Thoroughly unprepared...

"Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie. “

     Carl Gustav Jung

I wonder if Carl Jung had one of these precognitive dreams, when he came up with this quote. Of course, as a psychiatrist and the father of transpersonal psychology, he was referring to the journey of the evolution of our psyche as we move from lower to higher levels of consciousness.

However, the truth of his statement seems to also apply today in a community level where as a society we are individually and collectively stuck in the morning of our life and we are afraid or unprepared to step into the afternoon of life.

Most of us while we try to remain positive and hopeful, we do not admit that we are deeply troubled and scared by the wicked issues we are collectively facing in our society today, in the morning of our life.

Most of us want to make a difference in our community, organisation, governing body, social enterprise, start-up, the world but we don't know how.

We are all fighting for a cause.

But are we doing it the right way?

Citing Brene Brown and other thought leaders such as Peter Brown and others, we find ourselves in a time where we need to be braver leaders and build more courageous cultures.

And to do so, we need to change our ways.

We are all hungry for social change innovation. More and more funding go into innovation and social enterprise and we want a piece of the social procurement pie, we need funds to sustain us while following our passion and trying to make a difference.

Studies show that in order to become more daring leaders, we need to:

·        embrace our vulnerability, 

·        lean more deeply into our values,

·        trust ourselves, be brave,

·        and learn to rise

Peter Block encourages leaders to place service ahead of self- interest and to choose stewardship meaning to “act in service of the long run,” and to “act in service to those with little power.”

But we can’t get to courage to do all this and change our leadership style to a more daring and empathic one without embracing the suck.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek."

                                                                                                                  Joseph Campbell

To move to the afternoon of our life, to become daring leaders in such times of unprecedented uncertainty and complexity, we must enter the cave we fear.

We must develop the capacity and skills to manage our emotions and fears when we leave our comfort zone and are facing the unknown, during times of uncertainty, risk, and exposure.

When fear and uncertainty kicks in, when we need answers and results yesterday, when we feel pressured by all different sides to produce, we need to pause, look the abyss in the eyes and acknowledge our fear and armour that gets in the way.

We have evolved a very sophisticated defence coping system including thoughts, emotions and behaviours that we use to protect ourselves when we are too afraid to enter the unknown and lean into and vulnerability.

At that critical moment when we don’t manage to show up as our most courageous and vulnerable selves, we can fall out of alignment with our values, break trust with our peers and teams and most importantly disappoint ourselves.

If we continue wearing our heavy armour, we will keep operating in a fragmented world where sectors of our cities, neighbourhoods, business, schools, social services, organisations, churches and government operate mostly in their own worlds and communities are separated into silos.

We will keep recreating a culture that is much more interested in individuality and independence rather than interdependence.

And as per Peter Block, we will keep resorting to a command-and-control approach in an outdated, ineffective “patriarchal” model of leadership.

To shift this paradigm, many thought leaders argue that “questions are more important than answers”.

In this spirit, I will invite you to take the courage and explore the following questions that can inspire new ideas:

How do we break the silos and move to a more collaborative and relational approach?

How do we develop more interdependency between organisations and communities?

How do we more from an armoured leadership to a daring leadership that requires vulnerability, trust, courage and an open heart?

How do we let go of knowing and being right to become learners so we can get it right?

How do we more away from an old-fashioned patriarchal system of compliance and control to cultivating commitment and shared purpose?

How do we break the cycle of isolation and individuality to come together, share our unique gifts, connect to others, co-create and co-produce common good?