The Inner Development Goals - The Leadership Model for the Future

Gerrit: 0:03

A warm welcome to Second Crack - The leadership podcast. This is where we explore everyday leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you as our listener to self-reflect. I'm Gerrit Pelzer and I'm joined as usual by my friend and business partner Martin Aldergard. So, Hi Martin. How are you?

Martin: 0:29

Hi, Gerrit. I'm good today. And looking forward to this conversation.

Gerrit: 0:35

Good because today we will talk about what is called the Inner Development Goals and how this framework can help you achieve your sustainability goals. But before we go there into, into the depths of this, a quick reminder that if you like the show, we will be very happy to see you as our subscriber on the platform of your choice. And of course, we would appreciate if you will help us to spread the word, tell a friend about it, post on social media. And of course it would be great if you could leave a positive rating or comment. So last time we spoke about the huge complex adaptive challenges that societies and organizations are facing, right? And we discussed how leaders need to utilize the collective intelligence of the people to deal with these challenges. Today, we want to introduce a powerful new framework that you can use to do just this. It's called the Inner Development Goals, and unfortunately it's nothing that Martin and I invented. It's an open source, non-for-profit, initiative and Martin, where, where do you see this useful?

Martin: 1:49

Yeah, as you mentioned, I mean it's obvious that we as a society are facing huge complex challenges, for instance around sustainability, and also with our clients today we see the increasing emphasis on this. There is really a sense of urgency to bring these complex challenges into our business plans and drive these targets around sustainability into the organization. So going way beyond the CSR activities and all this that we saw just a couple of years ago. But now this also opening up this area of really contradictory or conflicting targets. For instance when an organization is really driving the triple bottom line, having targets around profit, planet and people. So it it's, it looks like a paradox. How can we be driving goals that are good for the planet and at the same time make a big profit. And how can they make a big profit while at the same time really taking care of our people?

Gerrit: 3:07

Yeah. It almost sounds like the more you focus on one, I wouldn't say inevitably, but there is a chance that you neglect another area of these three pieces.

Martin: 3:18

Yeah. And perhaps this is how it used to be in the past, but I think moving forward, we can see it is not a contradiction. It is planet and people and profit. There are business models around this but it also needs then a real change in thinking. And thinking about how do we lead in this environment? Because we have this potentially contradictory targets. We have the increasing complexity because there are so many more stakeholders involved that all have a piece of the puzzle. And I mean, let's be honest. There is not much more time and we really need to speed up this transformation. So, I mean, in, in this context, we see more of our clients really picking up this seriously and driving very ambitious targets and just a month ago we were in the virtual together with the leadership team, uh, where they discussed 2022 priorities and how they can move forward as a leadership team, establishing the right environment, the culture, the style of communication to better manage the triple bottom line goals that they are having.

Gerrit: 4:40

And I think we can be specific here. I mean, as it was a large multinational company and they aim globally to be climate neutral in thirteen years. And that was the company that has, let's say involves a lot of manufacturing. And I found these, these targets to be extremely challenging.

Martin: 4:57

Yeah. Yeah. So-so Gerrit, this inner development goal framework, why?

Gerrit: 5:04

Yeah. I mean, why is a good question? And, and, and when we look at these challenges, it was actually you who came up, who introduced it to me. The inner development goals it's a relatively new initiative, I think it was published last year. Maybe you could remind me who came up with it because I think these were all Swedish organizations, right?

Martin: 5:25

These are three Swedish organizations, Ekskäret Foundation together with The New Division and together with the 29K Foundation that came together to establish this framework.

Gerrit: 5:38

Yeah. And I think maybe we can highlight briefly, um, what the background of all this was. So they found that when we look at these huge global societal challenges that we're facing. Often we have good visions. We have a clear picture of how the future should look like, but then actually over many years, we are not making progress towards making this vision come true as quickly as we could. So the reality is that often we have the technical skills or the technology to achieve the targets, but the problem is somewhere else. And, um, what these people behind this initiative looked at is that apparently nobody has looked deeply into what leadership qualities or skills are needed to achieve these, these positive visions. And what I found very fascinating they were now not asking, what should I say, a single expert or a group of experts. They had a global survey where they involved over a thousand people. And they wanted to identify these skills and qualities that we need to, to go beyond. Let's say what they identified was that what we need is not what is typically taught in, let's say traditional leadership development programs. And I think what I like, I assume we both like it, so there is this idea of many, many people were involved. Um, it's open source material. It's not, not for profits so there are no primary, um, commercial interests. There's really nobody behind it who literally wants to sell you this framework or model. And, um, that's very important for me. Martin, what, what else do you like about it?

