Re-THINKING Leadership: Exploring the Inner Development Goals

Second Crack – The Leadership Podcast (Episode 43)

This transcript is AI-generated and may contain typos and errors.

[00:11] Gerrit: Dear listeners, a warm welcome to a brand new episode of Second Crack, The Leadership Podcast. If you are new to the show, this is where we explore everyday leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you to self reflect. I am Gerrit Pelzer, I work as an executive coach and I support personal growth and systemic change using a combination of Western science and Asian wisdom.

Joining me today, as always, is my dear friend and business partner, Martin Aldergard. Martin specializes in driving change and transformation within organizations. And what we both have in common is that we always put people at the center of our work. Hi, Martin, and happy anniversary.

[00:57] Martin: Hi, Gerrit. Happy anniversary to you too. It's amazing, three years of podcasting. 

[01:04] Gerrit: Yes, indeed. And exactly on this day when we are recording episode number 43, it's that Second Crack turns three years old. 

[01:14] Martin: Yeah, it's amazing, and, looking back at the journey and the, and the outcome, I think all the episodes that we have put togetherreally reflects the type of leadership that we are working with and that we stand for. I'm thinking of it almost like our book of leadership in an audio format. 

[01:33] Gerrit: That's true. And if you're new to this show, you can find all our episodes on all the major podcasting platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify. We're always happy if we get new subscribers, and of course, it helps us a lot if you can share the podcast with a friend. And Martin, what do you want to talk about today? 

[01:58] Martin: Today, coming back to one of our favorite leadership models, the Inner Development Goals, the IDG, and there specifically the competency of thinking.

[02:12] Gerrit: Some of you may recall that we created a whole series of podcast episodes on the Inner Development Goals, about two years ago. And the reason why we are picking it up again today is that you, Martin, will be a keynote speaker at an event on the Inner Development Goals or IDG. And you will be speaking about this third category of thinking. What are you going to talk about and why?

[02:44] Martin: Yeah, this is a local gathering here in my hometown of Karlstad, a so called IDG business hub,where local and regional business leaders can come together to talk about leadership and about how to drive the sustainable development in their companies. So this will be a great forum to share and to network, exchange and develop.

[03:10] Gerrit: Yeah, and maybe we should remind people who are not so familiar with the IDG or not remind, introduce to them. So the Inner Development Goals is a relatively new leadership framework, which was developed based on the question, "What leadership qualities do we need to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals"? And this starts with ourselves, how do we need to be and think, and then how do we relate and connect with others, and ultimately, how do we act together to build a better world? And while this framework is based on these UN Sustainable Development Goals, it has also proven extremely useful in corporations.

[04:00] Martin: And you and me Gerrit, we have already used the IDG framework in our work with clients and we know it works very well, andas an overview, the, the IDG framework, it has five competencies, five core dimensions: is Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating and Acting. Of course, today we're going to talk about the thinking component. And, and my question is always, you know, why talk about thinking? I mean, as leaders, we are quite good at thinking. And, and probably that is why we have been promoted because we are good problem solvers. We can get things fixed fast. We can drive results. We are typically very good in analytical skills. So what's the problem? Why do we need to think about thinking? So I reflected on this as input to, to the presentation and workshop I'm going to have at this event. And I thought about what type of problems are leaders really good at? And one way to answer that is to say, as a leader, I'm typically quite good at quickly solving, so to say, technical problems, technical challenges. Where we know what to do, we know the process to apply, we can put the right people on the problem and then we can leave that problem to them to take care of it. And then we can go on to the next problem, and they can quickly drive results forward. It's almost like what you're saying, running the business as a machine.

[05:40] Gerrit: Yeah, and it reminds me of this, quote by Ron Heifetz, who said that leaders today don't need to have all the answers, but they need to phrase the right question that then, utilizes the collective intelligence of the people to solve these more complex challenges. And this is what is often underestimated. Like you said, we often try to run the organization as a machine. Uh, we have a clear input, then we have certain actions and then there's a clear output. But this only works with very simple, as you said, rather technical problems. I mean, not only simple problems. It can be relatively, I would perhaps use the term complicated, but we can still clearly foresee what is happening, right? We can have a high tech machine, but an engineer who knows how to operate it can fix it, whereas a lay person would think, oh my god, that is, that is just impossible to do. But the problem with these complex adaptive challenges is that we can't necessarily foresee all the intricacies. And that is why one of the core competencies within this thinking segment is complexity awareness.

