I’m in a flow state right now, and I’m loving it.

It happens when I write, read, am immersed in a coaching conversation, play with my nephew, or swim. There are different ways to reach a flow state, all equally valid.

Flow states, also known as optimal experiences, make us get so lost in a task that we forget about ourselves, our doubts, fears and life challenges. We are one with our task, and everything else fades away.

Flow states are enjoyable, so the more often you have them in your life, the better your quality of life will be. As I explain below, they are also essential for personal growth and self-actualisation.

What is a flow state?

The concept of flow states was coined and popularised by the Hungarian-American psychologist with one of the most unpronounceable names in the history of psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chicks-send-me-high”, as he used to tell his students as an easy way to remember it). He published the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience in 1990, and it became a best-seller.

Thanks to Csikszentmihalyi’s work, a flow state is now a reasonably well-known psychological concept. It refers to a mental state we all attain when we are focused on achieving a goal and are immersed in a task. 

Flow states happen when the following conditions are met:

– We confront a task we know we have the chance to complete. It is not unsurmountable or too complex for our skill level. It shouldn’t be too easy, or it risks becoming boring.

– We must be able to concentrate on the task at hand.

– The task has clear goals and provides immediate feedback on how we are doing. 

– The task gives us a sense of control over our actions. Its completion depends on us and our skills.

When we enter a flow state, we get involved profoundly but effortlessly in what we are doing. Our worries disappear, and the sense of time vanishes. We are so concentrated that it sometimes looks like time stops, but when we finish, we realise time has actually flown away. Seconds merge into minutes and minutes into hours, and before you realise it, the whole afternoon has gone.

We are unaware of ourselves when we are in flow, but our sense of self emerges stronger once the flow experience is over. 

Flow states are full of paradoxes.

From flow to growth

Flow states exist in the fine line between boredom and anxiety. 

The challenge we face and the skills required to overcome it have to be at the right level, or we risk falling into boredom (when we are overskilled for the task) or anxiety (when our perceived skill level isn’t good enough).

The chart below shows this.

This equilibrium rarely remains stable, which is good. This instability is the reason behind flow states, causing personal growth and increased complexity of tasks and us as persons. 

When we undertake a task repeatedly, our skill level improves with practice, so we move to the right in the chart and out of the flow state channel. We are now bored because the task is too easy for us, so we increase the level of the challenge until we are again in the flow state channel. 

We could also increase the level of the challenge, even if we aren’t sufficiently skilled yet. This will create anxiety at first, but we will be forced to improve our skill level to bring it into the flow state and avoid being anxious.

This is how we move inside the flow channel to the right and up in the chart. This is how we grow and self-actualise

Flow states are enjoyable, so we should aim to have them because they are enjoyable in and of themselves. They are also an essential engine of personal growth and self-actualisation.

How to get flow

Csikszentmihalyi tells us about different ways to reach flow states. We can get there by doing a task, by doing something with our bodies and our minds… all our parts have the potential to make us reach a flow state.

With our bodies, we can reach flow states by playing sports or exercising. There are some steps we should follow to ensure we get into a flow state:

– Set an overall goal and smaller sub-goals, such as running a marathon in under 3:30 hours or a kilometre in under 5 minutes.

– Find ways to measure progress toward those goals. Continuing with the running example, this would mean running 1, 5 or 10 km faster every week or running ever longer distances at a similar pace.

– Concentrate on what you are doing, be mindful, and focus on the finer details of your performance. How do you feel when running uphill? And when you run intervals?

– Develop the skills necessary to interact successfully with the opportunities present in your environment. What is your running technique like? How can you improve it?

– Keep raising the stakes if the activity becomes boring. Can you run the next marathon below 3 hours?

We can enter flow states with nearly everything: reading, playing games, conducting philosophical thinking, playing an instrument, building Excel sheets, drawing, writing, listening to music, meditating, analysing the stock market… the list is endless.

The process will be similar in all these activities: set goals, concentrate, look for feedback from the task itself, and just get better and better. 

The more, the better?

Flow states sound like the best thing since slide bread, but are they? Is it true that the more, the better? 

They are positive processes indeed. They are enjoyable, and they help us grow. The more often we enter flow states, the better our quality of life should be. 

So the short answer to the question is yes, the more, the better, but with some caveats. Like in all aspects of life, moderation and balance are key. We can have too much of a good thing, and flow states are no exception.

I am unsure if we have physical limits on the number of flow hours we can reach daily, but we cannot be lost indefinitely in flow. Sometimes, we need to come out of it and carry on with the rest of our lives. 

Also, could a flow state be addictive? I’m not sure, but I can imagine it being so—perhaps not the flow state itself but the activity that brings us so much joy and growth. We may like running, reading, or meditating so much that it becomes a central focus in our lives. 

You may say, “There is nothing wrong with it as long as it is a healthy habit”. 

And I’d reply, “Of course not, as long as you make a clear distinction between a habit and an obsession”. 

I have been obsessed with running, and it was cool, but there were times when it wasn’t healthy or good for me. It was the only thing I thought about, and it hurt other aspects of my life.

So, by all means, keep bringing on the flow states and keep enjoying them, but please do yourself a favour and do not get hooked on the activities that bring them on.

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Great leaders should think, act and have the mindset of a coach. But what does being a leader coach mean?

Last Friday, I met Txema, my first mentor, and we talked about many different topics, including leadership and coaching and how they come nicely together.

Txema Bilbao was my manager when I was a trainee at ITP Aero, a jet engine manufacturing company near Bilbao, 20 years ago. I was an impressionable pink-cheeked young boy who had recently finished a Master’s in HRM and was eager to learn and start his career. Txema was the Head of L&D in ITP and was (and still is) keen on sharing his knowledge and wisdom with me. 

He was my first mentor and also the best one I have ever had. Sometimes I am lucky.

I learned a lot from him. That experience only lasted a few months, but left a lifelong mark on me. We remained in touch over the years, but in the distance, and this was the first time we saw each other since 2003.

Txema is still his old self, ready to partake in his wisdom and help others grow and develop, while also being cheerful and funny. 

Our conversation was wide-ranging, but there was a topic that touched a nerve with me: how we can develop leaders that act and think like coaches. How can we have more leader coaches?

Over the years, Txema has developed different programs to build the coaching mindset, attitude, and techniques among the leaders and managers in ITP. I won’t go into the details of those programs here, but our conversation made me think about the topic, and I wanted to reflect deeper on it.

The best way for me to reflect better is to write about it, so here we are. Below you will find my musings on the leader as a coach and what leaders can learn from coaches. 

Why we need more leaders as coaches

Let’s first continue with my friend and mentor, Txema, and his definition of leadership. 

For him, a leader is a person who helps other people grow. 

Simple, but great in its simplicity. I could not agree more.

This definition also happens to be very close to that of the coach. A coach also accompanies others to grow and become the best version of themselves. 

A leader needs to achieve some objectives, of course, but she will best achieve them by helping grow her team. For that, she can learn a thing or two from coaches.

A coach helps their clients by asking them questions and using many other techniques, but the central premise of coaching is that a coach doesn’t know the answers but helps their clients find the answers that work best for them. Coaches empower their clients by showing them they have everything they need within them. 

Old school leaders were supposed to have all the answers and make the right decisions all the time. They couldn’t be perceived as vulnerable and had to be seen as taking all the heavy weight of responsibility on their shoulders. 

Future leaders will not be like this. This leadership style doesn’t work anymore. Future leaders will have to be leader coaches.

Great leaders lead with humility. They know they don’t and cannot have all the answers and that their team members need to be empowered and make their own decisions so they can grow and be successful. 

They know sometimes they will have to make the decisions and tell others what to do, but many other times, they will have to ask questions and help others find the best way forward. 

Some things leaders can learn from coaches

There are many things that a leader can learn from a coach and incorporate into their leadership and management toolkits. 

Here below, I will explain the most important ones. 

Active Listening

Active listening and asking questions are the most important skills a coach can have.

The importance of listening is underappreciated, especially among leaders. The traditional image we all had of the great leader was the extrovert, charismatic, outgoing, and visionary communicator. That can work sometimes, but as Susan Cain showed us in her now famous book Quiet, introverted and calm leaders can also be successful. 

You cannot lead others if you don’t listen to them adequately. 

Actively listening allows the leader to absorb all the information they need from their team members, but more importantly, it makes them realise that they are heard and that their opinion counts. 

There are some things to consider to listen effectively, but the main ones are:

– Be present and switch off your internal radio (stop thinking about what you will say next and just listen to the other person until they finish).

