There is a Middle Eastern proverb that states: “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
This quote encourages courage and boldness in pursuing one’s dreams. It signifies that one must be willing to leave their comfort zone and face the unknown to achieve great things.
My name is Sophie Jules and I will take you away from the shore into the world of human possibility and new views of leadership and personal development.
A while ago in my previous company, we decided that after all the pandemic issues, we needed a team-building event, so we organised it.
All staff had to do some preparation in their teams beforehand, and you could feel the excitement growing day by day. The day comes and it was a beautiful day, we were all outside – for people who live in the Middle East it was close to the end of the year so being outside was actually a blessing and not a roasting.
With many backpacks of different nationalities and even more different life views and cultures, our workforce was dancing, doing physical activities, interacting laughing and being together. A great success!
Whilst walking back to my car I got into a conversation with one of the employees and after sharing some pleasantries and stories about the day, he – with a different composure on his face – mentioned that unfortunately working life will start again as normal on Monday, back to the silos, the blaming, and the loneliness of being an intellectual capital worker….
Hmm, I didn’t expect that, but was massively grateful for the employee’s candidness and honesty. On Monday in office, I had a recap meeting with the CEO on the team-building and he then asked, so, are we fixed? Is everybody happy again? A long conversation followed in which he opened himself to a more vulnerable person in admitting this is one of the things that keep him awake at night.
Have you ever asked your CEO’s what keeps them awake at night? Them being one of your stakeholders, that would make sense, right?
Some of you might, some of you might not.
Looking at the most recent CEO survey from PWC, 40% globally of these top leaders don’t believe their company is economically viable for the next decade if they continue their current course.
The top reasons for this they name to be:
- the economic uncertainties,
- changes in regulation and
- the shortage of new skills in the workforce.
Let us dive into these skills later.
After several years of focus to be ‘fit for crisis’, now many are refocusing their strategy to be ‘fit for growth’, which they are doing by focusing on reducing operating costs but even to a larger extent by defining key themes that are important to leadership and company culture:
- trust,
- adaptability,
- curiosity and
- a continuous learning mindset.
A shift towards a new holistic approach when it comes to leadership development and cultural transformation is knocking at the corporate door.
Several other shifts or transformations already have entered through that same door during the ongoing 4th Industrial Revolution.
The best way to reflect on this is by looking at how complex the role of a CEO has become over the last 15 to 20 years and therefor how many additions were made to the C-suite as a direct delegation of parts of the CEO’s role:
Think of the roles of Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Technology Officer and the uplift of the Human Resources position to a direct report of the CEO as CHRO or CPO.
All of these carry the duty and responsibility to meet the relevant needs of their organisations. Still there is no C-suite role who carries the responsibility and holds the mandate to meet the need of the workforce.
Enter the Chief of Inner Growth.
A new type of executive role that will be emerging in today’s business world with a duty and goal to create a culture of continuous learning and development, not only on technical or hard skills but even more so on human skills (I don’t like the word soft skills) and qualities of individuals. Their strategies will accelerate the companies’ triple bottom line of profit, people and planet in a sustainable way.
Why is there a need for a Chief of Inner Growth?
The traditional model of leadership in business has been focused on achieving short-term financial results at all costs. This model has created a culture of competition, stress, and burnout that is unsustainable in the long term. Companies that rely on this model of leadership are at risk of losing their most valuable asset – their people.
In contrast, the Chief of Inner Growth model is focused on creating a culture of continuous learning and development that supports sustainable change in profit, people, and planet. This model recognizes that the success of a company is not just about achieving financial results but also about creating a positive impact on society and the environment. It starts with considering employees in a more holistic way and brings them back from human doings to human beings.
Inner growth is essential for companies to thrive in today’s environment. Inner growth involves developing the mindset, skills, and attitudes necessary to navigate the challenges of today’s world.
This includes developing emotional intelligence, empathy, self-awareness, resilience, and adaptability.
Inner growth also involves developing a growth mindset, which is the belief that we can learn and grow from our experiences and challenges.
But why creating a C-Suite role for it, you are probably thinking?
Change is difficult for the human species as such and to create the buy in of this shift in mindset, in approaching employees holistically, there needs to be a platform of trust. The novelty shouldn’t feel like a seed in contaminated soil but as new soil all together, a tabula rasa as such.
