INsight/ For Something Bigger
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Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash.
Manila, 9 November 2023 — How challenge and collaboration lead us to Something Bigger.
Story
It happened this week. Several leadership puzzle pieces came together for me in an enlightening way. Naturally, I want to share that with you. The first piece came when I joined a weeklong leadership intensive titled Made for Something Bigger. A powerful title for me because it resonates with the notion that, for each of us, leadership is about Playing a Bigger Game. This is the perspective we can take when we look at leadership from a third-person perspective in our Observed World. During the intensive, I felt the palpable tension and excitement building as the participants were continuously pushed to review and rethink why we are doing the work we do, who we are serving—and who we love to work with—and what we are doing to make that happen, and how. Note how each of these explorations starts with an open question.
The second piece of the puzzle came when I watched a group of Asian leaders present the results of the projects they created in the One Million Leaders Asia (OMLAS) Fellowship Program over the past year. After having served as one of the program coaches, it was enlightening for me to see how far this inaugural batch of OMLAS Fellows had advanced by developing their leadership skills and behaviors, and by growing a large number of Stars and Champions around them to whom they passed on what they had learned. Then they formed teams to create and implement the projects together, each with a sustainability theme. I felt inspired to see how the teams had worked with local communities in countries as diverse as India, Nepal, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, and the Philippines. This was sustainability in action.
What struck me, and warmed my heart, was to see how much these OMLAS leaders had achieved in just 12 months by stepping out of their comfort zones to take on the program’s demanding challenge. Facilitated and supported by two Nepali women leaders with a global vision—both graduates of #Grow3Leaders—the Fellows had transformed into effective leaders by persistently practicing what they had learned. Then they formed teams to design and deliver their projects, learning first-hand how much more they could achieve by working together. What an impressive first-year result for this leadership development program that was initiated by the Next Leaders for Sustainability (NELIS) movement in Japan that has already spread to Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Challenge
The third piece of the puzzle came as I reflected on the challenging questions asked in the leadership intensive and the heartwarming results produced by the Asian leaders in OMLAS program. Lots of food for thought. Staying up late all week for the intensive, with discussions going well beyond midnight, gave me lots to ponder about. While reflecting, I experienced several of what you might call epiphanies or light-bulb moments. Strangely, some happened over much longer periods of what I will call lucid dreaming. Altogether, it’s proving to be a transformative process that is still going on as I write this.
Let me summarize three opportunities that have already become clear to me this week. The first is that, as leaders, we are Made for Something Bigger. It’s part of our vision, and it’s something we need to keep working on all the time, every week and month. If we don’t do that, we risk getting stuck where we are, in an expert or manager mindset that is not helping to drive positive changes in our world. Asking ourselves a series of challenging open questions is a good way to work on this.
The second opportunity is to overcome the resistance that inevitably shows up when we work on Something Bigger. The stories I have heard over the past years from leaders I have coached attest to the importance and urgency of overcoming this resistance, which can come from people and conditions in our environment, and also frequently from inside ourselves. The third opportunity lies in collaboration. My participation in this week’s leadership intensive has benefited tremendously from working with the other leaders who joined. Moreover, the stories of the OMLAS leaders attested to the power of working together in teams and learning together out loud while working on a project challenge. It reminded me of Professor Rosabeth Kanter’s 4th key to leading positive change: Team Up! And what I as a leadership coach can contribute when coaching teams besides individual leaders.
Question
My question for you this week may well be the most important leadership question that anyone can ask you, so please give it your careful consideration:
If you accept that you as a leader are Made for Something Bigger, then what is that Something Bigger that inspires you deep down in your dreams? Or are you satisfied to stay where you are, with the mindset of an expert or manager?
I can’t wait to see your responses to this question, so do reach out. Over the past 15 years of coaching leaders, I have seen again and again that leaders can become Players in Something Bigger rather than holding back and limiting themselves to the role of Spectators who cheer others from the stands. Leaders get going when they take on a challenge, and Teaming Up is, in most cases, the best way to advance.
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