From ‘Leading Design’ to My Own Leadership Journey…
I’ve recently joined Clearleft as Managing Director. In my first couple of weeks I’ve been excited to hear about the plans for our forthcoming Leading Design conference in New York scheduled for mid March 2022. For those not familiar, the event is aimed at design leaders (I guess the title is a reasonable clue) and in particular those that may be fairly new to the role. I especially like the acknowledgement that the transition from practitioner to leader is not always a smooth one and brings a whole host of new challenges.
I’ve been reflecting on my own leadership journey and what I’ve learnt over the years. I’ve always believed that leadership, rather like culture, is a remix. Of previous experiences and mistakes made. Of other leaders or mentors you’ve worked with. Of techniques and approaches you’ve absorbed along the way.
Here are some of my tried and trusted influences that have helped shape my own leadership journey.
An overall strategic guide that has much to offer is leadership coach Steve Radcliffe’s disarmingly simple philosophy of Future, Engage, Deliver. I’ve certainly found that if you set a clear vision for the future of the company or department you lead, it resolves a lot of uncertainty. Critically, this vision should be borne out of something that you care deeply about. The vision shapes how you think and act every day.
At Clearleft I want to explore the future we all want, and see just how great we can be. A co-created future vision becomes truly powerful if you’ve also successfully engaged the team around you to believe in and share in it. As Steve says:
Engage is different. Engage is about your impact on others, how you connect with them, how you stimulate their thinking and impact their energy.
How I impact others and build meaningful relationships is something I’ve really thought about recently. It’s not just about empathy with someone’s situation, but about understanding energy levels. Steve taught me about the four energies and how recognising and harnessing them in yourself and others can lead to powerful results.
Intellectual Energy. This is what powers our thinking and analysis. It drives debate, curiosity and focus. Intellectual energy also drives criticism and finding fault.I’ve seen this type of energy destroy passion and enthusiasm so it has to be tempered at times.
Emotional Energy.- This is critical for human connection and relationships which have been sadly strained through these long Covid months. When emotional energy is strong it builds belonging; a sense of feeling valued and cared for. The lack of emotional energy leads to feelings of exclusion, frustration and even anger. We are working hard at Clearleft to strengthen those connections and partnerships that have inevitably weakened through the pandemic.
Spirit Energy. This is strongly linked to your passions and your sense of future possibilities. We can all remember feeling like the future looked bleak through Covid, but a critical leadership trait is maintaining high spirit energy levels, not least because it brings optimism and hope. When spirit energy levels are high literally anything seems possible!
Physical Energy. This is often what people think of when you talk about energy. Physical energy is key to making things happen. I like to think of it as a baseline. If you are neglecting the building blocks of physical energy like taking care of your sleep, diet, exercise or relaxation time, it’s really hard to maintain focus and commitment. This is a baseline I’ve ignored many times to my detriment, but I always try and come back to it. As the godfather of leadership thinking, Peter Drucker, famously said:
Your foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help orchestrate the energy of those around you.
Steve’s final piece about delivery talks about the importance of how well you deliver through others, rather than worrying about how you personally deliver.
From a more individual perspective there’s the work of Professor Steve Peters and his mind management model, The Chimp Paradox. I’ve found it useful to dip into from time to time, particularly around managing the internal narrative and not letting raw emotions dictate decision making.
More recently, the Japanese concept of Ikigai is something I’ve enjoyed applying. In essence, it translates as ‘waking up to joy’ or rather more prosaically, ‘a reason to get up in the morning’. Ikigai asks four questions of the individual to help them find purpose (typically presented in 4 overlapping spheres):
- What do I love doing?
- What am I good at?
- What does the world need?
- What can I get paid for?
Perhaps the best mantra for successful leadership that I’d heard in a long time, however, came from an unlikely source. At a recent family gathering my mother-in-law talked about her own mother (my grandmother-in-law?) and how her outlook on life was all about the reward of treating others as you yourself would like to be treated. Or as she put it:
If you give away your bread, it will come back buttered.
Chris Pearce
