Time With Sands – New Leadership

How can we achieve visibility as advocates, authors, teachers, activists, and navigators through non-traditional leadership roles?

– Barb N.

In these times, we are redefining everything. Everything is over. What we knew worked in the past, no longer does. Bring out that new whiteboard. Start by listing the top 5 characteristics of a the non traditional, visionary leader you desire to be for these VUCA times.

What are the qualities of the visionary non-traditional leader? There are no rules, nothing set in stone to aspire to be. So create your list from scratch with no holds barred. All of us can choose to embody those traits. Then take one of these 5 traits per week with the intention to exemplify only one new trait for your chosen time frame. Notice and notate how you do with this exercise. Be gentle with yourself as this is a new way of being, which you are trying on for ‘best fit’ and relevance. If you find yourself slipping into old ways of leading and being, just witness, self-correct, and start over again. Rinse and repeat until you master incorporating and integrating each of the 5 traits in succession, adding one more trait per new time period. These new traits will embed faster and be more sustainable if you keep a journal to notate during each day when you slip and when you celebrate a win, then end your day by reviewing. Let go of what didn’t work, and embrace what did. Make sure to give yourself permission to be on a learning curve; this is an ongoing leadership developmental process, not an end-point.

Erase everything that was and envision for yourself on the blank white board in front of you.

CAUTION: Just be sure you aren’t settling by naming this process a “reinvention” if all you are efforting to do will only move around the same furniture in the same office, then don’t bother. But if you are ready to find a new office and decorate anew, then keep going. Truth is that if you are committed to making impactful change, then you must be willing to drop all preconceived notions and expectations. Only then will you truly change the trajectory of your role to one of a Visionary Leader blazing new trails.

Bucky Fuller explained that “a problem adequately stated…is a problem well on its way to being solved.” The trailblazing leader is someone who can first identify and articulate the true challenges of today…and tomorrow. The trailblazer who can fully and adequately state the underlying and interconnecting challenge(s), is most likely to fully offer innovative answers.