LEARNING FROM THE JOURNEY

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It can only ever be the journey and not the destination. As we ramble along often going off-track and taking roads and paths that lead know-where, we can still be assured that there is serious learning in all the twists and turns. As such, a mind-set of continous learning and indeed fast failure is essential for all of us in landscape of blistering change and unexpected unknowns. The Journeyer is a facet within the concept of the Digital Sage as part of the book Leadership Resilience in a Digital Age, Routledge. As leaders, we are all on a journey and it is up to us to determine the destination. This journey may lead to many avenues, even non-stops and wrong alleys, but ultimately getting back on track with yourself and your ultimate purpose and passion is the goal. In leadership, it helps if you can see yourself as a Journeyer. It means you can view highs and lows as part of the web and the flow of life and work. We cannot live without contrast or challenges arising. Each challenge is a continuum and the key to understanding is that we need to get to a place of balance and equilibrium. By keeping this in mind, we can sail into quieter waters.

I have always been on a learning journey as long as I can remember. At one point I travelled to Asia and India to explore the deeper meaning of life, and like most, look for the answers. However, it didn’t take long, and much to my disappointment, before I found that the real pearls of wisdom and gems were within, and in fact, I could be anywhere in order to retrieve the answers. A thread of knowledge to inner knowing and knowingness comes to mind. As such, I very quickly hopped back to Europe to continue my real journey. A lesson learned indeed.

The journey is not just the journey inward but involves the journey outwards. In professional terms, this means that your inner and outer selves need to align and be in sync with each other. Alignment to your own values and matching those values to the organization you work in, or have created, is key to being in the flow. It is called professional alignment. Do you feel professionally aligned with your real inner authentic self? To be out of alignment is heading for trouble and increases the likelihood of crashing into rocks at some stage because you are not being true to yourself.

We cultivate resilience on our journey by listening to both ourselves and others and sharing experiences as part of the journey. The journey is about acquiring new knowledge, reflecting, sifting, listening, and applying the learning to different contexts, and then re-evaluating again. The Journeyer is a reflective and reflexive practitioner who is curious and introspective. Undoubtedly, with this in mind reflection is part of the process of the leader. To be reflective can be to step back, press the button, pause for a while, and ponder. Or it can involve a more reflexive approach, questioning and re-evaluating in-built assumptions we have built up over time. Additionally, the stories we tell ourselves are very often just that (stories), and the truth is that awareness of this fact enables us to create our own stories and future journey. Therefore, deep reflexive practice helps us to examine our inbuilt assumptions. As such, be aware of the stories you tell yourself and it is your job to challenge yourself by re-writing them if necessary. Reflection is also at the heart of management development and the backbone of MBA studies at any University. We also need to reflect on the world as it is now, not as it was, in order to be relevant.

The Journeyer is an apprentice and navigator who places significant value on the experiences encountered on the journey. Staying agile and flexible can help us become more grounded. Perhaps we all need to be Journeyer’s in times like this when there is intense rapid change. If you think like a Journeyer you can keep your head above the water, check in with yourself, and remember it is a journey of continual learning. As we keep learning we become more naturally resilient.

The principle of the Journeyer, as mentioned above, is a facet emerging in the framework of the resilient leader becoming a Digital Sage. It is useful to reflect on this facet as we enter the new year and create new avenues and a prosperous future full of hope. The Digital Sage arose from interviews with the creative digital entrepreneurial leaders of the Northeast of the UK, the outcomes of which were published in the book by JanetteYoung (2022) Leadership Resilience in a Digital Age, Routledge.

Leadership and the Moral-Ethical Compass

Real leaders stand up and use their moral compass or do they?  Decision-makers need to consider the wider impact of their decisions both in terms of  how they impact on the business internally and externally and specifically with reference to how this impacts on society.   Moreover, will the decision being made support the greater good and not just the bottom line? These are incredibly important  issues due to the emergence of the new technologies.  How we respond and implement the new trends and technologies is crucial to our very survival and quality of life.    Ethics and leadership go hand in hand. We need to produce leaders who are prepared to evaluate the options carefully in these challenging times.    The bottom line is that we need to teach this skill set in leadership and management programmes  along with a whole range of other hard and soft skills.   What we need is a leader that supports the characteristics of an Ethical Ambassador.