“The illiterate of the future will not be the ones who cannot read and write, but the ones who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn’, Alvin Toffler wrote in the second part of the 20th century.

And here we are, at a time when he is right. We have recently been invited to talk and to teach about learning Agility. The audience is always made of people in management positions. We are in an era where technology is evolving at an ever-increasing pace, the generation gap has grown, the pressure of doing more with limited resources is at every corner, while the individual has developed very little psychologically. I am not saying that we, humans, do not have a huge capacity for adaptation; our history actually shows that we were able to survive thanks to our flexibility. However, I believe that for a time those survival senses have attenuated – it is not necessary to fight anyone physically, dangers have dwindled, and our life is not as threatened as it used to be.

But for a few years now, the need for a different type of adaptation has come up, for mental flexibility which is not so easy to accomplish. “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.”, said Pascal in the 17th century. We formed our mental models that helped us navigate the world, through companies, through society, to understand them, to put a certain order in our existence. But these mental models have come under scrutiny.

Technological progress has made job requirements change, together with the behaviors, needs, and expectations of the new generations, who ask for a different type of thinking from the one they were raised in. When it comes to leaders, the responsibility is greater: their essential role is to take care of people, of their development, to support them so that they will do their job properly and have better results.

A 40-year-old leader can interact with people older than them, with Millennials, even with people from Generation Z. The way they lead needs to be adapted to each one of them. Thus, great flexibility from the leader is needed, which implies, most of the time, to give up on their way of seeing things, to listen to others, to have the capacity to see from different perspectives and, at the same time, to rise above, analyse and make decisions. It is as if a leader needed many pairs of glasses and, depending on the context, they would use those with large gold lenses, more glamorous, or the shaded ones, cat eye, more elegant, or the pink ones, playful, or the silver ones, cooler, or the classic ones, black, the serious ones. This play with the lenses gives an indication of how great the mental flexibility of the leader must be in order to withstand all these changes, generations, automatization.

How can the leader develop to cope with such complexity and ambiguity? Here are a few ideas:

  • To put themselves in new situations – any type, not only professional ones (if you like jazz, go to a rock concert; if you dine out often, go to a different restaurant each time: Thai, Indian, Romanian, Italian, Lebanese, etc; if you usually drive to work, take the subway once a month and pay attention to the people in it; dress differently, so that you will look adequate; if you usually plan your vacations thoroughly, be crazy and leave without any plans, and see what comes out of it)
  • To always read – a few pages every day.
  • To take part in different discussion or debate groups
  • To go to classes
  • To have a coach and a mentor – they can give you perspectives; they filter for the coachee/mentee some information, articles, that can help the individual concentrate (in the words of one of my clients, ‘they put him back on track, just like a train’)
  • To have preoccupations from other fields (you can learn a lot from sports, cooking, perfumes, cars, for example)
  • To listen to other people with the intent of understanding, of seeing from other perspectives, and not just talking back
  • If you use Microsoft, switch to Apple/ or switch from Android to Apple or vice versa – make an effort to adapt to a different operating system
  • To write for a while on an iPad, not paper
  • To write for a while in white pen on black paper, instead of a black pen on white paper
  • To have the habit of reflecting on themselves / their activity over a period of time so they can analyse and better understand themselves.
  • To ask for constant feedback from those they work with and take it into consideration, to reflect upon it, to integrate it
  • To support others around to develop, in turn, their capacity to learn, to unlearn, to relearn
  • To learn how to tolerate uncertainty and to be patient. For example, to accept that each person in a team has a different rhythm. To expect everyone to react the same way is unrealistic, immature.

To be willing to accept that they were wrong; to stop, to change direction. It is like when you drive a car down the road and you realise that you have been going in the wrong direction; you stop, change direction, and start again. You do not sit and think for days and analyse ‘how could it happen to me’. You leave your ego aside and go down another road. Of course, you follow the same driving rules (that is, you keep your values) but change direction. Pride plays with our judgment sometimes and limits our flexibility.

For all of this to happen, it is essential for the leader to know themselves better, to know what makes them glad or sad and why what brings out the good and the bad in them. To lead other people, it is important to lead oneself, to prove the behaviors expected from others. The unauthentic type of boss model, who rages and fumes, does not work anymore.

I would say that the future in the development of leaders will be anything but the sloth of the mind.”

via: Learning Network

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