Sir Steve Lancashire is Chair of Forum Strategy’s National #TrustLeaders CEO network. He also provides mentoring for CEOs across our network and through the Being The CEO programme. In this month’s blog, Sir Steve shares his reflections on our seventh national #TrustLeaders CEO conference, which focused on how we lead with contextual wisdom. He reflects on some key learning points from the day, focusing specifically on how these can lead to tangible, impactful action that enable the betterment of our leadership and our organisations. Further content from the event will be shared on our post-conference webpage.
As I reflect on the excellent Forum Strategy CEO conference last week so many thoughts have been buzzing around in my head. The first of which is how a brilliant facilitator plays such a crucial role in shaping the overall impact of an event. I watched Maggie Farrar in awe, as she synthesised and analysed our different speakers’ insights, connecting the diverse viewpoints, drawing out key themes and intelligently linking them to the broader context of our leadership as CEOs. Her ability to ask probing questions and clarify complex points really enhanced the quality of an already excellent day. She turned a series of individually fascinating speeches into a cohesive, inspiring conduit for collective learning about the power of contextual wisdom. Bravo Maggie!
Another reflection is on the irony of Jeppe Hansgaard talking about ‘Connectivity is broken, now what?’ when the very essence of this conference was rooted in connection. In my own speech, I emphasised how unique I feel this network is, precisely because of the strength of the professional relationships amongst us all, the shared sense of care we all have, and the professional generosity that is a palpable feature of the network. I see no silos, no cliques or disconnected individuals amongst us all and so I’m taking from this that we must collectively be doing something right!
“In my own speech I emphasised how unique I feel the network is, precisely because of the strength of the professional relationships amongst us all, the shared sense of care we all have and the professional generosity that is a palpable feature of the network.”
Synthesising key points from a conference is a bit like creating your own personal Wordle. (Thanks Slido, do I get my own QR code?). Each speaker adds unique letters of insight, and as you piece them together, patterns emerge. Just as in Wordle, identifying the right combinations leads to clarity and understanding, helping us form a complete picture of the subject. By the end of the conference I felt we had undergone a complete 360 on contextual wisdom.
And by the end of the day we had developed, I believe, a common understanding about what we mean when we use the phrase. The broad range of speakers and diverse viewpoints emphasised the fact that this form of wisdom goes beyond theory and is far from being an abstract concept. It is complex and is multifaceted.
