Lifeworth Consulting » leadership

The Leading Wellbeing Research Festival in the Lake District, July 2015

Jem Bendell — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 21:39:51 +0000

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books; Or surely you’ll grow double:

Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?

…Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life, There’s more of wisdom in it.

These verses from the Lake District poet William Wordsworth, written over two hundred years ago, reflect the spirit of the Festival starting on July 16^th in the UK’s Lake District, organised by the Brathay Trust and the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS).

Scholarship is great, but immersing in nature and refreshing our creative desires is key for developing practical wisdom. The festival will be an exploration of ideas and also format, by mixing engaged scholars with radical professionals from across sectors and cultures. The aim is for a maximum mix of people, ideas and processes with few frills. Lifeworth has supported the event with IT services. As the academic chair of the Festival, I’m chuffed we will be welcoming scholars presenting over 40 papers, and speakers who are participating without charge, some coming from across continents.

We are aiming for interaction and reflection, with the Open Space, World Cafe, Open Mic and Storytelling sessions, amongst provocative plenaries and interviews. I’m looking forward to hearing philosopher Charles Eisenstein, actor Nandita Das and author Nicole Schwab. Underlying the range of sessions is the deeper question: “How might I lead greater wellbeing?”

It is an important question, because while more people speak of sustainability, the environmental news is really bad. While more people work on wellbeing, austerity bites and few address the power relations that undermine opportunities for collective wellbeing. While more people call for leadership, we risk forgetting the need for us all to lead together.

But tough issues don’t have to be explored in a tough or dull way. We can enjoy getting to know people on a deeper level as we explore whether to let go of our old stories of success and wellbeing, and where that will lead our work and life. That kind of fresh thinking likes fresh air, so we have organised a range of outdoor activities for participants… in the forest, on the lake, on the lawn.

The festival is also a celebration. I love what Brathay Trust does day-to-day in promoting young people’s wellbeing. We want to share the beauty of the Lake District, which inspires through the cultural heritage and contours of the landscape. It can be argued that contemporary conservation was born in the Lake District in the 1800s. Today, nearly 3 years after IFLAS was conceived, with around 2000 students from over 100 countries, it is time to share the IFLAS approach to sustainability leadership more widely.

So, Up, Up, friends, come join us for these days of exploration: www.leadingwell.org

Jem Bendell

Professor of Sustainability Leadership, University of Cumbria

Founder of IFLAS (www.iflas.info) and Lifeworth

Leadership Beyond Leaders

Jem Bendell — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:46:35 +0000

I recently had lunch with someone who worked with a global network of young leaders and also a group of elder statesmen and women. With such an intergenerational exposure to leaders and leadership I had to ask what she thought leadership is. After some discussion I was surprised at how many people working in fields that convene or praise “leaders” don’t think through what leadership means, let alone responsible leadership. Instead, more obvious and visceral things seem to identify leaders: fame, role, impact, novelty and personal connections being key. Maybe I seemed a bit disappointed, so my lunch companion asked me what I thought a leader is. Id read books about leadership but none of the theories were fresh in my mind, so with the benefit of a poor memory, I made something up that describes the characteristics of people I admire and thus the qualities I seek to express myself (in my better moments). After lunch I decided to type up the ideas here…

There is a whole bunch of other things that are important and help comprise a great character (born leaders?), or a skilled professional (trained leaders?), but here are the 5 key attributes I identified. Leadership involves:

* Inspiring people to believe in their greater selves,
* Showing them a pathway for enacting that,
* Encouraging them to participate in a community in the process,
* Practically helping them along the way, and then,
* Reminding them of their commitment.

Leadership is expressed, not held. With these attributes in mind, no one is a leader per se, but anyone can exhibit leadership. That is because leadership exists in relation to others and contexts.

I’ll expand a bit… Inspiring people to believe in their greater selves is key because its the most incredible thing you can do for someone, to unleash their hopes and dreams and sense of dignity and ability. Usually the result of encouraging someone to think of their greater or higher self is for them to connect to a purpose beyond their immediate worries or insecurities, and be an agent for something useful in the world. It is deep and lasting impact, and important at an existential level.

Showing them a pathway for enacting that is important, as unless people can relate their aspirations to their immediate predicament, this can lead to frustration and disillusionment. By providing a practical example of how to take a first step, this makes an abstract idea seem tangible.

Encouraging them to participate in a community is important, as it is through engaging others that we can achieve results, learning what we bring, and how we are valued, when acting from our higher aims and sense of purpose.

Practically helping them along the way is important, as true leadership needs to involve some substantive contribution rather than simply exhortation and advice. Introducing people to people, providing them with new responsibilities or opportunities for experiences and training, and defending them when they stumble while advising them on what to do as a result, are all important if the initial inspiration is to stabilise into a new way of being.