– Not only listen to the words but also look at the other person’s body language.

– Connect with them with your own body language (eye contact, nodding, etc.).

– Paraphrase what they said

– Ask clarifying questions.

This last point brings us nicely to the next skill leaders can learn from coaches: asking powerful questions.

Asking powerful questions

Coaches have a certain way of asking powerful questions that leaders could also use.

Coaches ask open-ended questions. They don’t suppose to know the answer beforehand, so the aim of the questions is not to guide the coachee in a specific direction. They are genuinely open questions that want to elicit the correct response from the coachee (correct for the coachee, not the coach).

Leaders could do the same with their team members.

If a colleague or team member has a problem or challenge, don’t tell them what to do, but ask them the right questions so they can look at the problem from different angles, broaden their perspective and find the answer that works best for them.

Don’t tell, ask.

Be egoless

Our egos often interfere with what we are doing, so just be egoless.

Being egoless means being in the moment and giving yourself to others, without trying to always do what is best for you. A coach’s responsibility is toward the achievement of their client’s objectives, not the satisfaction of their ego.

They park their wants and desires on the side to achieve what is best for their clients. They are their servants.

This links with the concept of servant leadership and leadership being about followership. 

Simon Sinek expressed it fantastically when choosing the title of one of his best-selling books, Leaders Eat Last. 

Leaders who eat last, serve others, and leave their egos at the door will succeed; the ones being driven by their egos will not.

The power of vulnerability

Showing vulnerability is not a weakness; it is a superpower.

Coaches know this and use it to their advantage when talking to their clients. They share and display their vulnerability and thus connect better with them.

Leaders should also admit that they don’t have all the answers and that they aren’t perfect, which nobody expects them to be. 

They should say “I don’t know” more often and be open about what they are good at and what they aren’t so good at.

Showing vulnerability demonstrates self-awareness, courage and frankness. It also demonstrates strength.

Displaying vulnerability makes us get closer to and connect better with others, so we should do it more.

Talking about emotions

Coaches are not afraid to talk about emotions; they often talk about them and how they drive behaviours.

Emotions are an essential part of our lives. They are part of our nervous system and guide us in many situations, often much faster and more powerfully than our rational brain. 

The problem is that in our modern society, we don’t talk much about emotions, we don’t acknowledge them, and we try to ignore them or “manage” them as if they were something bad.

Emotions are not good or bad; they just serve a purpose. Some are more pleasant than others, but they all have a function and are, therefore, helpful.

Coaches know this, and many great leaders also know it, even if unconsciously.

To be a better leader, start labelling your emotions, identifying what’s happening inside you, and talking more often about them. 

As Marshall Rosenberg explained in his book Non-Violent Communication, emotions usually tell us we have an unsatisfied need. They are the alarm bells that tell us we are missing something. 

Listen to your emotions and try to understand what they tell you about your needs. Try to understand other people’s emotions and what they lack or need.

Normalise talking about emotions, yours and others, and your relationships with others will improve.

A nugget of wisdom

Txema has his own phrases, his “txemisms” if you like.

They are his, nobody else’s. 

They are original nuggets of wisdom on leadership and personal growth. He told me I should create my own, but I’m not sure I have the wit he has to do it well. 

I’ll give it a try when I’m ready.

One of my favourite txemisms is “trabajar para sobrar”, which is difficult to translate into English, but would be something like “working to become unnecessary”. The idea behind this phrase is that a leader should work to create a team, structure and culture that make him or her eventually redundant. You have to sow the seeds of your own irrelevance.

That’s scary, but if that isn’t egoless and selfless, what is? 

That’s a leader at the service of the organisation and their team. 

That’s how a leader as a coach should think about their purpose in an organisation. Their mission will come to an end one day, but they will need to make sure that when that happens, the organisation they leave behind is ready.

They do that by growing their teams to become the best version of themselves. They do that by acting as coaches.

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These coaching exercises will help you develop the Leadership Qualities required to be an effective Future Leader

The most successful leaders aren’t born—they’re made. 

The secret to becoming a successful leader is in the way you think. It is a question of developing a certain mindset and skillset. Some exercises from coaching can help you get there.

We have already discussed extensively the Leadership Qualities of the Future Leader:

• Being Future Ready.
• Having a clear Purpose.
• Mastering People Skills 
• Being obsessed with Personal Growth.

Here we will look at some coaching techniques, tools and exercises you can use to develop each of them. 

Being Future Ready

Being Future Ready is about understanding the future, not predicting it, and being ready to shape it. 

As a coach, I have used different coaching exercises to help my clients work on their future readiness. 

Let’s look at three of them.

Developing foresight by asking “what if” questions

Coaches work mainly by asking powerful questions, and “what if” questions are some of the most potent questions that can be asked.

When you ask “what if” questions, you are opening windows to new possibilities; you are making the impossible possible. When we receive a “what if” question, our brain creates new neuronal pathways. We start to consider new things that weren’t there before.

It is worthwhile asking “what if” questions one after the other, probing and going deeper into the answers, and not discarding any of the questions or their answers as too unlikely or too absurd. 

When asking “what if” questions, we explore the unknown and try to be creative, so we shouldn’t discard the options that present to us too soon. 

Some good starting questions you can ask yourself or someone you want to coach and help:

– What if my industry got disrupted by this technology or that geopolitical incident?  

– What if I were in that other position/department/company? What would I have to do to be successful?

– What if AI enhances my job? What if it replaces it? 

And so on, you get the idea. 

Writing or ideating fiction scenarios and possible futures

Scenario creation is linked to asking “what if” questions, but it goes further.

When building a scenario, you are creating a fictional world in the future that doesn’t exist, and it probably won’t exist in that exact form and shape, but it could exist, and that’s what matters.

I ask my coachees who want to be ready for the future to create different scenarios of what that world could look like. 

It can be helpful to awaken the creative juices in our minds, so I ask them to write vivid possible future worlds. If they prefer to draw, make a ceramic sculpture, write a song or use any other creative form, that’s great too.

When writing scenarios or possible futures, different possibilities should be explored. As I did in my Possible Futures series, it’s helpful to at least include three types of scenarios: growth, collapse, and transformation worlds.

Signal of change collection

As William Gibson famously said, “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed”. 

Signals of change are those little gifts from the future that are already here. They are signs of where the world is going or might be going. They come from different spheres of life (technology, politics, economics, society, culture), and when many signals are pointing in the same direction, they form drivers or future trends. 

When my coachees are really interested in forecasting and the art of foresight, I ask them to collect signals of change. They need to scout the news and the web to find these signals. Sometimes they are easy to find and spot; others are well buried.

The Institute for the Future (IFTF) and other institutions publish signals of change regularly, but like many things in life, the real beauty of it is to find them yourself.

Clear Purpose

Future leaders have a clear purpose that goes beyond their own self-interest and is engaging and inspiring to others.

This is a fertile ground for coaching, and there are plenty of exercises that can be done with clients. Again, let’s look at three. 

Personal purpose exercises

The first step to finding a purpose that is inspiring and engaging to others is to define your personal purpose: What are you here for? What are you meant to be doing with your life? 

Having a clear personal purpose is essential to being happy and living a fulfilling life, but many people wander through life without even thinking about it. Coaches can help people find their purpose, and there are different exercises to do so. 

I explored one method in How to find your Career Purpose in Four Simple Steps, with the four steps being these: 

1. Name what you love

2. Identify what you are good at

3. Find what the world needs

4. Think about what you can be paid for

It is focused on the career, but its scope can be broadened, and it can be used for all areas of life (you can take out number four if you don’t need to be paid, for example).

Other exercises will require the client to write a personal mission statement that defines their values, passions and life goals. These should all be basic things, but not all of us have thought them through, and it is a worthwhile exercise to think about them and write them all down.

Coaches can then work specifically in some of these areas. Some will go deep into your values, for example. There are plenty of other exercises to explore them (see, for example, here). 

The Wheel of Life

The Wheel of Life is an excellent tool to find balance in your life.

It is a simple tool that allows us to look at the different areas in our life: love, relationships, career, friends, health, etc. I will ask my clients to rank the importance of each of these areas and then rate the focus they are currently putting into them. 

In a very visual way, it shows the user the discrepancies between where they would like to focus their attention and where they are actually doing it.

It can be mindblowing to see the differences in front of you.  

Journaling

Journaling is a widely used and very recommendable exercise.

Its most usual place would be in the Personal Growth section below, but I wanted to include it here to focus on a specific type of journaling, the gratitude journal.

