Would you agree if I say that wisdom is THE defining characteristic of what it is to be human. If so, wiser leading implies rehumanising leadership and organisations. When people, leaders and companies say they want us to be healthier, more humane, compassionate, or productive, they try to get us back in touch with the basic aspects of our humanness – to a more natural state in harmony with our truer, deeper nature. Wisdom.
Wisdom has always been important, in every human culture – it allows individuals, groups, institutions, and other ecosystems to meet, address, and respond to the challenges of Existence. This nexus of existence and experience is all about learning how to live and lead our lives ‘better’.
The challenges of Leading nowadays present an overwhelming array of issues, problems, dilemmas, tensions, and paradoxes. Effective and sustained navigation of the unknown along such permanent crisis and chaos could be the most difficult and important challenges facing leaders today if we are to protect, nurture and unleash individual and collective futures.
Most organisations have the knowledge and the know-how to operate, but, as you may have experienced, this is not enough anymore to sustainably perform and transform. There is an emerging imperative to find new and robust ways to nurture and cultivate a wisdom culture where leadership wisdom is the embodied development of greater capacities and capabilities for leaders and organisations to better Care and Dare.
A leadership Wisdom culture capitalises on Collective Wisdom, it is not just the additive sum of a collection of ‘wiser leaders’, but a culture in which they’re empowered and enabled to bring about the kinds of transformational, developmental and adaptive processes and outcomes that would otherwise remain invisible or seem impossible.
Leadership Wisdom has been for too long the forgotten component of effective leadership. With our core intent and vision to rehumanize leadership and organisations, let’s embrace together a new leadership paradigm – Leadership Wisdom in Action.
Cyril Legrand & Dr. Philip Hayton