Accelerating the Development of Transformational Leaders
A key insight of Nick Jankel is both the vertical and horizontal development of transformational leaders, as with jazz musicians who improvise vertically (according to the harmonic chord changes) and horizontally (using the melody and lyrics of a song as basis).
—Greg Thomas
Nick Jankel
Today’s guest post, by author and leadership futurist Nick Jankel, is the first of two featuring an excerpt from his latest work, Now Lead the Change. Not only is it my favorite book on leadership published in 2020; I strongly endorse it a contemporary masterpiece in leadership literature.
In his 400 page tome, Jankel synthesizes decades of research, work with top executives in Fortune 500 firms, and inner-outer growth and change models into a work of art in which lay persons and experts desiring transformation will find guidance for wise choice-making in this chaotic age of transition.
In short, to-the-point chapters, he presents a set of integrated, developmental solutions to systemic challenges. Inner transformation, never easy, is nonetheless the first step, according to Jankel, who respects readers as individuals who can lead whether or not they have a title. A key insight is both the vertical and horizontal development of leaders, as with jazz musicians who improvise vertically (according to the harmonic chord changes) and horizontally (using the melody and lyrics of a song as basis).
Embedded below are gift instructions for a select few who will read closely and take immediate action. They (you?) will receive a free copy of Now Lead the Change and the opportunity to sign up for a free Master Class with the Jankel occurring this Thursday. Enjoy . . .
Excerpt from Now Lead the Change: Mastering Transformational Leadership by Nick Jankel
What the world needs now, more than ever, is leaders who have the skills and qualities needed to transform the business, social, and political models they inherited from the Industrial Age of advanced capitalism and adapt and upgrade them to ensure a flourishing and regenerative future for all. This great challenge for all of us leaders requires not just the addition of new capabilities, such as those in innovation and storytelling, but the unfolding of our developmental potential into a new stage of human development.
This stage-based lens forms the 5th “gem” or principle of the model and methodology of transformation that I have spent 3 decades co-creating: Bio-Transformation Theory & Practice®.
It appears that there is a ‘natural’ order of transformational development that unfolds as we consciously mature as adults. The child psychologist Jean Piaget was the first to carry out seminal studies into understanding the stages of development that we go through as we move from children (with plastic, creative brains) to adults (with strategic, focused brains).
More recently, research psychologists Lawrence Kohlberg (Theory of Moral Development), Carol Gilligan (Ethics of Care theory), Abraham Maslow (the Hierarchy of Needs), Clare Graves (Spiral Dynamics), Michael Lamport Commons (Model of Hierarchical Complexity), and Erik Erikson (eight stages of psychosocial development) have all suggested that we progress through various identifiable and archetypal developmental stages to achieve higher levels of thinking capacity. Philosophers like Sri Aurobindo and Ken Wilber have also contributed markedly to emergent adult development theories.
I find the insights from stage-based theories of adult development both powerful and persuasive. However, caveat emptor. Each developmental stage is idealized to provide insight. They are not to be taken literally. Every person has within them inconsistencies and tensions. As Walt Whitman said, we are large and we contradict ourselves. We are all on a spectrum rather than fully inhabiting a discrete stage; and we may exhibit thoughts and behaviors typical of a certain stage in one area of our life and those from a different stage in another sphere.
How to Best Use Developmental Stage Theories for Leadership
That said, I use developmental stage theories as lenses to help me understand crises and potentials within people, organizations, and systems; and to inspire and empower myself, and those I work with, to push ‘onwards and upwards’; continuously upgrading our consciousness so we can land more positive impact. I never use stage theories to be prescriptive or normative; or to judge or criticize others. Few of us need more criticism; or to be placed in yet another box.
I think of increasing cognitive capacity as “insightful action” or the development of “Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity” (C-BC). It is the capacity we have to generate solutions to ever more complex problems in our head; and then implementing those solutions in ever more complex systems with our hands. Amoeba have very low levels of Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity. This fits their very simple environment: move towards food. Move away from danger. That’s about it.