Think of the top athletes of the world, whether they are in soccer or in tennis or any other sports, they have a trainer or let’s say coach, right? A skilled person who helps them to improve on their technical skills and physical strategies, over and over again, but would they win each game because of this? No, they don’t, and there is a huge mental load on them, therefore also in sports more and more top athletes and big teams have contracted with mental performance coaches, the ones who will work with them on their resilience, self-compassion and inner growth.
The existing roles in organisations are the coaches who tell employees WHAT to do, the new role of growth will guide employees to find out HOW to do it, for themselves. It is the missing puzzle piece that brings them all together.
Remember in the beginning that we spoke about the three biggest causes that CEO’s address as reasons not to be economically viable in the next decade, well now, let us discuss these…as these would be on the plate, or to make it more tangible, on the job description of our Chief of Inner growth.
Quickly one could think of the new let’s say technical skills people need to have, like, a prompting engineer ( someone who knows very well which prompts to give to Generative artificial intelligence like an openAI platform)
Or Green energy specialist, or cyber security experts…and many more.
All of those are of course completely correct and will see a massive uprise in the foreseeable future. But human employees are not just the technical skills to do a job, they come as a whole person and the added complexities that nowadays world of world has daily dealings with.
In order to handle these uncertainties, the role would have to look at following 5 dimensions:
- Promoting a relationship of each employee with themselves, this looks at having and knowing their inner compass, being in a state of openness, having self-awareness, authenticity, a curiosity and willingness to embrace change and grow and being Mindful as in having a presence in the NOW.
- Promoting the development of cognitive skills by taking different perspectives, enhancing critical thinking, sense making, an understanding of complex systemic conditions and working on long term orientation and visioning.
- Enhancing the relationship factor in the workplace as a place of connectedness, appreciation, humility and empathy and compassion
- Working on newer collaborating skills and competences of active listening, co-creation skills, trust, inspirations, inclusiveness, and intercultural competencies
- Driving further change by acting with qualities such as courage, optimism, creativity and perseverance.
Excited for this new role?
That sounds like a full plate, right?
You might think, that is all nice and jolly, but probably just an opinion of Sophie Jules alone, a new trend sort of speak that comes and goes just like hybrid working….well, actually, it is not, as some much wiser people than myself have had a similar thought, not about the Chief of Inner growth, but about the dimensions I just talked about.
In 2023 there was an article in McKinsey Quarterly on New Leadership for a new era of thriving organizations in which they dive into companies like Allianz, Microsoft, Haier and their trailblazing organizational approaches of creating sustainable, inclusive growth. It calls on leaders to make an evolutionary shift beyond the standard expectations in which they need to reimagine themselves, undertaking inner work to shift their mindsets and consciousness to see the world anew. The five critical shifts that were mentioned are:
- Beyond profit to impact
- Beyond competition to Cocreation
- Beyond command to Collaboration
- Beyond control to evolution and
- Beyond expectations to wholeness
In 2019 a new movement has started to take shape which is named the Inner Development Goals, or IDG’s in short. It is a not for profit, open-source initiative, as the initiative has co-creation at its center with ongoing development and input from more and more experts, scientists, practitioners and organisations around the world.
How did they come about this initiative?
Well, looking back at 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals gave us a comprehensive plan for a sustainable world by 2030.
The 17 goals cover a wide range of issues that involve people with different needs, values, and convictions. There is a vision of what needs to happen, but progress along this vision has so far been disappointing.
We lack the inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment and challenges. Fortunately, modern research shows that the inner abilities we now all need can be developed. This was the starting point for the ‘Inner Development Goals’ initiative.
The IDGs will provide an essential framework of transformative skills for sustainable development, a field-kit (in co-creation now) on how to develop these necessary skills – open source and free for all to use.
The current IDGs framework represents 5 dimensions and 23 skills and qualities which are especially crucial for leaders who address SDGs, but fundamentally for all of us! It is the greatest possible accelerator to reach the Sustainable Development Goals and create a prosperous future for all humanity.
So, how can companies embrace the new paradigm of leadership that is focused on inner growth and development? Here are a few key steps:
Let us recap what we spoke about:
- the world we live in today is more complex and interconnected than ever before.
- Companies who are ready to embrace a new paradigm of leadership that is focused on inner growth and development are better positioned to thrive in this environment.
- The Chief of Inner Growth is a key role that can help organizations to foster a culture of personal growth and development, attract and retain top talent, create a more engaged and motivated workforce, and build a more resilient and adaptable organization.
- From human doings back to human beings will bring sustainable development for people, profit and planet.
Are you excited… do you agree with the need for companies to start working in a different way than before to safeguard their economic value and even grow it by making their employees grow internally?
