Joy in leadership
Exhibition on joy in a war zone
An exhibition on joy in Kiev, Ukraine has piqued my curiosity. The exhibit by Katya Lesiv – from the I am. Rada series – suggests ‘letting go of fear, limitations, and prohibitions, and returning to yourself’. The work by Ashfika Rahman ‘Than Para — No Land Without Us’ ‘holds the memory of the last gathering of a community’. If an exhibition in a war zone can focus on joy, what place could joy have in leadership?
You don’t hear much about joy in leadership
You don’t hear much about it. In well over two decades of executive coaching I’m not sure I’ve worked with more than a handful of leaders who experience joy in leadership, who access it as a resource, and who convey it to their followers. Am I alone? How common is it? And if it isn’t common, given the benefits, why not?
My own moments of joy
A prompt came from a coaching client wanting to find his next passion, who was feeling lost, lacking in energy, stuck and aware of a lack of motivation, despite a career of significant success behind him. I started wondering what place joy had in his life – and I started noticing my own moments of joy.
They include feeling elated at being alongside a client who’s been struggling with a particular issue, and then witnessing them discovering and internalising an insight which opens a door for them to the possibility of change. Being with a client who dares to say what’s true but who has been too scared to articulate it till then – and who feels liberated by the articulation. Introducing a person to a new experience or a new perspective that they feel enriched by. Seeing something beautiful in nature – a meadow of wildflowers, a ladybird landing on a leaf, hearing birdsong. Seeing a piece of art which offers a new slant on the world in a way that connects something for me (the David Hockney exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery in London had that effect for me: I had a palpable, somatic sense of feeling joyously uplifted). Witnessing a child absorbed in the seemingly simple experience of watching a butterfly that had landed on his arm.
And recently in the territory of my own leadership, the huge joy and fulfilment that accompanied being a co-founder of Coaching through COVID, a programme offering pro bono coaching, provided by 250 coaches, to 650 NHS staff, impacted mentally, emotionally and physically by the pandemic. I experienced moments of heightened joy at the time. In the difficult moments – particularly of stress, pressure, exhaustion and overwhelm –summoning up the joy offered me a resource.
Benefits of joyous leadership
Joy brought its own benefits in that situation. It strengthened my resilience, reminded me of why I was doing what I was doing, and sometimes suggested a reset, a re-finding of perspectives, and an exploration of my place in the system.
My experience of joyous leadership has helped take me through tough times, multiple (and sometimes conflicting) pressures, dilemmas, uncertainties and seemingly impenetrable complexities. It has enabled for me resilience, connection, creativity, energy and vitality. I’m aware that the joy I experienced during Coaching through COVID was shared in many ways by many members of our team, who gave so much of themselves, and together created unique and extraordinary results in terms of the community of coaches that somehow formed, the coaching clients they enriched, and the relationships with the NHS Trusts we worked with. That joy went beyond meetings, tasks, demands and a focus on outcomes. The discretionary effort and energy that I witnessed being brought to the programme was awe-inspiring. What leader wouldn’t want that?
Elements of joyous leadership
For me the elements of joyous leadership include focusing on facilitating other people’s development and growth, and their fulfilment and satisfaction, especially if their journey towards that has been arduous. In my experience living one’s values plays an important role. Joy can also arise from witnessing, nurturing and celebrating ‘what is’ (and nature can be a beautiful playground here), and an authentic, humble bringing of oneself – being present – and a readiness to be open to what emerges.
How can you bring more joy to your leadership?
What lights you up? How could you create small opportunities to bring some of that to your working life? If you pay some attention to what sparks your energy, what experiment could you create to bring a small experience of that into your working life today, tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that?