Transformational leaders have very high levels of Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity: they can understand how a national system of various tribes and ethnicities interacts with a global system of nations and worldviews; and how to intervene in the various systems to realize their transformational vision (from private conversations with specific individuals to speeches that are shared across global media).
As we mature, assuming we consciously choose to develop our Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity, we are more and more able to understand not just how to follow rules but how to break and shape rules; how to lead people along the non-linear process of transformation; and how to intervene in complex living, adaptive systems. Clearly, a transformational leader wants to develop Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity so he/she can engage with, and then solve, complex Transformational Challenges in often-chaotic, stressed, and interdependent systems. This is what I call the vertical direction of intentional consciousness expansion.
Organizational theorists Herb Koplowitz and Elliott Jaques have suggested that as long as managers are one or more developmental stage higher than those they manage, then they will be making more nuanced choices that fit the level of complexity outside the organization. In other words, as long as we have higher levels of Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity at the top of the leadership ladder than at the bottom, then our organization will be well placed for adaptive, agile, and transformative strategies that can keep us surviving and thriving in the VUCA—Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous—world.
However, many experiences at the front lines of disruption have shown me that this is anything but true. Many senior leaders are actually less able to think systemically and paradoxically than some of their more junior counterparts. Research shows that whereas IQ—a proxy for Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity—is a good predictor for the overall pay grade one reaches in an organization, it is actually emotional intelligence that is a better predictor of the level reached once we achieve a leadership position. In fact, the further up the organization we get, the more important emotional/interoceptive intelligence becomes. Over 50 years of research has shown that emotional intelligence is two hundred percent better at predicting leadership effectiveness than is IQ.
Learning the Hard Way: My First Start-Up
I discovered this inalienable and unalloyed truth the hard way. My first start-up, which I co-founded when I was 24, quickly grew a reputation as an innovation powerhouse with dazzling C-BC tools and techniques for driving disruptive and systemic innovations into complex markets. Yet, without much wisdom, we also grew a reputation for having a revolving door. We hired the wrong kinds of people (going for IQ over Emotional Intelligence, or EQ) and I, for one, managed our people poorly. We ended up with a brilliant business that was making lots of money doing very prestigious consulting projects. But the company was doing innovation that was not guided by a genuine purpose (a matter of the heart not head); and had a fast-paced creative and empowering culture ... that was also missing some relaxedness, compassion, and vulnerability.
As business psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a lecturer at University College London and Columbia, makes clear in his book Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?, emotionally-stunted people (mostly men) still rise up the leadership ladder. This is because many companies are still part of an old world order that rewards power, smarts, and confidence over creativity, wisdom, and connection. ‘Toxic’masculine values and habits are still dominant, whether in the ‘strong man’ culture of mainstream corporations and nations, or in the ‘tech bro’ culture of Silicon Valley.
This has been compounded by the reality that trauma, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), outdated moral and social conventions, and a failing education system all interrupt the progression of emotional intelligence, locking people in power in ever-decreasing circles of effectiveness. They may be productive and profitable, but their reliance on power over people in a hierarchy—rather than power to enable and enlighten people to be creative in a network—massively reduces their capability for transformation. Because of the VUCA reality and massive adaptive pressures for all, the writing is on the wall for this kind of leadership. A flourishing future of work requires us leaders to recalibrate the workplace away from ‘toxic masculinity’ to be more aligned with what some consider to be the ‘feminine’: relational, holistic, vulnerable, insightful.
While Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity matches well to the level of education and managerial position achieved by a leader, one could argue that in our technocratic, metrics-obsessed, extractive modern societies, emotional intelligence is often inversely related to conventional achievement levels. That is to say, my kids are often better at trust, intimacy, listening, compassion, and even co-creative ideation than many of those in positions of great power. Such differences between generations is stark: many Millenials and Gen Z grew up in a culture where vulnerability, transparency, spirituality, and embodiment practices have been elemental parts of life. They are often wiser, in an embodied sense, than their boss’ bosses are.
