As a reminder, my definition of Resilience is “Springing Forward with Learning”.
This article is a build upon my last one as I mentioned in my last article that I had recently achieved my Purpose of “Positively affecting 100 000 people by the year 2025” and that, therefore, I needed a new one…
Currently the new Purpose is “Business as a force for good”, which, I know, needs building upon so please keep reading!
There are four strands that are informing/influencing this new Purpose:
- firstly, I often start conversations/sessions I am facilitating with the statement of “Resilient people = Resilient Organisations”
- secondly, any person’s ability to give a positive answer to the question “how are you?”, is highly dependent upon their relationship with their line manager (dependent to the tune of approximately 70%, based upon research)
- thirdly, how do we ensure that humans and Artificial Intelligence can genuinely compliment and augment society
- fourthly, what is your answer to the question – “how confident are you that the behaviours of your people are positively contributing to your business bottom line?”
In my experiences, those that role model great Resilient Leadership navigate these four strands really well and predominantly enable the “happiness” of their people.
How do they do this? By role modelling the three things that all Resilient Leaders are responsible for:
- Delegating brilliantly and removing the blockages to their people performing and being at their best.
- Building, growing and enabling a Resilient Team and
- Personal/Leadership growth – by making the decision to persistently engage with developing their Resilience Wheel.
I want to expand upon the strand of people’s ability to answer the question “how are you?’ (assuming they are in a role).
I mentioned some research, therefore, according to the last three World Happiness reports, the relationship we have with our line manager has a significant influence upon our ability to give a decent answer to this question.
To clarify, a line manager is not responsible for someone else’s happiness, however, the influence and impact a line manager has on the day-to-day sense of any person’s overall wellbeing is huge. Hence the first bullet point above.
Any line manager has an impact upon whether someone feels understood, listened too, heard, valued, appreciated, whether they have worth and their levels of underlying confidence.
Therefore, when I talk about “Business as a force for good”, I want to have a helpful impact upon every single line manager’s approach to their role.
Another strand I want to expand upon is around Human and Ai augmentation. My business is a member of the Oxford Review which is a fantastic think tank and research organisation that looks at all research around Leadership and Organisational Development. They have recently done a series of webinars with a real deep dive into AI. Some themes that have struck me from this are:
- AI doesn’t and can’t think! The chasm of difference between how humans think, and how AI gives the perception it is thinking is massive.
- We all need to understand what “AI literacy” is! This is our ability to genuinely understand what AI can and cannot do and the risks us humans are taking by making assumptions around this.
- Resilience, Wisdom and Critical Thinking are key for Human/AI augmentation.
If I could wave my magic wand, what we really need to do to gain the most from AI is for us all to take a step back and clarify “what it means to be human”, before engaging with AI.
Clearly that’s not going to happen! Also, what it means to be human is also the question of what it means to be Resilient.
However, all leaders need to spend time with their people clarifying:
- their team’s purpose (human to human, not KPI’s)
- how well they are supporting and enabling each other and understanding each other’s Strengths
- how a Resilient Team is also a high performing team and
- how AI can enhance their team’s human capabilities.
Therefore, when I talk about “Business as a force for good”, I want to have a helpful impact upon every teams’ conversation around the above bullet points.
To be clear, I am not assuming that I can impact every line manager/team around the World!
However, when supporting clients to “Lead themselves and others really well in a VUCA World”, my intention is to collaborate with others to navigate a path through all these challenges and give them the best chance that when each individual in their Organisation is asked the question:
“How are you?’ they can answer:
“I’m good, thank you.”
How confident are you that most people in your Organisation can answer this question this way?
How confident are you that your business is a force for good?
How confident are you that your people’s behaviours are positively contributing to the business bottom line?
