We have discussed culture, creating a vision, bringing together a team but what is it that can catch us out?
Most of us, feel “If only I work harder, learn more and perfect my skills, with the combination of passion and work ethic, I can be an expert and will feel good enough.”
As discussed previously, the concept of patience and exploration are important skills of leadership. We need to shift from experts, competency and doing it alone, to mastery, wisdom and achieving things collectively.
Children naturally practice mastery, uninterested in their performance when they are young enjoying experimenting and having fun but as they become oriented toward performing well, children who meet a challenge, often feel that they are not good enough and abandon learning.
We know there is a whole range of knowledge, skills and competencies that people need to develop in order to succeed in a role. But, if we focus on growth and development and life long learning, we could find joy in the work we do, even when we are not good at it yet!
I would like to address the myth that work needs to feel impossibly hard and a destination to be achieved. Where there is challenge, which requires effort and learning, often with conflict between people, through mastery, we could enjoy the process, connecting with our colleagues and problem solving together.
The path to mastery
While we are exploring and working towards an end result with others, the process transforms who we are. We grow and develop, connect and share our ideas and knowledge.
Mastery requires endurance, dedicated time and continuous effort. It takes hundreds and thousands of repetitions, trial and errors alongside community and celebration.
As a leader myself, there have been times when panic has set in. Imposter Syndrome undermined my efforts and I found myself frozen with anxiety, unable to be creative or share my guilt, that I was letting everyone down.
By opening up, using a coach who created a reflective mirror, I could explore new opportunities, stop competing and put aside my short term goals and find a new direction.
Inspiration has come from understanding psychological safety, servant leadership, values led systems, distributed wisdom alongside the joy of empowering others and problem solving as fun but it involved change in myself.
Although we need to understand who we are, we have to shift our mindsets to believe and discover our untapped potential.
Why is mastery out of vogue?
At an individual level, our pull for perfectionism, gathering knowledge, creating correct systems and success projection tend to get in the way of being flexible, adaptable and always learning.
We feel guilt and shame for failing and letting people down. Rather than ask for help when we hit a barrier, we often feel we are stupid for not being able to solve the problem and make mistakes.
Organisations learn when individuals learn.
It is not through endless policies, processes and systems that real transformation occurs.
Real mastery requires us to become lifelong learners and coaches, facilitators and mentors for other’s journey.
- Purpose gives us the energy of pursuing a path
- Wisdom gives us energy when we are open to new understanding
- Belonging creates energy when we are deeply connected with people, so that we can take joy in other people’s joy and find success in their success.
- Growth generates energy when we are growing from every experience.
- Self-actualisation provides inner peace that allows you to engage with your responsibilities with focus and self confidence.
How do we develop mastery?
Although Benner: From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice Novice is a good model of educational progression, we need to build on this foundation.
When we start a job, we acquire knowledge and develop skills, meaning we can follow a task to an end.
Then, we perform group of tasks with understanding, growing capability and confidence in the role. As our intuition develops, we become truly competent.
When we are competent, we grow the capacity to do more and find space available for us to help others. This is when we become an actual contributor to the broader team and meet the proficient criteria.
By contributing, others start seeking us for ideas, opinions and we become able to create solutions, connect the dots or bring teams together and may appear experts however I would include that we should grow our own personal insight, becoming an influencer and modelling adaptability rather than the fixed mindset of the expert.
In our own academy we believe that is mirrored in our model:
- Acting a Ripple of positivity – our thoughts, actions and words have the power to affect great change far beyond ourselves. The small decisions we make every day – to laugh, to smile, to share a kind word – create an impact that spreads far and wide, impacting much more than our own lives.
- Acting as a Change Agent, Social and Cultural Architect consciously role modelling values and behaviours to lead change in others and transform teams, systems and organisations.
- Alumni – Our mastery requires us to become aware of our latent power and grow trust in our collective ability to overcome hurdles and we can act as influencers to create ongoing transformation.
In conclusion, in mastery, we will be both a leader and a follower in our individual and collective transformational journeys, igniting and inspiring change to create a journey of discovery.
