The Executive Leaders Program was facilitated by Andrew Stevens, Barry Bales & Diana Renner on behalf of Local Government Professionals SA. It was held over two intensives In August and October 2018.

It was without doubt one of the best professional development experiences I have had and am so grateful I had the opportunity to attend. If you have the opportunity to attend anything facilitated by Andrew, Diana or Barry I thoroughly recommend you do.

 My Epilogue from the Experience of XLP 18

Wow, what an experience XLP18 has been.

We covered a vast array of subjects and concepts over the journey, shared some amazing insights, learned a lot about ourselves and each other and had a wonderful and enjoyable time along the way.

We came together as an eclectic mix of professionals from across the Local Government sector, representing the city and country, from the biggest to some of the smallest Councils in the state, and came away with a shared journey that will link us all for the remainder of our careers. Our collective journey means something different to each of us who participated in XLP18, and the following is what it meant to me.

I did not know what to expect when I signed up for XLP18, but I knew it was something I needed to do and I am so thankful that I had this opportunity.

My key learnings, epiphanies and insights from the program are encapsulated under the following headings:

• Complexity,
• Awareness of Self and Others,
• Pause and Reflect,
• Love Self, and
• Best Self.

We must delight in the unknown, pause, reflect, listen and experience, we cannot let our egos get in the way of enlightenment.

Complexity

 The world does not think in complex terms, but it is complex.

One of the key themes of this program is learning to become more effective working in complex situations and to become comfortable in our complex world, our world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, our VUCA world.

For us to be successful in our complex world we need to advance our thinking capability, to vertically develop, the outcome being the ability to think in a more complex, systematic, strategic and interdependent manner. Traditionally we have focussed on skills and competencies, gaining expertise and knowledge to do the job. This knowledge is important; however by broadening perspectives, thinking deeper, reflecting and focusing on vertical development, we will become better at the activity of leadership. To be more effective leaders we need to be able to pause, take the time to think deeper and be more observant to interpret our world from a range of perspectives. We need to embrace complexity.

f we try to impose order through knowledge and expertise in a complex context we will fail, but those who can set the stage, step back a bit, allow patterns to emerge and determine which ones are desirable will succeed. They will discern many opportunities for innovation and creativity.

In order to vertically develop we need to free the mind in the first place, part of this is living in the moment and giving ourselves completely to the concepts and ways of thinking we have learned during XLP 18. To make this mental leap we need to look internally and change our thinking. This was the primary take home message of this course and is the challenge we now have before us.

The ability to pause and reflect is a key behaviour that will assist our vertical development.

Pause & Reflect

 Reflection turns experience into knowledge

 It is important that we learn to pause, step outside the square and create opportunity amongst the demands of the day to stop and reflect. Renner and D’Souza describe this through the concept of ‘not doing’, to pause, think and breathe. Not doing is being present, reflecting, letting the mind wander, recover, retrieve, refresh. Not doing is the antidote to our current view about how we get things done, which is traditionally by being busy, to control, to work hard, to work against the natural flow of things.

Cara Bradley in her article, ‘The Power of Pause’, identifies that we perform best and are most productive when we alternate between periods of intense focus and intermittent renewal. It is this renewal that we have ignored in our busy world and is a key learning of this program. We must commit time to pause.

We are starving for stillness and silence in our culture. You have to commit to taking time to pause. Taking time to just be still and quiet gives your nervous system a chance to regain balance.  Cara Bradley, ‘The Power of Pause’, 2018, upliftconnect.com

Our ability to pause and reflect will assist us to develop our awareness of self and others.

Awareness of Self and Others

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. Marilyn vos Savant

Another key theme of the program was observation, in particular our observations of ourselves and others. Our observations will heighten our awareness. We delved deep inside ourselves to identify our self-limiting behaviours, we got on the balcony to observe others, we developed psychological safety to enable us to fully engage with each other and we learned the art of powerful questions which will enable us to engage our best thinking about complex issues. These elements of the program have provided an opportunity for us to develop a greater awareness of ourselves and provided tools for us to further develop this awareness.

According to Bruce Lipton in his book ‘The Biology of Belief’ the story of evolution is the story of ascension to higher awareness. As humanity this is vitally important for our future. Lipton identifies in his book, ‘Spontaneous Evolution’ that human evolution is at a turning point where our old paradigm and a challenging awareness are uneasily trying to co-exist. He identifies that we are wedded by habit and tradition to an outmoded view of the universe and yet civilisation is pregnant with a new exciting and optimistic understanding of life.

This program has provided us with several insights into our own individual advance towards heightened awareness. One path to heightened awareness is being able to ‘walk in another’s shoes’ and see the world from other perspectives. A way to do this is to cultivate our Negative Capability. Negative Capability has been described as a ‘sublime expression of supreme empathy’, empathy being the capacity for participating in, experiencing and understanding another’s feelings or ideas. It’s a creative tool to help us understand each other, understand different points of views or different cultures so that we might be able to express them.

To be able to express this understanding, we also need to be great listeners. It’s often said listening is the most important communication skill. Listening has been defined as spiritual hospitality and the key to hospitality is ‘paying attention’, when we pay attention we divest ourselves of self-preoccupation. To be hospitable we have to get out of ourselves and become interested in the other. This will build our awareness of self and others.

