In his 2021 book Quo Vadis?: The Existential Challenges of Leaders, Manfred Kets De Vries asks a simple question, Quo Vadis? or Where are you going? It would appear from much research and experience that this is a question increasingly faced by senior executives as well as people across all walks of life who, to a greater or lesser extent, are asking the same question. This means that our organisations are full of people in the Quo Vadis mode. It is a quintessentially existential question at the heart of the human endeavour as we try to find a path to a meaningful existence, and Kets De Vries is giving us a nudge to grapple with it because the experiences of the past few years have ignited something deep in people and our organisations, and leaders of the future will need to get to grips with this pronto.

Ask yourself the question then, “Where am I going?” In a leadership position this is equally as important as where am I taking my organisation because these are all too often one and the same, at least for periods of time as we develop strategies, visions and plans and then try and try again to get people engaged with them.

In reality, I think the needs of leadership are changing rapidly and the values led strategies developed in recent years that haven’t really worked have failed because they are too thinly veiled and lack meaning. Meaning is what people bring to the party and without a really clear statement of intent that is born from vulnerability and authenticity, and lived courageously by the leadership and executives, people will sense this and bring their own meaning and interpretation to bear making it even harder to establish meaningful engagement after the metaphoric horse has bolted. This is what Brené Brown has warned of in her book Dare to Lead. The good news is that there are so many opportunities to make good and tap into the positive courageous energy that has been waiting so patiently in recent years to be given its chance to shine and gain the upper hand – we sometimes call this frustration, because it is all the untapped human potential just waiting for the right conditions to be heard, understood and then embraced.

I think and have experienced leadership training that has gotten us to this point and hasn’t really worked. Yes, some things have progressed but there is a great deal of research to suggest that in spite of the relatively new organisational practices of human resource departments, career development, leadership development and skills training etc. etc. that the everyday experience of people remains contextualised by the narrative of efficiency and effectiveness, right out the  book of Taylorism which serves to operate a mechanistic and scientific management approach introduced over 100 years ago and guess what – it’s no longer fit for purpose and has often led us away from systems of trust, compassion and authenticity to byzantine bureaucracy and compliance without a human heart as a regulator.

Yvonne Thompson often says, “Leadership has everything and nothing to do with the leader all at the same time”. I think she is so right and her contemporary life changing leadership programmes are taking us in a completely different direction – the right direction.

We need to start thinking uncontrol rather than control. We need to start talking about cultures of accountability where people are enabled and encouraged and, wait for it, trained in the skills of wellbeing, taking responsibility for themselves, being accountable to themselves for their own actions and for people to learn how to have a compassionate and deeper appreciation of themselves which inevitably leads to a greater appreciation for others and creates cultures that enable and celebrate difference at the individual level. This takes time, commitment and intent. One-day and weekend workshops simply don’t work, they may be convenient because we are all so busy being stressed but we are simply not built that way.  Real change takes place at an emotional level and this takes practice and time to understand and get right.