Hi, my name is Sharon Olivier and I am going to talk to you today in this short video about chapter 5 of our book which we've called Eco-Intelligence. Eco-Intelligence is probably the most emergent, relevant intelligence in our world today in these turbulent times that we move in today. We've used the word eco specifically because we refer to organizations as living, messy ecosystems with many different interdependent parts all interacting with each other in a non-linear, complex way, as opposed to the view of organization as a well-oiled machine or hierarchy of linear processes. When I asked a leader the other day on a program, what does it feel like for you to lead in your organization?
He said, Sharon, it feels like I'm riding an elephant. I said, what do you mean? He says, well, I'm on this elephant and I've got my clear dream.
That's where I want to go, my vision, my objectives and my little whip. And I want to make it go in that direction. But the more I try to push the organization or the elephant in a particular direction, it goes left and it goes right, leaving me often feeling totally out of control. And this is the thing with ecosystems.
Because there are so many different moving parts and they interdepend on the supplies, the customers, the different divisions, the regions, local, global, and of course all the economic and political influences, and then all the informal leaders in the organization influencing. energy and movement in different parts, it often leaves the former leaders feeling like this, that they're riding an elephant and feeling out of control. They might be formally in charge, but they're not always fully in control. And so eco-intelligence is really important in today's world.
And it's enabling the ecosystem where this intelligence comes alive. Ecosystems need to be enabled and nurtured. They cannot be controlled.
So eco-intelligence is that capacity To be able to leverage the interdependencies between the different parts and create places, safe spaces where people can think together and do things together in a collaborative way, rather than depending on the hierarchy to make things happen, we enable and unleash the energy of the natural informal leaders and the ecosystems to make things happen. And therefore now the leader's role changes. They're no longer the boss or the one that has to make things happen. They become the ones who create the safety. And the context, the culture for people to self-manage and self-organize.
They become the integrators. We've called them the integrators. They're very good at something called polarity management and integrative thinking. Bringing diverse people, diverse ideas together for the emergence of new thinking in the organization. Therefore they need to be great listeners.
They need a sense of humility. It's not about their ego. shining and being at the forefront of leadership but rather enabling the leadership to emerge from the organization and that definitely means that they need to be great facilitators of groups facilitators of processes and also strong and emotional intelligence the ability to listen and relate and connect with other people but most of all I think they need to be systems thinkers they need to be able to see the bigger picture the bigger system and the interconnections between the different aspects to be able to leverage this interdependence They really struggle with this polarity between ensuring control on the one hand and enablement and freedom and empowerment on the other hand. And in our research, we found that a really important element for holding the ecosystem together and to bring that sense of control is in fact to have a very clear, strong purpose, to be purpose-led.
And for the key stakeholders, if they all resonate with why we are here, what we believe in, what we stand for, then the leaders can release the how. They can release the how things get done. if people are very clear on the why and the what they need to achieve together. So having a clear purpose rather than just being vision driven as to where we're going but why we exist is really important in this ecosystemic leadership today.
So the big qualities then of eco leaders is humility, it's being comfortable with uncertainty and messiness, and excellent listening and facilitation skills. Two really fundamental ingredients for effective eco intelligence are on the one hand the ability to let go, control and to trust your teams. A few leaders have explained to me over the last few months how with COVID they have been forced actually to let go of control as their staff have started working from home and how pleasantly surprised they've become by the level of performance and commitment.
The other important ingredient is data, that for ecosystems to, for the communication and the sharing between different self-organizing units in the organization, there needs to be a sharing of data and information, best practices. And of course, with digital revolution, social media, it has become increasingly easy for organizations to be able to capture the pulse of different teams and to connect people using the digital platforms that are available today. Of course, eco-intelligence on its own can't be successful.
We speak continuously in the book about the need for the integration between the three intelligences for effective agile leadership. For example, if you have too much of this eco-intelligence at the expense of ego and intuitive, you end up with incessant talk shops and a conflict avoidance, people just becoming too nice and lacking that focus to be able to make things happen and drive things through. So it complements well with intuition, where teams come together and are encouraged to think beyond boundaries out of the box, intuitively sensing and using imagination and creativity.
And then with ego, where ideas that come through the integrative thinking are taken to shape and to form and into implementation. So it's what we call the well-blended leader, a leader that's got a good smattering of all three intelligence and the well-blended organization also has all three. So in our book, in the last chapter, in chapter eight, we offer a free diagnostic tool where you can actually assess your own leadership blend to see what your particular strength and weaker areas are and then a whole range of different tips and examples of different companies, different leaders on how to actually grow and develop your three intelligence to become a better blended leader.
So please do enjoy.