WorkingOutLoud on Imperfect Leadership

In my recent work around Social Leadership i find myself coming back time and again to the notion of ‘imperfection’. I find that this is typically (if subconsciously) a way of developing, rehearsing, or refining, vocabulary. Building a language around an idea, so the work today is shared in that spirit. Perhaps it will be a duplication, or evolution, of what i have said before?

This work is founded in the idea that there is no ‘perfection’ to strive for, as we are accountable in so many parallel systems. To succeed in one may be at the cost of another, and hence our balance is always off. To lead within our imperfection is hence to negotiate the nature of balance: to be engaged not in comfort, but nor in judgement. Rather to be in dialogue: to listen, to engage, to speak, but not to speak ‘answers’.

I am reminded that walking is an act of imbalance, that dance is an act of unbalancing. Of moving from the still and stable into motion. Perhaps that learning is an act of fracture and imbalance, but to include a re-authoring of ‘self’, through processes of reconciliation and sense making.

The term ‘a humility of practice’ has been stuck in my head: reflecting that humility may be found, through our engagement with the shadows that we cast, through reflection, but also it can be imposed, by circumstance. A conscious choice to engage, or a context we cannot escape. Both can humble us.

The idea that we can accept imperfection not as aberration but as dialogue. Not something we can ever ‘escape’ from – which in turn indicates that we cannot ‘learn’ to avoid it – but rather we can find motion through imbalance. Not to endlessly repeat ourselves, but to constantly iterate our ‘selves’. This, in turn, links leadership into the space of identity, dialogue, story.

It takes the idea that we are endlessly accountable, in different systems, and that we cannot operate in the light without casting shadows.

If we cannot be ‘perfect’, then perhaps we can at least be in dialogue: this work considers how we can be story listeners, careful trespassers, and humble leaders.