Creating sustainability from surviving to thriving

The Centered Leadership approach, defined by McKinsey stands out as a model enabling leaders to create sustainability in their personal and professional lives and move from surviving to thriving.  Following over 140 interviews with leaders across a variety of sectors, McKinsey identified 5 core elements which combined represent a centered approach to leadership.  Initially the project focused on women, however due its success, the model has been equally successful for men. 

Centered Leadership is based on positive psychology and draws upon the work of Martin Seligman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and others.  Essentially, the 5 core elements are meaning, managing energy, positive framing, connecting and engaging.  The preconditions are that an individual has intelligence, a tolerance for change, a desire to lead and communication skills together with an awareness of one’s personal and professional context.  The impact of the 5 core elements and preconditions is that of presence, resilience and sense of belonging.

Meaning

Meaning is the motivation that moves us.  Meaning starts with happiness and research has demonstrated that building our work around our signature strengths provides us with happiness, greater job satisfaction, higher productivity and increased loyalty.  To do this we are encouraged to be honest with ourselves, identify our strengths and areas for development and accept those.  Notice the patterns in the work we do and notice when we experience a sense of ‘flow’, identified by Csikszentmihalyi, where we experience a positive emotion about the present with no conscious thought of feeling attached.  Flow occurs when the challenges we face perfectly mesh with our abilities to meet them.  For women the sense of meaning may change throughout their career at certain junctures.  For example as a new mum, the connection with our strengths and work may change as priorities change. This can enable the opportunity to ramp up or ramp off career opportunities.  The key is awareness of these shifts and recognition of the conscious choices within the context of our personal and professional aspirations.

Managing Energy

Today’s executives work hard; 60 per cent of senior executives work more than 50 hours a week and 10 per cent more than 80 hours a week.  In seeking a sustainable balance between work and non work activities, we are encouraged to prioritise our activities on those that energize us both at work and home.  This means actively managing our resources to prevent dipping into our reserves.  Work doesn’t have to be exhausting.  Csikszentmihalyi found, in his research, that those who frequently experience the sense of ‘flow’ as mentioned above, are more productive and derived greater satisfaction from their work than those who did not.  Furthermore it energized them rather than drained them.  Experiencing a sense of flow is not the same for everyone.  A friend of mine, at the time a single parent of two children ran her own business successfully and enjoyed year on year growth also studying a Masters degree, identified that she enjoyed living her life in the fast lane, it energized her.  Managing energy is about identifying situations, conditions and people that replenish our energy and those that drain it.  Self-awareness enables us to deliberately restore energy.  We are encouraged to give ourselves time during the day free of distractions and realize the impact of greater productivity, several times over.

Positive Framing

Martin Seligman shares the concept of happiness and fulfillment as being satisfied with the past, content with the present and optimistic about the future. Optimists are confident they can manage the challenges life throws at us whereas in contrast, pessimists are more likely to feel helpless and get stuck.  Positive framing accepts adversity and counters it with action.  The action step is what differentiates positive framing from positive thinking which seeks to replace adversity with positive beliefs which has a more temporary effect.  The frames people use to view the world and process experiences can have a profound impact on professional outcomes.  Self-awareness is the key.  When a meeting goes badly, we are encouraged to limit our negative self-talk, keep it temporary and impersonal and engage in restorative activities to renew faith in ourselves.

Connecting

Those with a strong network enjoy a greater sense of belonging and makes life more meaningful.  Leadership as identified by Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter in Harvard Business Review as being able to identify where to go and enlist the people and groups necessary to get there.  Research has shown that women’s networks tend to be narrower but deeper than their male counterparts.  The impact this has for women is that their sponsors play a key part in their success due to the lack of self-promotion.  It is essential to develop connections both internally and externally to gain access to opportunities.  An area highlighted from McKinsey’s interviews with female leaders is they did not recognize reciprocity unlike their male colleagues who naturally understood that you must give before you get.  Women can learn reciprocity and this will require some explicit planning and risk taking in terms of influencing key individuals within the work context.  We are encouraged to find ways to forge connections which may include a more personal strategy of finding out what others enjoy outside of work to find any common interests. It is also important to recognize who we are and who we want to become within our professional context and with this increased self-awareness shift our connections to those who are fulfilling the roles and lives we aspire to.

Engaging

Many people believe that hard work will be enough to secure a promotion and be acknowledged.  The reality is far different.  Those who want to grow as leaders should also take responsibility for their own professional and personal development.  This requires time and reflection spent on learning about how to become more effective.  Engagement also involves risk taking.   Research suggests that those who make a choice for risk and work with it, rather than avoid it, enjoy a greater degree of happiness than others.  The McKinsey research shows that to embrace opportunity, we must often take sharp detours and that the risks of unexpected changes commonly seem more obvious than the benefits.  We are encouraged to reach out to others, ask for support and advice and learn the best outcome from change.

References:

Barsh, S, Carnston, S, Craske, R, (2008). Centred Leadership: How talented women thrive, The McKinsey Quarterly, 2008 Number 4

Ibarra, H (2004). Working Identity, Harvard Business Press

Seligman, M (2003). Authentic Happiness. London. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.