Written by: Janette Young, 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.
New Year seems a good time to highlight the importance of the Journey. We have all heard the saying “It’s not the destination – it’s the journey”? It is, after all, the journey that counts. The Leader as a Journeyer is Intrinsic to Resilient Leadership.
The Journeyer is a facet within the concept of the Digital Sage as part of the book Leadership Resilience in a Digital Age, Routledge. As leaders, we are all on a journey and it is up to us to determine the destination. This journey may lead to many avenues, even non-stops and wrong alleys, but ultimately getting back on track with yourself and your ultimate purpose and passion is the goal. In leadership, it helps if you can see yourself as a Journeyer. It means you can view highs and lows as part of the web and the flow of life and work. We cannot live without contrast or challenges arising. Each challenge is a continuum and the key to understanding is that we need to get to a place of balance and equilibrium. By keeping this in mind, we can sail into quieter waters.
I have always been on a learning journey as long as I can remember. At one point I travelled to Asia and India to explore the deeper meaning of life, and like most, look for the answers. However, it didn’t take long, and much to my disappointment, before I found that the real pearls of wisdom and gems were within, and in fact, I could be anywhere in order to retrieve the answers. A thread of knowledge to inner knowing and knowingness comes to mind. As such, I very quickly hopped back to Europe to continue my real journey. A lesson learned indeed.
The journey is not just the journey inward but involves the journey outwards. In professional terms, this means that your inner and outer selves need to align and be in sync with each other. Alignment to your own values and matching those values to the organization you work in, or have created, is key to being in the flow. It is called professional alignment. Do you feel professionally aligned with your real inner authentic self? To be out of alignment is heading for trouble and increases the likelihood of crashing into rocks at some stage because you are not being true to yourself.
We cultivate resilience on our journey by listening to both ourselves and others and sharing experiences as part of the journey. The journey is about acquiring new knowledge, reflecting, sifting, listening, and applying the learning to different contexts, and then re-evaluating again. The Journeyer is a reflective and reflexive practitioner who is curious and introspective. Undoubtedly, with this in mind reflection is part of the process of the leader. To be reflective can be to step back, press the button, pause for a while, and ponder. Or it can involve a more reflexive approach, questioning and re-evaluating in-built assumptions we have built up over time. Additionally, the stories we tell ourselves are very often just that (stories), and the truth is that awareness of this fact enables us to create our own stories and future journey. Therefore, deep reflexive practice helps us to examine our inbuilt assumptions. As such, be aware of the stories you tell yourself and it is your job to challenge yourself by re-writing them if necessary. Reflection is also at the heart of management development and the backbone of MBA studies at any University. We also need to reflect on the world as it is now, not as it was, in order to be relevant.
The resilient leader as a Journeyer is an apprentice and navigator who places significant value on the experiences encountered on the journeyer. Staying agile and flexible can help us become more grounded. Perhaps we all need to be Journeyer’s in times like this when there is intense rapid change. If you think like a Journeyer you can keep your head above the water, check in with yourself, and remember it is a journey of continual learning. As we keep learning we become more naturally resilient.
The principle of the Journeyer, as mentioned above, is a facet emerging in the framework of the resilient leader becoming a Digital Sage. It is useful to reflect on this facet as we enter the new year and create new avenues and a prosperous future full of hope. The Digital Sage arose from interviews with the creative digital entrepreneurial leaders of the Northeast of the UK, the outcomes of which were published in the book by JanetteYoung (2022) Leadership Resilience in a Digital Age, Routledge.
Janette Young, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr. Janette Young is an experienced senior academic, coach and consultant. She has worked in UK Universities as a Director of master’s programmes for many years. Most recently, author of Leadership Resilience in a Digital Age, Routledge. Janette explores personal resilience intelligence in these ever-changing times. Her latest book highlights the voice of the creative digital leaders she interviewed on this topic. The book presents stories about how leaders have faced significant challenges and pressure, and how they have used these experiences as catalysts to transform, flourish, and develop personal resilience. In the book she presents strategies and solutions for personal resilience and presents a framework for the leaders as a Digital Sage.
Janette is passionate about all things personal development and focuses on knowingness, personal resilience (PRQ), creativity, innovation, design, mind body and spirit, and wellbeing in all her work.
Her previous book was Personal Knowledge Capital: the inner and outer path of knowledge creation in a web world. Elsevier/Chandos.
