5 Ways to Navigate Leadership on the Edge of Chaos

All around us, old patterns are dissolving. It's all we can do to create new systems faster than the old ones become obsolete. All this, at a time when "busy" is the normal answer to "how are you?" and we spend far more time looking at screens than we do at each other.

But the world is not getting any slower. Exponential technologies are already having an accelerating impact on society.

We are at the cusp of waves of change that will transform society and culture as we know it, at a pace radically faster than things have ever changed before.

Accelerating Technological Change

The exponential technologies re-architecting our paradigms are converging to create a multiplier effect. Things are going to get a lot faster before they settle into any kind of new normal in the times ahead.

Leaders and changemakers, buckle your seat-belts. Maybe strap on your space helmet. Things are about to get crazy, and we haven't seen anything yet.

The social and cultural shifts that will come with these rapid advancements in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), data science, digital biology and biotech, medicine, nanotech and digital fabrication, networks and computing systems, robotics, and autonomous vehicles are simply huge.

I'll be exploring them more in detail, but suffice to say that being agile is everything, as long-term planning with any degree of certainty becomes almost impossible the longer ahead you try to look.

The old professional culture of 10-year plans and long-term strategy is over. If you still have to do these things for work, I feel your pain.

We know the old tools aren't working.

That's why, unless we do something about it, we're stressed out of our minds and unable to sleep, much less relax. Our to-do lists and obligations take us so far outside of ourselves that we spend the day rushing on our feet, forgetting to eat or drink, let alone rest or enjoy.

No one would deny that as leaders, we need more support than ever. But as leaders, we're more over-extended than ever, faced with competing priorities and needs.

What are we supposed to do?

Stress and the Uncertain Future

"We cannot transform that which we cannot feel," says my teacher, Hala Khouri. It's a bold challenge for those of us used to thinking our way out of things, to step more into the presence that comes when we invite emotional intelligence to our work.

Because of how quickly the brain changes (literally, “neuroplasticity”), we can repattern how we respond to stressors and learn to create more ease, grace and resource around us.

Learning to listen to the signals sent by our body, mind and emotions about the stress we experience, we are able to resource ourselves with enough ongoing resilience to navigate the wild frontiers of change.

Stress isn't going away, so here are some ways to cope with the intensity of sensation, feeling and thought when things become a little overwhelming.

5 Ways to Navigate Leadership on the Edge of Chaos 

1. Downregulate.

Any real or imagined incident triggers a stress response (fight/flight/freeze/fawn), which you will notice as a physical pattern of sensation or felt emotions. This because our stress responses are highly individual patterns based on our families of origin and personal history.

These days, there’s so much going on around us that our brains have a hard time deciding which stressors to prioritize, which makes us hard on ourselves and can cause a negative feedback loop that just makes things worse. So don’t get caught stressing about trying not to stress. I’m speaking from experience…

It's essential to learn basic techniques to ground and center when you notice you’re having a stress response. Use breathing practices, yoga, EFT/tapping or other somatic techniques to downregulate your nervous system and interrupt the process.

2. Confront yourself.

We all have patterns of reactivity that are literally encoded into our brains as well-grooved neural pathways of rapid-fire, predictable behavior.

Transforming our leadership to be able to cope with the challenges of a chaotic future means being willing to navigate our leading edge of personal growth.

In order to re-pattern old thinking and limiting beliefs, we need to surrender and be vulnerable enough to let go and make space for the in-between, the not-knowing and the tension of what wants to emerge.

3. Take your stress seriously.

Almost every leader I've met works too hard, and most of us are running towards burn-out, if we're honest and look at the pace of work we expect from ourselves. This is not sustainable, but the fact is that no one is going to make changing your lifestyle a priority but you.

Global leadership and tech culture celebrates overwork, with lots of meetings, sprints and sneaking work on your smart phone during meals and most times in between.

It's okay to do these things, but the idea is to be aware of what is causing you stress and start to reduce how it shows up in your life. 

4. Prioritize your experience.

Other people's experience of you is none of your business. I know this can be very hard to hear for people-pleasers, but no one is going to take care of you the way that you can.

I repeat. No one else can take care of you, the way you need, like you can. 

5. Stand your ground.

Once you create boundaries and have a clear no on something for you, it's essential to honor that and stand your ground. There is a foundational self-confidence that comes with knowing that you can identify and secure your emotional boundaries and needs.

Most people these days aren't used to strong boundaries. They will pressure you to volunteer, or do extra work, or say yes to a social engagement your body is telling you that you really, really don't want to go to.

Once you know what you truly need to resource yourself, stand your ground until you get it.

Self-Care Isn't Selfish

When leaders start to reorient and re-center themselves in self-care, the problem is that we get self-conscious.

Most of us are used to over-giving and not receiving much ourselves, and some of us even pride ourselves on our extreme resourcefulness, on being able to get by and carry on with very little.

A complete turnaround in thinking is required if we are to resource ourselves to thrive in the future.

We need to learn to richly and unapologetically resource ourselves, as thoroughly we can, in abundance and without apology.

As leaders, our communities expect us to show up fully resourced, radiant and whole. Why should they expect anything less? Why should we?

How many times are we told by people who love us, again and again, to take care of ourselves? To not nourish ourselves is a kind of anorexia that keeps us weak and ineffective; we must learn to resource ourselves to be strong.

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Learning to navigate leadership in times of accelerating change is a journey, with new modalities to learn and experiences to integrate.

But not only is it possible to learn how to thrive in the future ahead, it's absolutely necessary if we want to enjoy the ride.