Understanding Others
This week we take a look at others and how people interact in the world around them. Below's post follows a theme of knowing yourself, understanding others, and building strong leadership in a workplace.
The Guardian - 6 reasons CEOs feel powerless to drive sustainability into their companies
Implementing sustainable frameworks into a company would be a top-down initiative, one would guess. But as this article shows even CEO's have many roadblocks that inhibit them from taking action toward sustainable futures. A lot of these hindrances seem to come from lack of support, peer rejection, and even fear of success. This lack of support comes from all angles; investors, the board, politics, etc. So if there is pushback for a CEO on sustainability then how can we expect for any strides forward to be made? Consumer demand could be one influence. Another approach could be what I'm going to call CEO massaging. Focusing on relationships and communication between influencers groups and decision makers and the people who lean on those decision makers (CEO).
Looking at the De Bono Group's, Six Thinking Hats here:
If a CEO brought to their awareness what hat they are wearing when, and further, what hat they chose to wear when dealing with different groups on the issue of sustainability they could massage the mindsets of those against or intimidated of sustainable initiatives.
Center for Creative Leadership - The Top 6 Leadership Challenges Around the World
After surveying leaders from all over the world, this study concluded that all of them were hindered by the same six challenges the most. This goes to show that leadership is a universal language that bypasses culture.
One of the challenges, in particular, stuck out to me as in line with this week's themes.
5. Guiding Change is the challenge of managing, mobilizing, understanding and leading change. Guiding change includes knowing how to mitigate consequences, overcome resistance to change, and deal with employees’ reactions to change.
Implementing change, in general, is not an easy task. So when combined with an unknown or foreign concept such as sustainability then the implementer has two challenges. Overcoming resistance is a hardship leaders will face on a daily basis whether that be through small or large feats. Some strategies of approach could include education of the unknown. People are less afraid of accepting what they understand. Communication of long-term goals and values. Also communicating the effects of change. How will this change affect the people directly implementing?
Innovation Excellence - Why Agile Learners are Ideal for Innovation
The word agility, according to Merriam Webster dictionary, is defined as the quality or state of being agile: nimbleness, dexterity. I like to define words when discussing them as meaning can get lost in communication.
'“Learning agility: Knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do” – sounds so right for innovation.
“Learning agility is the ability and willingness to learn from experience and then apply that learning to perform successfully in new situations”'
When talking about "learning agility," one would surely need this when trying to understand others, and implement newness into their company. I know I am guilty of writing, "ability to perform in the face of change" on a resume or two. But what does it actually mean to be agile? And, is it always a good thing? As Paul Hobcraft points out, for innovation, it is undoubtedly a viable trait. This leads me to ask is sustainability inherently innovative by nature? I could lean towards a Yes on that one. Sustainability and Creative leadership are avenues that rethink the way we do things, i.e., do things different than we have done them before. Which according to this blog is the breeding ground for learning agility.