Agility, Vulnerability and Systems-Perspective

The theme of Agility accompanied this emphasis on bold and courageous leadership. Leaders must be agile in addressing the multi-tiered and shifting challenges of VUCA-Plus. They become and remain agile by testing out new ideas and new approaches to existing issues. They are willing to Take Risks and Look Foolish. As members of one small group put it: agile leaders are working In It and On It (It being the challenging environment in which they must leader). They are fully engaged and never standing on the side lines. They are the pilots of the plane flying through a storm. And often they also have to be the co-pilots and even the navigators. Speaking of broad bandwidth! This commitment to fully engaged agility means at a very deep and fundamental level that leaders embrace a willingness to be Vulnerable. This is a tall personal order.

Another of the small groups took a somewhat different approach—embracing a strong systems perspective. Members of this group noted that at any moment in time, anyone in an organization can assume a leadership role. A VUCA-Plus environment requires many different kinds of skills and types of knowledge, as well as diverse styles of leadership. This means that a mid-21st Century organization must provide structures and policies that enable and call for diverse, situation-appropriate modes of leadership. This also means that organizations must find Unassuming Leaders—those who can step into this role without great fanfare or abundant narcissism. This group seems to be embracing the findings of Jim Collins that effective leaders are often quite humble (as well as persistent). Given the many mistakes that will inevitably be made by leaders in a VUCA-Plus environment, this humility (and the accompanying openness to new learning and change) is warranted and welcomed in an Agile organization.

Leadership Development and Executive Coaching

Given these challenges confronting leaders in a mid-21st Century environment, what might a leadership development program look like—especially when accompanied by executive coaching. Two fundamental questions were addressed by participants in the NECS: (1) What’s now working and what’s not working, and (2) What is the “Industry” asking of us?

Best Practices: What Is Working?

How do we approach the first question regarding what is and is not working? It probably depends in large part on the perspectives being taken and the criteria we have engaged to determine success. In other words, as one of the NECS small groups concluded: it would help to figure out “what is the right” but this is hard to do.

We want to do the next thing to be successful–but we often don’t know what it is. Best practices can be identified, but one of the small groups warned that the outcome of any best practice review should be the identification of important perspectives, practices and “philosophies” of coaching—not a prescription nor set of dogmatic guidelines that discourage innovation.

Even with these reflective and cautionary comments, participants in NECS do have some good ideas about what has been shown to be effective. The first key to success seems to be the establishment of long-term relationships with organizations. The coach serves as a trusted advisor. The word TRUST seems to be particularly important.