The Wise Leader of 2022

A senior official at the United Nations concluded at a conference:

“I’ve dealt with many different problems around the world, and I’ve concludes that there’s only one real problem: over the past one hundred years, the power that technology has given us has grown beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, but our wisdom has not. If the gap between our power and our wisdom is not redressed soon, I don’t have much hope for our prospects.”?(quoted in Senge 2005)

A sobering thought.??Is it possible to develop wisdom? Let’s begin with being clear what is meant by wisdom for it is in danger of being subjective.?

Wisdom is defined as ‘good judgement and advice in difficult and uncertain matters of life.’ It is also defined in dictionaries as ‘insight and knowledge about oneself and the world’. Teams of people in different parts of the world have been developing a deeper understanding of not only what wisdom is, but how it is practiced and why some people seem to have wisdom and others not.?

The ‘Berlin Group’ found that wisdom appears to be a cognitive domain that does not seem to have an advantage of age but rather reflects individual and specific life experiences. Kunzmann and Baltes (2005) argue that it is not specific competencies such as emotional intelligence or creativity, but the way in which such elements interact as wisdom that is unique.?

In Austria, Judith Gluck and Susan Bluck (2004) asked ‘why do certain individuals develop high skills of wisdom in the course of their lives, while others do not? The outcome was to develop the MORE wisdom model that relates to four key skills- Mastery, Openness to experience, a Reflective attitude, and Emotion regulation. They found that people who develop wisdom use these resources when approaching challenges, and by using them, they develop even further. We know from individuals including Eduardo Briceno that mastery alone is not enough for today’s complex and uncertain world.?

A deeper understanding of wisdom is by the American academic, Monika Ardelt based on three elements working together. These are:

Cognitive -?an understanding of life and a desire to know the truth that includes knowledge, acceptance of the positive and negative aspects of human beings, the acceptance of the limits of knowledge and uncertainties. This in practice includes the ability and willingness to understand a situation, and an acknowledgement of ambiguity and uncertainty in life.?

Reflective?- the perception of things from multiple perspectives that requires self-examination, self-awareness and insight. In practice this means the absence of subjectivity and projection, in other words, question assumptions and not blame other people or circumstances for one’s own situation or feelings.?

Affective?–this is the demonstration of sympathy, love and compassion for others. In practice this requires positive emotions and behaviours towards others and the absence of indifference.?

Her research found that those who scored high on wisdom were more reflective and used more active coping strategies. Having the time to reflect and gain different perspectives with a mentor while becoming more self-aware, a leader can see and accept the reality of the present and gain better understanding of one-self and others in a work situation.?

Good mentors touch your life not just your career and often see in us more than we can see ourselves. Mentoring leaders has probably been the most satisfying work I have done over the years. It always involves transformation. Seeing things with a fresh pair of eyes and enabling leaders to act with courage is what a mentor does.?

In Homer’s story of the adventures of Odysseus on his way home after the siege of Troy around 1200 BC he writes about Odysseus’s??trusted??friend Mentor to whom he asks to act as guardian, adviser and guide to his young son Telemachus while he is way. However, other kings gate-crash and try to force Penelope, wife of Odysseus, to marry one of them while plotting ways to rid themselves of her son Telemachus. It was the intervention of the goddess of wisdom Athena who took the form of Mentor that helped keep Telemachus safe and enabled Odysseus to take back his lands. She guided them and gave them another dimension not yet mentioned in the above theories and models on wisdom - the courage to act. In today’s world, we should include courage in action to the model of wisdom whether in business, public services or politics, wisdom with courage and action is what human beings must participate in to reinvent a better world for all on our planet.?

Today, just like Odysseus, leaders can get stuck, blaming their context and others, Brexit, disruptive technology or globalisation. True leaders don’t wait for the future to be decided by others or circumstances; they shape it for themselves and the people who rely on them. Having a mentor can enable this.?

An example is when I was mentoring the top person in an organisation who needed to replace his top team who were there because they had been with the organisation a long time, not because they could do the job. We worked together to replace them quickly and you could hear everyone else in the organisation sighing with relief for at last someone was doing what others had not had the courage to do. It wasn’t my courage but that of the leader. All I did was support, guide, advise, listen and encourage. He was the one who carried it out in such a way those leaving agreed it was time to go. The organisation became a beacon of great practice.?

A few years later, in another organisation, he called me in to mentor his new number two. At first??the number two did not see himself as a leader, but he quickly found he was not only comfortable having the identity of leader but noticed how everyone else perceived him as a leader. His thinking and mind set had changed through reflecting in our monthly mentoring sessions. Reflection as part of the mentoring process always away from the work- place was an important part of the process. This reflection is best described by Alvesson and Wilmott:

“A critical process that seeks to encourage the questioning of take-for-granted assumptions??so??to reflect critically on how the reality of the social world, including the construction of self, is socially produced and therefore open to transformation.” (1992)?

When we see our day- to- day work and our life as a journey it makes sense to seek out a mentor at different times and in different roles including the demanding role of CEO. A leader can feel lonely yet they needn’t. A leader should always ask why they want to lead. Then ask who can stand beside me to fulfil that desire. We all need a mentor at some time. We can also close the gap between our power and our wisdom. A wise leader will seek out a mentor.??

To discuss finding the right peer mentor email?[email protected]