Authentic Leaders

"We are re-launching this blog under the title - Authentic Leaders."

Recently, I travelled to Dubai and used the time on the plane and in the airport to catch up on some reading. Boris Johnson's book “Have I got views for you” kept me amused on the outward-bound flight with a Harvard Business review highlighting “The Effective Organization” to read on the return leg. In my mind the two seemed to balance each other out.

Over the years I have had the privilege of being involved and working with a variety of leadership teams across the UK and in different parts of the world. So I find reading about different leadership styles to be insightful and sometimes quite entertaining. Recently Michael O’Leary of Ryanair fame was an interesting read on one man’s amazing drive and ambition. As was Alan Leighton book on “Leadership”, full of quotable quotes, and incredibly helpful for someone who trains leaders and is also a blogger.

To add to all this and all the wealth and wisdom on leadership out there, we are launching www.authenticleaders.org.uk  This blog will have a number of contributors, video interviews, book reviews, articles and discussion around the idea of an authentic leader. My next few blogs will qualify what I believe an authentic leader is.

The Art of Concentration

Having written about the four challenges that hinder creative thinking, I want to move on to look at some things that will help us to think creatively.

The first is concentration - the ability to focus and give attention to the big idea. Deresiewicz writes “It means gathering yourself together into a single point rather than letting yourself be dispersed everywhere into a cloud of electronic and social input.”

He goes on to say, “It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of your mind come into play, that you arrive at an original idea. By giving your brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, then a new idea can take you by surprise.”

For myself, I know that the early part of the day is when I function at my best in terms of concentration. This means that my schedule must reflect this, especially when I am looking at important issues. I find the challenge is not the isolated occasion but to consistently and regularly put quality thinking time in my diary. 

The challenge of using someone else’s strategy

I am too much of an activist to enjoy attending many conferences. My preference is to learn in the cut and thrust of debate. Especially if I have had the opportunity of giving the subject some previous thought. If I rightly understand one of Paul’s teaching styles, recorded in Acts 18:4 where “..he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks”, as a more interactive way of learning. I would have loved to be in that environment.

Those conferences I do attend I find myself wanting to listen to people who have achieved something. I especially enjoy listening to those people that have some interesting and stimulating insight on a given subject. The challenge we face when listening to great achievers is that they tend to talk about a model that they have developed that has worked for them. A one-way flow of information can motivate us to implement a “Ready made idea” without thoroughly thinking it through and asking the right questions.

Deresiewiez writes - “I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom”. It is so important that we take any idea and really understand how it relates in the context the speaker comes from, and the context that you are planning to implement it in.

To be continued

Think Slow and Change Quick

"The real need to make changes, often with limited time availability, can put pressure on us to cut corners"

I always want things done yesterday. Implementing change, and the thrill of achieving new things, energies me. Opening my mouth too quickly and then later engaging my brain is something that occasionally gets me into trouble. Sometimes in a lively discussion, as I am talking, I have the frustrating ability to change my mind and finish a sentence holding a different opinion. This can apparently be very confusing for those engaged in the debate.

Again I am challenged with a Deresiewiez comment - “I used to have students who bragged to me about how fast they wrote their papers. The best writers write much more slowly than everyone else, and the better they are, the slower they write. James Joyce wrote Ulysses, the greatest novel of the 20th century, at the rate of about a hundred words a day. T. S. Eliot, one of the greatest poets our country has ever produced, wrote about 150 pages of poetry over the course of his entire 25-year career. That’s half a page a month. So it is with any other form of thought. You do your best thinking by slowing down and concentrating”

As I write this blog I realize that I live in the world of fast communication. Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, text, and 24hour news encourage us to make comment first and think second. The real need to make changes, often with limited time availability, can put pressure on us to cut corners. This limits our creativity and ultimately the diligent implementation of those ideas.

Iphone kills concentration

"My wife Mary declared, with some intensity, that iphones should be banned"

Whilst I was preparing this my phone rang. Without thinking I glanced at the screen to see who was calling. It happened to be someone I wanted to talk to and so I duly answered the phone. Trying hard to concentrate again after the conversation brought it home to me again that getting constantly distracted is a challenge to creative thinking.

While on a day off at the beginning of the year my wife Mary declared, with some intensity, that iphones should be banned. The ability to receive emails, read blogs or Twitter tweets, at anytime and anywhere means that if you did not turn it off you can be constantly bombarded with information and potential distractions. Not helpful for any type of concentration especially when on a day off with your wife.

“Solitude, being alone with your thoughts,” is a vital component to creative thinking. For an external processor like myself that can be a major challenge, even without all the distractions of modern technology. Getting in the bad habit of spending only short spurts of time on the big ideas is a massive hindrance to achieving creative and well thought through plans.

Multi-tasking prevents creative thinking

Having taken detour in my last blog to highlight my enjoyable visit to Regents College, I want to return to “The idea that true leadership means being able to think for yourself and act on your convictions,” (William Deresiewiez).

There are things that hinder giving yourself to creative thinking. Over the next few posts I want to look at four challenges we face and then highlight a number of helps.

The first challenge is multi tasking. As a leader in a growing church I find that multi tasking is part of life and I think I am reasonable good at it. Deresiewiez refers to some research done on the idea that today’s college students were able to multitask so much more effectively than the previous generation.  “How do they manage to do it, the researchers asked? The answer, they discovered—and this is by no means what they expected—is that they don’t.” They also found that those who were high multi-taskers scored worse in a number of tests such as distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information and amazingly the very thing that defines multitasking itself: switching between tasks.

I really enjoy doing most of the tasks that are in front of me. Even the ones I don’t want to do, I can put myself under pressure to fulfill them. Making a real difference in the city of Manchester involves finding adequate, quality time, to stop and think. It means making hard decisions on what is more important. As a multitasker I need to take time away from all of the jobs that demand my energy so that I can focus on the big ideas that bring growth.

To be continued