We live and work in an age of extreme uncertainty and severe disruption. Leaders today face the complex systemic challenges of a global pandemic, racial inequality, climate change, and economic calamity. More than in recent memory, people seek coherence, empathy, guidance, and support. Perhaps more than ever, there is a need for greater leadership wisdom in meeting the needs of people, organizations, and communities.
The organization of today and tomorrow is evolving as a networked entity with leadership roles broadly distributed across loosely-defined structures. Leaders are no longer just at the top of the pyramid or the center of the lattice; they are deep in the organization and on its outer edges. The nature of work is cooperative, information-driven, and fragmented. Digital technologies continue to transform how people connect, communicate, and collaborate.
For these reasons, the many forms of leadership are evolving as well. Leaders guide processes, programs, projects, teams, functions, and organizations. Leaders also steer emergent networks, virtual communities, and other webs of activity in culturally diverse ecosystems. The nature of leadership is becoming less formal, less hierarchical, and more about guiding, influencing, and supporting the achievement of results without depending on role-based authority.
Based on three decades of experience in working closely with hundreds of organizations and their leaders and management teams, I propose a simple definition for wisdom in the context of leadership. Leadership wisdom is the combined use of awareness, experience, and insight to set direction, empower people, ensure wellbeing, and guide activity to achieve lasting results. Integrating extensive personal experience with key concepts from the research-driven work of Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence, Joyce and Bob Hogan on the science of personality, Carol Dweck on growth mindset, and Robert Sternberg on the synthesis of wisdom, intelligence, and creativity, the following outlines four pillars of leadership wisdom.
Pillar 1: Wise leaders develop and apply an effective perception of reality. They understand we are interdependent in a relational world, and believe that diversity and inclusion are essential to expand awareness and gain critical insight. They apply a panoramic, non-dualistic view to scan the landscape, understand the dynamic environment, recognize patterns, and see total systems. They process information without unhelpful judging, filtering, or motivated reasoning. They are aware of their own conditioned biases and cognitive distortions.
Wise leaders transcend ego-driven self-identity in optimizing stakeholder value. They relentlessly question, actively listen, and continuously learn. They are committed to doing the right things in the right ways for the right reasons regardless of internal or external conditions. They show careful discernment in their critical thinking to efficiently make decisions without unnecessary data and analytics. They balance short-term needs with long-term goals, combine idealistic values with hard-boiled realities, and inspire hope about the future.
Consider how a leader at a life sciences company immersed herself and her team in studying the changing dynamics of distribution in their industry, and as a result, found new ways to harmonize interactions with channel partners and grow revenue of higher margin products.*
Pillar 2: Wise leaders create the conditions for people to do their best work. With a clear mission and strategy, they communicate the critical-few priorities and the path forward. They empower people through well-defined performance expectations, desired behaviors, and cultural norms. They consistently lead at the proper altitude given the situation, aligning, coordinating, and guiding activity to achieve results. They give people the necessary resources and discretion to do their work using good processes the people themselves help to create and improve.
Wise leaders encourage experimentation and openly talk about failures and successes. They give people access to real-time performance information and the elbow-room to act on it. They encourage people to solve tough problems and make important decisions within defined boundaries. They are willing to have meaningful conversations, knowing that quality interactions are more important than technology platforms to real productivity. They let people know they matter, show how their work contributes to success, and reward them for their contribution.
Consider how a leader at a research organization implemented new protocols for communicating and collaborating that shifted the emphasis from volume of work activities to impact from key priorities, and as a result, increased total productivity while reducing overall workload.*
Pillar 3: Wise leaders shape a climate of trust through personal integrity. They are candid and honest. They pursue the truth in good faith andare open to changing their mind. They do not lie or omit information on purpose, and do not minimize or magnify reality. They do not horde information and are willing to share it. They are open and receptive to new ideas they may not agree with or did not originate. They encourage feedback, are sincerely interested in acting on that feedback, and close the loop with people on why or why not action was taken.
Wise leaders are reliable and predictable in their values-driven behavior. They build trust and stability through a coherent leadership approach. Mostly operating in the middle of the delegation continuum, they consistently provide needed direction and carefully avoid macro-management (hands-off command) and micro-management (hands-on control). They create psychologically safe spaces for improvement by treating people with fairness, respect, and dignity. They are always helpful and committed to service inside and outside the enterprise.
Consider how the leader of a professional services firm managed his team during an economic crisis by reinforcing four core values in every case of difficult decision-making, and as a result, reduced expenses, retained the best employees, and maintained client service standards.*
Pillar 4: Above all else, wise leaders personify the spirit of positive equanimity. They welcome every situation as an opportunity to learn and serve, and show a calm, composed, and dignified attitude of appreciating each life experience. With an alert awareness, they are both deliberate and agile, less automatic and more intentional. Comfortable with impermanence as the natural state, they demonstrate the mindful practice of continuous flow: being present, resisting distractions, navigating situations, and staying focused on what matters most.
Wise leaders are purpose-driven in positive equanimity. They do not impulsively react to random distractions or overreact to difficult circumstances. Even-keeled and resilient, they reframe situations to keep them in perspective, and meet external complexity with internal simplicity. They establish a rhythm, a management cadence, for daily and weekly activities. They take initiative, do not wait for change to happen to them, and do not back-down from hard decisions. They are humble but also confident, careful but also bold, and patient but also tenacious.
Consider how a new leader at a healthcare system navigated a steep learning curve by reframing challenging situations in real-time as exactly what was needed, in the spirit of acceptance and gratitude, and as a result, accelerated her path-to-full-competence in the role.*
Concluding Thoughts
The pillars of wisdom-in-practice relate to reality, priority, integrity, and equanimity. These pillars rise from a shared foundation of empathy. Wise leaders show empathy and compassion in leading from both the head and the heart. Over time, they become more open, not closed, to the struggles of the human condition. They do not denigrate, humiliate, or manipulate people. They know the deepest truth that cruelty is weakness and kindness is strength. They care about the well-being of people and support good practices for healthy mind, body, and spirit.
Leadership is an ongoing process of discovery, learning, and application. Leadership capability develops from participation in diverse projects, roles, and teams that bring greater depth and breadth of experience and expertise. Leadership wisdom develops from active engagement, objective observation, and deep reflection. The nature of leadership is changing. More than ever, wise leaders are essential for the conscious evolution of our world.
*Examples reflect actual leaders whose names are withheld due to client confidentiality.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1993). The Evolving Self. HarperCollins.
Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization. Wiley.
Goleman, D. (2006). Emotional Intelligence. Bantam.
Hogan, R. (2017). Personality and the Fate of Organizations. Psychology Press.
Sternberg, R.J. (2007). A Systems Model of Leadership: WICS. American Psychologist, 62(1), 34.
