Driving leadership growth and evolution

WE live in a world that is saturated with leadership wisdom — from countless books to endless streams of thought pieces — yet the gap between what leaders know and what they do remains wide.

- MARTIN GUTMANN, ALEXIS ZAHNER

Leadership transformation is hard. It's deeply human to cling to comfort and choose habit over risk; so it takes immense courage to step outside the status quo.

In our years of working with leaders, we’ve noticed that those who succeed at continuously evolving their leadership mettle strike a balance between three impulses. To make the concept easier to grasp, we visualise each impulse as a persona: the kid, scientist and gardener. These personas act as a framework to develop and maintain momentum in one’s personal leadership development journey.

The kid persona

Picture a child encountering the world. Everything is new and fair game to touch, break or build. Kids aren’t afraid of failure; they learn by doing, adjusting and doing again. The kid persona cultivates curiosity, play and bold action. Leaders often limit their learning by the perceived parameters they operate in. However, by embracing the kid persona, leaders can tap into a playful curiosity and willingness to act without having every answer tied up in a bow.

Leaders too often succumb to analysis paralysis; fearful of imperfection, criticism or failure. To be the kid, leaders need to cultivate the courage to play with new ideas — even when the stakes feel high. This doesn’t mean reckless gambles; it means small and bold experiments knowing that not every attempt will succeed and that that’s okay. Try a new meeting format. Give frontline staff decision-making autonomy for a day. Stop asking “What if I fail?” and start saying “Let’s see what happens”.

The scientist