La rentrée. Are you ready for re-entry?
Leadership Squared: a deep dive into the new era of human and modern business leadership. I delve into my professional and lived experience and provide my perspective on topical issues that are close to my heart.
Welcome to my monthly newsletter meant to inspire you to reflect, act and develop greater self-trust, agility and relational intelligence in your personal and business life. This month's theme is: transitions.
On My Mind
La rentrée. Are you ready for re-entry?
How are we already well into the first week of September?!
Usually, the appetite with which one contemplates returning to work / school / grid or grind is correlated to the length and depth of the break you get.
I hope you had a good one.
More or deeper?
As the world moves faster and faster, with the collective cry that ‘more and bigger is better!’ … more social media, more famous, bigger hustle, bigger impact, bigger vision … we are challenged to drop into a different way of being.
Maybe it’s not more that we yearn for, perhaps it’s not bigger, but deeper.
Can deeper be acquired by moving faster, going bigger and being more? I don’t think so.
I notice that when I tune out these seductive cultural headwinds that scream their bad advice and drop into existence, just trusting the here and now, some other physics kicks into gear.
Things come to me without quite so much effort and I’m more in flow. The world begins to open up to me with invitation, and life feels more abundant.
What is calling you? Is it more? Or is it deeper?
Transitions
Transitions, how we are impacted internally by our external world, in life are often challenging.
Each of us has our own way of managing endings and new beginnings, our own way of making transitions.
You may have developed familiar rituals that support you or maybe you don’t want to think about it and just crack on!
You might be a bit of both, I know I am.
Right now, many of us more so than ever are being pushed to change, invite shifts in ourselves or let go.
Whether that’s letting go of habits or routines which aren’t helping us to achieve our goals or holding us back from thriving, letting go of relationships that are no longer nourishing us, accepting that we need to say no to opportunities that won’t serve our purpose in the long run, or letting go of projects that aren’t financially rewarding enough.
What are you doing for the rest of 2023?
January is usually the time of year where most growth-minded people sit down and focus on their goals, their identity, and how they want to show up in the world.
Instead, it's around this time of year that I sit down and look at my calendar for the year ahead.
What do I want to study?
Who do I want to learn from?
What books am I reading (professionally and in my book club)?
See, I think advisors and coaches are a unique bunch.
While the rest of the world makes plans and resolutions and sets goals in January, we're often doing it in September.
I like to think of it as us getting a head start on the world's crises so we can be prepared for what clients bring to the table.
I’ve written quite a bit about goals and New Year’s resolutions in the past.
Unlike most personal growth rituals, I’ve always refrained from criticising New Year’s resolutions because I do believe there is something psychologically significant about year changes. We divide our lives into years, conceptualise our identities in years, so it makes sense that the turning of a year will coincide with some introspection and realignment of one’s values.
Instead, what I usually do is encourage you to think differently about goals. How they can backfire. How they are often short-sighted and set not for you but someone else, or the wrong reasons.
But I’ve done that for plenty of years and you can go read that on my LinkedIn profile or Instagram.
Instead, I’d like to talk about something adjacent to goals but arguably far more important …
Skills
Because every year, everyone talks about losing ten pounds or changing jobs or getting a raise, and creating courageous workplaces. They talk about trust, motivation and identity and belief and persistence and resilience.
But nobody talks about the skills required to do it.
And I don’t mean ‘how to run your first half marathon’ or ‘how to raise series A funding’ kind of skills. I mean far more subtle skills.
I mean the ‘I get out of bed even when I don’t feel like it’ kind of skills.
How do you rate for what I believe are the six essentials of an extraordinary leader?
Curiosity, creativity, courage, clarity, coherence, and care
Curiosity
To understand yourself and those around you, to ask smart questions, to listen attentively.
When clients ask me ‘the one thing I could do differently today to help me and your organisation be future prepared, where should I start? With economic headwinds and AI disruption an everyday reality, I believe the best solution is to activate and nurture a culture of curiosity. One that replaces 'fake' empowerment with agency, trust and flexibility.
Creativity
To try new ways of thinking, exploring and doing. Using your imagination to dream up, new, original ways to address customers’ needs and create the best possible place to work.
Research shows that there's a big ‘aspiration to action’ gap when it comes to building a culture of curiosity with only 28% of workers reporting that they 'put their curiosity to work in a relevant way' at work.
Courage
To have the fortitude to tackle issues head on, call out poor behaviour, make bold moves and stay the course when the going gets tough or the odds are stacked against you.
