Jim Herrington and Trisha Taylor with The Leader’s Journey have decades of experience leadership development. On November 16, 2022, they shared key points with two dozen Greenville County nonprofit leaders.
They reminded us that this leadership development is a lifelong learning quest, and there is no magic button. To effectively implement and respond to change in their organizations, leaders need to see and name their reactions to it and work to grow in their emotional maturity. Below are Greater Good Greenville’s Top Five Takeaways from their session. To learn more, visit The Leader’s Journey.
- Leadership is two feet walking: the left foot is individual leadership development, the right is the mobilization of people around a shared mission. Growth on one side increases capacity on the other.
- Leaders are leading living systems (defined as: any group of people who have a shared purpose and are emotionally hardwired together. This includes any nonprofit organization, business, or philanthropic entity as well as the larger systems in which those entities operate). To do this, you need to see yourself, see your system and see yourself in your system.
- Systems are complex, connected (within the system and outside to other systems) and changing.
- Change in an organization, whether welcomed or unwelcomed, creates anxiety in the system. Our reaction to this anxiety either helps us successfully navigate the change to meet our missions or undermines our ability to work together.
- Our goal as leaders is to act with emotional maturity, which is the ability to: act out of our deeply held values despite pressure to do otherwise, to stay connected to others without having your feelings or behaviors determined by them, and to define yourself and allow others to do the same. We are all working towards the capacity to stay both defined and connected.
Each person who participated in the workshop is receiving a coaching session with team members from the Leader’s Journey.