As its name indicates, when we write a gratitude journal, we list the things we are grateful for. We show gratitude to others and ourselves by focusing on the things that really matter. The benefits to our mind and well-being have been well-researched, so it is a great habit.

It also helps us realise the impact our purpose can have on others and on making the world a better place. 

By keeping track of all the things you are doing for others and how grateful you are for them, you remind yourself that what you do matters and positively impacts the world.

Isn’t that a nice feeling?

People Skills

Mastering people skills is one of the most crucial skills we can have, both professionally and personally.

We are constantly dealing with people, so being able to manage our emotions, have empathy for others, communicate and listen well, persuade and influence them, and all the set that composes this broad skill set will have a considerable impact on our success in life and our careers.

Coaches work on many aspects of people skills through a wide variety of techniques and exercises.

The empty chair exercise

This exercise can be beneficial to unblock an emotion or overcome interpersonal conflict.

When I do this, I would ask my coachee to sit on a chair and face an empty chair, with me standing behind them so they can’t see me. Then I would ask them to imagine that on the chair in front of them sits the person they have a conflict with or the emotion they have difficulties dealing with, usually sadness, fear or anger.

They will expose what upsets or annoys them, and what they don’t like about the other person’s behaviour or the emotion holding them back. 

Once they have said everything they had to say to the empty chair in front of them (it sounds nuts, but it works), I’d ask them to stand up and sit on the chair in front of them. 

Now they are the other person they are having a conflict with or the personification of the emotion troubling them. What do they have to say? I’d ask them again not to leave anything out and tell them everything they must say. 

Then they would stand up again to swap chairs to respond to what they have heard from the other party. This can happen a few times until the coachee feels both sides have said everything they had to say.

I can ask my coachee a few questions about the experience, but usually, most things have already been said. They have told themselves everything they had to hear. 

This exercise can be cathartic. 

The client builds empathy and really puts themselves in the other person’s shoes. If working with an emotion, they get to understand the emotion’s function and how it is trying to help them. 

The end result is a better understanding of themselves, their emotions or others.

Role modelling giving feedback

Knowing how to give and receive feedback is vital in today’s competitive world.

Giving feedback allows us to help others improve their skills and express our feelings about what bothers us. Unfortunately, many of us don’t know how to provide feedback correctly; fortunately, a coach can help you improve your feedback-giving skills in many ways.

One of my preferred ways is to role-model different situations where the client pretends to give feedback to a colleague, team member or any other person with whom they have interacted. Then, I’ll provide them with feedback on their feedback, so to speak.

I will usually tell them to focus on the facts and to be specific, not to attack the person but the specific behaviours and actions, to make it clear that it is their own perception and not an objective fact, and to share with the other person how they feel as a consequence of that action. 

All these fundamentals make feedback effective.

Through role modelling, the clients have the opportunity to practice real-life situations in a safe environment and receive valuable feedback. As a result, the quality of their feedback improves considerably in a short time.

Rehearsing

Rehearsing a presentation or a complicated and dreaded conversation is also a common exercise I do with my clients.

It is similar to role modelling, but it involves practising for a commitment in the short term, and the remit is broader than merely practising giving feedback.

I will ask the client to deliver the presentation or explain the points they would like to discuss in the conversation they want to have with their manager or client. Then I’ll give them feedback, so they can improve their delivery, communication style, clarity, the points to be included or taken out, and the like. As a consequence, they also gain self-confidence.

Together we will make it much more likelier that the presentation or the conversation will be a success.

Personal Growth

Coaching is a methodology, or even philosophy, for personal development and growth, so everything we do in coaching could be linked to personal growth.

Gaining self-awareness through the Johari Window 

As I explained in this other article, the Johari Window is an excellent tool to gain self-awareness and know yourself better, which is the first step in the long path towards personal growth.

I often explain to my coachees the four quadrants of the window: what is known to self and others (Open), known to self but not to others (hidden), unknown to self but known to others (blind spot), and unknown to self and others (see below).

We discuss what might be lurking in each quadrant for them and explore different ways and strategies to increase the surface of the open quadrant and reduce all the others.

Earlier, we role-modelled providing feedback to develop this essential skill. Asking for feedback and receiving it with the right attitude is equally important, and it is one of the most effective ways to reduce our blind spots. 

The Johari window is an excellent way to start getting to know oneself better and to define strategies to develop that self-knowledge further.

360 review

360 reviews are widely used by HR departments in the corporate world. 

They often involve external consultants and can be expensive, but you can also have a “homemade”, more informal, 360 review that won’t be as comprehensive and detailed but can also still be valuable and full of insights.

The formal 360 implies the line manager, peers, colleagues and direct and indirect reports filling a questionnaire, usually anonymously, and the HR department in question or the external consultants preparing a report with the findings. Then the coach (or a consultant) briefs the subject, asks them questions to gain insights and helps them define an action plan based on the feedback received.

The homemade version is the same but simpler. 

When there is no budget or willingness to engage external coaches or involve the HR team, I will ask the coachee to ask for simple, written feedback from their surroundings: their manager, team members, and the like. This feedback has to be simple, so I’ll usually ask them to provide their three main strengths and development areas.

The outcome you will receive will be less comprehensive, and anonymity won’t be guaranteed (unless the coach or a third party, a colleague or friend, collects all the feedback and doesn’t share the specifics with the coachee). It can still be full of insights.

It will help the client reduce their blind spots, learn more about themselves, and focus on new development areas. 

Exercises to develop a Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset, which we have discussed extensively on this website, is crucial for Personal Growth, so I work on it through different exercises with my clients.

Someone with a Growth Mindset doesn’t think skills and abilities are fixed, so there is always a way to improve and develop them. One way to do so is by embracing the power of “yet”.

I ask my clients to think about a skill they don’t master and they think about often. I tell them to add the word “yet” to their thoughts about it, as in, “I’m not good at public speaking… yet”.

It sounds silly, but adding this three-lettered word makes a difference. You are telling yourself you don’t master this skill yet, but you can and will if you practice and work on it. You are building the right can-do and constructive attitude.

In sum, you develop a Growth Mindset.

Another exercise is to reframe all your challenges and difficulties as opportunities. Whenever my client faces a big challenge at work or in their personal life, I help them reframe it as an opportunity for growth and learning. 

Like all the rest, this challenge shall also pass, and with it will arrive new learnings, realisations, and growth opportunities.

Learning through coaching

These are just a few exercises we can use during coaching sessions to help our clients develop and learn new skills.

They can also be used with the help of a mentor, a friend or close partner. Some of them can even be carried out alone.

The future needs leaders who understand what is coming, have the purpose to shape it in helpful ways, and have the people skills and the focus on personal growth to bring that purpose to life. 

Are you ready to step up and become one of them?

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The role of solopreneurs in the Future of Work – observations from a non-solopreneur

What role will solopreneurs play in shaping the Future of Work, and how will they disrupt traditional employment structures?

In The 6 Most Important Workplace Trends for 2030 and Beyond, I included New Working Models as one of the key trends, with solopreneurship having a special place within this category.

In the last few years, with the advent of the creator economy, the shock caused by the covid pandemic and the push for remote working enabled by technology, solopreneurship has been on the rise.

Traditional employment will not disappear, and other employment models will come to the fore, but solopreneurs will play an increasingly crucial role in the Future of Work.

What exactly is a solopreneur?

Solopreneur is a portmanteau formed by the words solo and entrepreneur. 

As the word indicates, solopreneurs form a solo business, composed of one person. They are the only founder and the only employee in their one-person business. They might and often do partner with contractors and freelancers but don’t have other employees on their payroll. 

Solopreneurs take all the risk of their business, make all the decisions, and do all the work (or most of it, if we subtract what they outsource to others).

New name, old concept?

Many argue that solopreneurship is a new name for an old concept: aren’t freelancers and contractors also one-person businesses?

They may have a point, but it depends on who you ask.

Some people make the distinction based on the size. Freelancers are contractors with a small customer base. Once they grow and scale this base, they’d become solopreneurs, as they would be seen as managing their own business.

I’m not sure I buy this distinction. A business is a business, regardless of its size, revenues or customer base.

Human beings like using new names for slightly different things, and now it is in vogue to call solopreneurs one-person businesses, but these businesses have always existed. 

A digital business

However, another distinction is often made: solopreneurs are usually associated with online businesses. 

A carpenter or a plumber could be, by the term’s definition, a solopreneur, but I haven’t seen this label applied to them. Graphic designers, content creators, and bloggers are more like it. 

The internet, mobile connections and a society that is always on have facilitated the creation of the one-person internet business, also known as the solopreneur. 

