WISER LEADERSHIP

Wisdom with Teeth

We need wisdom. Never have we needed to measure it, celebrate it and cultivate it more than we do now.

Think about the wisest person you know. You may not automatically think of them as a business leader, but don’t they have traits you would like to find more often in leaders? Wisdom is Gandalf, Merlin, Confucius, Saul Bereson!? A worryingly male list if we are honest but is this only the stuff of myth, philosophy, and awesome drama?

Wisdom is a burgeoning area of research with such luminaries as Judith Glück, Igor Grossmann and Dilip Jeste. And the consensus, as much as there is one, is that wisdom helps us make better decisions that take in more perspectives, balance complexity and contradiction, and ultimately increase the chances of a better outcome. Igor has been known to describe it as the ‘highest attainable level of human development’. Tell me that doesn’t sound awesome!

My particular area of interest, is the idea of Organisational Wisdom (OW). Some say that wisdom is contextual and non-transferable from one domain (e.g. leadership), to another (e.g. romantic relationships). I think it’s just more open to disruption because of the complexities it deals with. For example, I believe a wise business leader would be better equipped to make a wise personal decision, it doesn’t mean that they will.

Bill Clinton.