Integritus Prime

Recently, I attended a free webinar on Facebook, hosted by Vishen Lakhiani of  Mindvalley.  Keith Ferrazzi was the expert guest, and he talked about ‘New Rules of Leadership for a New World’. He described 8 sections for the whole course; some very interesting aspects of leadership were discussed as an introduction. These new rules of leadership are worth sharing, especially since we at Alchemus Prime are wrapping up our 23rd book and it is about authentic leadership. Stay tuned for that! In this post, I cover Part 1 of my reflections on this webinar.

For me, after working for 39 years in the health sector and experiencing many types of leadership, this was an intriguing topic. Most of the leaders I encountered during my working life, were of the ‘old style’ of leadership, which mainly consisted of creating fear and inadequacy in learners as the norm; making the juniors feel that they were privileged to have a leader; and never missing the opportunity to point out who was the leader.

These ‘new rules’ have a special attraction for me, as I was practicing some of these when I became a leader, without realizing it. These new rules validate what I thought was right, and include 5 important components:

• Collaborative problem solving
• Drop-in technique or open-door policy
• Co-elevation – lifting each other up
• No need for a title to lead, and
• Using communication techniques that are encouraging.

The webinar also discussed 3 common false beliefs about leadership as follows:

1. Leaders are born – not true. Leaders need to consciously develop skills, as well as constantly upgrade and learn new concepts, especially during changing times, such as technological advancements and the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Leadership requires a title – not true. Strong leadership happens when a person with a vision enlists other people and convinces them to follow that vision; hence leadership is earned with passion and an art of listening to our team, not necessarily a title, which can create more distance and hierarchy than collaboration.
3. Believing that your leadership style is sufficient – not true. There are so many opportunities and potential for growth and abundance that leaders need to keep an open mind and change their leadership style accordingly to harness these.

I further learnt that leadership is a contract between the leader and the members of a team. The team has to live up to its guiding principles. The relationship between the leader and teammates, as well as between team members is very important. The current situation (of COVID-related restrictions) is very stressful, and leaders feel overloaded with work. They need to share the burden of their work with teammates and develop a culture of ‘shared load’. Team members need to step up and share responsibilities. The leader has to facilitate this sharing of the workload so the whole team feels responsible and shares successes. This is referred to as re-contracting the old behavior to a new behavior.

Reasons why re-contracting is important include the following practices:

• Consciously record and discuss, the good and not-so-good practices,
• Embrace new ways of leading the team,
• Instill habits that solidify the team,
• Assure that we get value out of the team.

These practices will help lead to favorable outcomes. However there are many more reasons for a winning team’s success, such as:

• The importance of re-contracting, as it is the operating system of how things work with the team,
• Having a bold vision with risk associated with it,
• Delegating accountability to each member of the team, towards each other and not only holding the leader accountable,
• Implementing social ‘re-contracting’ between the team members in this new era for this new world.

These practices will help towards successful functioning of the operating system. In other words, re-contracting old behavior to new behavior. Next week, in Part 2 of this series, I’ll share more details of the new rules of leadership, including 6 steps to re-contracting and 8 behaviors that support the new rules.

Share with us your thoughts on the changing roles of leaders in this changing world.