Martin: 7:38

I, I really liked this co-creation behind this model because this in itself is also how we need to approach these global challenges. There's not one single entity that has to answer, and we only become successful when we really co-create. The IDG was developed really through the collective intelligence of more than a thousand people, a lot of thought leaders, a lot of consultants, a lot of corporate people, leaders and managers that work with this every day. And I really like how the IDG helps us to make what used to be looked upon as soft skills. Make that to be the new hard skills of leaders. Uh, focusing on connection, on relating, on involving others, to see other stakeholders and find the win-win, really utilizing collective intelligence. Like what we talked about in our last episode, I think for us when we saw the IDG, a lot of pieces of the puzzle came together.

Gerrit: 8:44

Yes. And also I really liked that your emphasised, it has been co-created so they were actually practicing what they preach because co-creation is, is part of it. Uh, basically after this survey, they identified a total of 23 skills and qualities, which they grouped into five categories. The five categories are Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating and Acting. And if you're listening now, you don't need to write this down. We put all this of course into the session nodes and we put some links to the inner development goals. But starting perhaps, um, or should I say when I look at it as what is different from other leadership frameworks, I think Martin, you summarized it perfectly for me. You said it starts with ourselves. Then it's about how we connect and relate with other people and how we take action together. And it was quite amazing when I saw this, that you summarized it this way. I realized this is how I work in all of my coaching assigned. So I coach leaders one-to-one and it always starts with the individual leader. Who are they? What are their strengths and development areas. And then, um, how do they relate and connect to the people they work with? And then ultimately, of course, I think we said this last time, we need to align people to align people towards a common vision and to take action of course. So coming back to this first category, they call it Being, as I said, it starts with, with ourselves, uh. They call it also the relationship to self. It's about understanding ourselves and perhaps something like, I'm not sure if I should say managing ourselves, uh, but becoming the best version of ourselves. So it has a lot to do with, uh, what's my inner compass right. How self-aware am I? And it's, it's very much related also to integrity and authenticity.

Martin: 11:01

And Gerrit, for me this is nothing really new. And, and, and we could say that about the whole IDG framework, but I think the beauty here is how it is put together in its context. So it helps me to remind myself, what do I truly need to care about as a leader. And again, starting with the Being, I need to take a very honest look at myself as a leader today and how I looked at myself as a Being in the past, looking for instance towards the traditional corporate targets, to the traditional view of managing in the organization, looking at a very me or we focus. And now looking at Being from a triple bottom line point of view, me Being but also in the context of a whole, all the stakeholders. So if I take an honest look at myself, my inner compass, where does it truly points toward? Uh, my integrity, the values that I bring, what are the principles that are really, really, uh, important for me. And the alignment because like we spoke about in our earlier episode around purpose. There are a lot of leaders that have a misalignment when they are honest to themselves, between their inner purpose and the purpose and direction of their companies.

Gerrit: 12:40

Yeah, Martin, when you, when you, when you said there, it's not really new. Yes. I would agree that if we look at these 23 skills and qualities, uh, yes, we have seen them all. And as you said, rightly so they are put differently together. But I see there is another difference to the more traditional leadership models. And that is, I think we, we, we will come to this anyway, when we talk about the other four categories um. But this framework is less about the actual Doing. And I'm making this comment because you emphasized on the Being and we have in the English language, this wonderful term for us- we are human beings. We are not human doings. And it reminds me suddenly of a workshop we did many, many years ago. Remember we spoke about Be - Do - Have. So many people focus on what do we need to do to achieve something, something we wanted to have. But what is underlying is the Being. Who, who am I, how am I? And then often the Doing follows naturally. And I think it, it may sound almost like semantics, but for me practically this makes a huge difference. Being, and then Doing follows automatically. If we focus on the Doing right away, this is often when we find out it's not working,

Martin: 14:07

Especially in this complex environment where solutions are not as easy as 1, 2, 3, we really need to have a system thinking approach. Then the jumping to doing is certainly an invitation for trouble, most probably.

Gerrit: 14:24

Systems thinking is a good keyword because the second category is about Thinking. Would you like to start with that one?

