This year I’m celebrating 30 years working as a mentor in the field of leadership development.
Possibility Leadership is my current evolution. It’s emerged from 6 major pivots that I’ve made in the 30 years and my yearly habit of reimagining and doing some reinvention of my work so that I always have something unique, valuable and different for my clients.
The 6 pivots I’ve made prior to Possibility Leadership
In the 90’s I moved from being a participative leader in my corporate career to being a harmony leader as a mentor to leaders. My concept of life/work harmony as very different to life/work balance grew from here too. More on life/work harmony.
Harmony Leadership is about finding the relationship harmony point between opposites and moving beyond duality. Harmony Leadership was the beginning of shared-view as a concept that now underpins all of my work with clients. There's podcasts, videos and other resources on shared-view here.
In the 2000’s I pivoted to change leadership while sustaining harmony as a foundation. Shared-view further evolved.
Change Leadership emphasises that all change is personal first, relationship change second, and organisational change a distant third.
In the mid 2000’s my focus became differencemaking leadership based on the concept of enlightened self-interest which means we can do well by doing good.
I lead an online community for 5 years about differencemaking. We had members in over 40 countries. It was both a challenging and highly rewarding experience that greatly influenced my work.
In 2016 I added Appreciative Leadership while maintaining change, harmony and differencemaking as foundations.
Appreciative Leadership introduced two more to the areas of significance where it’s essential to sustain shared-view making it seven areas of significance overall. The seven, Reality, Possibility, Purpose, Strategy, Execution, Progress and Culture.
Appreciative Leadership also explored change as a process and the discovery that the best workplaces are where the focus is on people feeling valued, living values and delivering value.
In 2017 Meaningful leadership was added to the equation. I wrote an ebook on the subject called Meaningful Work and The Meaning of Life.
Meaningful leadership celebrates what I see as a major shift in the world of work particularly as machines are taking over more of the simple, routine and repetitive work. This creates a wonderful opportunity for us humans to be remarkable and to do work that is meaningful for us and highly valuable to other people.
In 2019 Remarkable Leadership was added to the story to build on a central theme of who before do, i.e. that who we are precedes what we do. I published the book Remarkable Workplaces which explores this in detail.
Harmony, Change, Differencemaking, Appreciative, Meaningful, Remarkable all are foundational to Possibility Leadership which is about leading from your heart and being open to the quantum physics insight that we live in a world of infinite possibility.
Harmony, Change, Differencemaking, Appreciative, Meaningful, Remarkable and Possibility are all faces of what I have come to call Heart Leadership. You can access all the various books and other publications dealing with all of the above with my compliments and via one PDF you can download.
Overviews of The Eight Components of Possibility Leadership
People leadership: unearthing, magnifying and enhancing people’s essence (character, uniqueness);
Process management: ensuring processes, which include policies, procedures, practices, philosophies, principles, structures and systems, mean it’s simple for people to bring their essence to their work;
Progress Sustainability: the art of keeping progress in meaningful work visible and desired value delivery a consistent and delightful experience for employees, clients/customers and other stakeholders.
Leading as Mentor & Coach: they are two sides of a coin. One is about commitment, the other about competency. Together they help to build character and capability.
Leading as strategic advisor and execution energiser: strategy is like a compass, execution a map. They are entirely different yet must work together in harmony. Strategy is simple yet profound, execution tough. One focuses, the other must energise us.
Leading as Communicator, Conversationalist and Presenter: in leadership conversations are not about the work, they are the work. Candour, conviviality and compassion are essential and must be supported with communication that is compelling as well as consistent as well as wise, witty and warm. More than ever being able to rise above the disruption, data, disconnection we must all be able to design and deliver presentations that matter and that inspire people to become who they’ve never been, and to do what they have never done before.
Leading as Culture Keeper And Sustainer: establishes/evolves the shared behaviours of values and how people are appreciated when they do well and held to account when behaviour is less than agreed it will be.
Leading as Change Champion And Innovator: change management is an oxymoron. Change leadership on the other hand inspires, enables and equips people to thrive on the challenges of change in their own best way. Everyday innovation is paramount to niche market leadership. Imagine what would be possible if every day everyone in every workplace was able to be on the innovation journey. It is possible!
All new program
I’ve created an all new program around these 8 components that can be undertaken privately or as part of an online master-mind/peer group. It’s undertaken in a series of 3 by 70 minute sessions. Learn more. I'm also very excited to have a mentoring team engaged. The first four members of this team, Susan Furness, Glenn Capelli, Gary Edwards and Anne Riches are introduced at the link.
Do Your Work.
Be remarkable.
Ian
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