Leadership & Team Development, Video

Nº 200

21st Century Leadership Calls for our Wisdom

At Whirling Chief, we are keen to get our broader business community acknowledge that the current work experiences we reside in is neither well suited for our human nature nor complimentary to the 21st century life experiences we want to be a part of, and, engage new age leaders in a regenerative process towards re-envisioning future and building the kind of work experiences we want to be a part of.

• We seek inspiration, a spark, a purposeful task that makes us jump out of bed.
• We seek meaning, knowledge and comfort to know our work effort makes a difference somewhere.
• We seek psychological and physical safety, not wanting to leave our hearts or souls at home or hide parts of our ‘being’.
• We seek joy in our environments, we want to cherish collaborative relationships and fluid engagements, free of asymmetry and fear.

How do we create such environments? We are trying to find out with a community of thought leaders in their areas. We are indulging ourselves in a mountain of research and summarize evidence-based management practices that can serve both or individual and collective needs.

Today’s post is a philosophical conversation around ‘wisdom’ with Dr. Barry Schwartz, whom we adore deeply. We know he is controversial but controversy doesn’t scare us in search of truth.

Why wisdom?

Wisdom is one of the eight core human capabilities (and future leadership attributes) in our Awakening Humanity at Work model we aim to introduce in our collaboration with Stanford’s CCARE soon. A colleague recently asked me “What if a leader doesn’t care about being ‘wise’?” A fine questions with very complex answers… See, all the way back, Aristotle told us:

“Practical wisdom is a combination of moral will and moral skill.”

A wise person (a leader) has (a) core technical skill, (b) has experience through “failures” , (c) embraced learning and grown, (d) is confident, (e) has permission to improvise and most importantly, (f) understands the importance of connecting, caring and cultivating people.

In the 21st century, brilliance is not going to be enough for us to influence people effectively. As Dr. Schwartz claims in this video, ain’t no organizational systems “smart” enough to do the right thing on behalf of us.

Between that moral will and moral skill lies the opportunity for our leadership.