INsight/ Three Leadership Forces

Manila, 13 March 2025 — These three leadership forces will help you build collaboration among your stakeholders. 

Story

It happened in the past few weeks. Two trusted international advisors shared their views on policies during the rapid breakdown of the current world order. Jeffrey Sachs, president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, was asked by members of the European parliament what countries should do.

His response was that peace was most important. The world’s prospects, he said, are actually “very positive if we construct peace.” For context, he added that “every conflict I study is a mistake.” He advocated building collaboration through diplomacy and negotiation.

Two weeks later, Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s foreign minister, responded to similar questions in Singapore’s parliament, saying he had “never seen the world more disrupted, more volatile, or more dangerous.” He also advocated continuing to build collaboration with all sides, underlining the hard work involved. 

Challenge

Both Sachs and Balakrishnan were clear-eyed on the difficulties lying ahead. Building collaboration at a time of clashing worldviews is a major challenge requiring highly skilled professionals to take the lead. They emphasized that this challenge requires trust and openness.

Reflecting on their words, I realized that their diagnosis and prescription are not limited to problems of international collaboration. From our coaching experience, we see that clashes of worldviews are behind most of the problems that teams face in their work in businesses and organizations around the world.

Whatever the scale of leadership that you are engaging in, your task as a leader is to bring parties together, resolve conflicts, construct peace, and build collaboration among the parties with trust and openness. That is a tough challenge at every scale, from strategies and projects in your business to brokering international collaboration among countries.

Question

My question for you this week is this. What are the leadership forces that can help you as a leader in the challenging task of building collaboration? Drawing on recent research in positive psychology, we found that three forces, in particular, can help you make progress in your work as a leader.

The first of these forces is your ability to inspire a shared vision among the parties concerned that aligns with your vision as a leader (your purpose and possibly your Ikigai or reason for being). In our coaching experience, this requires that you reflect and consciously choose and develop a set of appropriate behaviors, skills, and tools. 

The second force is your specific set of values as a leader. How do you embody your leadership values with integrity as you build collaboration every day and every week? The third force is your unique set of character strengths as a leader. In sum, for the three forces of leadership vision, values, and strengths to help you, you will need to develop them, communicate them, and learn to use them daily for optimal effect. 

P.S. Developing and using these three forces is what you learn with us in our executive, team, and group coaching programs. Please set up a free strategy call to discuss how you can develop and use the three forces to build collaboration among the parties you work with as a leader. We look forward to hearing from you.