Solopreneurs and the Future of Work

Solopreneurship challenges the existing employment structures dating from the Industrial Revolution.

Together with the gig economy, the creator economy, the social media influencers’ business models and all the other new employment modes, it brings a new dimension to employment. In the Future of Work, there will be an increasingly varied and flexible array of employment models, and solopreneurship will be an essential part of it. 

Solopreneurship has advantages, like flexibility, autonomy, and control over work-life balance.

Also, it allows its practitioners to cultivate their self-actualisation and live happier and more fulfilling lives. It is possible to pursue self-actualisation as an employee in a corporation (millions of people have found self-realisation working for others). Still, it is arguably easier to find it when working on a personal project and setting your own goals. 

Solopreneurship is a newish phenomenon, and many predict it has yet to boom and explode. If true, it can potentially disrupt industries and create new job opportunities for many people.

That would be great, but beware, solopreneurs, not everything is as good as it looks. 

Beware, solopreneurs!

Not everything is as pink-coloured as it seems in the solopreneur world.

Solopreneurship can be very challenging. Undertaking a business entails assuming a risk, sometimes a big one, and like any business, it can fail miserably.

As the saying goes, a monthly salary is one of the biggest addictions of modern life. There is a reason for it: it gives us security. When you work for another company, you have a monthly income assured, regardless of what you do (at least until the company fires you, which is always possible).

A solopreneur will always have the uncertainty of whether they will make enough money to satisfy their needs. 

Also, the solopreneur’s life can be a lonely one. They often feel isolated, and they may lack the social interactions that other types of work can offer.

However, the most significant risk for a solopreneur is burnout, stress, and falling into the hustle culture trap. Many solopreneurs are extremely engaged with their project (which is great and to be expected), but this engagement may take a dangerous turn. They may want to be always connected, trying to squeeze the last ounce of productivity, and all their life may turn around their solopreneur business, forgetting all the other elements of a balanced life. 

Many solopreneurs are convinced hustlers. I left my thoughts on the hustling culture clear in the Manifesto Against Hustling Culture.

Be a solopreneur, by all means, it’s great, but beware of burnout, financial risks, isolation and toxic hustle culture. 

Towards a world of solopreneurs?

So, are we moving towards a world dominated by solopreneurs? 

The short answer is “No”.

A world where everyone forms a one-person business might sound like a utopia for many, but it wouldn’t be sustainable. Big corporations exist for a reason, and they have many advantages over one-person businesses. There are many industries like manufacturing, hospitality, health care, etc., for which it makes sense to integrate collective efforts and scale up into organisations formed by many people.

If everybody is at home building digital businesses, who will deliver all the basic and essential services we all need?

Having said all that, the solopreneur phenomenon will only grow over time. Increasingly more businesses are digital, and many of our needs are now satisfied online, with services that often can be better served by a solopreneur. 

An increasing part of the population sees the allure of being “your own boss”, so the number of solopreneurs will only go up.

Solopreneurs will be another integral part of the Future of Work. They will have a positive impact as they will challenge existing practices in many ossified sectors and industries, but not everything will be pink-coloured. Solopreneurship will bring new challenges.

Are you ready to be your own boss? 

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Personal Growth is the fourth and last Leadership Quality of the Future Leader

To learn more about developing this Leadership Quality, read How Coaching Exercises Can Help You Develop into a Successful Future Leader

Personal Growth is the foundation of successful leadership. 

It always has been. In a world that is more VUCA every passing day, the ability to unlearn old skills and learn new ones will gain importance and criticality. The future leader will have to be obsessed with their personal growth and that of their team members to be successful. 

We have already touched on the other leadership qualities of the future leader (Future Ready, Purpose, and People Skills). Here we will go deeper into Personal Growth.

Why Personal Growth is critical for future leaders

Think about the leaders who inspire you the most. Chances are, they’re the ones who have continuously worked on their personal growth skills.

You cannot stay still in a changing world. 

Leadership is a complex and multifaceted discipline, a very demanding one at that, and it requires its practitioners to keep updating themselves, their skills and their views on the world constantly. If we add to leadership the future dimension in an ever-changing world, this requirement to continually grow and learn is even more essential. 

There cannot be a great future leader who isn’t constantly learning and developing themselves and their teams. 

How to work on your personal growth

First, a caveat: we are human beings, not machines. 

We can do many things to learn and improve, but there are some limits.

If you read social media and many publications today, many people don’t seem to have received the memo, and they treat people like machines. There is a hustle culture with an excessive focus on productivity, working a lot and filling the hours of the day with either working or learning new skills. 

You are supposed to wake up at 5 am, have an ice-cold shower, have introduced two hours of deep work under your belt, and read a chapter of a book by a self-help guru even before you sit down for breakfast. 

This approach is toxic (see the Manifesto against Hustle Culture) and unsuitable for high-performing or high-growing leadership. 

Personal growth is crucial but must be part of a balanced life. 

Having introduced this caveat, let’s look at three tips to work on your personal growth.

Self-awareness, or why you cannot improve what you don’t know

The average person spends more time on their phone daily than they do reflecting on their thoughts and emotions.

We sleep-walk through life without thinking about ourselves and without knowing ourselves well. We lack self-awareness. The thing is, without self-awareness, there cannot be any personal growth. 

You cannot improve what you don’t know. 

Self-awareness means understanding our emotions, traits, quirks, motivations, passions, and intuitions. 

In order to grow, it is crucial to know our final destination, but it is also essential to know where we are starting from. Self-awareness is knowing where our starting point is, who we are today, and who we have the potential to become.

As I explained here, there are different ways to work on your self-awareness, but my favourite ones are asking and receiving feedback, working with a coach, and meditation. 

Good habits are the foundation of Personal Growth

There is a reason why Atomic Habits by James Clear is one of the best-selling books of the last few years. 

Good habits are the building blocks of personal growth and a happy life. We become who we are by showing up consistently, doing the right things regularly, and stopping doing the things that don’t add value to our lives. It is easier said than done. reinforcing

Nobody said it was easy, but if you can build the right habits for yourself and stop the harmful ones, you will be on the right track.

Little tiny atomic habits bring tremendous results if you keep at them long enough. Consistency is key here. Good habits compound over time, like a savings account with interest, so small changes can have a considerable impact.

As I explained in this post based on James Clear’s book, there are four laws to consider when building good habits (or stopping bad ones, the process is the same):

1st Law – Cue: Make It Obvious

2nd Law – Craving: Make It Attractive

3rd Law – Response: Make It Easy

4th Law – Reward: Make It Satisfying

Follow these rules, and you will build healthy and positive habits, and as you do so, you will progress in your personal growth journey. 

Sharpening the saw

In his classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey gives the seventh and last habit an extremely apt name: Sharpen the Saw.

Like a woodcutter must sharpen the saw to carry on chopping wood and falling trees, so the great leader, the effective manager or the person merely focused on their personal growth must continue sharpening the saw in the four areas of life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual.

Books and book collections have been written about growth and care in each of these areas, and this is not the place to go deep into each of them. Still, I wanted to highlight here that life goes beyond the mental or physical arena, and there are many different areas to consider. All of them should be taken care of. 

Tools like the Wheel of Life can help us maintain the necessary focus on all critical areas of life. 

Do exercise, meditate, meet regularly with family and friends, read extensively, get a coach or a mentor, write in a journal, study or learn something new, travel around, meet new people, reflect on your emotions… 

Do whatever takes you out of your comfort zone and gives you growth opportunities in each area of life without focusing too much on only one. 

Growth vs Fixed mindset

We cannot finish a post treating the topic of personal growth without talking about growth and fixed mindsets.

Popularised by Carol Dweck in his book Mindset and many speeches, articles and Ted talks, the concept of growth mindset has gained broad popularity in the last few years. Like most powerful concepts, it is simple: some people have a fixed mindset, and others have a growth mindset, and that makes a huge difference.

People with fixed mindsets believe our talents and abilities are innate, so there is not much we can do to improve them. When we fail at something or make an error, it is us, as a person, who fail. The failure is proof of our incapability to do that thing correctly.

People with growth mindsets, on the other hand, believe our talents and abilities are acquired, and we grow them through hard work, learning, living experiences, and, yes, by making mistakes. A mistake or error is not a failure or proof of anything, only a new opportunity to grow and learn.

There is no question which of the two mindsets is more beneficial if we want to develop our personal growth and development. If you see yourself falling in the ways of a fixed mindset person, be aware of what you are doing and try to change your thinking. 

A fixed mindset won’t allow you to grow; a growth mindset will.

