Reflections from the Inner Development Goals Summit

Context

On the 29th April I had the pleasure of attending the Inner Development Goals Summit – a gorgeous and much needed hybrid event which seeks to address the question “What internal skills and capacities do we need to more effectively meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals?”?

The SDGs were developed in 2015 and are set to conclude in 2030. We are over halfway towards that milestone and yet many goals (climate, poverty) still leave much to be desired. Why is that? What’s missing? One could argue that globally we have access to the research we need, the resources – but when it comes to decision makers taking action, something seems to be missing. ?

Regular followers will know that I’m a massive fan of Gandhi’s mantra “You must be the change that you wish to see in the world.” This teaches us that in order for change to be effective we must start with our own internal world, then our own actions in order to create the outward ripples for others. I am reassured that the IDGs strategy is encouraging decision makers to look internally and notice what needs to develop and grow within them (and wider society) so that we can come together and more effectively make those external changes that our planet so desperately needs.

The Inner Development Goals

The goals were developed by asking a range of experts from business, science, NGOs and SDG practitioners: “What abilities, qualities or skills do you believe are essential to develop, individually and collectively, in order to get us significantly closer to fulfilling the UN Sustainable Development Goals?”

All of the responses were collated and grouped (you can read more about how in their report) in order to create a streamlined list of 23 skills and qualities grouped across 5 categories.

Being - Relationship to self: Cultivating our inner life and developing and deepening our relationship to our thoughts, feelings and body help us be present, intentional and non-reactive when we face complexity.

• Inner compass
• Integrity & authenticity
• Openness and learning mindset
• Self-awareness
• Presence

Thinking - Cognitive Skills: Developing our cognitive skills by taking different perspectives, evaluating information and making sense of the world as an interconnected whole is essential for wise decision-making.

• Critical thinking
• Complexity awareness
• Perspective skills
• Sense-making
• Long term orientation and visioning

Relating - Caring for Others and the World: Appreciating, caring for and feeling connected to others, such as neighbours, future generations or the biosphere, helps us create more just and sustainable systems and societies for everyone.

• Appreciation
• Connectedness
• Humility
• Empathy & compassion

Collaborating - Social Skills: To make progress on shared concerns, we need to develop our abilities to include, hold space and communicate with stakeholders with different values, skills and competencies.

• Communication skills
• Co-creation
• Inclusive mindset and intercultural competence
• Trust
• Mobilisation skills

Acting - Driving change: Qualities such as courage and optimism help us acquire true agency, break old patterns, generate original ideas and act with persistence in uncertain times.

• Courage
• Creativity
• Optimism
• Perseverance

Finding my Tribe

It was a breath of fresh air so see these traits and qualities so succinctly and deliberately communicated. I say this because sometimes there can be a resistance to working on ‘inner stuff’ in favour of outward results. Working in the world of leadership training, I often have conversations with people about those external results; better performance in teams, more successful projects, less time dedicated to mediation and conflict resolution. These are all valid goals, but they are achieved most successfully when you spend time on the inner work and developing capacities like those mentioned above. Some of my clients see that connection and others do not. In the latter cases, I can feel like I’m doing a ‘covert operation’ to sneakily build up people’s internal capacities without putting people off with those ‘fluffy’ terms like ‘self-reflection’, ‘values’ or ‘self-awareness’.

Being at the IDGs summit felt like home because all of the speakers (very respectable and prestigious!), facilitators and fellow attendees were on the same page – the inner world is not fluffy, irrelevant or an indulgence. Working on the inner world is a necessary foundation for being effective in all other parts of your life…and the research shows that working on your inner capacities leads to those tangible ‘business’ outcomes better than trying to bypass them. ?

Since the summit I’ve had a number of conversations with people whom I met and found each time that out values and vision for operating in the world were very similar. It is reassuring and exciting to know there are people in the world working together to advocate for much needed inner development (or self-leadership as I might call it ??)

Key Insights

It is hard to summarise everything that came out of such a jam packed and very deep programme. I will list a few short insights here and follow up with more targeted blog posts for the sessions which most spoke to me. In short, things that came up:

• Researchers have investigated growth mindset at the organisational level (rather than just individual level) and found that growth mindset leads to a more open sharing of ‘failures’ and learning from them whereas fixed mindset leads to shame and hiding failure. This impacts workplace culture and the bottom line of a team’s performance outcomes.
• People find it difficult to navigate what makes a good life for them. Do they want it to be happy, meaningful or psychologically rich? The answers to those questions can sometimes be very different and so people make choices ‘in the moment’ to be happy and then regret not making meaning or having varied experiences. Doing reflective inner work helps you better plan achieving goals in all three areas.
• Much of the narrative around flourishing is about personal success. We need to shift away from this and recognise that true flourishing always involves other people. Increasing personal forms of wellbeing gives us the energy and motivation for ‘well-doing’ – having positive impacts on others.
• Research shows that we are all born naturally compassionate. Infants can recognise and prefer to play with a puppet who is helpful and kind rather than a selfish one. Our natural tendency for compassion can fade if it is not cultivated, so what can we do as parents, educators and wider society to continually reinforce empathy and compassion as positives?
• Failure can be positive – but not all kinds of failure are there same. Some errors are due to poor planning, chance or momentary errors and have little to teach us. These should be avoided as much as possible and not glorified. We need to learn to spot and promote intelligent failures – the ones where we take an educated risk to do something new and therefore learn new ways of operating. Our narratives around failure need more nuance so that we can solve ever more complex problems.??

And not a learning point exactly, but useful idea to round off the conference:

“All research is me-search” – the idea that many experts choose to become an expert in the thing which helps them to understand themselves or navigate their own lives better. I particularly loved this because this entirely captures why I do the work that I do – learning about self-leadership, positive psychology, conflict resolution and the many other soft skills / inner development tools enabled me to overcome challenges throughout my life. This has fuelled my passion to keep learning more – to become more well rounded and equipped for life – but to also pass those skills onto others.

Final Thought

?A closing quote from the summit:

?“Sometimes what is most personal, is the most universal.”

?Focusing on our inner development can sometimes feel vulnerable or taboo because it is so personal… and the thought of systematising it into 23 categories for development may even feel clinical. But what I love about the whole initiative is recognising that though we are beautiful and unique, we also share many patterns and commonalities. Learning to navigate life effectively and deal with challenges is universal – knowing that and working towards it in more effective ways can unite us so that we can achieve bigger and better things together. For that reason, I am very excited to keep following the IDGs and to advocate even louder than before for working on the inner capacities that matter.?

#IDGs #IDGsummit #IDG22 #innerdevelopmentgoals @InnerDevelopmentGoals