Thundamentals in their song, ‘Got Love’ from the ‘So We Can Remember’ album perhaps describes this best:

And I believe in the phrase
“Stand for something or you might fall for anything”
So find me standing on my own two feet
Put my feet in your shoes, am I going to do?
You can walk a mile in my boots
I could do the same thing
And see how life is for you

For me, a deeper understanding of our need for heightened awareness of ourselves and each other is found by considering the importance of community. Bruce Lipton in ‘The Biology of Belief’ identifies our need to move on from Darwinian Theory which stresses the importance of individuals to one that stresses the importance of community. The Darwinian focus on the fitness of the individual de-emphasises the significance of communal cooperation in evolution. To provide emphasis on communal cooperation we can focus on our ascension to higher awareness of self and each other which will enable us to gain greater understanding, collaboration, empathy and fellowship. For us, as Local Government professionals, the improvement and wellbeing of our community is the essence of all that we do and maybe we need to walk a mile in our community’s shoes and not assume the role of expert as we are sometimes want to do.

Love Self

Survival of the most loving is the only ethic that will ensure not only a healthy personal life but also a healthy planet. Bruce Lipton

To love self is a combination of self-acceptance, self-assurance, self-awareness, kindness and respect for ourselves.

This program has identified we have to love ourselves for who we are. Loving ourselves is the most important means to develop our personal power.

According to Robert Firestone (www.psychologytoday.com), personal power is based on strength, confidence, and competence that individuals gradually acquire in the course of their development. It is self-assertion, and a natural, healthy striving for love, satisfaction and meaning in one’s interpersonal world. This type of power represents a movement toward self-realisation and transcendent goals in life; its primary aim is mastery of self, not others. Personal power is more an attitude or state of mind than an attempt to manoeuvre or control others. It is based on competence, vision, positive personal qualities, and service. When externalized it is likely to be more generous, creative and humane than other forms of power.

Personal power can be grown and developed. It is not bestowed on us but resides within us.

Insecurity stems from not only a lack of belief in oneself, but also a lack love towards ourselves. My message to myself is; “Believe in yourself, Love Yourself”.

To love ourselves means we can embrace our light and be the best version of ourselves as we can. To become the best version of myself will be the most important outcome of this program.

Best Self

Who are you to tell me how to live my life, cuz I won’t give this up.

These are my shoes, my view, my cue, to say I do give a fuck

And pretty soon I’m a’bloom and it’ll be alright

Everyday’s another chance to ignite

Cuz I’m addicted, I’m addicted, I’m addicted to this universal feeling called life

Bliss N Eso, from the song ‘Addicted’ on the Running on Air Album

 For me, everything we have learned through this program has centred on one thing, to become the best version of Tim that I can be, to be my Best Self. If we are all striving to be our best then individually and collectively we can achieve anything. It is incumbent on us all to be our best self, whatever that happens to be.

I draw much inspiration from the book ‘Age of Discovery’ by Goldin and Kutarna. They identify that our present age is a contest; between the good and bad consequences of global entanglement and human development, between the forces of inclusion and exclusion, between flourishing genius and flourishing risk. Whether we flourish or flounder and whether this century goes down as one of humanity’s best or worse, depends on what we all do to promote the possibilities and damper the dangers that the contest brings. We can achieve our own golden era, our own Renaissance, as the conditions are ripe. But we need to be determined because our new golden era will not simply arrive, we have to achieve it.

Goldin and Kutarna identify what we need to be to embrace our New Renaissance, to me this is what we need to be our Best Self.

We can be our Best Self by being bold and take a long term big picture view. It takes courage to hold onto the big picture, and even more to confront a prevailing pessimism with the case for confidence.

We can be our Best Self by being virtuous. Virtue is the quality of character to act as one should, even when doing so is difficult, or unpopular, or upsets vested interests.

We can be our Best Self by being honest. Honesty breeds trust, which is perhaps the essential attribute of a more robust and resilient humanity.

We can be our Best Self by being audacious. Fortune favours the bold. Amidst chaos and uncertainty, the most prudent course is to take risks.

We can be our Best Self by showing dignity; which is the practice of respecting and exploring one’s full potential as a human being.

The video linked below is by Elizabeth Ralph, it has a simple message on how we can become our Best Self and aligns with some of the key messages we have learned through the program.

https://vimeo.com/269919795?ref=em-share

Where to now …

Someone recently told me that Local Government is their safety blanket stopping them from following another path, perhaps it is also my safety blanket as well. I am motivated to take on board our learnings and be a more effective leader but perhaps my passions lie elsewhere and I need to find that. Maybe I will realise that I should heed the above advice and be more bold and audacious and take the leap out of the comfort zone.

I am committed to writing more and working towards a book. The path to writing the book will likely include a blog, articles, essays, poems and letters. I like to think this is where my main contribution to humanity lies. I will continue to research, discuss and think about what our next ‘ism’ should be as this, at the moment, is what I really want to write about. As humanity we’ve rewritten our mission statement several times from animism, polytheism, monotheism and now scientific materialism. Bruce Lipton would tell us that ‘holism’ is our evolving paradigm, Peter Ellyard talks of ‘planetism’, I like the thought of a version of communitarianism, the answer is likely to be a combination and/or version of all of these, or something even more profound and positive. But perhaps the answer will be found once I’ve worked out what the right question is. Perhaps that is where I need to focus my energy.

If I am to be successful with this, I am also going to have to take heed of some sage advice from Deb Richardson, and that is ‘to not to be a stranger to the world’. I need to add my voice to the public discourse, question our current paradigms and offer positive alternatives.

Apart from that I am committed to managing my energy more effectively given that Intensive 1 indicated I was heading for a full-fledged energy management crisis. So I am committed to managing my mental, spiritual, emotional and physical energy and have started a range of things I identified in Intensive 1 to achieve this.

Above all things, I am committed to my journey to be the best version of Tim I can be and I am eternally grateful of the opportunity of XLP 18 to help me on my way.