Personal Growth is a journey that never ends, and that’s fine

Leaders who neglect their personal growth skills are doomed to fail.

This premise is now truer than ever. It applies to everyone, not leaders only. Adapt, learn and grow, or fail.

The world is changing faster and faster, so we need to adapt more quickly too. That means learning, developing and acquiring new skills.

Personal growth will make you a better professional. It will also make you a better human being, a better partner, friend, and all the other roles you have in your life. 

It will also make you happier. Self-actualisation and the thirst for learning and self-improvement are the highest human need, so we are happy when we learn new things and become a better version of ourselves.

Personal growth never ends, but that’s fine. Personal growth makes us more human and more satisfied with our lives.

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The time for a Manifesto Against Hustle Culture has arrived.

Preamble

We, the movement against hustle culture*, reject the notion that productivity, continuously being on, and self-promotion are the keys to success. 

We believe that the constant pressure to hustle leads to burnout, stress, and an unhealthy focus on material wealth. We reject the idea that our worth is tied to our output and refuse to participate in a culture that glorifies overworking and underpaying.

Article I: The Right to Rest

We demand the right to rest. 

Rest is not a luxury; it is necessary for our physical and mental health and well-being. We refuse to participate in a culture that treats rest as a weakness or a waste of time. We demand that employers and society at large recognise the importance of rest and allow us the time and space to recharge. 

We encourage the continuation of trials on reduced work time (e.g., four-day week) until we find the right formula benefitting both employers and employees.

Article II: The Value of Leisure

We reject the idea that leisure is a waste of time. Leisure is essential for creativity, innovation, and personal growth. 

We demand that society recognises the value of leisure and encourages us to pursue activities that bring us joy and fulfilment, not just financial gain. 

We demand the right to seek self-actualisation inside and outside work.

Article III: The Right to Prioritise Mental Health

We reject the idea that success is only possible through constant productivity. 

Mental health is just as important as physical health, and we demand the right to prioritise our mental health without fear of judgment or stigma. We refuse to participate in a culture that glorifies overworking and promotes the normalisation of burnout.

Article IV: The Right to Unproductive Activity

We demand the right to pursue leisure activities for their own sake and not because of their expected benefits in terms of gained productivity or career advancement.

There is no need to fill all the hours in the day with productive activity. It is possible and desirable to have empty hours of contemplation, nothingness, or boredom, as these are also essential parts of life.

We hereby state that it is possible and even desirable to read books for sheer fun and pleasure, and not only because they will teach us the latest productivity hack or how to advance in our careers. 

Article V: The Right to Wake Up after 5 am

We demand the right to wake up at the time of our choosing. We promulgate that it is not necessary to wake up before 5 am to be successful and conduct a happy and fulfilling life. 

Ice-cold showers, meditation, journaling and daily exercise before breakfast might benefit some, but they should be optional choices and not a compulsory recipe for success.

Article VI: The Right to Avoid Toxic Positivity

Hustle culture is conducive to toxic positivity, so we demand the right to avoid it. All emotions have their function, they all have their use, and people should be able to express them freely at work.

We reject the notion that people need to always be seen as positive and cheerful. They should be let be themselves and bring their authentic self to work.

Article VII: The Responsibility of Employers

We demand that employers take responsibility for creating healthy work environments that prioritise the well-being of their employees. This includes fair pay, reasonable working hours, opportunities for rest and leisure, and support for mental health. 

Article VIII: Quality over Quantity

We demand a more significant focus on quality than on quantity.

Quality is more important than quantity in most facets of life, including work. It is much better to do a little quality, focused, deep work than continuously multitasking, hustling, and trying to be seen always on without achieving much.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we reject the hustle culture and demand a society that values rest, leisure, mental health, waking up at any time, responsible employers and quality over quantity. We refuse to participate in a culture that glorifies overworking, burnout, and the devaluation of human life. We request that the focus on hustle culture be replaced by a focus on healthier work cultures, such as a break culture.

* This movement doesn’t really exist, but someone should create it. 

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People Skills are one of the leadership qualities of the future leader. It is all about emotional intelligence and communication.

To learn more about developing this Leadership Quality, read How Coaching Exercises Can Help You Develop into a Successful Future Leader

People skills have always been an essential leadership quality and will continue to be so. They are one of the leadership qualities of the Future Leader.

Leaders constantly deal with people. They interact, liaise, communicate, and negotiate with followers, clients, suppliers and other stakeholders. They have to listen to them and influence them. 

All the time.

In sum, there cannot be great leaders without excellent people skills.

It’s as simple as that.

Let’s look at Emotional intelligence and communication, the two key elements of people skills. 

Emotional Intelligence

Who hasn’t heard about emotional intelligence?

EI (also known as EQ) has been in vogue since Daniel Goleman made it popular in the 90s, although it’s a concept Maslow had already explored in the 50s. Emotional intelligence is supposedly a better predictor of success than the traditional type of intelligence, the one measured through IQ tests.

Goleman initially talked about five dimensions of emotional intelligence, although other thinkers have proposed different adaptations to the model. 

The five dimensions in question are the following:

1. Self-awareness – knowing oneself, one’s emotions, strengths, development areas, values and goals, and using intuition to make decisions. 

2. Self-regulation – controlling emotions and impulses and adapting to a changing environment.

3. Social skills – managing relationships with others.

4. Empathy – literally, putting yourself in others’ shoes. It’s about understanding other people’s feelings and emotions.

5. Motivation – being aware of what motivates us and acting accordingly.

Emotional intelligence has internal and external aspects to it.

Self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation have a high internal component, as they centre on understanding and managing oneself, while social skills and empathy are focused on understanding others and managing our relationships with them.

High emotional intelligence is conducive to excellent people skills. 

The good news is that emotional intelligence can be worked upon, developed, and improved. We will focus more on how to do so in another post.

The importance of emotions

Emotions, or at least some, have a bad reputation, but they are essential to being human.

People say things like:

“Don’t be emotional.”

“You should get your emotions under control.”

“Leave your emotions aside when making a decision.”

“You shouldn’t let others see your emotions.”

They all have a negative connotation, as if emotions were something we were better without, something to be silenced and controlled.

All human beings have emotions, and they all serve a purpose. Human-like beings without emotions only exist in fiction; they are robots, zombies, or Vulcans like Mr Spock from Star Trek. 

Emotions have an essential role to play in life. Some are more pleasant than others, but all of them have a function.

Next time you feel strongly about something, listen to what that emotion is trying to tell you. What need of yours has to be satisfied?

If you listen more often and more carefully to your emotions, your people skills will necessarily improve.

Why suppressing my emotions didn’t help me

I have generally been a rational and cerebral person who disregarded what emotions were telling me. 

I had issues showing my vulnerability, and I never wanted to acknowledge I had emotions that I thought demonstrated weakness, like fear and sadness. I suppressed those emotions as much as I could.

I would also feel embarrassed about showing love in public, as that wasn’t very manly, or letting anger get the better of me. That was also weak and a sign that I wasn’t in control.

I thought I was doing great by suppressing my emotions, but on the contrary, this didn’t help me at all in my relationships with others. 

When I studied to become a coach some years ago, I started to realise how important our emotions are in our daily life, our relationships with others, making quality decisions, and general well-being. 

Since then, I have been working on listening better to them and not suppressing them, and I have got better at it, but after decades of emotion silencing, this doesn’t come naturally to me.

It is an ongoing learning and growth journey, but isn’t that what life is about? 

Communication

Communication is one of the most important skills one can have, as it enables understanding between people, influencing and persuading others, conveying information, and many other essential human interactions.

Communication has many aspects, and we can be good at one and terrible at others. Public speaking is a form of communication, but so is facilitating a team working session, influencing someone in a one-to-one conversation, or actively listening to what others have to say.

Yes, listening is a part of communication, too, a very important one at that. 

Many people wrongly believe that a great communicator is someone who can deliver a punchy message. The true great communicator is a great listener, first and foremost.

It’s all about listening

Listening is the most crucial communication skill.

As any textbook will tell you, communication is an exchange of information between an emitter and a receptor through a specific channel. 

There are always two parts to it. The receiving end must obviously listen well, but the emitting one should also do so before and afterwards to adapt their message accordingly.

There cannot be good communication without active listening.

Active listening is listening not only with your ears but with all your being. It’s listening with your full attention, with both your rational mind and your emotions. 

There are many techniques for how to do active listening properly: sending the right messages with our body language (nodding, maintaining eye contact, etc.), paraphrasing and summarising what we just heard, and so forth.

