Why Successful Leaders Focus on "Being" before "Doing" － Inner Development Goals Part 2

07/21/22 • 35 min

Last time, we explored The Inner Development Goals — THE Leadership Model for the Future. Now, we take a deeper dive into the first category of this Framework: "Being — Relationship to Self"
Traditional leadership models tend to focus a on the actions ("doing") a leader has to take to be successful. However, the underlying "being" sets the stage for what actions we take and how we take them.
The IDG highlights five specific qualities and skills for leaders:
1) INNER COMPASS
Your inner compass gives you a sense of direction. It's about your core values and beliefs.
Challenge: We are so busy "doing", we rarely take time to stop and pause, and to reflect on the real priorities in our lives.
Reflection Questions:

What are your core values in life that make you judge things as right or wrong?
What really matters in your life? What gives you a sense of meaning and purpose?

2) INTEGRITY AND AUTHENTICITY
A strong inner compass enables us to act with integrity and authenticity. It is related to trust and honesty, a top characteristic of admired leaders.
Challenges: If we are not clear about where our inner compass is pointing , we may act inconsistently. We might worry if we can show up as our true selves at work.

Reflection Questions:

Are you practicing what you preach? Are you walking your own talk?
Do you trust you can be "your self " at work?

3) SELF-AWARENESS
Every change process starts with (self-)awareness. Beyond the obvious (e.g., strengths and weaknesses), outstanding leaders are also aware of their emotions and bodily sensations. They are aware of how these impact them and their interactions with others.
Challenges: As with the inner compass, building awareness may not be seen as a priority. When people do not know about the underlying biology, emotions and bodily sensations may be ridiculed as esoteric nonsense . Some may be afraid of what they might find when they start some self-exploration.
Reflection Questions:

How aware am I of my self?
How aware am I of my emotions ?
How do these emotions impact me and how can I regulate them productively?
How aware am of my body's signals (interoception) and can I interpret these signals in a useful way?
How do other people perceive me?

4) PRESENCE
The ability to be in the here and now and in a sate of open-ended presence. The quality of our presence is of critical importance particularly in our interactions with others.
Challenge: We have too many things on our minds. We may think that multi-tasking is more efficient than staying focused on just one task.
Reflection Questions:

How able am I to be in the here and now without thinking what's next?
How able am I to make a connection with another person ?
How present can I stay with a task or a person beyond just a few seconds?

5) OPENNESS and LEARNING MINDSET
Having a basic mindset of curiosity and a willingness to be vulnerable and embrace change and grow.

Challenge: Past successes seem to confirm that our way is the right way. It can be challenging to question our own values and beliefs
Reflection Questions:

How open am I to ways of working (simple) or world views (huge!) that are different from mine?
Am I willing to challenge my values and guiding principles that I have lived by for decades?
Finally: In my current role, can I be my best self and how does being my best self look like?

More info: secondcrackleadership.com

What are your core values in life that make you judge things as right or wrong?
What really matters in your life? What gives you a sense of meaning and purpose?

Reflection Questions:

Are you practicing what you preach? Are you walking your own talk?
Do you trust you can be "your self " at work?

How aware am I of my self?
How aware am I of my emotions ?
How do these emotions impact me and how can I regulate them productively?
How aware am of my body's signals (interoception) and can I interpret these signals in a useful way?
How do other people perceive me?

How able am I to be in the here and now without thinking what's next?
How able am I to make a connection with another person ?
How present can I stay with a task or a person beyond just a few seconds?

How open am I to ways of working (simple) or world views (huge!) that are different from mine?
Am I willing to challenge my values and guiding principles that I have lived by for decades?
Finally: In my current role, can I be my best self and how does being my best self look like?

More info: secondcrackleadership.com

Previous Episode

The Inner Development Goals - The Leadership Model for the Future

There are already hundreds of leadership models. And most companies have well-established competency frameworks for leadership. So why should we care about another model?

In this episode, we explore The Inner Development Goals (IDG) model and why we think IDG is a powerful tool for leadership development and organisational transformation.

WHAT'S IDG?

IDG was created in 2021 by three Swedish organisations: Ekskäret Foundation, The New Division, and the 29K Foundation. The purpose is to draw attention to the development of inner abilities and skills needed for people and organisations to contribute to a more sustainable global society.

"There is a vision of what needs to happen, but progress along this vision has so far been disappointing. We lack the inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment and challenges. Fortunately, modern research shows that the inner abilities we now all need can be developed. This was the starting point for the 'Inner Development Goals' initiative.”

