5 Highlights of the Week in Creative Leadership – November 15, 2024

The longtime University of Michigan Ross School professor has, with a collaborator, Chester Elton, looked beyond conventional tools and audits to pose one simple question about leadership: How often does someone leave an interaction with this leader feeling better (or worse) about themselves? By focusing on others leaving an interaction feeling better about themselves, Ulrich and Elton argue that leaders increase their impact. To aid leaders in fostering more positive responses, they then offer seven specific tips for leaders to help others feel better about an interaction and about themselves. These range from “Expressing sincere care” to “Expressing gratitude” and include “Practice the Three Doors of Buddha” (Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?) as steps toward inspiring and guiding others.

The longtime University of Michigan Ross School professor has, with a collaborator, Chester Elton, looked beyond conventional tools and audits to pose one simple question about leadership: How often does someone leave an interaction with this leader feeling better (or worse) about themselves? By focusing on others leaving an interaction feeling better about themselves, Ulrich and Elton argue that leaders increase their impact. To aid leaders in fostering more positive responses, they then offer seven specific tips for leaders to help others feel better about an interaction and about themselves. These range from “Expressing sincere care” to “Expressing gratitude” and include “Practice the Three Doors of Buddha” (Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?) as steps toward inspiring and guiding others.

Another event meant to inspire positive individual and collective transformations this week was LoveFest, from RADAR, the vibrant decentralized global collective of people thinking about and building better futures. The virtual gathering was designed as the culmination of a three-month exploration into “A Future in Love—a future where love isn’t just the end point of some mythical quest, but the guiding force behind how we live, care for each other, and shape our world.” Unfortunately, because of two other longstanding in-person commitments, I couldn’t attend the full program, but the depth, reach, and imagination of their design and curation of LoveFest was inspiring. I first encountered the depth and reach of RADAR’s work when Alex Eley shared a copy of The Curious Human’s Field Guide to the Future, their rich, evocative, and highly recommended collection of essays, activities, self-reflection, shared imaginings, and tools for foresight.

The annual program celebrating pioneering Austrian-born management thinker, consultant, and professor had as its theme this year Peter Drucker’s prescient observations about how productivity in the 21st century is shaped by knowledge work and knowledge workers. Taking place in Vienna but streamed globally, here are three illustrative takeaways from the talks and discussions with practitioners and researchers:

1. 1. The former Unilever and Lipton executive—and Tata director—Ranabadran Gopalakrishnan (Gopal) quoted the still-resonant words of the founder of the Tata Group, Jansetji Tata, from 1890: “In a free enterprise, a community is not just another stakeholder—it is the very purpose of its existence.”
   2. Strategy guru Roger Martin pointed out how too many companies and leaders recurrently focus, particularly in their incentives, on trading value versus building value.
   3. In the final words of the event, Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson offered one closing piece of advice to leaders: tell the truth—especially the hard truth—to your people as a basis for finding an honest rationale for why they should believe what they can do, and a basis for hope.

“An expert advisor on systems thinking for leaders, offering strategic, scholarly insights in a conversational tone.” This is the work of Mattias Seger, the longtime Swedish leadership and organizational development consultant, coach, and agility facilitator. His ChatGPT bot emerges from his forthcoming book, Systems Thinking for Leaders and Organizations. To sample his thinking, a brief and approachable summary of the chapter on “Leadership Awareness in Systems Thinking” is available. Among other useful ideas, Seger uses Ken Wilber’s IAQ model to better recognize interconnections and shows how leaders can help cultivate self- and team awareness to enable adaptability to those interconnections.