Yesterday's "rules" of leadership don't seem to work any more. Things are much more complex than they used to be, you have a lot more players and people to juggle and please, and you never seem to have the time to do everything you need to. With changes in technology, regulatory changes, multiple generations in the workforce, multiple stakeholders to juggle and the day-to-day fires that have to be put out, it's hard to step out of the busy-ness to actually be strategic and lead. Today's busy-ness and hectic pace are signs showing us that the way we've been doing things aren't working any more.

You are listening to Kathy Jourdain, President and Ravi Tangri, CEO

Just as the industrial age called for new ways of working and leading, moving out of the industrial age is demanding new leadership - Co-Creative Leadership.

Over the past 30 years or so we've talked a lot about the visionary leader or transformation leader who has a great vision and inspires others to follow him or her.

Unfortunately, the problems in the workplace today are often too complex for one person to have a clear vision of what to do. You often only have part of the picture.

As a leader you're supposed to know what's happening and where you want to go. You're supposed to have all the answers and make all the decisions.

It used to be that decisions were black-and-white. Today it can seem like it's all shades of grey. With so many players involved, you're never quite sure how everyone is going to act or react, and yet you're responsible for the outcome.

Today, you rarely have all the information you need, and taking action without that information can create more challenges than you started out with.

Itís no wonder that today's executives' greatest fear is of being exposed as an imposter.

This is a tough place for leaders - the rules of the game have changed and nobody has the new playbook. And as a leader, you're not supposed to admit that you're not sure of what to do, are you?

Fortunately, there's a new playbook to deal with the challenges we face today. Co-Creative Leadership is a proven approach in dealing with complex situations, multiple players and uncertainty.

Co-Creative Leadership means letting go of the outcome and trying to control everything (of course you never could control everything - that was simply an illusion), and opening the door to all the others involved in the situation to create a new way forward. You control the right things, not every-thing.

Being a Co-Creative Leader means stepping away from traditional leadership models which, like the Emperor's New Clothes, have left many leaders standing naked in the face of today's complex problems.

The old control-based approaches simply do not work today (if they ever did).

To find out how Chrysalis supports you in growing your co-creative leadership, click here.

What Makes Co-Creative Leadership Effective

While the traditional leader was supposed to have all the answers and make all the decisions, the Co-Creative Leader acknowledges that no one person has all the answers. In fact, even a senior management team does not have all the knowledge of the organization as a whole.

Co-Creative Leaders admit that they don't have all the information or 'the answer' and engage and tap into the collective wisdom of the broader community of stakeholders. By engaging all the players in strategic and meaningful conversations, the Co-Creative Leader goes beyond traditional negotiation to allow the entire community of players to understand each other and create new win-win-win ways forward.

Co-Creative Leaders practice the Art of Hosting and Convening Strategic and Meaningful Conversations to find new ways forward. These conversations are the DNA of effective learning organizations.

Traditional facilitation can involve, with a good facilitator, up to fifty people, with the facilitator up front conducting the process. In contrast, hosting can actively involve literally hundreds or thousands of people in forging the way forward.

Imagine taking your entire organization - a hundred people, a thousand, two thousand - away for three days to develop your strategic plan.

That's what hosting allows you to do.

In fact, at Chrysalis, we've found that a strategic combination of both facilitation of small groups and hosting large communities produces powerful results.

To find out how we can help you engage your key players, click here.

The biggest problem with most plans is implementation because there is no buy-in and commitment.

Imagine the commitment if everyone has been a part of creating the plan.

The challenge here is the perceived loss of control by the leader. The reality is that there is no control anyway if people don't buy into your plan. It takes courage to step out and share the power. That's the courage of the Co- Creative Leader.

And, of course, it takes time. That's the second biggest argument to engaging everyone. "There's no time. We have to act now."

Why Co-Creative Leaders Take Wise Action, Not Re-actions

It can often feel like everyone is after you for your time and input, that everything has to be done right now, and there's no time to think things through properly.

Traditional leadership calls for quick, decisive action, even when all of the facts and perspectives are not known. Unfortunately, that lack of information and limited perspective can cause far more problems down the line than you were facing to start with.

It seems you never have the time to do it right the first time, but you always have the time to fix the problems that emerge later.

In contrast to this, the Co-Creative Leader invests the time required to engage all players in strategic and meaningful conversations. They also invest the time required to go through the U-Process, a proven framework for initiating large- scale change when many players are involved. The U-Process is the difference between action and wise action.

The first stage of the U-Process is sensing, where you go out to the system, ideally with representation from the whole system, and find out what all the different views and perspectives and perceptions are.

Only when you have the whole picture through sensing can you move to the second stage, presencing, at the bottom of the "U", where you dig underneath all you've learned to surface the root, systemic issues that are causing the symptoms that most people are reacting to.

It is only at this point, when you have identified the root systemic issues that you move up the right-hand side of the "U" into realizing to start paving ways forward. It is here where real innovation happens, where you can find new ways forward that you never dreamed possible before.

This is the difference between taking action and taking wise action.

Click here to find out how you can make this difference.

Where Co-Creative Leadership Starts

Co-Creative Leadership starts within. Co-Creative Leaders first and foremost have a clear sense of purpose - they are absolutely connected to their inner core of meaning and motivation - and they connect that purpose with their work.

The traditional model of leadership says that you need to focus on facts and data and hard business. That's why it's so limited.

Truly high-performing individuals and organizations have a clear sense of purpose and meaning in their work - that is why they excel on a consistent, ongoing basis.

Once Co-Creative Leaders are anchored in their own sense of purpose, they help their core team create a shared sense of purpose in their work. This can be challenging with teams that have been working with long-standing tensions and conflict (working in spite of themselves, you could say) but it can be done.

At the bottom of the "U", in presencing, Co-Creative Leaders connects their personal sense of purpose with the issues that they are dealing with to identify what aspects of these problems - and their solutions - they will "own" to make sure the ways forward come to pass. Only with passion comes commitment.

If there are other individuals and organizations involved, Co-Creative Leaders continue this process to grow a strong sense of shared purpose for the work they are doing. Purpose (the "why") comes first. The how and what comes much easier once you know the "why".

Chrysalis has long-standing expertise in helping leaders connect with their core sense of purpose and craft their personal leadership from that base. Contact us to find out how.

How Chrysalis Helps You Grow Co-Creative Leadership

Chrysalis focuses on evolving leadership with the fusion of the Art of Hosting and the U-Process to engage all key players in creating new win-win-win solutions that everyone co-creates and is committed to making work.

We help Co-Creative Leaders host the meaningful conversations they need, and we act as strategic thinking partners for Co-Creative Leaders in finding new ways forward. We support you in awakening possibilities and in bringing forth what you know is possible.

Our Discovery Program has been helping leaders gain absolute clarity on their core purpose and how to use that clarity to create the success they want for over 15 years. We also work with leaders one-on-one with our Purpose Coaching to gain that same focus.

We can support you with coaching, and we can help you bring even dysfunctional teams into alignment and high-performance.

E-mail us to find out more about Co-Creative Leadership and how we can help you grow Co-Creative Leadership for yourself, your organization and your community.