Matching Cognitive and Emotional Complexity in BodyMinds for Wisdom’s Sake
We cannot permanently reach the highest levels of Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity without matching our smarts with an expansion of emotional intelligence within our body and mind. We can peek into the awesome transformational capabilities that arise in the highest stages of C-BC; but we will not be able to land truly transformational projects that regenerate systems without real wisdom; and that wisdom needs to be fully integrated and embodied within our minds and our hearts.
If we lack such wisdom, we will likely end up injecting into our organizations/systems what Carl Jung called our ‘shadow’: unacknowledged and disembodied parts of ourselves (both conventionally ‘good’ and ‘bad’). This often shows up as what people call ‘toxic masculinity’ (narcissism, obsessive meritocracy/competitive-ness, arrogance, bullying, heartlessness, and tyranny from above) and ‘toxic femininity’ (victimhood, passivity, artificial niceness, obsessive flatness/consensus, and tyranny from below).
Possibly because most of the developmental stage thinkers were, and are, people working in a rationalist paradigm within academia, the focus of most of the developmental models has been how we think and act—the head and hands of our 4H model—rather than how we feel and sense in our heart and hara (a term from Zen Buddhism denoting the visceral center of our felt senses). I believe it is crucial to include in any developmental model the reality that we can, and must, consciously develop our emotional and interoceptive intelligence as we go through life. We want to become ever more wise, not just smart.
We call this “embodied wisdom” or “Interoceptive-Affective Complexity” (I-AC). I think of this as the horizontal development of conscious expansion. Interoceptive- Affective Complexity is less showy than Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity. But perhaps it is more important. Interoceptive-Affective Complexity contains, yet expands profoundly upon, traditional notions of emotional intelligence. On this horizontal axis of development, we aim for mastery of: our senses so we can transmute suffering in the systems we touch; the ability to repair ruptured relational fields with speed and elegance; the capacity to innovate anything to adapt it to the changing world; and becoming ever more stable, compassionate, and forgiving leaders, no matter how loud and stormy the headwinds of change are.
[To register for a free Master Class with Nick Jankel, “The Six Spirals of Transformational Action,” on Thursday, Jan. 28th from 11 am - 12 noon ET, click here. And the first 10 people who respond to this post by email, and write the word “Transform” in the Subject line, will receive a free digital copy of Now Lead the Change.]
Interoceptive-Affective Complexity, embodied wisdom, includes skills and qualities like: speed and alacrity in owning our own protective patterns; a rapidity of both forgiving and apologizing; humility in balance with hubris; a sense of spaciousness in the body and around us; regulation of our emotions; making consistent ‘progress’ in healing our traumas and wounding within; awareness within our sensory self; integrity and trust in our relationships; maintaining clear and strong yet compassionate and semi-permeable boundaries; a preference for participation as much as control; cultivating reciprocity and co-creativity within our networks; ‘feeling the room’ and ‘sensing the music in the system’; being present and truly listening to others; openheartedness, compassion, and kindness even when we don’t like someone; a disinterest in being ‘cool’ or being recognized for one’s genius; a nobility of intent whether in a factory or festival; treating everyone as an equal in worth as a citizen, whether plumber or Nobel Prize winner; ‘holding space’ and creating safe spaces for transformation; deep listening, attuning, and mirroring; nurturing weak ties without manipulation; sensing weak signals that presage major change.
As transformational leaders we want to be developing both vertical Cognitive-Behavioral Complexity and horizontal Interoceptive-Affective Complexity. We want our wisdom to melt the seeming dualistic polarities of cognitive brilliance and emotional openness into a dialogical “Highest Common Factor” that affords us full transformational potency.
In the second excerpt from Now Lead the Change, Jankel will relate the potential value of what he calls the “double-helix” of cognitive and emotional development for leaders, and the dangers of not embracing both as necessary dance moves to groove with the momentous changes that leaders must improvise on and with in an emerging new system . . .
If you have yet to register for our free online event this Thursday from 1:30-3:00 pm ET, limited availability remains. Click the image, register, and join us.