For me, the most important one is what I call “switching off the radio”. We all have our internal radio on when we are listening to others. 

When someone is talking to us, our minds usually don’t stop: 

“What she is saying is silly, I know it’s not true, I’ll reply to her and she will see… but she won’t shut up, when can I say my thing? Shall I interrupt her? Her jacket is nice, I like that blue, it suits her… she keeps talking, but I know what I’ll tell her… the man who just entered the café is very handsome…mmmm, I like him…oh, she has stopped now, but where was I?” 

This kind of train of thought is more frequent than we think. 

Our thoughts don’t stop appearing in our minds, it’s a constant stream that also shows up when we listen to others. Our most frequent thought when listening to others is what we will say afterwards. After a sentence or two from the other person, we have settled on what we will say next, so we don’t listen anymore. 

That’s listening “with the radio on”.

In order to listen properly, you need to switch off that radio and be fully present in the conversation. After the first couple of sentences, don’t think about your response and keep listening until the end.

It sounds simple, but it isn’t. 

Start doing just that, and your listening will improve considerably, and with it, the quality of your conversations with others.

3 Tips for Excellent People Skills

We have discussed emotional intelligence and communication above, but what is critical to mastering people skills can be condensed into three simple tips:

1. Focus on others, not on yourself

This means listening more and having empathy, but above all else, it means being genuinely curious and fascinated about others and being open to learning something new from anybody. 

When people realise you are more interested in them than in telling your story, they will be more open to you, and it will be easier for you to make meaningful connections with them. 

Also, if you are genuinely open to learning from others, you end up, well, learning from others, and that’s great in and of itself.

2. Be authentic, be vulnerable

“Be yourself, everyone else is taken”

Oscar Wilde

Don’t ever pretend to be someone else; it never works. People can smell non-authenticity, aka fakeness, from miles away, and nobody likes it. 

You are unique, like everybody else, so you may as well bring your uniqueness to the world and let others appreciate who you really are.

You are not perfect, of course, but that’s fine, nobody is. 

That means that to be truly authentic, you need to display your vulnerability and show others where you are lacking or need development, show them where you are vulnerable.

Vulnerability is a super-power worth using. It brings us closer to others.

3. Use your emotions to your advantage

Your emotions are your friends, not your enemies, so make the most of them. 

Listen to them, identify them, cherish them, work with them and not against them, and you will grow as a person. Your relationships with others will also improve as a consequence.

People skills are more important than ever

In a world increasingly dominated by technology and machines, being human and connecting with other humans is more important than ever. 

People skills are more critical than ever.

That means knowing yourself and making the most of your relationship with others is vital. 

Master your emotional intelligence and communication skills to improve how you manage other people, how you negotiate with them and how you interact with them.

Take care of your people skills, and they will, in their own way, take care of you, too.

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This article was written by guest writer Nestor Rondon, group psychologist and talent development professional.

Group psychology has taught us that groupality seems to precede leadership.

Leadership is a natural function, a system born within groups oriented to maximise cooperation and preserve the well-being of people, of the followers.

In essence, leadership is about followership.

In the last forty years, we have had an exponential increase in attention to the leader’s figure but not so much to the followers.

It is necessary to build a new narrative that helps us better understand followership and its importance.

It all started with cooperation

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Harari offers the interesting theory that one of the keys to human supremacy has been our ability to cooperate in complex and large-scale ways.

Being able to organise an entire tribe or clan around a common goal has been what has tipped the balance in our favour since the beginning of time, allowing us to survive glaciations, droughts, epidemics, and predators and organise migrations or navigate.

To cooperate is to operate in a shared way. 

It is an operation in which a group of people contributes to the solution of a common problem (as opposed to collaborating, which is contributing to the solution of a problem that concerns only one person).

The psychoanalyst Pichon Rivière argues that the nature of a group is the movement. If we put a few people together, they will soon define and share a task (purpose) that will give way to the movement of the group, thus starting their cooperation.

However, even though purpose triggers cooperation, the latter is only sustainable if the group achieves a certain structure and organisation.

The group will generate, on the one hand, rules that will provide harmony and shared frames of reference (what we are, what can and cannot be done), and, on the other, roles that will emerge as a mechanism to assign participants and responsibilities.

At this point, leadership appears as one of the roles that, by nature, are born within a group’s life.

Rather than essential or necessary, leadership is simply natural. 

Leadership is a byproduct of the group’s movement. The dynamic of the group generates leadership, not the other way around.

Regardless of the type of members a group has, leadership will always appear. This is because leadership is a role, a function, NOT a person.

Leadership only exists to maximise the cooperation of followers.

Without followers, there is no possible leadership. Regardless of the leadership qualities that someone may possess, without followers, there is no leadership, or, in any case, leadership will only be potential.

I am not seeking to reduce the concept but to expand it, incorporating (or perhaps restoring) what should be its central axis by definition. A teacher can be understood without students, but a leader cannot be understood without followers. 

I’m aware that leadership is a complex phenomenon, but its essence should be the same: to contribute to the dynamics of the followers.

Barbara Kellerman tells us in her book “The End of Leadership” that leadership is a “function” that occurs thanks to the interaction of three elements with an equal level of importance: Leader, Follower, and Context.

Anyone who aspires to have a leadership position should learn primarily about followers and develop some contextual intelligence.

Followers seem to be the “missing point” in the leadership equation.

I am convinced that many of our readers have participated in at least some leadership seminars or have read some literature on the subject, so I would like to ask you, dear reader: how many times has the word follower appeared? What proportion of any leadership training curriculum at any respected academy or multinational corporation is devoted to gaining a detailed and accurate understanding of followers?

In the last forty years, we have had an exponential increase in attention to the leader’s figure, which has seemed to be inversely proportional to the interest aroused by the followers.

Being a leader is fashionable and sexy, while being a follower is seen as passive and negative.

Today it is almost impossible to visualise professional growth without feeling the call of leadership. The leadership narrative has gradually been transformed until it is virtually merged with the success narrative so that to be successful, you have to be a leader.

This begins to take shape in the academic world.

The mission statement of the Harvard Business School is “educate leaders who make a difference in the world”. The Harvard School of Dental Medicine states that it “develops and fosters a community of global leaders dedicated to improving human health”. Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Graduate School of Education also have the word leader in their mission statement.

Many companies and institutions guide the development of their talent based on “leadership competency” models, measure performance using leadership scales that are applied indiscriminately and independently of the role that the person occupies, and invest vast sums of money in training that, in most cases, has the word leader somewhere.

Throughout my professional practice, I have witnessed the impact caused by facing a team of people for the first time from a leadership role. Colleagues who have long dreamed of a promotion to a leadership position suddenly find themselves overwhelmed and surprised by the experience, even thinking that “if it weren’t for the fact that I have to manage people, my new leadership role would be great.”

Restoring the importance of the followers in the leadership equation is essential.

Thanks to social media, followers are increasingly de-individualised and blurred, becoming an asset numbering in the millions. 

At the same time, the trend is to develop leaders by guiding them to think about themselves and exalting the most individualistic components of leadership, such as charisma, influence, persuasion, hyper-competitiveness, or strategic thinking. 

It is not surprising, then, the proliferation of narcissistic or authoritarian tendencies that we see in our leaders and that increasingly marked inclination to understand companies or institutions in a mechanistic way.

Restoring the follower is incorporating the human dimension of leadership (which is almost redundant). It is nothing more than understanding how people behave both individually and in a group situation. It is to know and enhance the dynamics that are activated when people interact with each other: 

How are they linked to each other, or what kind of link have they generated with the task at hand? What kind of roles and norms does the group establish, and to what extent can they be limiting? How are the resistances acting? How to strengthen alliances, dependencies, and identifications? How to build purpose or distribute power?

There is always a final objective: to maximise cooperation and guarantee the well-being of people.

Some words from Barbara Kellerman

Barbara Kellerman tells us the following:

“…there are other parallel truths: that leaders of every sort are in disrepute; that the tireless teaching of leadership has brought us no closer to leadership nirvana than we were previously; that we don’t have much better an idea of how to grow good leaders, or of how to stop or at least slow bad leaders than we did a hundred or even a thousand years ago; that the context is changing in ways leaders seem unwilling or unable fully to grasp; that followers are becoming on the one hand disappointed and disillusioned, and on the other entitle, emboldened, and empowered…”

As a talent management professional, I consider it a priority to stop and begin to critically reflect on some fundamental issues associated with leadership, even before continuing to launch any attempt to develop it:

1) It is necessary to build a new narrative about leadership that, among other things, restores its fundamental purpose or at least broadens our conception of what we understand as a leader.

