Cultivating Wisdom
When we consider leadership skills and qualities essential to being effective, a plethora of words make the list—confidence, competence, communication, innovation, empathy, inspiration, self-awareness, adaptability and many more. These values and behaviors translate into leadership styles that people respect and are willing to commit working for.
When I saw a story about the Friendship Bench, it prompted me to ask myself: what place does wisdom hold in the landscape of leadership? Wisdom seems to have been relegated to an all but forgotten place of old-time thinking that is no longer viewed as either something to pursue or to seek out in others—unless it’s a mentor relationship.
Dr. Dixon Chibanda, pictured above, is a leader in the global conversation to democratize mental health care, a published researcher, and author of The Friendship Bench: How Fourteen Grandmothers Inspired a Mental Health Revolution. A practicing medical doctor and professor of Psychiatry & Global Mental Health at the University of Zimbabwe and The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Dr. Chibanda was distressed by the staggering ratio of psychiatrists to the Zimbabwe population—one psychiatrist for every one million people. With a mind to tackle a seemingly impossible task, Dr. Chibanda launched the Friendship Bench in 2006, a community-driven initiative to address the dire lack of mental health care.
Dr. Chibanda started by training over 700 grandmothers in evidence-based talk therapy to serve as lay health workers. He chose grandmothers because they were the backbone of the community. He saw the value and wisdom of elders in fostering intergenerational connectedness and helping those suffering from anxiety or depression. The elders sit with people on outdoor benches, speaking one-on-one and providing life wisdom and guidance.
The Friendship Bench has been incredibly successful, expanding around the globe to ten countries. Volunteer workers have seen over 700,000 people. Their collective wisdom and knowledge have been instrumental in providing healing and belonging to those in need.
Intergenerational ensembles are fairly common in jazz. Traditionally, reverence for the talent and experience of elder players is widely held and expressed. This is one of the reasons why jazz is an exceptional metaphor for high performance in the workplace.
So, how do we cultivate wisdom and bring the elements of that lived experience to our leadership journey?
Author and speaker Chip Conley wants us to embrace wisdom. As there are typically five generations in the workplace at any time, Conley is striving to create intergenerational wisdom there. He sees this happening by matching smart young talent with elder workers. Shifting the notion of the elder to “modern elder” is how he brings value back to those who have the institutional knowledge, decades of emotional intelligence, good judgment, and humility. As wisdom-workers, Conley contends that there should be mutual mentorship for an intergenerational flow of wisdom, and that wisdom can be valued as much as disruption.
Conley has four lessons that he says a modern elder can offer:
Evolve by being willing to shed parts of your identity and knowledge
Learn continually (as in the JLP Practice of In the Shed)
Collaborate as an essential part of working well together (as in the JLP Principles of Shared Leadership & Ensemble Mindset)
Counsel by listening (as in the JLP Practice of Big Ears) to and for the stories of young leaders
There has certainly been a shift, over several generations, to admire and value youth across industries. It would serve us well to seek out the wisdom of elders, welcoming and respecting the sage lessons their life experience can teach us on our leadership journeys.
