How can you develop far-sighted leaders throughout your enterprise? How do you find the inner voice of strategic leadership? We’ve been researching these questions, drawing on insights from neuroscience, organizational learning, social psychology, coaching, and the study of values. There are two types of leadership common today at all levels of an enterprise: transactional (making deals, solving problems, pleasing customers and your boss) and strategic (challenging existing ways of thinking, accomplishing things that others consider impossible, galvanizing people around the organization to transcend limits). Each is linked to a different pattern of mental activity and an associated brain circuit—transactional to the low ground of the mind and brain and strategic to the high ground. Both are habit-forming. Both are necessary for the leaders of today and tomorrow. By focusing your attention, you can become more effective at both. A great leader balances the low ground and high ground, moving by choice between expedience (solving problems) and strategy (making a better world). With this practice, you draw on the wise advocate within your mind. This is the inner voice of strategic leadership: seeing yourself as others might see you, with full compassion and care for your success. Calling on the wise advocate changes people; it helps them become more capable leaders, speaking with that voice in the organization around them. This helps them overcome the deceptive messages that travel through an organization’s culture and hold everyone back. With enough people embodying the inner voice of strategic leadership, an organization can take on a wise advocate role in society at large.
Learning to draw on your wise advocate will provide you with three things:
1) the ability to balance the low ground and high ground by moving between expedience (solving problems) and strategy (making a better world)
2) the emotional intelligence to see yourself as others may see you, with full compassion and care for your success
3) the confidence to help overcome deceptive messages traveling through an organization’s culture holding everyone back.
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John Reid is founder, president, and lead designer of JMReid Group, a global behavior change organization specializing in leadership, development, sales effectiveness, and skill enhancement. He is unique in the training development space, having spent much of his career within the industry. After surviving three bouts of cancer, he decided to pursue his passion for learning and development with a belief that people can get better and want to get better, but it was often the manner of which traditional training is designed and delivered that made this desire for growth difficult. As the lead designer for JMReid Group, Reid shifts the design emphasis from models and intellectual property to a learning experience that is relevant to the learner’s real world, taps into participants’ wisdom, and is engaging and sustainable.
He has built a reputation for providing cutting-edge, client-focused solutions that deliver business results and spearheaded the design of a breakthrough program on building relationships, leveraging both neuro and social science. He also created and implemented a learning strategy for a major pharmaceutical company as well as designed and delivered a comprehensive sales effectiveness program for a leading packaging firm.
