Business
In this episode, Marion interviews David about how he has applied his experience as a triathlete and USA Triathlon certified coach to his coaching practice with leaders. David talks about leadership as an emergent property, meaning you cannot measure it directly but you can measure the conditions that will most likely lead to the emergence of effective leadership. When coaching athletes, it is first important to establish some baseline metrics in order to tailor the training to help the athlete build new skills that will turbocharge their race performance. The same is true in leadership...once we acknowledge the VUCA in our leadership context, and we accept the limitations of our current way of thinking, we can then get to work on establishing the leadership skills and ways of being that need to be developed. For the past five years, David has been measuring VUCA leadership through a 2 dimensional diagnostic process: Competency: this is a measure of the leader's VUCA skills such as perspective coordination, collaborative capacity, contextual thinking, and decision-making (we go into some detail about each of these skills during the episode) Reality check: comparing how the leader views him/herself as a VUCA leader compared with how their peers/colleagues/direct reports view them. The combination of these diagnostics paints a clear picture of where the leader is already strong and where there are areas to develop. With Marion joining Fully Integrated Leadership, a third assessment has been added, creating a 3D view of the leader. Adding to the competency and reality check, we now look at the capacity a leader has for thinking and acting in the face of complexity and uncertainty. We look at where the leader tends to place their attention and how this helps and hinder their teams and organizations in the face of VUCA. This is an episode packed with great content, so have a pen and paper ready!