Tag: disruption

Leadership and loss of control

Leadership is often associated to being in charge, in command, and in control. Yet my most memorable leadership experiences have been when I lost control. Like many, over the years, I have envisioned myself going places, achieving a number of things. I developed visions and plans to get there. In fact, I was particularly good at it. But the hard part and where I truly learned about leadership was when life took me to places where I did not want to go – at least consciously. I would feel that something had gone wrong and that I made a mistake. My fault or not, this would always be associated with some disheartening possibility.

What if things going wrong were to take us to a place where we needed to go for reasons deeper than our own ability to reason? What if these detours and disruptions were necessary to shake us loose of an illusion of control? It usually takes something major to wake us up, and the point is rarely to go back to what we know, but rather to remind us that the way forward lies in what we do not know. How many discoveries were made by accident, changing the course of history? These major wake up calls soften us and make us vulnerable to the point where we can release our resistance and let go of control, of what we know and understand.

You may have visited this undesirable place lately, where your response to difficulty has prompted you to witness some of the patterns of behavior that come up unconsciously, unresolved emotional baggage that stands in the way of an easier life, a more joyful existence. It takes courage to face these moments, surrender to what is, and leadership to create a new path rather than return to familiar ways of being and doing things. You will only get a finite number of opportunities to change course and emerge transformed. What is true individually, also applies internationally.

Welcome to my blog!

You just landed on a site focused on Healing International Relations, but you will read little about what goes on in the world or about international relations as we study it in university or practice it internationally as diplomats, military, grass root activists, or aid workers. Should you wish to register (see left column below) you will read every other week a post about the individual behind these roles.

As the world faces man made challenges on a scale beyond recognition, as international organizations and well-known institutions crumble all around, the level of disruption is calling for a different approach, a new system. We are collectively seeking answers through innovation, artificial intelligence, sciences. We are seeking answers in history, philosophy, religion, stuck at the crossroads, still unable to integrate all these fields. The task, however, is well beyond a new school of thought or even a new world order. At the same time, it may well be much closer to home, within our own personal power to change for ourselves and by ourselves, going back to basics and focusing on how we relate to life and thrive as an individual.

This blog stems from the premise that the time has come to disrupt ourselves – to reinvent ourselves individually with the help of each other to weave a new way of life. Disruption is commonly understood as an act of forcible separation, division into parts, break-up, dislocation that interrupts the flow momentarily or upends an industry. It typically offers also an opportunity to reconnect, re-assemble, and start anew, imagining a future catalyzing our own evolution as a species. While we tend to focus typically on the disruption around us, I have found that the rules of disruption apply to the individual as well, and I believe that innovation ultimately begins within ourselves. It takes courage to disrupt ourselves, stepping beyond our zone of comfort, beyond our doubts and embracing the scary and lonely path into the unknown. It is especially challenging as it calls for discovery rather than conventional planning and strategy. It requires searching where no one else has gone, switching to different performance criteria – an inside-out job – redefining the attributes of success. Albeit an individual path, we do not have to go it alone. You may resonate with others on the way to affirm yourself, tell your own story. I hereby offer my lessons learned from a personal disruptive trajectory, along with tips and insights on how to cope with the level of disruption within, which I believe to be necessary for healing our relations at the international level, and usher a different world one person at a time for everyone to thrive. Healing ourselves is the path to a new international environment.