Martin: 14:34

Yeah, I think in, in the Thinking component of the IDG, the cognitive skills. I thought, first of all, I mean, this is obvious as a leader. I mean we are really good at thinking, we are analyzing, we can draw conclusions, we are very fast at thinking, seeing cause and effect and making, uh, making, uh, decisions based on our good judgment and our cognitive thinking skills. But here in the IDG, I think beyond this is really thinking not only as an individual, practicing how we make sense of what's going on, looking at the system, looking at as an interconnected whole, looking at different perspectives, perspectives in terms of what what's in the past, how it looks today, where we want to go in the future, perspectives from different stakeholders, how others might see it. And also just being super aware, these are complex challenges. Yeah. And there might not be a simple solution. So we need to improve our thinking skills, dealing with system challenges and complex challenges. Not always trying to jump to a quick conclusion and simplifying things or over-simplify things.

Gerrit: 16:04

Yeah. Well, and again, I think this element of what they also call here Thinking when I see this in once again, the more traditional leadership models, it is often related to intelligence. And I don't see this explicitly mentioned here. Of course it's somehow underlying what I wanted to pick up what you said earlier. This, uh, one of these skills and qualities is complexity awareness. And still today, we often talk about how many people try to run the organization as a machine. Everything is linear, has very clear cause and effect connections. But the reality is that it's usually more complex. And you highlighted this perspective skills and I think that is really extremely important. I, I remember a coaching case where somebody said if only he could see it differently. And I think when we also look beyond the corporate world, the conflicts that are going on, um, It's often, you know, if we could only take the perspective of the other person or the other party, then maybe we are able to, um, negotiate something that works for both of us. So, so thinking less from intelligence, but again, aspect of complexity, taking perspective, making sense. That is what I found pretty surprising.

Martin: 17:36

And, and that's that links very well to the Relating part.

Gerrit: 17:41

Indeed. So we come from where you said that maybe ourselves and I think relating is really at the heart of my work. We had I think it was two months ago, we had a whole episode on the importance of relationships at work. Uh, we put a link to this, of course, also into the session notes. So, but as a quick summary, what we often see as social or psychological, has actually hard biology as a basis. So as human beings, we can only exist together with others. We can only survive with others. And so we are these deeply social beings and what I see particular in the western world, I would say, um, we see more of a me focus. But when we look at the problems of the world, I think it's pretty obvious, we can only solve them as, as a collective. And, uh, again, we are focusing more on organizations, but the same is true for any organization that that is facing these complex adaptive challenges. It can be only solved together. Yeah, and that is why, uh, appreciation and connectedness, and, and also what, we often talk about, empathy and compassion are, are so important.

Martin: 19:09

And I like when you highlight this, moving from me to we, and this reminder for leaders that before we jump to the doing, the action, yeah, we need to emphasize the relating, the relationship, because to be able to take collective action. Yes, we need to involve and build trust and strong relationships. Else all those action plans, they will fall flat right now because nobody will want to help us on it. Um, and, and, and this to me, then that leads to this, the, the, the skill sets that we need around Collaborating, the social skills that we need, how do we as leaders then help a diverse team, with our own team, with external collaborators, external stakeholders to work effectively together. So all this, the things that we know around communication, around the co-creating skills, around holding others accountable, right? When, when many stakeholders needs to come together, how do we effectively lead that? And I think this is where the IDG framework gives us so much practical guidance.

Gerrit: 20:35

And again, I would like to emphasize how is this different from other models that we have seen in the past, of course, collaborating and social skills is nothing new, but we see here in this one less of a focus on results that, that we see so often. And even Martin, even though you mentioned hold holding others accountable, I think that is from my perspective, um, that is where the difference lies, because I think it's, it's not explicitly mentioned here. Instead we focus on, you said earlier, the soft skills are now the new hard skills, for instance, communication. We see again and again today how communication is mission critical in crisis for instance. We see as one quality or skill, trust, linking back again to, um, what we discussed in our episode on emotions at work. Where we say trust based relationships are the ultimate foundation for performance at work. So, um, I think when I looked at this in our development goals as a whole, I felt like everything is falling into place. It relates so well to everything that we are working on with our clients, be that in the individual coaching or when we're working with teams. Um, yeah. And this then leads ultimately. So we have being, thinking, relating, collaborating. Of course the whole thing makes sense only when then we, uh, act when we drive change. But once again, yeah, here we see less of a focus on Doing. It's about what is underlying the ability to act and the qualities and skills, you know, are courage, creativity, optimism, and perseverance. And I found very funny a couple of years ago, we worked with a large organization and help them establish a new, or develop a new, vision for the future. And the word perseverance ended up in their vision. Yeah. And how I really found this fascinating. Martin, any other thoughts on Acting?

