Dreaming of Borderless-Centred Leadership

It has been more than four years since Covid said Hello to the world. In the midst of it, I crossed borders and continents, and settled in the UK as part of the Hong Kong diaspora. I have been dreaming since, dreaming about moving around freely as peoples, as expats, as third culture kids, as individuals. I dream of a world without borders.

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Covid continues to touch us and we have all been impacted throughout its reign. My husband and I have different households set up in different countries for over a decade because of our work. We managed to visit one another frequently pre-Covid. During Covid, due to borders closing and varying quarantine protocols, there was a more than eight-month period that we did not have any in-person visit. The seed of borderlessness was planted.

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I continue to dream. I dream of the essence of a world without borders, of equity of public goods for all, of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which, based on the latest progress report, we are not likely to achieve by 2030 “without massive investment and scaled up action”.

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So I continue to dream. I dream of a new breed of leaders who think borderless, who anchor themselves beyond the quick-win-now mindset, who hold course towards the futures we want.

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And I dream of supporting this new breed of leaders as a coach to centre the world through a borderless lens, to commit to their individual and collective desired futures of borderlessness, to achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030, to be Borderless-Centred Leaders.

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So what is the right stuff for Borderless-Centred Leadership? What does being Borderless-Centred Leaders mean in a world full of borders?

The Right Stuff for Borderless-Centred Leadership

My vision for Borderless-Centred Leadership (BCL) is that of a multidimensional way of being and leading that is future-oriented, interconnectedness-focused, and agile-responsive. BCL is grounded in the humanistic traditions, informed by the Inner Development Goals Framework, and rooted in the Co-Active Leadership Model. In its essence, BCL is characterised by four principles:

1. Act now future-oriented

2. Iterative and anticipatory

3. Say no to yes

4. Humanistic and interspecies

Act now future-oriented is to dynamically balance the present and the future, reactive and creative, to lead at once from behind and in front. It is with long-term orientation, visioning, and keen awareness that we relate to others and the world, and that what we do now has an impact on the future. How relevant are the words of T.S. Eliot here and now:

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Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

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Iterative and anticipatory is about listening actively, learning persistently, and critically sensing and scanning the horizon, to be ready to make course adjustment accordingly. This is agile decision-making with full self-acceptance and self-authority.

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Say no to yes is about focus. In the Metamorph stage of Whitney Johnson 's S-Curve of Learning and Growth, Metamorphs learn to “say no to distractions and yes to accelerating momentum on the S Curve.” ?When options and opportunities are seemingly bountiful, we pause and reflect on the best pathway towards the futures we want.

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Humanistic and interspecies is about being human and normalising our interconnectedness and interdependence with all those around us. It is with self-authority that we collaborate and co-create as we steward our world. We are not alone. We are part of an ecosystem that is intergenerational and interspecies.

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My dream is that by embodying BCL, leaders in us can stretch beyond the short-term, quick-win, and action-now context towards intergenerational equity. We adopt and adapt our stewardship by leaving our world better than we find it. And with that, realising the UN Sustainable Development Goals, for example, becomes an achievable imperative.

What is Borderless-Centred Leadership to you?

Join me to further explore BCL.

• What are some acts of BCL you have witnessed?
• What is your dream of BCL in yourself and your world?

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Subscribe to Just Be with Lina?to receive my next monthly newsletter, to explore how being, rather than doing, can better support us through uncertainty, living on the periphery as expats and third culture kids (TCKs). This edition is a detour from the ongoing series modelling Whitney Johnson ’s S-Curve of Learning and Growth. I am at the launch point of a new S-Curve within the ongoing one, and the main thread will be picked up again in future newsletters. If you want to dive deeper into Borderless-Centred Leadership or the S-Curve of Learning and Growth, contact me to explore how coaching can support you.