Reminding them of their commitment is key. I almost said “holding people accountable” but that sounds too much like a positional role. Instead, what’s important is that if someone is impacted positively by your actions and advice, and you see them act differently as a result, then you have a bond. They will remember. In my own experience I have often belittled the impact I’ve had on others, not wanting to take things too seriously or create an impression of hierarchy. This means I’ve not accepted this aspect of leadership and perhaps this means that Ive missed the opportunity to play that useful role for people… to help them reflect on whether they are living their commitments or not today. Perhaps it takes a maturity that I’ve not had, to take on all this final aspect of leadership, which assumes an “elder” role… To do it in a way that is also humble, and still playful, could be my personal holy grail.

After lunch I looked back at some of the literature on leadership and it appears much discussion on leadership does not emphasise these attributes. Could it be our somewhat individualist, egotistical and patriarchal culture means we focus on powerful or charismatic individuals? Or that our organisation-centric and hierarchical forms of work mean we focus on those people who best get people to serve organisations, rather than their own higher callings?

Perhaps. And these limitations also then play out in discussions of what “responsible” leadership might be. Many speak of responsible leadership in terms of an individual being a fearless do-gooder confident in their own moral frameworks or, more introspectively, seeking fulfilment beyond accomplishment or, more simply, looking after their immediate subordinates.

I’ll venture that ‘responsible leadership’ is the expression of the five relational qualities I identified above in ways where the intention and effect is to help people who will be influenced as a result. i.e. if leadership concerns ones immediate relations with others, responsible leadership concerns one’s wider relations with communities influenced by those being “led”.

Sometimes a focus on responsible leadership can distract us from systemic issues. As if individual leaders acting in the public interest could change the world despite ingrained racism and sexism, structured inequality, corporate-owned mass media, consumerism, compound interest and financial speculation (to list some of my pet peeves). So its important when thinking about responsible leadership to think in movements and systems. Therefore our key interest, research, education, advice and advocacy should be about how we can cultivate such leadership in everyone, and what aspects of our culture, politics, economics and organisations undermine these qualities of leadership that anyone could naturally express!

In outlining these attributes of leadership I’ve probably been inadvertently rehearsing a leadership theory found in a 1950s management text or 4th century BC spiritual text. If so, please advise, as I could then cite the ideas of a known “leader” who defined leadership this way. As Im involved in the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative (GRLI.org) I could then also feed this stuff into their work in a way that could be valued academically (as you dont get points for a bad memory freeing up mental space for a new schema!).

Or if these are new ideas and we need a new management fad name for them, tweet me a suggestion (@jembendell http://twitter.com/jembendell). Perhaps Relational Leadership? Connective Leadership?

Thanks,
Jem Bendell

The Implications of the Copenhagen Summit for Globally Responsible Leaders

Jem Bendell — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:32:01 +0000

Post-Copenhagen, it is becoming clear that the only responsible thing for companies and financial institutions to do is to call for a new global framework for carbon taxation, and an end to ineffective and unfair carbon cap and trade markets. The intergovernmental paralysis that has been caused over the last 18 years by seeking agreements on carbon caps, the daylight robbery of both tax payers and consumers that current carbon markets have aided, and their complete ineffectiveness in reducing real carbon emissions, means that a fresh paradigm is called for. Polluters and banks can make millions out of carbon markets, and so their lobbying for such markets is not a sign of responsible leadership, but the exact opposite − exploiting people at a time of global fear. In 1992, carbon cap and trade came to dominate the policy agenda because there was no real will from business to bring emissions down. Today there is such will, and so negotiations need to focus on what will work, and that means putting the cash-grab that carbon markets present into the dustbin of history. It’s a dustbin we could label with the reminder: “beware how selfish elites can threaten our very civilisation.” Post-Copenhagen, the pragmatic arguments for cap and trade have been shown for what they are – the spin of special interests. We must never assume that just by working on an issue of public concern that we are doing a good thing − it depends entirely on why we work on that issue, and on the effectiveness and fairness of our contribution. Many talented individuals have progressed over the past decade from concerned environmentalists to leaders in carbon-markets. Fortunately they now have the chance to use their roles responsibly and promote real solutions, not just serve the elites and their own careers. It’s their choice. In this paper I explore the clear need for them to make that choice.

Download the paper in pdf.

The paper will be adapted to appear in the Journal of Corporate Citizenship and the Lifeworth Annual Review of Corporate Responsibility in 2009. Please comment below, especially if you are working on global carbon charging advocacy.

Thanks, Jem Bendell, Director, Lifeworth Consulting.