Julia Middleton's Thoughts on Leadership

Last week Common Purpose held an event called Leaders’ Questions in the UK. We asked around 40 leaders to discuss with some great speakers what the leadership challenges were in 2009, what they’ve learned, and how they will now face the challenges and the opportunities in 2010.

By the end of the day we were exhausted. Which is fitting – because our concluding discussion revealed a sense of fatigue.

It seems our leaders might be caught in a spiral. They’re over stretched. They’re not dealing with much positive news. They’re stressed. The fatigue is impacting on teams, who are then not ‘speaking out’ on how they can innovate. So how do you break the cycle?

Think about the rest

Leaders are tired – and they have been for a while. They have been making very tough calls all year. Some of these calls have been about other people’s lives – especially if you have had to make a call on redundancies. And at this time, when nothing feels stable or clear, and your colleagues want you to be visible and positive – even if you don’t feel like being so at all.

This whole year has been about facing realities – or ‘naming the beast’, as I pointed out to the Birmingham Post in May last year.

You have probably been having less sleep and leaders are working harder to achieve less. And then you come home, were you may have kids, and they know they’re not going to find jobs easily. Or you might have a partner, and they may be facing the same issues at work. Or you have both.

What are you going to do? Here are some top tips that emerged from our Leaders’ Questions event:

• You need to get enough sleep.
• Don’t load it all on yourself – it’s the leaders who share some of the burden with their teams who will keep going.
• Remember that everyone is frightened – and there’s nothing wrong with being frightened unless it freezes you.
• Resist the temptation to share all the load and try to keep positive. You can feel the fear, but if you reveal all the burden, you might just unsettle your colleagues  - and that really will load the burden on you.
• Take a step away. If you don’t look outwards you won’t see the next thing coming – and you never know, it could be an unbelievable opportunity.
• Focus on strengths and shelve the distractions. It’s not ‘getting back to basics’, it is doing what you do best as a priority.

Many also felt that there was a positive change in old boundaries disappearing. Unlikely conversations are taking place – and that’s great. It is also important that leaders ask different people in their organisations for perspective or suggestions on innovations. People you think are leaders and those other people look to as leaders are not necessarily the same people.

This is no time to be timid. But to be brave, you need to sustain your strength.

I shared with our participants at Leaders’ Questions that it had been suggested to me that it would take a cataclysmic event to provide the springboard for positive change and new ways of leading. I’m thinking economic collapse and a complete shift in international relations is a fairly big signpost.

Here’s hoping our 2,500 world leaders at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, which starts today, are brave. As they look to ‘Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild’ – they will need to be.