And I would like to compare it with perspective skills. So first of all, we need to have the awareness that we're operating in a highly complex world. And in order to solve these problems, we need to not only have our own perspective, we need to involve other people in solving this problem. So we need to get the perspective of many different people. Does that make sense? 

[07:24] Martin: Yes for me totally. We have this, so to say, technical challenges. This, so to say, simpler problems that requires one type of thinking that we are typically quite good at. And on the other side, we have this complex adaptive challenges, for instance climate change or other unknown problems that we're dealing with, it needs a different pattern and it needs different competences, like you mentioning complexity awareness, perspective skills, sense making. And this is also why I came to the idea to talk about thinking in this event. by positioning it as we are already good at one side, the technical side, but we need to improve and be more aware of the limitations of our thinking in the more complex problems. 

Just to take another step back, I think it's so easy to fall into the short term thinking pattern, trying to find the quick solutions as a leader. And there's so many things that motivates us to find a quick fix and short term solution to problems. And one thing might be that we are driven by economic results, by quarterly reporting. There is sometime very little incentives to look for longer term solutions, and many time then we take decisions that has good short term impact, but the longer term consequences we don't need to consider because then we already get our promotions and somebody else needs to fix the problem. 

[09:06] Gerrit: Yeah, if I can just build on this. So within this thinking category, one, capacity or skill is long term orientation and visioning. And as you just said, sometimes you operate in an environment that only rewards the short term orientation. We may operate in a business where quarterly reporting is expected and it's very hard for a leader to get the message across. Or let's say there are stakeholders, shareholders literally, who want great results every three months. And it's hard for a leader to get the message across, you know, the next three quarters won't be good so that we get better results in five years. Then the investors, they might jump ship, 

[09:54] Martin: And building on this, on the long term orientation, then I think it's so important for leaders to, while we are dealing also with short term expectations, which are the, and of course they are important, we cannot neglect them, but we also need to then in parallel work very hard on maintaining a long term direction of the business and communicating internally and externally, our long term intention. And this helps both external stakeholders to understand how do we prioritize and that we're working on both on short term results and long term direction, but also internally. What I'm seeing in my work is that the immediate problem solving, almost fire fighting is typically what takes the most attention in the organization. And we under communicate internally the long term direction of the business.

[10:58] Gerrit: Yes.

[10:59] Martin: And it's so nice that it is highlighted in the IDG framework that the ability for long term orientation and visioning is something that we typically need to strengthen. And of course, a lot of that is then down to communicating it internally. 

[11:15] Gerrit: Also linking this back to the competency of complexity awareness that is highlighted in IDG, as a leader to not jump to conclusion, not trying to simplify. 

[11:31] Martin: The problem, because trying to simplify a problem, seeing a problem without its full dimensions, that certainly will lead us into unintended or unknown consequences further down the line. 

[11:45] Gerrit: Yeah, first of all, when I was listening to you, I thought it might be interesting to give some concrete examples and I'm thinking of rather big ones. So as a former chemist, I was impressed with these Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). So, a long time ago they were considered a breakthrough in refrigeration and aerosol sprays. They were non toxic, non flammable. And they seem to be harmless. But only a long term later, because they are so inert, as we say, they went up in the higher parts of the atmosphere and destroyed the ozone layer. And nobody has thought about this. 

Or other examples where we may have in maybe agricultural aspects, we have a problem and try to find a natural solution. So there's one example where a long time ago in Australia, there was a problem with sugar cane beetles, and then people found that there are certain toads that, eat the beetles. Yeah, great, now we don't need any chemicals, we have natural predators. But then they had no, enemies, these toads, right? And there was a massive population explosion. And then you create another problem. 

