Dr. Jay Desko, put six words up on the whiteboard: strong, visionary, successful—and chaos, confusion and complexity.
The dominant expectation of leaders today is that they must be strong, visionary and successful. Much of the thinking and literature on leadership development is centred on creating these qualities. We expect our leaders to be heroes, their capes trailing in the wind behind them. We expect them to hold within them all the right answers. And as a result, many leaders live with horrendous pressure to operate in a way that makes them appear to fit the part.
However, the daily realities of leadership are not strength, vision and success. They are chaos, confusion and complexity—and it is these qualities for which we must equip our leaders. This has probably never been truer than it is right now, when the pace of change in our world is unparalleled. We need to let go of the caricature of the strong, successful visionary leader and instead embrace the image of leaders who humbly and authentically know who they are, who mobilize the collective strengths of those around them and who excel at navigating systems and diversity. We need leaders who can work in the in-between and be the bridge to positive change.
I was doing a spiritual formation exercise with Muskoka Woods senior staff, most of them in their late teens or early twenties. As we walked, we came across an old tire that had washed up on the beach. I stood there praying, discovering in this tire a great vehicle for me to talk with God. I picked it up and carried it back toward our meeting room to use as an illustration. On the way, various people tried to take it from my hands and throw it out, but I said, “No. I realize that I feel like this tire. I’m worn out, bald from running on the road for a long time. I know that if I don’t tend to some dangers, I will have a blowout.” People in the room were surprised by my vulnerability.
Often, a leader’s followers want him or her to be a strong, visionary, perfect picture. But, instead of an illusion of perfection, you want a leader who humbly understands what she or he is not. When all leaders say is “I’m fired up and strong,” there is no room for growth in their lives. Much of the leader’s life is coming to the end of ourselves and saying “I need others.” Effective leaders know how to gather around them what they need to move themselves or their team or their enterprise in the right direction.
This book addresses leadership in all three spheres—self, team and organization.
Over time, people have asked me, “Why do you spend so much time thinking about and reading about leadership? Not everyone is a leader, and not everyone needs to cultivate the core practice of leadership.” I disagree—at least in part—because leadership operates on three levels.
The first is the sphere of leading self. In this sphere, none of us are excused. We lead to live. Without taking on the mantle of leadership, how can you lead yourself out of bed each morning into purposeful action? If you cannot lead yourself, you are powerless to respond to the change that comes at you in your everyday life and live into your preferred future.
The second is the sphere of team leadership. While we all lead at the level of self, a smaller but substantial subset of us also leads others. Team leadership may show up in the classroom, on the schoolyard, in the workplace, at camp or in a church or other place of worship. No matter how skilled, how gifted, how competent, no one person is entirely sufficient for all situations. That’s where team leadership comes into play.
The third is the sphere of organizational leadership. You know you are in this sphere when the purpose of your leadership serves someone else who is expecting value. When I try to get on a hockey team, it’s about personal leadership—my own skill, drive and discipline are what help me reach my goal. When I’m the captain of the team, it’s about team leadership—we train and play together with the goal of winning our games. But when I am the general manager of Team Canada, it’s about enterprise leadership—because our team’s purpose is much bigger than just winning a game. We also carry the hopes of the fans and the nation, alongside pleasing sponsors and meeting expectations.
If you struggle with leading self, you will struggle with leading others. And if you struggle with leading others, you will struggle with leading an enterprise. This book tackles the challenges of leadership in all three spheres.
This book is about emerging leaders.
Born in the late 1980s or early 1990s, emerging leaders live in a different world than the one I grew up in and face challenges I never had to address.
Today’s young people live in a world marked by more accelerated change than at any other moment in human history. Many of them will grow up to work in jobs that have not yet been invented, using technology we cannot yet imagine. The list of acceptable options for their lifestyle choices, family models, education, religious expressions and moral practices is more expansive than it has ever been before. Their social, cultural and belief landscape is shifting sand.
We often speak as if young people have created the world in which they live. But the truth is, they have inherited it. Pluralism, relativism, consumerism, technological innovation, postmodernism—this is the only world they have ever known. As one of my mentors, Don Posterski, says, they have inherited in the micro what the older generation of adults have put in place in the macro.
These emerging leaders are the group of people I work with in my role as president and CEO of Muskoka Woods. The decade between age 16 and 26 can be a period of incredible leadership formation. Over the years, I have crossed paths with thousands of young people in this stage, and I have had the privilege of giving mentoring, coaching and spiritual direction to many. Along the way, I have seen that the nature of the world they live in creates particular strengths and challenges for them as leaders. In such a time as this, how do we develop emerging leaders?
This book aims to deepen understanding about where emerging leaders are at and what kind of world they live in. It aims to inspire and equip young people—and the coaches, mentors and sages that accompany them—to look at the world and say “It doesn’t have to be this way” and do something about it.
Finally, this book is about leadership development.
Venture capital investors step out on the edge and throw their weight behind ideas that are unproven and risky—but also carry the potential for being highly profitable. The art is seeking out these ideas in their early stages, before they are clearly valuable to the rest of the world. Venture capital investors invest not only in what things are but also in what they can become.
Leadership development is also a venture. It has both risk and reward. If we are convinced that leaders are strong, visionary and successful, that is who we will seek, and that is what we will equip people to become. Often it seems that people only want to invest in those who have “arrived.”
When it comes to young people and to leadership development, I’m more interested in the people who are rough around the edges. All of us—you, me, any young person we ever encounter—are unfinished. Each of us are both being and becoming. Many emerging leaders are easily missed. Nurturing leaders is not automatic. Leadership development with emerging leaders takes a vision of who young people are and who they can become. It takes intention, and it takes great tools.
The heart of this book is a simple but powerful way to pursue leadership development with young people:
•SEE…emerging leaders for who they are and who they can become.
•STRETCH…emerging leaders to do and be more than they thought possible.
•SUPPORT…emerging leaders as they both succeed and fail.2
