A call to renew

We completed our 5 day 5 country Virtual Global Leadership Practices Program last week in partnership with a wonderful, diverse group of talented and inspiring participants, all leaders striving to make a positive difference, our wise Program Sherpas and a host of fantastic international leadership institutions like the Churchill Archives Centre at the University of Cambridge, the Wellingkar School of Business in India, the E-government leadership Centre in Singapore, The Public Policy Institute in Auckland and Georgetown University in Washington DC.

In each country and with each host institution we explored transformative leadership in its various forms: legacy, potential, uncertainty, inclusiveness and renewal.

Through the people, ideas, issues, solutions and perspectives we were exposed to, it became clear to me that in these, in ours and in many other countries, there are leaders who are stepping up to the responsibility, challenges and joys of serious leadership.

With a view to the longer term, a determination for sustainable, purposeful and collaborative action and inclusive community building, we can lead in different ways…. in transformative ways. Indeed, our planet and its people and the organisations we work in demand of us a better kind of leadership: a kind that can renew.

But to renew what exactly?  Well, perhaps it’s to:

1. Renew and reinterpret our values that have been encrusted, corroded or abandoned
2. Liberate energies that have been constrained or diminished by failed procedures and outmoded habits of thought
3. Reenergise forgotten goals or to generate new goals appropriate to new circumstances
4. Achieve through science and other modes of exploration new understandings leading to new solutions
5. Foster the release of human possibilities through education and lifelong growth.

A call to renew: ‘Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can’- Arthur Ashe