So I think these are examples where we are not thinking sufficiently about complexity. We don't know how things are really interrelated in the world. And I think so these are now examples where especially let's say take these chemicals, the CFCs, where we would say, you know, we have here a defined environment, we know the rules, we know the laws of nature. We can do a lot of calculations and come to an answer, but it's getting even more complex the moment human beings are involved, right? And we had the, we had Paul Lawrence once on the show, and we discussed with him extensively about systems thinking and complexity. And you may be in a meeting with a number of people, and there seems to be agreement what needs to be done. But then later on, people go in different directions, they continue discussions in groups, and it gets a dynamic of its own. And as a leader, you need to be aware of these dynamics, you need to be aware of this complexity.

[14:17] Martin: And even if we don't have all the answers, just being aware so that we don't jump to conclusion too quickly and that we don't oversimplify a problem, that is important. 

[14:31] Gerrit: This is another wonderful example. I see this a lot, that once we, let's say we're dealing with a major challenge, and then the moment we think we have the answer, we rush into action. And I experienced this, I did a number of workshops on communication, and people have a wonderful card game, and they can only solve it when everybody is involved and when they communicate properly.

And many times when we do this exercise, we realize that there is someone who thinks, ah, I figured it out, and then wants to get quickly to the solution because we, we measure the time and people tend to be competitive in such environments, but then they go off track. And what we actually need to do in such situations, when we think we have the solution, we need to stop, take a step back, and again, utilize the collective intelligence of the people and say, okay, is it really true? Have we made sure we haven't overlooked anything? So this, uh, jumping to conclusions can be a huge mistake. Yeah. 

[15:45] Martin: And this already then starts to touch on the other competency: having perspective and the skills of creating perspectives. I remember when we were helping a company to develop their long term vision and then their strategy and then that led then into their different tracks, the different operational plan to implement it. And how important it was to bring in a diverse set of team members into the conversation because everybody brought their own view of where they needed to go. So not one single person had the complete answer, not even the managing director had the complete answer. But it is always so evident then in these kind of meetings, how each person brings in another perspective, and I remember one instance in one of these, uh, processes when one senior leader said something and the room went quiet and you could almost hear the pin drop on the floor because it was something that nobody else had thought about. And I think that was to me a beautiful example of creating different perspectives.

[17:07] Gerrit: And of course, as consultants, as coaches, it's relatively easy because we coming from a not knowing position, like what Ilka talked about in our last episode on transformation, right, applying a not knowing position as an outsider, that's one of the benefits that we bring in. So for us, it's relatively easy to see this and to build the environment and make sure that we bring in different perspectives. I also looked up the definition, the IDG definition of perspective skills, and I find it highly intriguing. It's "Skills in seeking, understanding, and actively making use of insights from contrasting perspectives". So this is a short sentence, but it's very rich. So it starts with, skills in seeking these contrasting perspectives.

If I think of the average corporate meeting that I've encountered, either as an employee, myself, or attending those from other companies, there is a certain routine. It's often the same people talking, dominating the meeting, and it's the same people being quiet, right? So there is the skill in seeking these contrasting perspectives. So as a leader, Or as somebody attending a meeting, you also need this facilitation skills. You sometimes need to stop those who tend to dominate the meeting all the time. And you need to involve those quiet people more actively. Because often it's not like that they're not interested. They may be a little bit shy, but often these people who are quiet are very deep thinkers. And they may bring in this contrasting perspective. 

And then the second aspect here is understanding it. So where do different people come from? You know, one of my favorite topic is, is politics. And what makes me truly sad that even leading politicians, they have very little interest in seeking the other perspective, in trying to understand where is the other person coming from, and then actively making use of these insights. Of course, it's easier if all the people seem to have the same opinion in a meeting, but when we have different opinions, then we can come to better results. And I think it's also true for our podcast. Often, even though we know each other very well, often when we prepare for a new episode, I think we are both sometimes surprised how differently the other person looks at it. But I think, even though sometimes while it may take a little longer, it leads to a better result. 

