I have a challenge for you – watch and see if you are up for it…
Video transcript
I have a challenge for you.
Its called work your inside for a change.
But before I disclose what the challenge is I want to share with you what has inspired me to create this challenge.
This summer, I came across a really interesting initiative that has come out of Stockholm, Sweden, a group of consultants, academics, and researchers have asked themselves this very important question. We have this beautiful framework called the United nation sustainability framework? When you look at them, It very obvious what needs to be done?
The research is there, the knowledge is there. Everybody knows what needs to be done,
But somehow it’s not happening. Or if it’s happening, it’s in a very small way compared to what is actually needed. So in that sense, this, this sort of classic knowing, doing gap,
We know exactly what has to be done, but somehow it’s not happening.
You could also say that we have a collective blind spot. Somehow we’re not seeing what it is that’s tripping us up and preventing us in actually taking the necessary action.
And so they ask themselves this question, what would it actually take? What are the skills and abilities and attributes that we would need to develop individually and collectively in order to fulfil these sustainability goals.
And they put this question out to a wide range of people and asked for their input. And out of that came what they have now labeled, The inner development goals. Go to their website and you can learn a lot more about them, the way they researched it and process that’s behind developing this framework.
A lot of interesting companies that are backing up this initiative. It’s, it’s not a two centsstart up in a basement. It’s a very serious initiative.
What that came up with was 21 skills and attributes, including things like openness, how our ability to be open to new things, our ability to take perspectives, humility, trust, empathy, all these kinds of things.
They then grouped them in five main categories that they called
- being
- thinking
- relating
- collaborating
- acting,
This framework is open source and free to use for anybody who is interested in working in the field of sustainability and leadership.
When I saw the framework I went, hallelujah.
Those are exactly the same attributes that we would need If you asked someone, what does it take to develop sustainable leadership?
What do we need to develop?
Well, they’re exactly the same skills and attributes.
This then brought me back to something that I’ve been asking myself for a long time now.
In the so-called Western world, we seem to have an over focus on the outside. We are fascinated with skill development that has directed towards task orientation and optimising performance. But that over focus on the outside seems to develop some kind of imbalance in the system that we are part of.
And the way that imbalance comes out is in things like th is the great resignation people leaving their jobs in droves. Companies having problems with recruitment. Theya little red lamps popping up that are telling us that somehow our system is out of balance and that imbalance is due to a blind spot or a knowing doing gap.
We know what it takes to create sustainable leadership. We know what kind of organisations and workplaces we need to develop, but somehow it’s not happening.
And my feeling is that the main reason it’s not happening is because we are neglecting the inside. We are not working hard enough on achieving a balance by developing individually and collectively a healthier inside.
I think one of the reasons this happens is because most of us, when we look at these things, humility, trust, openness, whatever they are and we ask ourselves, am I good at that? And we all go, yes, of course, I’m good at that. I’m a very open person. I’m humble, I’m trustworthy. And so we give ourselves a 10 out of 10 on all of those. But the reality is that when we look at that list of 21 things, we all have some serious blind spots and we cannot work on them until we start exploring them.
Awareness, proceeds, change remember.
So what I mean is that you can be the smartest person in the room. You can have the most fabulous education. You can have gone undergone all sorts of incredible training courses. But if you’re inside is underdeveloped, then you will end up getting in your own way. You will not be able to perform as well as you could, if you had a better balance.
And that’s why I’d like you to join me in this exploration of inner development.
And that’s the challenge that I want to present you with today. I call it working on your inside for a change. Over the next five days. I will send you a podcast, one podcast each day. In the podcast, which will be about 25 to 30 minutes. I will take up one of these 21 Inner development goals could be trust, humility, empathy, complexity awareness.
And at the end of each podcast, I will ask you a question to reflect on. It’s really important to do this reflection, because if you just consume the podcast, then you have just added more knowledge to your knowledge bank, but you’ve actually not started working with the inner development.
In order to work with inner development, we need some kind of a conversation, a conversation with ourselves or a conversation with somebody else.
And so the conversation with ourselves could be in the form of answering a reflection question and putting in that reflection question on an email to me.
In that way, there’s a certain commitment to doing it.
So that’ll be the rhythm: podcast, reflection, another podcast, reflection at the end of the five podcasts, I will offer you a coaching conversation where we can go over the five inner development goals that we have covered as well as your reflections for each of them.
There’s no charge for this.
There’s no payment, but there is a catch, a small catch. And the catch is that if you don’t do the reflection, you don’t get the next podcast. You can’t just consume the content because you’re just going to add to the knowing, doing gap. And so podcast + reflection, and that releases the next podcast.
That also means that if you feel that doing it every day for five days is too fast, or you don’t have the time for it, then you can skip a day, even two, as long as you realize that you don’t get the next podcast before I receive your reflection.
So that’s the deal.
So how do I think you might be able to benefit from this?
Well, I think first of all, and that’s my overall goal with this, I wanna give you a taste of what could it be like to work with your inside?
And in that process, I would also like to raise your awareness of this phenomenon that I’ve talked about, of this imbalance, how we seem to be much more focused on working on our outsides and not paying enough attention to what would actually happen if we start working a little bit more on our insides.
And I also hope to make it clear to you that the quality of our insides ends up driving the quality of our output – of our outsides if you like.
And finally, my larger hope is that this little sequence of podcasts, and the coaching conversation will inspire you to continue working on your own innerdevelopment development.
So how does that sound?
Are you up for the challenge?
I really hope so. I would so enjoy having you board. The next step is very simple. All you need to do is go to my webpage, Mikehohnen.com/inside, and then add your name and email address in the form that’s provided.
When you are registered as a participant you will first of all, get an email back where I will send you some more material to think about that will inspire you to further consider, your own inner development.
I expect to be shipping the podcasts around the end of August.
So that’s when you can expect the first podcast to arrive in your imbox, but in between, I’ll make sure to keep you busy with something else to think about. I really look forward to seeing you on the program.
Bye bye for now.