Leading is a collaborative path.

The days of the lone genius or master controller at the top is long gone.

There is a yearning for leadership that taps into  the collective intelligence. Frankly,  it’s an imperative in today’s ever-increasing pace complexity, and volatility – especially if organizations want to create, innovate and reinvent. 

For years there have been statistics floating around about how 70% of the North Americans are unhappy at work. It has to be soul sucking to show up day after day to something that fails to inspire or ignite any spark. And let’s not forget the physical and mental toll that would take, affecting all aspects of our life. You may currently find yourself in such a position or you may have experienced friends or family who have endured work in this way. Too often, we find ourselves in settings where we are encouraged to believe that work is only something to be endured, not life-affirming. This is a lousy feeling. 

Work related anxiousness has more to do with the interactions people encounter than the actual work. There are no doubt  many reasons for work induced stress, but more often than not, I have found client’s inner well-being is affected by the relational elements of co-workers. Teamwork is said to be the Dream work, but that is not the reality for most people. When we come up against lack of clarity, lack of transparency, or tyrannical behavior, it diminishes our trust. And when our trust diminishes, our desire to invest in the relationship diminishes. Furthermore, our desire to succeed and our own self-esteem diminishes. Essentially, we don’t feel safe and we move into our most basic states of flight

/fight/freeze. This is a paralyzing and unresourceful state. Often, we can find ourselves blaming and shaming. At our core, we can feel inadequate with a heightened sense of not belonging. 

So much personal, team, and organizational energies and creativity are squandered in workplaces due to such dysfunction. It’s more common than we think. Workplaces do not need to be like this. If so many people are unhappy at work, what needs to change? How might we create work cultures that allow human potential and happiness to expand? 

Work is no different than our personal and community lives. In order to contribute, people need to feel they belong. To belong, we need to feel that we are safe, accepted and loved. Yes, loved. Love has a lot to do with leading. (more on this in a future blog post). In work cultures that thrive, leaders are tending to the whole human. They understand that there are intrinsic basic needs we all share. When we tap into this shared humanity, we tap into synergies that give space for whatever needs to show up in each moment. Sometimes it means we need to go slow to actually go fast if we want our teams to be better equipped to deal with the volatility and complexity that business entails. 

So, what type of work culture are you creating? Do your values change at home and at work? What needs to shift for you to lead with your values and integrity intact? How are you listening to your teams? How safe is it to speak about feelings and desires? How does collaboration work? How is collective intelligence mined? 

Building trust requires you to trust the intelligence of others. Engaged, contributing, creative, happy teams are possible. They require cultures where the relational space is nourished. As Claude Debussy said, “Music is in the space between the notes.” There is much to be learned from listening to the space between individuals and the space inside individuals.  The leader sets the tone in creating such a culture where human potential is unleashed. Deepen connections between people and groups, distill collective insights, and bring life to the emergent desires and vision of individuals, teams and the organization.