Written by: Victor Penda Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The ability to be flexible and agile is an essential quality for any modern leader to possess for strategic, personal and interpersonal success. Firstly, on a strategic level, it improves agility which enhances the organisation's ability to meet changing situational or socio-environmental demands. For example, according to a study by McKinsey, becoming more agile increases the chances of successful transformation from 30 percent to 75 percent. Secondly, on a personal level, it allows the leader to regulate the self and promotes interpersonal relationships. Regulating the self and others is a quality that rarely ever comes naturally even after years of formal education. As humans, our natural predisposition is to automatically accept what fits within our worldviews and may subconsciously neglect or become defensive towards what doesn’t. To become more agile in our worldviews we must first become self-aware of our underlying patterns and behaviours.
According to Google dictionary, self-awareness is the conscious knowledge of one's own character and feelings. Considering today’s complexity associated with socio-environmental changes and the general emotional difficulties associated with changing our worldviews. It is more important than ever for leaders to become aware of their underlying patterns of thoughts and behaviours. This leads to a greater consciousness of knowledge that can benefit cognitive and psychological flexibility. While cognitive flexibility relates to the ability to work with complex information effectively, psychological flexibility is more strongly associated with handling difficult situations while staying connected to our sense of self. These psychological competencies are strongly associated with effective decision-making, empathy and emotional intelligence. Yet shockingly enough, a study reported that only 19 percent of female and 4 percent of male leaders exhibited strong self-awareness.
Because critical business and people management competencies such as decision-making and empathy are closely related to self-awareness. It's not difficult to see how the lack of it could cause leadership derailment. Dysfunctional behaviours associated with leadership such as abuse of power, defensiveness and poor interpersonal skills are failures of the leader to be aware of their underlying patterns of behaviours. Not surprisingly, this can keep the leader stuck in dysfunctional behaviours that creates a lack of flexibility and adaptability. The ability to adapt to change is frequently mentioned as the main cause of leadership derailment. This can lead to organisational ineffectiveness, team conflicts and a toxic work environment.
The modern leader
Self-regulation
The modern leader is in touch with their innermost feelings and thoughts. Importantly, they understand how these inner experiences show up during challenging situations. Emotions are strongly associated with contextual cues of a specific situation. Therefore, to successfully adapt to any given situation we must learn to be aware of our emotions because they carry contextual relevant information. Dysfunctional leadership is related to the leader's difficulties in making sense of their inner experiences. Which leads to inflexible behavioural patterns that prevent successful adaptation to changing situations or environments.
Other regulation
Difficulties associated with the self isn’t just restricted to situational inflexibility. It may also harm relationships and teams dynamic as the leader may lack the ability to react flexibly to differences. This may relate to differences in worldviews, gender, racial and many more. This is particularly relevant in today’s context where diversity is of greatest importance. The inability to manage differences may damage organisational trust and the psychological safety needed for employees to express their ideas and identities. High turnover, team conflicts and disengagement are just some of the negative consequences of low trust and safety.
Learning from previous experiences
The ability to be reflective and interoceptive are skills that must be developed to learn from experience and to improve self-awareness. Unfortunately, not only does the average person struggle to master these skills. We are also prone to neglecting them during times of heightened stress and anxiety. Leaders must learn about their emotional triggers and any previous experiences that may have had any significant impact on their psychological welfare. A psychological practitioner can help the leader develop the reflective and interoceptive skills needed to learn from experience while improving psychological flexibility to successfully lead in today's complex environment.
Victor Penda, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Victor is an organisational and consulting psychologist focusing on behavioural change and performance. Socio-environmental changes have forced us to re-think how we individually and collectively understand work and performance. His evaluation begins with the self. Which he argues is being faced with unprecedented pressure to adapt to a new world full of uncertainty and complexity. He has diverse experience working with professional athletes and FTSE 250 companies. He works with leaders, teams and high performers to facilitate change through psychological flexibility and wellbeing.
