With respect to the late and great Otis Redding, who popularized the song in 1967, VIM Executive Coaching would like to “borrow” the title for this post on executive leadership. To be completely transparent (and not to make this post a journey down music history lane) the song was actually written during the worst of the Great Depression in 1932. And maybe, that is the point of this post.
There is nothing new
For there really is nothing new under the sun. The tools have changed, the settings have changed, the way we communicate has changed, but executive leadership – at its core – has remained rather fixed over the eons.
Ah, but we can already hear the protestations, that executives have become more awake, aware, and in-touch with the issues. Of that point, we do not necessarily fall into a lock-step.
As executive coaches, we have seen and we can name many examples of 2023 executive inflexibility, bias, moral righteousness and indignation to the extreme, of leadership saying one thing and doing the other. This is occurring regardless of gender, industry, age and orientation.
Some, might call the above “gaslighting,” it is a nice, neat expression most often, incorrectly used. We prefer a more ancient, yet highly relevant and current practice called mindfulness. Rather, a lack of mindfulness.
Try a little tenderness?
How do we tie all of this together? How do executive leadership, tenderness, gaslighting and mindfulness interconnect? VIM Executive Coaching is willing to hazard a guess that you intuitively see the connections as we speak.
While we understand the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion; while we embrace the larger issue of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), we realize that DEI and ESG are just terms unless the executives applying those terms are mindful. Trying a little tenderness was, in its day, a plea for greater mindfulness of what “the other” was going through. In other words, a sense of empathy.
Empathy leads to authenticity, which must lead to compassion. The world of leadership, the great lecturers and prognosticators on the future of leadership understand that without a sense of mindfulness, none of this authentic leadership stuff works.
We seem to be in an era of great “outrage” and yet, before any executive leader can stammer and pronounce on sweeping change within their organizations, the first of those changes must occur to self. They cannot be disconnected.
Executive leadership requires mindfulness. Whether the executive screams for greater inclusion, zero emissions or transparency in the international sales process, the executive must also have an awareness of who they are in that moment and every moment.
Mindfulness requires an awareness not only of broad, sweeping and even esoteric changes on grand scales, but within self. No executive can hope to know what is best for everyone else, unless they are mindful enough to be tender and compassionate toward self. For invariably, if the hypocrisy and disconnect continues, it will sure manifest itself in the executive.
We well recall the case of an executive leader a few years ago who railed against sexual harassment and abuse in their organization (an absolutely needed set of policies). However, the leader was found committing multiple violations of the policy with subordinates. The executive was let go, but not before the entire organization was shamed.
Perhaps the executive needed to apply compassion and tenderness to self, many years before, to understand why those tendencies were improper. The self-awareness might have been life changing.
To first be an agent of change, every executive leader must be the mindful change within themselves.