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Rebalancing Leadership for 2020 and Beyond
Sebastian Salicru
(Psychologist)
PTS PTY LTD, 47 Farran Street, Gungahlin, ACT 2912, Australia
Abstract
The challenges we face in our increasingly complex world require more effective leadership
thinking and practices than ever before. This means overcoming our existing personal,
institutional, structural and relational barriers, thus being able to facilitate a paradigm shift to
advance the leadership we really need.
Keywords: Leadership; leadership development; paradigm shift; sustainable future; self-
transcendence; self-transformation.
2020 will be a significant landmark for rebalancing and building leadership capacity for societal
change and a sustainable future – globally and across the board (politics, business, non-profits,
and communities).
In this context, rebalancing refers to the building and re-building (making and mending)
required to establish a new dialogue and relationships with others, so a renewed type of
leadership can emerge. This includes building or re-building alignment and alliances, and
balance the interests of key stakeholders for the construction, re-construction or re-negotiation
of meaning and purpose, and the maintenance of social networks, to unable new scanning and
unified strategic direction.
“The future is determined by what we do now, and the window of opportunity is closing fast”
(Veglio, 2020, p. 75). The great challenge is to translate the insights from this analysis into
collective, swift, bold, and continuous action.
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How to grapple with the complex leadership issues of our times?
The challenges we face in our increasingly complex world require more effective leadership
thinking and practices than ever before. This means overcoming our existing personal,
institutional, structural and relational barriers, thus being able to facilitate a paradigm shift to
advance the leadership we really need.
This new rebalanced leadership goes beyond decisiveness, authoritative action, or trying to
change others. Hence, the best place to begin is not by attempting to change or rebalance others
or society at once; but rather to examine, change or rebalance yourself. In this way, by default,
you’ll be able to positively impact your inner circles of control and influence.
Below, I offer some key questions related to leadership development, you could consider asking
yourself, should you wish to lead more effectively.
Within your circle of influence, are you willing and able to:
▪ Act for others, without bossing them – not driving by mandate, but leading by example?
▪ Respect, tolerate, and respond effectively to those who hold different social, political, and
economic perspectives than yours?
▪ Seek advice from others?
▪ Allow others to give you feedback (take your inventory) and learn from them?
▪ Be accountable and accept criticism for your decision?
▪ Surrender your personal ego, power, interests, controversies, and sometimes, ambitions and
deeply held opinions, in order to serve and lead your constituents, stakeholders or team
members?
▪ Develop yourself by enhancing the attributes and capabilities required to improve your
moral imagination and ethical practices, emotionally engaged behaviours, and adaptive
capacity to support the complex challenges faced by those you’re supposed to lead?
▪ Consider engaging in spiritual development? That is, to believe in something beyond the
material universe, and develop the awareness and raise the consciousness that transcends
ordinary existence by connecting with the realities beyond the confines of time and space.
The latest matters because spirituality is an effective (and arguably the only) way to transcend
the greatest barriers to human development (all egocentric, socio-centric, and anthropocentric
forms), and to achieve transformation. Spirituality, then, becomes the source towards healing
and harmonising, and the expression of compassion, wisdom, human connectedness, and –
ultimately – successful adaptation and sustainability.
The above is in line with constructivist developmental theorists (e.g. Piaget, 1972; Kohlberg,
1971; Loevinger, 1997), which assert that understanding and ethical reasoning change
qualitatively over time by evolving the ways in which humans know and relate to the world.
It is also in line with Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs which, among other things,
encapsulate the following: (1) a more comprehensive understanding of worldviews relating the
meaning of life; (2) greater understanding of the motivational roots of altruism, wisdom, and
social progress; and (3) the integration of the psychology and spirituality. Maslow (1968) also
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alerted us to the fact some self-actualizers rarely or never have peak experiences, while for
others these moments are frequent and transformative.
And, like in all hero stories, would say Campbell (1949), the key to achieving transformation is
the discovery that an important inner quality is missing, which is what has up to that time
hindered or delayed personal growth and moral development.
❖ An excerpt of this article was first published in LinkedIn in January 4, 2020.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rebalancing-your-leadership-2020-beyond-sebastian-salicru/
References
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