Living & Leading in the Temporary: The Valley between Now and Tomorrow
Dr. Joan McArthur-Blair, Co-President of Cockell McArthur-Blair Consulting is an inspirational writer, speaker and facilitator. She believes positive leadership matters in the world and all of her work is around enabling and fostering that generative possibility.
As 2020 ends and 2021 begins, I feel compelled to craft a personal commentary about ‘living & leading in the temporary.’ It has been an extraordinarily complex year both personally and in leadership work. Every leader I have worked or spoken with talks about the complexity they are residing in. Some have found incredible innovation; some have had to lay people off; some are struggling to meet budgets; some have left roles and recreated themselves.
I am an author & consultant working with many clients who are facing an unknown future in their organizations and as we talk about this space between the now and a hazy future – we find ourselves talking about this idea of ‘living and leading in the temporary.’ Leaders express concern about residing within the maelstrom of all that is happening in the world and at the same time attempting to care for those around them; provide meaningful work; and lean toward an unclear future. This commentary is about what it might mean to be in this space and how leaders might begin their own conversation with self and others about residing in this temporary state.
The power of a commentary is that it begins a conversation. It does not provide the definitive answer, rather it wonders about what might be. In this piece, I offer wonderings about what it means to reside as a leader in this place of temporary and to prompt a conversation that might help leaders find abilities they never knew they had.
I hear in every session I do about what life and work will be like when Covid is over; when politics is gentler; when climate change response takes off; when vaccines are here; when… Embedded in these musings is a notion of returning to a sense of normal. Yet every leader knows in their heart that the maelstrom of the world will forever and irrevocably change them and their organizations and there is no longer a normal to return to. As humans one cannot pass through trials and hardship without becoming anew – it is like being re-formed into a new state of being.
‘Living in the temporary’ is neither a state of hope nor is it a state of despair. It is something else. It is a leadership state of just being, of pulling on all the skills acquired in years of work to just abide in a state of temporary. By abiding in this state, I don’t mean doing anything. I mean beginning to have a conversation with self and others about the nature of temporary and how it could be a powerful leadership force.
‘Living in the temporary’ is neither a state of hope nor is it a state of despair. It is something else.
DR. JEANIE COCKRELL AND DR. JOAN MCARTHUR-BLAIR
As leaders, I am sure you are expected, as I was when I was a formal leader, to be decisive, to be clear about the future then drive toward it. Today I want you to consider how your leadership might be positively generative if you stopped listening to the siren call of decisive action and future focus and considered a few guiding questions that might prompt powerful conversations about ‘living and leading in the temporary:’
- What might happen if you expressed to your organization that the future was unclear, so in the meantime, you simply were going to work with everyone inside the organization to deliver excellence today and let tomorrow evolve?
- What might happen if you maximized living in the temporary to such an extent that you generated pop-up innovation – ideas that in themselves had a powerful impact but only for a short period of time?
- What might happen if you worked with your organization to create a guiding aim that compelled your work forward instead of the classic strategic pillars and goals with metrics and outcomes?
- What might happen if you opened a conversation about this place of temporary and the stress it causes for other leaders in your organization?
- What might happen if you fully embraced what ‘living and leading in the temporary’ might enhance in your leadership?
- What might happen if your organization gathered the power of ‘living and leading in the temporary’ instead of planning for a return to normal?
I am wondering if some of these powerful questions and others that leaders might add in their own commentary would catapult ‘living & leading in the temporary’ to an extraordinary place of co-creation, where being and doing hold domain.
By being, I mean that state of hyper-attunement to the organization and the people within it. Sinking as a leader into self-awareness and awareness of others that can embody the best work in the temporary. I believe this attunement can not only mediate some of the despair that can get generated in the temporary but manifest hope, innovation, and trust.
By doing, I mean bringing the art of being to the possible. It might not be obvious where the right organizational path lays but, I believe, by creating conversations about powerful work in the temporary innovations will arise; new ideas will take hold, and excitement for leaning into an unknown future will flourish. It takes altering your gaze from the horizon to see what is right before you as a leader and doing that.
So I offer this as my commentary about ‘living and leading in the temporary’ in the hope that it prompts for every one of you as leaders an opportunity to be and do in new and powerful ways. And, I hope it creates space for you to reside with grace and skill in the state of neither hope nor despair – as you ‘live and lead in the temporary’ of leadership.
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