What i’m thinking about
My new Quiet Leadership book was published this week: exploring ‘humility’, ‘kindness’, ‘fairness’, and ‘grace’, it considers leadership in the smallest of actions. The book, like the four week programme, is entirely free, and my hope is that people will pay it forward in their own communities.
You can download the Quiet Leadership book here: https://bit.ly/QLbook
The paperback will be published probably next month, if physical books are your thing!
This work is not simply a reflective book: it’s evidence based, through the Quiet Leadership global initiative, with over 500 individual contributors so far. As this research work grows with each cohort, i am able to explore broader aspects of how people experience, and explain, their role as a leader.
This research has already thrown up some interesting perspectives: for example, contrary to my prediction, the majority of people view ‘humility’ as an active, not purely reflective, process, and see that the ability to gather feedback from multiple perspectives is important. They also view that a leader should carry out their reflective practice within a small community, not simply alone.
We see that the language that is used to talk about kindness carries higher levels of anxiety and uncertainty: something that is typical when people are unsure what others feel, or when talking about a subject is not a normal part of their working life. ‘Fairness’, by contrast, sees high confidence in language use: probably because it’s already commonly part of Organisational narratives.
When i developed the Quiet Leadership work in 2020, i introduced the notion of ‘Organisation as Ecosystem’, and this idea has persisted - i now use it more widely across my work. I find it a very useful language and concept to explore how we are connected, and how we each cast shadows in the landscape - this is important in understanding how culture works, how communities form, and how change happens, or is constrained.
What I'm writing about
I’ve written two key pieces this week: this piece, ‘The First Three Steps’ is an expansion of language that i have found myself using widely, about the journey into practice. It originated in the Quiet Leadership work, where i say that Organisations talk about change as a journey of ten thousand steps, but in that work we will only take the first three - the first three that we take today are the most important, and possibly the hardest.
The first three steps https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/02/02/the-first-three-steps-in-practice/
This second piece, ‘Learning: Knowledge, Meaning, Capability’, is a typical blog post in that it represents a ‘first reflective’ view - it’s a deeper consideration of how we structure and consider learning, and in particular how we view ‘knowledge’, the creation of ‘meaning’, and the notion of ‘capability’.
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2022/02/01/learning-knowledge-meaning-capability/
As i’ve shared before: since the start of last year i have been deliberately reviewing and reworking my core ‘learning’ ideas, and this forms part of that reflective practice.
I shared an initial view of this here, with links to various topics:
https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2021/12/14/learning-fragments/
I was fortunate to catch up this week with a great friend and writing partner, and started discussing how i may eventually publish this body of work - i know that it won’t be a standard book, but perhaps a Wiki, or even a series of videos. More on this throughout 2022 i feel sure.
Both these pieces represent the key value of the blog for me: they are fragmentary ideas, but this gives a space for them to live in until they find a proper home.
Reflection
As well as the publication of the Quiet Leadership book, i am currently guiding a full cohort through the 4 week journey: it’s the thing that i start my week with. This Monday there were explorers from Australia, New Zealand, America, Spain, France, Singapore, Germany, a whole host of different countries, from a wide range of backgrounds. I felt excited to be in such a global group, and it really bought home to me the value of our radical connectivity in the context of the Social Age.
Inevitably our ‘everyday spaces’ can be filled with ‘everyday voices’, so the chance to hear different perspectives, and to learn of the realities that other people live in, is valuable.
I hope that you’ve had a great week, with best wishes
Julian
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