Unlearning Leadership
Reflections on Unlearning at Meaning Conference, November 2018
“There is work to be done — share what you have to offer and play your part”
This was the invitation Meaning presented to us at their conference earlier this month in Brighton, UK. I don’t know about you, but I left the day reflecting hard on the importance of real action. We were taken on an inspiring journey that invited us to consider the kind of businesses our society needs and wants. We were connected to the ways that others had already shown up to lead in 21st-century ways organisations.
I reflected on the conviction needed for systemic change and to take on rewriting the rules of business as we’ve known it, as we were challenged to see that Britain is broken and needs urgent yet sustainable investment in better ways.
I thought about the creativity we’ll need to reimagine how organisations can build personal autonomy, community and grow the economy in equal measure. Buurtzorg GB and Ireland showed us how they were bravely taking on in their work alongside our monolithic NHS, navigating a path between old and new systems.
We’ll definitely need a stack load of empathy to support our people to find meaning and wellbeing through work. As many speakers pointed out, these are not luxuries of the worried well but basic human rights and we need to start seeing them as vital needs that our places of work fulfil for people.
And most of all we’ll need a lot of love to bring humanity back into our business cultures, to counter the dominant mantra that it has no place in the world of productive, profitable work. That conscious capitalism isn’t a choice but a requirement so that our companies contribute to the kind of society we all deserve to live in.
“It’s through our journey of discomfort, that we come home to ourselves”
The topic of strong leadership always comes up in times of crisis and transition, and it feels timely to revisit this given everything Meaning has asked us to consider. What kind of leadership do we really need?
It’s a question Within have been exploring for some time, having spent the last year in conversation with leaders around the world to better understand how they need to show up to lead 21st century businesses. This extensive research revealed 8 qualities — courage, conviction, empathy, vulnerability, patience, curiosity, creativity and love.
With our fellow Unlearners at our Meaning workshop, we explored how people are showing up to these qualities, and what helps and hinders them to step into them fully. We consistently heard the Meaning Community reinforce our belief that these qualities are already inside of us.
But we’ve become disconnected from them and in doing so, from our innate, essential leading nature. Why, because the world of business and commerce has asked us to learn their way.
They have asked us to study their mantra about successful leadership, to go on courses that reinforce it and to observe it being modelled by our predecessors.
We’ve been encouraged to keep work self and personal self, separate. We’ve grown up in work cultures that value certainty, prize individualism, celebrate science and rationality and ask for conformity and compliance. Too right there’s unlearning to be done. And bravo to those who are willing to go boldly into this. We need champions like you amongst us.
Our Unlearners shared their journeys of coming home to themselves. Their stories of unlearning, or, moments of ‘enlightenment’ through challenge or set-back where they realised there was another way. They’ve woken up to the fact that the key to better leadership is by staying true to their innate human nature. Unlearning is letting go of assumptions and beliefs that are no longer fit for the world of work today.
We heard an invitation to become the new role models for what our businesses need. To set an intention to actively create a new generation of unlearned leaders. Inspired by our Unlearners at Meaning, here is our Unlearning Manifesto