2) We must incorporate the followers in our reflection and achieve a deeper understanding of the group’s dynamics, the followers’ place in the system, and the mechanisms we put in place to support their performance, but above all, to guarantee their well-being.

3) Finally, it is necessary to minimise the follower-leader dichotomy and understand leadership more as a system or a function, which supposes adopting a group perspective.

I believe that another leadership is possible, but real change will only come when we understand that beyond persuasion, charisma, or strategic thinking, the most defining quality of a leader should be a deep and genuine curiosity for the human condition, that leadership has much more to do with serving than with leading, and that perhaps in the future, the greatest challenge for a leader will be knowing how to give up leadership when appropriate.

There is a story of a drunk man who lost his keys on his way home. In the middle of the night, growling on his knees and hands, he searched over and over under a lamppost. After a while, he moved to the next lamppost and repeated the search. After watching him for a while, a man asked if he had lost something near a lamppost.

The drunk answered, “No”. 

“Then why do you keep searching under the lampposts?”

The drunk replied, “Because that’s where the light is”. 

Maybe it’s time to start looking for answers in the places we haven’t looked at yet.

For more on leadership, read The 4 Leadership Qualities of the Future Leader

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Why purpose is an essential part of leadership and what makes a purposeful leader

To learn more about developing this Leadership Quality, read How Coaching Exercises Can Help You Develop into a Successful Future Leader

Leadership is 10% strategic acumen, 20% people skills and 70% purpose. 

These percentages may be a bit off, but it doesn’t really matter. 

The point I want to make is that purpose is essential for leadership. Without a strong and inspirational purpose, there is no leadership. It cannot exist.

In this article, we will establish why purpose is essential for leadership, and then we will expand on what makes a purposeful leader.

Why purpose is essential

Human beings are moved by self-interest but also by an overarching purpose that goes beyond ourselves.

Simon Sinek explained it well in his book Start with Why. People are moved by the why of things, not the what or how. They want to know their reason for being and inherent values, and if they are aligned with theirs, they will go for it.

Plenty of research demonstrates that people are more moved by something bigger than themselves than their own self-interest. 

Most people, with the exception of sociopaths and psychopaths, want to be good, want to help others, and want to make their little contribution to building a better world.

People usually want to grow in their careers, get a promotion, earn more money, be recognised by others, and many other things centred on themselves. That’s true.

They would like to do all that, but they would like to do all that by leaving a positive impact on the world, by making it better. 

They want to pursue a purpose worth pursuing.

“I am building a cathedral, and you?”

You have probably read or heard the apocryphal story about the three bricklayers or stonemasons working on a cathedral, with very different attitudes.

When asked what they were doing, the first one answered with an exhausted look, “I’m laying bricks to feed my family”. 

The second one was equally tired and responded in a similar vein: “I’m building a wall.”

The third one seemed happy to be doing what he was doing. When asked, he replied with a gleam in his eyes: “I’m building a great cathedral”.

Who do you think had the higher purpose, and who went to work happier every day?

Managers force compliance, leaders inspire through a purpose

There is an eternal debate about the differences between being a manager and a leader. 

One is more tactical, the other strategic; the former manages the day-to-day tasks, the latter inspires through a vision, et cetera. 

All the differences can be summarised in just one statement: managers force compliance, leaders inspire.

They inspire through an engaging and inspiring purpose.

A leader needs followers to exist, and in order to have followers, you need a purpose.

From all this, we can surmise that without purpose, there is no leadership. 

As simple as that.

The Purposeful Leader

All purposeful leaders have five main characteristics:

– A strong personal purpose

– A clear vision

– Values-driven

– Authenticity

– Followers

 Let’s look at them one by one.

A strong personal purpose

Before focusing on team, organisational or other externally focused purposes, it is essential to start with oneself.

We need to start with a strong personal purpose.

Why are you here? What are you supposed to be doing in this world? What makes you happy?

These are among the most important questions you should be asking yourself. Sadly enough, most people don’t think much about them. For example, only 25% of American adults say they have a clear sense of what makes their lives meaningful. 

It is a similar story in other countries.

A strong personal purpose can be approached from many different angles. You can have an integrated purpose overarching your life as a whole, or you can have different purposes for different areas: a health purpose, a career purpose, a purpose about your family life, etc. 

It doesn’t matter much. It is vital to have a clear life purpose, and then all the other purposes for the different elements comprising your life will naturally stem from it. 

You can do different exercises to find your purpose, like visualisation techniques, a vision board or a vision mandala, and many others. For example, I recently wrote about an approach to finding your career purpose, which you can adapt to other aspects of your life. 

I will write about other exercises and tools in the future, so watch this space.

A clear vision

We have all heard about organisational purposes, mission statements, visions and the like. 

It often sounds like management guru mumbo-jumbo, but it is crucial. 

Yogi Berra once said, “you’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.”

A vision tells us where to go, our direction of travel. If you don’t know where you are going, it will be difficult to get there. 

From Stephen Covey to Jim Collins to other management gurus and thinkers, all have highlighted the importance of a vision to engage the teams. I may not always agree with them, but the gurus are right on this one. 

A vision is important, but it cannot be any vision, it has to come from a purpose. 

It has to have a reason for being that is enticing and engaging, usually, that means it has to be about something beyond personal gain. 

The best visions are about making the world a better place in some way. 

According to research from Harris Kumanu, when employees understand the organisational purpose, share it, and have the autonomy to enact it their own way, then the magic happens. This is what brings high engagement.

A leader with a strong personal purpose aligned with the organisational purpose and who can translate that purpose into a clear vision for their team and organisation will be unstoppable. 

Values-driven

Having a purpose is about wanting to impact the world positively. It’s about having the right values, living by them and being guided by them.

As I wrote elsewhere, there are no good or bad values, as values are a product of our history, background, cultural surroundings, life experiences, and many more factors, most of which are subjective and relative.

That doesn’t mean all values have the same weight or that all of them will help us build a better society, live happy lives and have better relationships with each other. 

Some values promote harmony, while others encourage tension and conflict. Which ones are preferable? That’s another value judgement in itself. You see, it is difficult to talk about values without making value judgements. 

It is not my place to tell others what values they should live by or tell leaders what the right values are for them. That’s a choice each of us, including our leaders, must make. 

You need to live by your values, but be clear about what those values are and live by them. Really live by them. Don’t just use them as empty words to convince and persuade others, and yourself, that you have your heart in the right place. 

The purposeful leader knows their values and lives by them daily. Their team members and followers also understand those values and follow them because they are aligned with them.

They also believe their leader is authentic about them, which brings us to the next characteristic.

Authenticity

Nobody follows a phoney leader. Nobody likes fake.

We all love authenticity.

A purposeful leader needs to be authentic. Above anything else, they need to be themselves. 

This means they need to accept and love themselves first, which isn’t always a given. 

To be authentic, you must first be self-aware and know yourself well, then accept yourself and be OK with who you are. Once you do that, it’s easy to be authentic and not pretend to be someone else. 

It also helps to have a meaningful purpose that goes beyond personal interest. It is easy to be yourself and authentic when working towards achieving a lofty goal that will help others.

Followers

There are no leaders without followers. 

This sounds like a self-evident truth, which it is, but it is incredible how many people have never thought about this or never realised it. 

A leader without followers is not a leader. They have nobody to lead. I would go as far as saying that the followers make a leader and not the other way around. 

It is a specific situation and the followers who tacitly give the baton of leadership to a particular person. It is not the company structure or the hierarchy that will provide them with that authority.

A great leader will have followers who will follow them over the hill and take risks with them. 

Why? Because they feel inspired and engaged by that leader.

And once again (you see the pattern, right?), a leader will need an inspiring, engaging and aspiring purpose and vision to achieve that. Without a purpose, there is no following others over the hill.

In a symbiotic embrace, a leader gives purpose and meaning to their followers, and the followers provide purpose to the leader.

Purposeful Leadership

If you have these five qualities, congratulations, you are a purposeful leader.

If you don’t, don’t worry, they can be learned and developed. Like most things in life, with some effort and dedication, you can get to master them.

The starting point is the reflection on your life purpose. Once you have defined that, the rest becomes easier. If you find your real purpose, the one that feels right to you, all the rest will be more straightforward.

It will be relatively easy to create a strong vision that comes from your stated purpose or to find an organisation or a leader whose vision aligns with it. Focusing on values and being authentic will come naturally to you. If your purpose is in the right place, you will have people following you.

The most important thing to consider here is that being a purposeful leader is not an end in itself.

