#WorkingOutLoud on Quiet Leadership

Quiet Leadership is an exploration of leadership in the smallest of things: our mindset, our words, and our actions, in every single day.

It’s not about a grand aspiration, about formal organisational objectives, or big development programmes.

It’s not about the formal power you have been given, your ability to influence at scale, or the varied ways you exert control.

It’s not about ‘one’ way of leading, but rather about a multitude of ways, and specifically about how you find ‘your’ way.

Quiet Leadership is about the way we are with each other in every moment, and how those varied ‘ways’ of being come together to give us the thing we call culture, today.

Quiet Leadership is a reflective practice, not to see the version of ourself that we already know, but rather to discover ourself how others see us.

Leadership in our reflection: leadership in our shadow. Leadership in our impact, through every action in every day.

The 4 Seasons of Quiet Leadership

In this work we will pass through four seasons: ‘Humility’, ‘Kindness’, ‘Fairness’, and ‘Grace’.

In the Winter we will start with the acorn: the potential of our leadership, and look inside to the leader that we wish to be. We will consider Humility, to understand the extent to which it is held in our intention, our action, or our impact. As the first green shoots poke out through the snow, as we cast our first shadow in the weak winter light, we consider the ways we are experienced as a leader, from the start.

In the Springtime we will look at the Kindness with which we grow: as we gain power and status, we impact others within the system, but do we do so equally, and do we recognise the ways we cause friction as we grow?

The Summer sees the tree reach maturity: as our canopy spreads, as we find a magnificent strength and power, we ask ourselves how we use it: does your power serve yourself, or shelter others? How is ‘Fairness’ held and experienced?

Finally, come the Autumn, we must shed our leaves, we must decide what we can leave behind: if a tree carries every leaf into the winter storms, the weight of the snow will break our branches. We must choose the loss that we will experience, because we cannot carry everything forward. Leadership as a practice of growth, maturity, loss and renewal. The idea of ‘Grace’ is about our ability to change, and to leave certain things behind.

Quiet Leadership is leadership through the smallest of actions, in each and every day.