[19:55] Martin: And, and building on this, I have two things. One is looking from a facilitation point of view. And here, of course, we want to recommend every leader to become a better facilitator. You mentioned perspective skills, seeking, and understanding and actively making use of new insights from contrasting perspectives. That takes facilitation skills. You are like a conductor of a dialogue as the leader of this meeting, right? And, and having this not knowing position is very important because if you are sitting there as a leader, believing you have the answer, you are looking for confirmation from the others of your view of the problem, it's already a bad meeting. You're, you're not going to get much new perspective out of that conversation.

Putting together the correct team, bringing in people to the meeting with diverse perspectives. Like you're saying, bring in the people that are quiet or bring in the people that are most in opposition, that you know they don't like your ideas. Bring them in and understand them, don't see them as a resistance to change. See them as passionate people that really want the best. Try to understand them. But then I'm thinking from another perspective. How do you put together, for instance, your executive team? Do you put together a team of yes sayers

[21:30] Gerrit: Hmm. 

[21:32] Martin: and you put them together because for your own ego, for your own confirmation, for your own feeling good, 

[21:40] Gerrit: Yeah. 

[21:41] Martin: or do you put together a team that actually can drive perspectives that can find the best solution in complicated problems. I think that is even a more important question to reflect on. 

[21:55] Gerrit: Yeah, I think it's very simple. Leaders who want yes sayers around them, they are just driven by fear. And it also relates strongly to what you said earlier, admitting to not know. I think this is so difficult for many leaders, right? Because there is often this perception that leaders need to have all the answers. And if they don't know there may be some bashing going on and we're back to the politicians, right? Which politician can really say, 'I don't know.' But I think, this ability to say, I don't know, is just a demonstration of strengths, because what we do is we say the truth. It is something that nobody can know.

And I think we need to distinguish between the professional knowledge, the technical knowledge, the understanding of the business. Of course, we can't have somebody in a leadership position who does not know or understand the basics, but when we come to these complex adaptive challenges, nobody can have the answer. We need to find the answer together by looking at the different perspectives. Have you thought about this, have you thought about that? And how do we put it all together, and how do we make sense of it all?

[23:16] Martin: And you already mentioned now, 'how do we make sense of it?' And, and that could lead us into the another component of the IDG thinking competency. So it explicitly says, sense making is an important skills, right? The skills in seeing patterns, structuring the unknown, being able to consciously create stories. And to me, this then links to, this is the skill that we need after bringing in all these different perspectives, and it looks like a mess. You know, when we are working with our clients, this is the typically the moment that looks like a total mess. We have all these different ideas, we have all these different perspectives coming in. How do we then lead to a conclusion so that we can act on it? How can we find a common direction? And again, this really needs skills and process and approaches.

Sensemaking also has a lot about decision making, it sets ourselves up for decision making. So, for instance, what is a majority pattern might not also always be right. The thing that we need to deal with might be something very small. It might be one of the minority opinions. And then when we explore that deeper, everybody realizes that is the key to the solution. So, sensemaking in itself is not easy, and it needs a lot of dialogue.

[24:52] Gerrit: Yeah, a lot of different aspects come to mind when I'm just listening to you. One here is also the other component, which you said leaders tend to be very good at already, is this critical thinking. How can we arrive at a conclusion that actually the minority opinion is the right or the better one? Then also what resonated very strongly with me was this structuring of the unknown and making sense together. It was just yesterday that I read an article about AI in coaching. And the author highlighted, yeah, you know, AI can help a lot with logic, but it can never replace human interaction. And the sense making is not only the logic, it's of being together as human beings in one room, discuss, exchange, and make sense together. And eventually make our individual sense making transparent to others. And then we can arrive at a solution together. 

[26:01] Martin: And, this is what we call mental maps, right? It is like our individual view in our own heads, how does this problem look like, what's important, what's not important, what we need to do? This conversation, this story, it becomes like a map inside our own heads. And, and what you're saying is we need to make this transparent so that you understand how my map looks like, I understand how your map looks like, and then we can compare them and we can align them. And the beauty is then if the whole team is bringing together and creating one map. Imagine then the power of the decision making. Everybody understands why we make this decision, everybody can stand behind it because it's based on one view, one mental

map. I think that is the goal of sensemaking.

