a shared way as a team.

We're talking about nurturing collective creativity and creating a space for change to happen. And that includes enabling the collective intelligence to emerge and tapping into the wisdom in the room. It involves what I call owning your shit, which is like growing our own self-awareness of our patterns so that we can take personal responsibility for our contribution to the situation.

And that is fundamentally work related to personality and ego, right? It's a consciousness and awareness journey that is unique to every person on your team - and everyone's going to be on their own journey on their own timeline.

You cannot do this work for others, which can be a bit frustrating at first. Because the whole purpose of creating this container is so that everyone will grow. Right? And we can accelerate performance or the impact that we're trying to achieve. But just creating the space for growth, modeling that commitment to your own personal evolution, and creating a common language that allows you to objectively, more objectively anyways, discuss and understand what's going on with the team are really going to help this along.

Because then when you reach a limitation, of yourself or of the team, you have language to talk about it, you can understand the risks associated with all of those choices, and maybe even use that limitation as a condition that can help you be even more creative, not just work around it, but, maybe there's something in it that would help us rethink how we're doing all of this to be more effective or efficient.

Okay, so that's what I mean by creating containers for growth, and that's the second key capability that leaders of the future possess.

 So the third capability is shifting collective focus from reactive problem-solving to co-creating the future. This means that we have to have a shared understanding of complex problems, and that can take time.

It involves building a positive vision that taps into those deeper aspirations shared by the team so that you're naturally oriented toward and aligned with that vision.

It involves building confidence in tangible accomplishments that we've made. It can be discouraging to always focus on what went wrong and having to fix it in the past. Or looking at the gap between where we are and where we want to go. So, leaders of the future know that building confidence and looking at how far we've come and what we do know how to do is a big piece of the ability to shift into a more generative social field.

Part of shifting the collective focus from reactive problem-solving to co-creating is facing difficult truths about our present reality. It feels a little bit counterintuitive because that's where the problem solving is probably happening. But often you're trying to solve a problem by jumping over the hard truth or skipping. So instead of shying away or minimizing the present and the difficult truth, facing it head on, hearing everyone's truth and creating opportunities to forgive and or move on in a way that feels authentic and real, is part of that orientation toward the future.

And the last thing here is using the tension of the gap between where we're at (that present reality) and where we want to go (that inspiring future vision). The gap between the two, right, creates a certain type of tension. Peter Senge uses the metaphor of a rubber band, the tension created by a rubber band between the vision of where we want to be and where we really are. You can feel the energy of the tension as you pull that rubber band taut.

The truth is, we often feel this as discomfort, and so we want to hurry up and skip ahead to this future vision. That's one way to deal with this tension.

Another is to lower the vision. Like, maybe that was unrealistic. That's where mediocrity and compromise comes in. Like, you feel less tension in that way.

Instead, you can use that creative vision to create a certain type of energy that inspires a new approach, right? Like the more able we are to be in the discomfort of the in-between, the more we can talk about our emotions, right? The more we can start to mine the tension between where we are and where we want to go. That gap, not as overwhelming or discouraging, instead, it can be like, “Huh, I wonder what possibilities are available to us here? I wonder how we could come at this from a different angle?”

So those are the three capacities. We talked about seeing the larger system, creating containers for growth, and then shifting the collective focus from reactive problem solving, whack-a-mole mode, right, to co-creating the future and what's involved there.

This is a lot of the work that I do in executive coaching.

A free resource to help you lean into a new style of leadership

In fact, in preparation for this podcast episode, I went through and compared the outdated style of leadership with leaders of the future. I looked at the problems that the outdated style creates and the actions and mistakes that are causing those problems.

And I contrasted that with the qualities and mindsets that leaders of the future possess, and then the types of actions that they're taking. So you can see it all side by side.

I do this often for my clients when I'm coaching. I have these extensive little mini workbooks that I create (often custom on-the-go) for folks so that they have a tangible resource they can refer to over time.

So if you want to see that sample workbook, I'll create a link in the show notes so that you can visually do this comparison side by side.

I’m fired up about this!

Y'all, I'm really fired up about this. I don't know if you can tell. I've spent the last few years helping teams solve acute problems. And I really want to help you think about your team and organization totally differently so that you don't have to call me in crisis, right? So it never gets to that point on your team.

I love working with leaders whose team is going pretty well, but the leaders are all in on investing in themselves and their team, and this is where the magic happens.

• You have more engagement, right, and motivation, because the vision gets bigger and more inspiring, and the whole way of collaborating feels more human and inclusive.

• There's less turnover when you have more engagement, the research shows.

• This idea about the containers for growth actually allows you to move faster. At first, it takes a little bit of time to set that up and get everybody on the same page, right? But once you have a generative social field, once you've created that container for growth, that's where the creativity and innovation comes in. And consequently, you end up having this bigger impact on the things that you guys care about, right?

But it also is the right thing to do. Like, trusting in the process of experimentation to figure out what is going to work for us and this willingness to give it time to see results.

Which is like us fighting against this, um, commodification of things, right? The stock market mentality that everything has to have a payoff in the quarter in which we make an investment. It messes up our ability to come at things in a more sustainable or generative way.

We are not machines. We are living systems and the more mechanistic models of leadership that we try to apply to our organizations, the more trouble we're going to run into. Organizations are made up of people. Visions are made by individual aspirations.

And there are so many companies right now innovating in the space and thinking about doing more with less. It's just a really exciting time to think about creating businesses and solutions for the future.

But I don't hear that many people talking about the leadership style that is required to support that type of innovation and growth.

Okay, so if you want to be part of this movement,

• if you want to know more about creating containers for growth or generative social fields,

• if you want to become a leader of the future,

• if you want to know how to find more ease and connection and peace in your business,

I can support you in that. I'll have a link in the show notes for how to set up a call with me to talk about what's going on for you and your team and how we might be able to support each other through this process of growth.

Until next time…

Have you subscribed to the podcast?

Don’t miss a single episode. Choose your favorite podcast app below, then hit “Subscribe” or “Follow” to receive new episodes right when they are released.

(If you have another favorite app not listed, just search for “Upleveling Work” or “Michelle Kay Anderson” and it’ll come up.)