Invest spirit and soul in vulnerable leadership
Brainpowered leaders invest soul and spirit with vulnerability.
Leaders who invest in practices that offer space to develop soul, also tend to facilitate innovation with spirit. That takes the kind of vulnerability that only the most successful leaders risk!
We found that out first hand in the MBA Leadership course, Lead Innovation with the Brain in Mind. Rather than a final paper and pencil test, MBA students in this course host a Celebration of Innovation.
This final Celebration of Innovation allows graduate level leaders to engage their wider community in leadership initiatives they designed to lead improvements in an innovation era. Each student is required to invite three guests from the community to this interactive trade show of sorts, and the class engages all guests at booths, where they facilitate exchanges about the course inventions.
In one such course, in another country, we gave in and allowed one student to omit that vulnerability requirement – so that he did not invest in bringing guests to the event. At the Celebration itself, the student who failed to invest brought very little to the table. His brain had little to lose without any investment – and it showed. His peers on the other hand, invested in bringing guests and also in facilitating innovative ideas to engage opposing views that inspired entire groups.
What investments will you make for leadership today?
Would you agree that core risks you make for the sake of quality leadership, will determine how much vulnerability and quality you bring as leader?
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Kare, thanks for your kind comments and I agree with Seely’s notion of a new culture of learning, yet see that social media has upturned the entire applecart in delightful directions.
Few can deny we need a fix anymore, and it’s wonderful to be a small part of what they fix resembles. There are many questions to answer still, and it heartens me to see folks like you tossing new ideas into the air.
Young leaders I work with are so ready for innovative change, and they are well equipped to help lead that change. But we’ll need higher diversity at the helm in the coming era – so the systems we create will fit into diverse minds they serve.
For instance, and economic system set by one race or gender, will rarely fit the others – and that can only change as we diversity leaders at the helm.
What do you think?
What a meaningful and captivating way to celebrate what they have learned. Methinks this approach would be wonderful to have adapted to other areas of learning. It also resonates after reading a new book I discovered via one of the co-authors , John Seely Brown: A New Culture of Learning
Conrad, thanks for your thoughtful communication! Love your extensions about moving it forward!
it’s true – there are more guarantees for safety in a stuck setting, where people feel secure, work lags, and brains freeze:-) How could it be so – and then adventure woos one forward!
Thanks for the way you model innovative leadership!
Ellen, your insights are just consistently marvelous and accurate! So few seem to see the value of vulnerability. Otherwise, you’ve never extended yourself and if you’ve never extended yourself, you’ve never grown.
Oddly, that strategy won’t ultimately keep you safe. While you refuse to change and move, to become vulnerable in the process, the world changes and moves – and you are vulnerable anyway! You are simply not actively engaged and that makes the vulnerability destructive and threatening.
Hmmm … could it be a lesson our political leaders need to learn?