It takes courage to be honest, to be vulnerable, to be confident, to be gentle, to try and risk failure, and to grow.
One of the best ways to outpace forces of disruption is to be a learner, and unlearner, not a knower. To be curious, to have the courage not to be a conformer.
Clarity
To be clear on your identity, intentions, what you say, and what you stand for. Avoid ambiguity, build relationships on mutual understanding.
Authentic kindness versus socialised niceness. Authentic kindness builds trust, socialised niceness creates suspicion and uncertainty.
Coherence
To align your words to actions, vision to tactics, strategy with culture, resources to priorities, and your professional and personal selves.
Coherence is the state that athletes often call ‘being in the zone’ or ‘flow state’ where they are performing at their peak, with maximal effort, but it looks and feels effortless.
It happens at a physiological, emotional, cognitive and behavioural level.
I would say that the most important step is to take ownership of your physiology and emotional state. Breathing techniques are a great place to start; if you learn how to breathe smoothly and rhythmically this will stabilise your physiology and prevent brain shut down under pressure.
If you want to delve more deeply into the topic, I can recommend this book.
Care
To practise self-care so you’re in the best shape to make decisions and treat people with respect; the same goes for care and compassion for your teams, customers and stakeholders.
You can set goals for networking and making new connections, but few people think about adopting and learning a new relationship skill. People say, ‘I want to meet new investors’. No one says, ‘I want to get better at connecting with others’ or ‘I want to learn how to be more vulnerable and own my flaws’.
Our ability to self-care is directly linked to our ability to show up and take action, to endure stress without collapsing.
When I talk of self-care these days - the sum total of the daily practices, habits, rituals that keep us emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually vital - it’s in the context of stamina .
Self-care as a fuelling station, looks very different for everyone and changes as we change.
We continue to need plenty of it!
Over To You
Mastery of the 6 elements is fundamental to my work with clients, whatever their situation.
These skills are something you develop with time, that you gain through experience, that you can consciously practice and attempt to foster within yourself, and by extension in your teams.
So, my questions to you are:
How do you manage transitions? What stabilises you mentally and physically as well as practically?
What are you doing for the rest of 2023?
What skills do you want to develop this year?
What are you improving at?
What are you learning and gaining?
What practical steps are you taking to sustain a culture of curiosity in your organisation that goes big on 'return on intelligence' not just return on investment?
Instead of thinking about what you want to achieve the rest of this year, ask yourself
What do I want to be good at that I’m not?
Then get to work at it.
And the beauty of focusing on skills is that it’s never done.
If you focus on a skill (as opposed to a goal), no matter how bad you are at it, you can still work on it in October, November and throughout 2024.
Monique Loves
Things I have read, watched, listened to and loved this month
Read
Vinter’s Daughter and the Triumph of slow beauty by Jacoba Urist for FT How To Spend It.
This year marked VD’s 10th year and the launch of only its 3rd product. In an industry which typically operates on a much more aggressive R & D scale, VD’s maxim to move at the speed of quality whilst maintaining a 30-35% annual growth rate is an interesting one.
Slow beauty, like slow fashion, taking one’s time, is an increasingly important concept in a tumultuous world.
Watched
Serpico (50th anniversary) is a 1973 crime drama directed by Sidney Lumet.
It follows the struggles of an honest, idealistic, New York City cop, Frank Serpico (played by Al Pacino at his intense best), against a corrupt system. It’s based on the true, powerful story of a countercultural whistleblowing police officer who, outraged by the top-to-bottom corruption in the NYPD, finally went to the New York Times with his story. A classic.
Listened to
The News Meeting by Tortoise. A lively, informative podcast about what should lead the news and why.
Twice a week, three journalists compete to convince Tortoise editor James Harding that they’ve got the top story.
Episodes are released every Monday afternoon and Friday morning.
The Dr Louise Newson Podcast. Each week Dr Louise Newson is joined by a special guest for the lowdown on the latest (peri)menopause research and treatments, bust myths and share inspirational stories.
Listen and learn, I am.
Loved
Undergrowth by Rook. A surprise perfume with a unique combination of scents including soil, grass, garden mint, vetiver, petrichor, orris, mandarin and white musk.
It takes you by the hand through a damp garden after a torrential downpour.
Thanks for reading this month!
Now that you’ve made it to the end of this month’s installment, why not forward the email to someone who’d also enjoy it? Or share it across one of your social networks, with a note on why you found it valuable. Remember: the larger and more diverse the Leadership Squared community becomes, the better for all of us.
I’ll be back next month. Until then, be very well.
Monique
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