[26:56] Gerrit: And at the risk of jumping a little bit ahead, I think this also demonstrates the beauty of the inner development goals as a whole. So when you look at the thinking skills, they are so closely related to the other core aspects like the relating, how do I relate to others? How do I collaborate? How do I communicate? So listening to you, I felt that listening is an enormously important competence for leaders. And then ultimately, it's not only about the thinking and the talking, we also need to act together. But this will only be successful if we went through the earlier steps like, related also under thinking, creating the story, which relates to the long term orientation and vision.

Can I create a vision that is compelling, that makes people smile, makes them energized and say, yeah, this makes sense. This excites me. And this is what we are working towards together.

[28:02] Martin: I think this is the beauty of the IDG. In one way, there's nothing new in the inner development goal framework in terms of leadership competencies, but it is, it is easy to understand framework putting together the core competences that perhaps in the past has been scattered all over the place, and putting it together into one framework. And it becomes so effective then as a leader, starting with the being, then the thinking, relating, collaborating and acting.

[28:35] Gerrit: Well, Martin, on the one hand, you say it's not really new, but I think the way it's put together and the aspects that are emphasized are different. You just mentioned the first category is Being. Now, I've been in leadership development for quite some time. I can't recall another leadership model or theory that emphasizes Being.

And then also the last one that we mentioned, Acting. Under Acting, we find Courage. So for instance, if I put it all together, under Being we have something like Inner compass, Integrity, and Authenticity. And that means then under acting, I also need to have the courage to act according to my inner compass, to be authentic even when it means I'm in an environment where I get a lot of, what should I say, contradiction, right?

So, it's quite amazing, but 

[29:43] Martin: Being an engineer from the beginning, I want to see everything in steps or in boxes, and I can really follow the steps from Being to Acting and see how they build on each other.

And coming back to, thinking now, of course, the starting point here is I'm, going to have this talk and this  workshop about thinking. And again, it's an opportunity to listen how business leaders see this, how they can apply this in their everyday life as leaders. I also hope to, to start some reflections so that they reflect on their own leadership. And in our podcast, of course, we also always end with reflection questions for our listeners. And I'm wondering, we have been talking now all about the, the thinking skills that we need, complexity awareness, perspective skills, sensemaking, long term orientation, visioning, critical thinking. What, what are some reflection questions coming up from this conversation?

[30:55] Gerrit: I feel excited about complexity awareness, and perspective skills. And I would like to put the question like this. Where may my worldview, my perspective, how I look at the world, be actually limiting me? And how can I expand this perspective, how can I be more open to different perspectives?  

[31:29] Martin: To build on that, I'm thinking of, one practical reflection question is: Who has perspectives that would challenge me and can I go and talk to them, can I invite him or her to a conversation? Seeking out people that have different perspectives than myself.

[31:52] Gerrit: 

[31:52] Martin: I have one more. 

I'm, I'm thinking about this aspect of sensemaking. So reflect on yourself: What are the stories that you make up in your own mind about a certain problem, explore your own mental model, your own story about the problem, and look at that and see whether just understanding your story, your assumptions, will already help you to identify blind spots. And of course, then that might help you to be more open to other people that have different versions, different stories of the problem.

[32:40] Gerrit: Wonderful.

[32:42] Martin: Yeah, so I will let you know, Gerrit, after my little event to see what we learned together. And today already, I think this has been a great refresher and reminder for myself of the complexity of our thinking.

[33:02] Gerrit: Absolutely. And I wonder when you come back from this event, maybe there will be so many new insights that we can have another episode. But that's it for today. Thank you again, Martin, for a wonderful conversation. And if any of our listeners, if you would like our support in developing your leaders, be that in a company wide initiative or individual executive coaching, please do not hesitate to contact us via hello at secondcrackleadership. com. And if you enjoy the podcast, please remember to subscribe and tell a friend about it. If you could leave a positive comment or rating, we would certainly appreciate it.

Thank you so much. And bye for now.