The Leadership That Might Be Ours
The New Year has certainly shone its spotlight on positions of leadership – the concept is centre stage and drawing our attention. Leaders stepping down. Leaders stepping into the vacuum left behind. Promises of a good future if we follow this leader – but not that one. Leaders saying whatever shocking phrase they need to – to keep our attention on them.
I am normally a careful optimist. In the last month, however, my sense is that there are death stars being built in every corner of the sky. Ungovernable technology, agendas and greed. Climate change, war and a widening gap between those in poverty and opulent wealth (alongside a widening gap of how much people even care). It’s clear that as a species, we’re going to have to raise our game to keep pace with (and change) where this new order of things is taking us. We’re going to need quantum leaps in our consciousness – as individuals, as teams, as communities and as societies. We are going to have to be very clear about what actually makes our lives on this planet better.
Because we are relying on our next generation of leaders
to face some wickedly complex dynamics.
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A few years ago, my daughter Rose and I spent a month in South Africa together as part of my sabbatical to work on my book. South Africa is an incredible country with a rich and turbulent history. Rose and I shared an incredible opportunity to step out of our normal lives and get some perspective. When I wrote, Rose would read. And over dinner together we would talk about where our work had taken us.
One of the books Rose dove into was entitled ‘Black Consciousness – A Love Story’ written by Hlumelo Biko – the son of Mamphela Ramphele and Steve Biko, founders of the Black Consciousness Movement. One evening she explained to me a risk that the author had addressed – when our attention is drawn over and over to those who are leaders (the way in South Africa conversations will often lead to the extraordinary life of Nelson Mandela), we begin to stop recognizing ourselves (and those around us) as leaders.
What happens if…we bring our attention back to the leadership that might be ours?
What if we notice…our own appetite to step into the turbulence rather than just watch it?
How might we walk…alongside our next generation of leaders and help them navigate a genuinely better way forward? 
This question is the focus of my book project, ‘Athena’s Way’ – written for mentors who want to accompany our next generation of leaders – coming out this fall from Page Two Publishing.
For any leader to stay grounded, make clear decisions and take calculated risks in unpredictable conditions – they need to be connected to others. Their capacity to lead well relies upon a constellation of mentors around them – a council of the willing, wise and deeply invested. We need others to help us recognize patterns, contemplate layers of ethics and consequence, and run the kinds of experiments that just might show us a way forward through complex times. We need to help each other engage wholeheartedly and find the most meaningful way forward.
Every entrepreneur, scientist, activist, public servant, mother, uncle, artist and CEO will need to be surrounded by a council like this. So that each of us can go and create the triumphs – and stay clear of the disasters – that a few years ago, we never dreamed would be on our doorsteps. We need to be the kinds of leaders in community who create space for honest conversations about fear, failure, frustration – and finding the way forward.
We cannot be the kinds of leaders that take up all of this space ourselves – like most of those leaders who have been drawing our collective attention, the last few weeks.
Ian Chisholm
Partner and Co-Founder
