085: High on agency?

“grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” – the Serenity Prayer

The concept of “High Agency” burst into the online leadership conversation in recent years. And it sounds good, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to be high agency? Who wouldn’t want to have high agency employees?

As with many such “obviously good” concepts, turns out it’s not that simple.

In this episode, Corissa and Tom also look at the other side of hopes for high agency.

We talk about how some leaders might wish for high agency employees, but would balk at what a very high agency employee would do in reality.

And we talk about what you need to know if you’re an employee being expected to demonstrate more agency.

And we signpost a whole load of lovely rabbit holes to go explore.

“imagine that I could sell you a magic pill and you could give it to two of your employees and overnight they would suddenly become high agency. What would be the first thing you’d notice was different when you went into work the next day?”

Linky Goodness

• Mushfiqa Monica Jalamuddin - the Estuarine coach you’re looking for
• Estuarine Mapping
• Multiverse Mapping (free course)
• Venkatesh Rao’s Gervais Principle
• Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Leadership BS
• Brendan Reid’s Stealing the Corner Office
• Luca Dellanna’s 100 Truths You Will Learn Too Late

Timecodes to help you navigate

00:00 Introduction

00:28 What is High Agency?

01:10 The Serenity Prayer

02:00 Estuarine Mapping is the Serenity Prayer in map form

03:45 High agency as a positive trait ... & its permeation into leadership mythology

04:06 “Sound like a challenger, but be an obedient drone”

06:20 Perhaps it’s about not waiting for permission, while also not doing silly things

08:09 Tools to create higher agency if you want that – including Multiverse Mapping

13:01 What if the traits we want in leaders are not the traits that get you promoted?

17:31 A magic question for you to use

18:34 What would have to be true for that stupid thing to make a lot of sense?

19:42 “You can choose the game you play, but not its rules”

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