I just listened to this podcast and my reflections were beyond the wordcount of any social media post! I’d love to hear what you think too.
The conversation is an interview with Mike Vacanti on Teresa Quinlan and Rhys Thomas’s podcast TNT ESQ and there were three big themes that jumped out for me.
- Whole-listic leadership
- Bringing people with you
- Healthy attachment
Read on…
- I love the concept of ‘whole-istic’ leadership. Confirming Daniel Goleman’s findings all those years ago that the most successful leaders were those who deployed all the categories of leadership that he defined.
What I really see in this is how you can’t ‘do’ flexibility with leadership styles effectively from the intellect. You can’t come to each situation, pause, refer to the boxes and pick which to use for this person in this situation.
You also can’t even do that effectively based on ‘I know this about you and how you’ll react so I’ll do it this way’ because then you’ve just put them in a tick box.
Leaders who are so groundedly secure in who they really are can do this. They live from something way more powerful than the intellect and we only find this by letting go of who we’re not (which is a lot of what we’re conditioned with through life.)
2. I also love in this conversation about bringing people with you who are less comfortable with change. The imagined race of business to be won and thought-created wars for talent lead us to ‘climb over each other’, as Mike said.
This clambering isn’t sustainable – or humane. Those less comfortable with change are people, with lives and loved ones, just doing their best based on the thinking they’re believing to be true in that moment.
3. I heard an important message about attachment but which I really heard as healthy attachment – to leaders, ideas, purpose…
Ego, as the thought-octopus that it is, can stick its tentacles to anything that it thinks will secure it and keep it from dying. Including an organisation, a job title, a great boss, a great follower. Unhealthy attachment leads to desperate clinging to maintain the relationship believing it’s a source of something it needs. Healthy attachment allows things to come and go knowing that they were never a source of ok-ness or completeness.
Thank you again Mike, Teresa and Rhys. Let me know what you think of this in the comments.
With love, Helen