2021 – a year to reflect on
As many of us return to being a largely ‘home bound population’, we may reflect on how well we have navigated our organisations through 2021. My ABC of strengths which differentiate successful leaders in the boardroom are:
Authenticity
Bravery
Curiosity
Being yourself and being courageous usually get a thumbs up from business founders and across the wider director community. They make sense. They come naturally.
Giving yourself permission and the time to be curious is often less instinctive. For some, curiosity is a natural strength. For others is needs to be nurtured. Curiosity sits behind so many ways in which effective directors think and act. Formulating strategy relies on the curiosity to scan the horizon; reviewing risk appetite involves the curiosity to build an understanding of different perceptions in and of the boardroom; inclusion relies on curiosity and a genuine interest in other perspectives.
Curiosity drives the places you go and the people you talk to; the times you stop and listen to someone who you haven’t heard before; the organisations you visit to see how they do things.
Curiosity is also about the holes you stop and look in; the skies you look up at; the puddles you jump in; the leaves you look under. Recapturing that childlike inquisitiveness can pay dividends in the serious world of business.
Being curious is often measured by the number of publications and information sources you read. Successful business leaders like Warren Buffett share their extensive daily reading regimes. Business publications signpost authors and articles. Strategy houses and academic institutions consolidate insights from multiple practitioners. We may simply resolve to read more in 2022.
In addition, we may embark on the year ahead with a determination to wonder and smile at the ingenuity of nature and mankind.