The Journeyer
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 outward in far off lands, but the real journey involves the journey inwards. This involves going into quiet space to find the answers, and deep listening.
Alignment to your own values and matching those values to how you work is key to being in the flow. Are you professionally aligned with your real inner authentic self? It can mean delayering all those layers of protection and just being more you. 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 and mental models through conversation 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 (past learnt stories), and the truth is that awareness of this fact enables us to create our own stories for a 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 notice and challenge yourself by rewriting 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 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.