The Hidden Revolution in Leadership & Change * o r e h t i n a By Richard Wilson With Matthew Kálmán Mezey & Nick Nielsen * o r e h t i n a The Hidden Revolution in Leadership & Change By Richard Wilson With Matthew Kálmán Mezey & Nick Nielsen *‘antihero’, noun, (plural) –roes, a central character in a novel, play, etc, who lacks the traditional heroic virtues. Collins Dictionary Definition, 2013. The definition of antihero has changed over time as society’s ideas of what is heroic have changed. Now we suggest it is time for another revision of what we mean by Anti-hero. about the author Richard Wilson is a social entrepreneur, writer and 2012 Clore Social Fellow. He was born in North Wales in 1976 and grew up there. He went to Bradford and Sussex Universities. In 2004 he founded the Involve Foundation and is now the director of Osca. He writes regularly for the Guardian and blogs at richwilson.org. He is a UN adviser and supports organisations around the world achieve social change. He lives in Stroud, England with his wife and son. Published by Osca Agency Ltd Osca 2013, some rights reserved www.osca.co Copyright © Richard Wilson, 2013 Copy edited by Phil Cooper and Thom Townsend Designed by Hyperkit hyperkit.co.uk 6 Preface “When I took on the leadership of NSPCC in 2000 I knew that I faced great challenges as a new chief executive of a large children’s charity in the early stages of the FULL STOP Campaign to end cruelty to children. It would have been easy to have been mostly absorbed with internal issues. But I realised in my first week that I would make little progress without active collaboration with all other agencies and organisations in the field of child protection including local and national government. My first thoughts have been about collaboration in many other situations since.” Dame Mary Marsh, Founding Director, Clore Social Leadership Programme ‘Often we think of leadership as finding and imposing the one right answer. At the RSA and in other roles I have come to see that the more difficult and valuable task is to acknowledge and combine elements of many right answers, seeing that it is only by holding these different approaches in creative tension that we release the individual creativity, team commitment and respect for legitimate authority which are all part of making organisations successful and solutions effective’. Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA 7 8 Summary Anti Hero helps explain why so many of us are frustrated with our leaders. Despite the great failures of Iraq, the financial crisis and MPs’ expenses, our leaders often appear to have learnt little, as they career from one crisis to the next. Anti Hero explains why none of this should surprise us and why we should continue to expect to be disappointed by our leaders until they fundamentally change how they lead. Anti Hero argues that the modern challenges we face have fundamentally changed what we need from our leaders, requiring a shift from Heroic to Anti- heroic leadership. The Heroic leaders who dominate our institutions today have four fatal flaws. First, they tend to be over-confident in their opinions. Secondly, they tend to lack empathy towards others. Thirdly, they tend to be inflexible. And finally, they tend to deny the existence of uncertainty. These are the four pillars of the Heroic leader. This isn’t, though, the fault of the leaders themselves; most of our leaders are the victims of outdated systems of leadership that were built for simpler times. Indeed, our leaders are very often doing their best in very difficult circumstances. Many of today’s issues are not like the complicated technical problems of the past; problems that could be addressed by smart people working hard. Our densely populated, hyper-connected, interdependent modern world is throwing up seemingly insoluble issues: ‘wicked’ issues. These ‘wicked issues’ require a way of thinking that technical experts and senior leaders rarely have. They require a more open and inquiring mind that can see patterns, understand, and even integrate, the multiple frames that different people and cultures have. This is not some high-minded ideal, 9 Summary but a description of real people who are already creating real change in institutions and communities across the world. We call these new leaders ‘Anti-heroes’. We call them this not because we believe heroes are bad, but because these ‘Anti-heroes’ are in many ways the antithesis of the single strong heroes who alone, ‘save the day’. Anti-heroes tend to be defined by five characteristics: empathy, humility, self-awareness, flexibility and, finally, an ability to acknowledge uncertainty. Developmental psychologists like Harvard’s Professor Robert Kegan argue that what makes these Anti-heroes exceptional is that they have reached a later stage of adult psychological development, and that only those people who have developed this anti-hero mindset are able to successfully grapple with today’s ‘wicked’ issues. We need to quadruple the number of Anti-heroes among our professionals from its current level (likely to be around 5% to 20%) if we are to have a chance of tackling the wicked issues we face. Understanding that the Anti-hero is a new stage of adult psychological maturation also helps to explain why the usual ‘informational’ training and learning we are offered in our organisations—adding ever more data to our overstretched operating systems—is of little help. What’s needed is ‘transformational’ learning where people can radically broaden their worldview by expanding the capability of their operating system, allowing them to have a much greater understanding of others, the world and themselves. It is only through deliberately applying ‘transformational’ learning that new, richer, more open, anti-heroic ‘ways of knowing’ can be created. However, there is great resistance to the emergence of Anti-heroes. There is a real possibility that both the current climate of austerity and deep-rooted societal ambivalence to personal growth will extinguish the emerging anti-heroic revolution. If this happens we will, at best, waste what limited resources we do have on the wrong kind of ‘informational’ leadership development and fail to meet the challenges we face. At worst, our leaders will fail even more badly than they have done in recent years, exacerbating the implications of wicked issues like the financial crisis and climate change. To avoid this we need to see institutions (particularly universities, business schools, HR departments and senior managers) across all sectors place a much higher priority on transformational learning. We also need to see some of our highest profile leaders demonstrate the qualities of flexibility, vulnerability and generosity associated with Anti-heroes. But to do this we need the media to develop a form of journalism that not only holds our leaders to account but also allows them to acknowledge uncertainty, be vulnerable and to change their mind. A U-turn should not necessarily be 10