Your aim shouldn’t be to become a purposeful leader but to find your real purpose and live a life according to it and your values. That’s it.

All the rest will be a natural consequence of it.

For more on purpose, please read Purpose and the Lion Tracker we All have Within

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7 tips to unleash the power of imagination and achieve better results, fulfil your potential and be happier

Imagination is one of the most beautiful things about being human. 

It is also powerful. It helps us grow and progress as a species and as individuals. Without imagination, life would be dull and possibly not worth living.

In this post, we will look first at the importance of imagination, to then go deeper into how to unleash all its power.

The Declaration of Enchantment

Psychologist Craig Chalquist wrote The Declaration of Enchantment as a warning against the forces threatening the power of imagination in today’s society. 

It is an interesting document, well worth a look. It made me think about imagination and pushed me to write this article. 

I have liked imagining stories, daydreaming and living in fantasy worlds since I was a little boy. I enjoyed using my imagination, so I did it all the time, but I didn’t think much about it. Human beings sometimes use their imagination, and that’s that. 

Then I read the Declaration of Enchantment and started thinking about it a bit more. 

As Chalquist says in his declaration, imagination is currently under attack from various fronts (“by mass commodification, by religious fundamentalism, by intellectual mechanisation, by political opportunism, by fiscal greed”), and it is an essential part of being human, so we should guard it against all these threats. 

That’s why he wrote this declaration, which, like any other declaration worth its salt, has a preamble and a number of articles.

The importance of imagination

The preamble of the Declaration of Enchantment highlights the importance of imagination for humankind:

“We can live a few weeks without food, a few days without water, and a few hours without shelter in an inhospitable clime, but we cannot live for even a moment without some movement of imagination in mind and body. To restrict its enlivening flow is to cripple the wellsprings of health, vitality, and sanity.”

Imagination makes us human. It enriches our lives, and it helps us push forward. It has been behind all human achievements, be them artistic, scientific, or technological.

Without imagination, there wouldn’t have been the Mona Lisa, the Theory of Relativity or The Lord Of The Rings.

As we will see below, without imagination, we wouldn’t have great leaders either.

How to unleash the power of imagination

We know imagination is important, but how can we use it more often and better? 

Let’s look at seven practical tips to unleash the power of your imagination.

Tip 1. Save time for reflection, thinking, and of course, imagination

The first thing you need to do is to make time for it. 

If you don’t dedicate time to reflection, thinking, and imagination, well, sorry to disappoint you, but it won’t happen. 

Stop or at least slow down the rat race you are probably immersed in, and save some time for you, your mind and your thoughts. Spend less time staring at screens and go for a walk more often. 

When eating alone, try doing it without looking at TV or Netflix, and enjoy your food and let your mind wander. 

If you go for a run, try not to listen to a podcast or music once in a while. 

Try sitting still and doing nothing.

These are some of the best moments for my mind to escape the day-to-day problems and drift off into the wondrous world of imagination. 

Yours might be completely different, and that’s fine. By all means, find the best moments for you.

Tip 2. Keep your limiting beliefs in check

We all have limiting beliefs that impede us from achieving our full potential. 

We all think we are not good at something and that we cannot improve on it. This usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we end up stuck. Many of us believe we are not creative or imaginative enough and we are better with numbers, Excel spreadsheets or something else. 

They aren’t mutually exclusive, so even if we cannot all be Lewis Carroll or Dali, we can all unleash the power of our imagination because we all have it. 

Stop believing you cannot use your imagination to get better at what you do and to have a more fulfilling life, because yes, you can.

Tip 3. Ask the right questions

We live in a world where answers are aplenty, but the right questions are difficult to find. 

Asking the right questions is an art that can be used in many fields, notably in coaching, but also at the service of your imagination. The more improbable or crazy the question, the more imaginative and creative the answer will be, so don’t be afraid of asking silly questions. The objective is to imagine new solutions and ideas nobody has thought about before, and you don’t get there asking boring questions.

So remember, crazy questions bring about imaginative responses.

Tip 4. Get exposed to diverse ideas

Imagination needs a rich soil full of nutrients to grow and flourish, and diverse ideas are some of the richest nutrients you can get. 

Imagination cannot thrive in a mind exposed to the same uniform ideas. The more diverse ideas you get from many different sources, the more imaginative ideas you will have. It is just common sense. 

If you always read the same books, talk to the same people and watch the same series, you will have the same ideas. Your imagination will become stale. 

On the other hand, if you meet different people from different backgrounds and perspectives, read authors who don’t think like you do and get exposed to novel ideas from different media, you will sow the ground with the right seeds for your imagination to blossom.

Diversity is great for many things; being rich food for imagination is one of them. 

Tip 5. What is outside the box? Look for it

Use more lateral thinking or thinking outside the box.

We all have our own way of looking at the world, our own box if you like, but there are always other ways to look at things. When you are thinking about something, trying to find a solution to a problem, or need new ideas, try to think outside your box. 

OK, you might ask, but how do you do that? It is your box, after all.

You think about the problem or the issue as you would always do. Then try to think about it from different angles and perspectives. What haven’t you thought about? How would someone very different to you think about it? What are you still missing about it? How would the opposite of what you thought look like?

Be as crazy as possible, and don’t be judgemental or dismissive of your ideas. This is a personal brainstorming session: all ideas, even if they are crazy, are allowed.

Tip 6. Experiment and take risks

There will never be any space for imagination if you don’t experiment with new things and take risks.

It is cosy and comfortable in our comfort zones. Still, if we don’t leave it now and then, it will be difficult to experience all the different things we can to give the appropriate fuel to our imagination. Do familiar things in different ways and see what happens.

Leave your comfort zone, try new things, be open to experimentation, and take risks; then your imagination will fly free.

Tip 7. Use all your senses

When we use our imagination, we usually visualise things, but we also have other senses. 

Use them.

Sight is the sense I use the most, like most people. It is the one sense that takes up most of our brain’s processing power and space, but we also have other senses. When imagining new things, use your smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Imagine how cold and hot it is, the scents in the air, the sounds…

It is often difficult to imagine or even remember smells or tastes, but try to do it, and your possibilities for imagination will expand.

Follow these seven tips, and you will unleash the power of your imagination.

Imagination in the age of AI

Chalquist wrote the Declaration of Enchantment to warn us about some of the risks threatening the use of imagination and give ti the importance it deserves. 

There is a threat he didn’t mention, and that’s Artificial Intelligence. 

In a world where ChatGPT can answer your questions in correct English, and DALL-E can create visual art following simple prompts, what will be the place for human imagination? Will AI empower our imagination or limit it?

This is still an open question; I don’t have the answer. On the one hand, AI opens new possibilities for us, worlds we couldn’t have imagined, and it might open new windows for our imagination to wander into. 

On the other hand, as AI produces more and more new things, we might delegate more and more of our imaginative work to it, thus weakening our imagination muscle. The thinking processes we outsource to computers tend to atrophy with time (who does simple math calculations or remembers their friends’ phone numbers anymore?). Imagination could be next.

Time will tell, but like many other things related to AI, it has the potential for the best and worst. 

It will all depend on the use we make of it.

Imagination and the Future Leader

This is a blog about the Humane Future of Work and the Future Leader who will help us build that future, so I can hear you asking: what’s imagination have to do with it?

Everything.

Imagination is a powerful force that can help us get better and closer to our potential. A leader with imagination will be a better leader. They will have more resources to ideate an inspiring vision and an engaging purpose. 

They will be able to imagine more diverse possible futures, thus being future ready. Imagination is also an essential part of having an innovation mindset. It is only possible to innovate with imagination.

We need imagination to continue growing as professionals. There is no personal growth without imagination. We need to imagine possible avenues for growth, have new interests and think about new projects and ambitions.

Imagination is a force pushing humans forward. It also pushes our leaders.

The stories we tell ourselves

We, humans, love stories, and there are no good stories without imagination.

When we fail at something, this is because our stories have failed us, and we haven’t been able to create new ones. Imagination is about the stories we tell ourselves. 

I can’t think of a better way to close this post than by quoting one of the articles from the Declaration of Enchantment:

Article 11: “Without the gifts of the imagination, we cannot fashion the new stories we need for carrying us forward. Systemic catastrophes like patriarchy, poverty, greed, global warming, habitat destruction, warfare, and bigotry all represent failures of imagination and, therefore, failures of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, our place in the world, and how we should be with each other”.

The Declaration of Enchantment

What new stories will you be creating to move yourself and others forward?

How are you going to use your imagination to improve your lot and that of others?

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