When it comes to situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency, the fight for racial equity and justice,
and other societal challenges at a global scale, we don’t need leaders who only
rely on their survival instincts or find opportunistic ways to leverage a
crisis.
We need leaders who consciously use their intuition, logic and emotions to
choose appropriate emergency responses. We need wise leaders.
Why? Because wise CEOs create the best results in both the short and long term,
for the benefit of both society and the bottom line.
That’s the conclusion of a survey of 100 CEO emergency
responses over
the past 30 years, conducted by Navi Radjou and Prasad Kaipa —
co-authors of From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading With Wisdom.
We need leaders who not only rely on their survival instincts or find
opportunistic ways to leverage a crisis. We need leaders who consciously use
their intuition, logic and emotions to choose appropriate business responses
that also benefit society at large. We need wise leaders.
8 mental models for wise leadership
In their article, “Leading with your head and your
heart,”
Radjou and Kaipa show how wise CEOs such as
Unilever’s Paul
Polman
and companies such as Siemens and Danone are transforming their
businesses into wise enterprises.
But what can a wise leader concretely do on a personal level to build the inner
resilience necessary for taking responsible and sustainable actions in
challenging times?
We've teamed up with leadership transformation expert Sandja Brügmann, founder
of The Passion Institute, to co-create an
infographic based on her eight mental models for wise leadership.
“For a while now, in CEO circles, we've talked about the world being VUCA
(Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous); and COVID-19 is showing us how
interconnected and interdependent we all are,” explains Brügmann, who helps
organizations embed sustainability, wisdom and purpose into the core of their
business strategy and leadership skills. “So, we need leaders to navigate these
uncertainties wisely if we want a safer and more thriving world for us all.”
Download a full-size edition of the infographic here.
We hope that this infographic will not only inform and inspire CEOs, but also
serve as a reminder for all of us on how to take personal leadership and deal
with the more “daily VUCA” situations.
If you are interested in integrating and leading through these principles, join
The Passion Institute’s Wisdom Leadership
Network,
facilitated by Brügmann herself.
The infographic is part of the Corporate Corona Actions
series, where The Social Business
Company and key collaborators share tips and cases of show how businesses can
contribute positively here and now — but also to build back better post-Corona.
Get the latest insights, trends, and innovations to help position yourself at the forefront of sustainable business leadership—delivered straight to your inbox.
Sandja Brügmann is a synthetic strategist working at the intersection of leadership, systems thinking, and clean‑economy transition
Tania Ellis is a prize-winning international author, speaker, advisor and
founder of The Social Business Company — a B Corp-certified speaking, training, and consulting company specialized in linking business, sustainability, and innovation.
Published Apr 2, 2021 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST