Monthly provocations and practices for transformational leaders. Disrupt the reactive cycle keeping you and your team stuck in the status quo to create real and sustainable change.
Are you denying your own power?
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Before we get to the good stuff, a quick update: This Radiant Change newsletter is shifting from weekly to monthly. On the first Sunday of each month, we’ll dig into an element of transformational leadership. I’ll offer my current understanding, share the wisdom of leaders and experts, and invite you to engage via reflective prompts and hands-on practices. And yes, I may still drop a poem in here and there. 😉 Meanwhile, the monthly RadiantLeader.co community newsletter is now going weekly. These notes, dropping to our members every remaining Sunday, will include micropractices that we’ll bring to our work—and our world—that week. So essentially I’m flipping the schedule, both to offer the max support and value to Radiant Leader members and to manage my own workload. Thanks for understanding. 🙏 If you want to stay in touch on a more-than-monthly basis, you do have options:
Ok, that’s the new news. Now, onto the main event. THE 8TH TRUTH OF RADIANT CHANGE Change is InclusiveThe Power ParadoxHow do you feel about the word “power”? When you read it in the section above, what kind of response did you have? How did it land in your body? If the notion of power (especially your own) feels complicated, you’re not alone. On the one hand, many leaders struggle to step into their power:
On the other, leaders are often seen as domineering, unwilling to share their power:
What’s happening here? Welcome to the power paradox: “We rise in power and make a difference in the world due to what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst. We gain a capacity to make a difference in the world by enhancing the lives of others, but the very experience of having power and privilege leads us to behave, in our worst moments, like impulsive, out-of-control sociopaths.“
—Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., author of The Power Paradox
As historian Lord Acton put it back in the day: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Or as I like to say: When we want power, we're likely to misuse it. It's when we're uninterested in power that we wield it wisely. See, we can’t simply opt out of power. Not if we hope to lead. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. defined power as “the ability to achieve purpose.” It’s our power—and yes, we all have it—that allows us to lead people, lead organizations, lead change. So what’s a leader to do? How do we make a difference without becoming something different ourselves? How do we reconcile the power paradox? The answer is simple, though by no means easy. We need to practice inclusive leadership. To continually calibrate a balance of stepping into and sharing our power. Inclusive Leadership = Stepping Into Our Power x Sharing Our Power This is a practice because our context is always changing, and various moments will require more of one or the other. But we never want to fall into either/or territory, where we’re denying our power or hoarding it. The key is to always be both stepping into our power and finding ways to share it. [We attend to this balance in my mindful leadership course, Momentum. Our next cohort kicks off Friday, September 13. If you’re ready to deepen the intention and impact of your leadership in 12 short weeks, come on over and register here.] Inclusive Leadership WisdomGUIDANCE: adrienne maree brown, thinker, activist and author of Emergent Strategy
“The more people who cocreate the future, the more people whose concerns will be addressed from the foundational level in this world. Meaningful collaboration both relies on and deepens relationship—the stronger the bond between the people or groups in collaboration, the more possibility you can hold.
In beginning this work, notice who you feel drawn to, and where you find ease. And notice who challenges you, who makes the edges of your ideas grow or fortify. I find that my best work has happened during my most challenging collaborations, because there are actual differences that are converging and creating more space, ways forward that serve more than one worldview.”
CHALLENGE: Rick Rubin, music producer and author of The Creative Act
“We want to set up an environment where the decision-making occurs free of the misguiding force of persuasion. Persuasion leads to mediocrity. To be evaluated, ideas have to be seen, heard, tasted, or touched.”
CASE STUDY: Hubert Joly, former CEO of Best Buy and author of The Heart of Business “The factory needed to improve its operational performance. We used a four-step improvement process spanning roughly eight weeks.
1) A baseline was set along with targets for improvement. The targets had to be ambitious enough to avoid marginal tweaks in process and force a radical rethinking.
2) Everyone was involved to generate ideas of how things could be improved. The best ideas came from front liners, who directly experienced what process was clunky and often already knew what would work better.
3) Ideas were sorted into three buckets: Yes (strong idea), No (too expensive and/or risky) and Maybe (potentially promising). 4) We set up next steps for the Yes and Maybe ideas.”
This month, the RadiantLeader.co community will be talking about…Collective intelligence as our leadership superpower. Next time you’re faced with a complex problem, resist the urge to solve it alone. Instead, gather your team and use techniques like brainwriting or mind mapping to tap into your collective genius. Taking meetings from mundane to can’t-miss. You can have fewer meetings when those meetings are more engaging, inclusive and effective. We’ll talk about how to take advantage of these opportunities to step into our power and share it with our teams. Decision making strategies. Making a significant decision? Use a decision strategy that consults your broader system. This ensures you’ll hear from all stakeholders, including those who‘ll be impacted by the decision but aren’t often in the room. Co-Creation—where the magic happens. Co-creation is all about breaking down hierarchies and creating together. Use techniques like design thinking or appreciative inquiry in your next project. These approaches level the playing field and allow everyone’s unique talents to shine. The bottom line…Inclusive leadership isn’t an innate trait; it’s a practice. It’s about constantly trying, learning, growing and evolving. As you step into your power, find ways to share it. (And btw, to have anything to share, you have to step into your power first. 😎) The bottom line? Power is like love—the more you give it away, the more you have. Onward together. P.S. - I’d love to hear your thoughts. What’s resonating with you here? What challenges have you faced in balancing both stepping into your power and sharing it? Kristen Lisanti |
Radiant Change
Monthly provocations and practices for transformational leaders. Disrupt the reactive cycle keeping you and your team stuck in the status quo to create real and sustainable change.
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