Leadership Mindsets for 2021 – Leadership Lab with Peter Miller, exBP transformation lead
We held our second Leadership Lab this week with 20 leaders from different sectors.
Peter Miller provided an initial provocation of his experience of transformation in BP including the impact of new Purpose, renewables, on performance and the need for agility.
We discussed how all businesses are facing one kind of reset or another, whether than includes new purpose or simply the need to reset to new market conditions during and post pandemic.
Using that input the participants discussed and offered their insights on how we could adapt our leadership mindsets.
A summary of key themes about leading through transformation and change:
Our tone as a leader
- Expect to be vulnerable as leaders; try not to provide all of the answers.
- Embrace the fear as a leader.
- Recognise the solution may be unknown and unknowable.
- The pandemic is an inescapable experience; learning to deal with paradigms as a leader, holding the dilemmas lightly.
Supporting people to change
- Increase use of reverse-mentoring and reciprocal mentoring to share the learning, shake-up leaders, disrupt leadership patterns and break -up hierarchies.
- Producing and encouraging solutions that are ‘just enough’ (minimal viable impact).
- Creating time for teams to become more agile.
Organisational or cultural themes
- Need to move from top-down push, to bottom-up pull involves showing humanity
- Paradoxically, organisations need to become more ‘mechanistic’ in some of their approaches in order to become more agile in others
- Try to find where there is most to be gained internally by adopting an agile approach, not everywhere.
Wider Ecosystem themes
- Invite disruptors in and allow minority voices to be heard.
- Providing space to hear and recognise the voices from the wider ecosystem.
What our attendees had to say:
“I thought the conversations were useful and the stimulation from Peter just right. Also really liked the diversity of guests. Made for interesting sharing.” Bryan Sampson, Senior Consultant – People Growth and Performance at Nationwide Building Society
“It was another really engaging and very valuable session today. It felt even better than the last one. The Leadership Lab is a great idea – just getting a diverse bunch of professionals together to explore and discuss topics. It makes you really think for long after the session has finished! What stood out for me today is that without trust in each other and into leaders you won’t get far. And Peter‘s agile way of working was a great way of creating trust by empowering everyone in the organisation to bring themselves in and move things forward so much faster and better. Thanks again for having me.” Klaus Goeldenbot, Former Group Chief Executive Officer at Nisbets
“What a wonderful LLab today, such a diverse group of participants and seamless teamwork with the OHP! Peter Miller’s story was fascinating, with practical examples and set the stage really nicely for the follow-up conversations.I learnt a lot and took many notes. A personal favorite quote was: ‘Embrace the fear that goes with freedom.’” Hellen Hettinga, Executive Coach
The next Leadership Lab – we discuss how the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion are developing in the NHS whilst being under so much pressure due to COVID.
17th March 2021 at 12.00h London, Rubi Gubara-Sannie from the Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust, will open the Lab with some thoughts on “Culture Change with a focus on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and specifically inclusion with regards to Race”.
If you are also interested in joining the Resilience Reset series, starting on Feb 25th here are details of how to book.