Quote from www.innerdevelopmentgoals.org

WHAT WE LIKE ABOUT IDG

We were immediately drawn to the clear structure: change starts from within, then addressing how we need to develop our thinking, connect and relate to others, collaborate and finally act.

This, in its parts, is nothing new. What is different and powerful is how the parts are put together in an easy-to-understand and easy-to-use framework.

We also like that IDG is co-created by over 1,000 thought leaders, consultants and professionals, combining the best global thinking on leadership. The broad base of support behind IDG makes it generally applicable for all leaders to use.

THE 5 CATEGORIES

IDG is structured along 5 categories, with 23 skills. In this episode, we give a quick introduction to how they are relevant.

Being — Relationship to Self

Thinking — Cognitive Skills

Relating — Caring for Others and the World

Collaborating — Social Skills

Acting — Driving Change

We will cover each category in more detail in separate episodes.

HOW CAN LEADERS BENEFIT FROM IDG?

We have already found immediate use of IDG in our own work as coaches and consultants, applying it with senior leadership teams and in leadership development.

IDG is also an effective tool to help increase momentum and scale in corporate transformation, not only directly related to sustainability. It helps create shared mental models and language for leaders to identify and develop the necessary skills across the organisation.

A third use is in supporting suppliers and other external partners in their development.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

Looking at the most complex challenges (e.g. sustainability) your organisation is facing:
- where might a different approach be needed to create more momentum?
- might there be too much focus on the 'technical' aspects and too little on the 'inner development' that enables change?
- where do I/we need to work on my/our' inner development'?
Looking at the current leadership model in your organisation:
- how effective is it in identifying and developing the critical inner skills and qualities that matter most for your transformation and change?
- what inspiration might you draw from the IDG model?

REFERENCES

Find more information related to IDG at innerdevelopmentgoals.org

And more info about us and our work at secondcrackleadership.com

Next Episode

The Thinking Skills You Never Thought of — Inner Development Goals Part 3

Cognitive Skills are common elements in any leadership model, and most leaders excel at these qualities. However, traditional leadership models may emphasise aspects such as analytical thinking, rational decision-making, or logic. Of course, such skills are still critical today. However, leaders need to expand their cognitive skill set according to the context we are operating in nowadays. The world is highly interconnected and complex, and the speed of change can be overwhelming.

The Inner Development Goals (IDG) offer a new leadership framework to tackle today’s challenges. In this third episode on the IDGs, we discuss the second category of this framework: Thinking. It consists of five skills and qualities:

Complexity Awareness goes beyond mere awareness but includes understanding and skills in working with systemic conditions and causalities (systems theory). We can’t possibly know all the parameters and casualties that impact outcomes. Leaders can’t control an organisation like a machine but can influence the system through their interactions with others.

Perspective Skills refer to “seeking, understanding and actively making use of insights from contrasting perspectives.” This requires humility, awareness of blind spots, and the openness to invite views that are very different from ours.

Sense-Making is directly related to how the human brain operates. We continuously interpret what is going on in our environment and adapt accordingly. This is critical for survival. However, we must challenge whether our sense-making of the past is still useful today. In addition, we make sense through our interactions with others, and we need to share our thinking processes to do so more effectively.

Critical Thinking is what most leaders are very good at already. The art is in applying critical thinking in the right places: at times, we may be overly critical, slowing things down unnecessarily, or frustrating others. On other occasions, we might not be critical enough, especially when we are influenced by our own confirmation bias.

Long-term Orientation & Visioning is another area in which most leaders do quite well. The challenge is often in a) defining short-term goals which support the long-term vision and goals and b) sustaining the commitment to achieving the long-term goals.
Reflection Questions for Leaders:

How can I let go of control and instead, exert influence to achieve the organisational goals?
How well do I understand the degree of complexity in a situation?
Where may I tend to oversimplify, where might I make things too complicated?
What (or who’s) perspective are we missing here?
How aware am I of my blind spots?
How well do I nurture a climate for different perspectives to be shared?
Where might past sense-making limit me in the future? What might I need to re-visit in a different context today?
How do I make my own sense-making more transparent and involving?
Looking at the five THINKING skills and qualities, which ones do need to further develop to remain successful in the future?

More info about us and our work: secondcrackleadership.com

Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast - Why Successful Leaders Focus on "Being" before "Doing" － Inner Development Goals Part 2

Transcript

[00:00:00] Gerrit: A warm welcome to Second Crack — the Leadership Podcast. This is where we explore everyday leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you as our listener to self-reflect so that you can grow as a leader. Today, we will explore why “being” matters more than doing for leaders — or, in other words, why the being of a leader sets the stage for everything they do. This episode today is a sequel to our previous one on the Inner Developm