Martin: 22:50

I really liked this emphasizes of it's not about doing a such it's the underlying mindset and behavior that supports acting effectively. And we know addressing all these challenges, for sure complex challenges, we won't get it right the first time. We need persevere and we need the to try again and raise up and try again when we fall on our face. We need the courage to try new things that nobody has tried before. We need the optimism of course, when we are facing all these world challenges and in sometime the world looks so dark, we need the optimism as leaders to move forward and take the steps that are needed. And breaking this old patterns that we got ourselves into. Yeah, This IDG framework, it puts a lot of puzzle pieces together. And you mentioned the, when, when we've worked in the past with clients just a month ago, when they worked with the leadership team, we actually used the IDG framework. And I think how we used it there was for shaping like shared mental models in this leadership team. It's not about what they individually think is important, but they need a shared framework so they can have a deep dialogue. And a shared reflection. And I think this is the benefit of how leaders can use IDG. As a team to discuss and reflect, um, what categories do we need to work on? What the qualities that we need to work on? What are the behaviors that we can take to be more effective as leaders in our organization? So you can be used as leadership development framework. But also of course, Why do we need to use it like that? Yeah. We need to scale up the momentum of transformation. So we need to also, we need to train our more junior leaders. We need to train people in the organization with these skills so they can take ownership and they have the right skill sets. And I think the IDG gives a very clear guideline. What are the skill sets that we need to train people and leaders in our organizations. How the Being, The Thinking skills, the Relationship building skills, the Collaborating skills, and then the skills needed to effectively act to change. And if we train and develop our people within the IDG framework, I think we can see great momentum.

Gerrit: 25:43

And at what I found interesting. Again, you brought in the perspective of the collective. Um, when I hear the term inner development goals, I think first of all of the individual, maybe also biased through my, uh, lens from the executive coach who mostly works with individuals, but as we have experienced in this workshop, it's actually also critical to do this together with, with the leadership team. And, um, I start thinking Martin, maybe this, this is enough as a first introduction to, to the Inner Development Goals. I assume because w you know, this is also new for us, and I assume we will have a couple of follow up sessions on this and explore maybe each of these categories in more details with practical applications. Uh, meanwhile, if you want to learn more about this, there's a bunch of material and information on their website. It's very simple. It's innerdevelopmentgoals.org. Inner development goals is in one word.org.org. Uh, we will put again that link also in the session notes. Uh, and then as usual, we wrap up with a set of reflection questions. If I think of it, what we discussed today, when I make the link back to where we started. So we see that in many areas, we actually have already a vision of what we want to achieve. Sometimes we have this vision for quite a while, but then we realized that over an extended period of time, no progress is made, or at least we don't make progress as we actually could, based on the technology we have available. So with this, I would lead into a reflection question of for leaders that if I look at the most challenging crop, most challenging and complex problems we are facing as an organization, where might we need a different approach? Are we perhaps focusing too much on the technical aspects and technology and where might it be useful to work instead on our inner development, inner growth. I mean, of course it starts again with the individual leader. What do I need to do? But eventually, what do I need to do with, uh, my team? So this would be my, I actually didn't count it, was maybe two or three questions. Martin. Uh, any, anything that comes up for you as reflection questions.

Martin: 28:26

Yeah. My question is, when looking at the inner development goal framework, comparing it with the existing leadership framework or terminology that we're using today in the organization. What can we learn from the IDG framework, the inner development goal framework, to make, to make progress more effective? And basically how effective is our current framework? And what can we learn from the IDG to add on so that we can act more effective as a leader to drive transformation? That is, that would be my main takeaway as a reflection question.

Gerrit: 29:11

Excellent. Then I would say that's it for today. As I said earlier, if you enjoy the show, please feel free to subscribe to Second Crack on the platform of your choice. And of course, help us please spread the word, tell a friend about it, post on social media. And of course there's also more info about Martin and myself and the work that we do on our website SecondCrackLeadership.com. And then we hope to hear you, see you, speak to you again next time. You take care. Bye, bye..