Leading in Disruption
I was listening to the radio in early 2020. Covid was upon us and the discussion centred around a phrase that stuck with me: “post-traumatic growth”.
We’re very familiar with the term PTSD. It’s so well known that we sometimes use it too casually when reflecting on a difficult moment. But, of course, true PTSD is no laughing matter, which is why the very deliberate phrasing used by the interviewee that day struck me. It was a powerful reminder that bound up in the most difficult experiences we may ever endure, there is the potential not just for rupture but for repair and growth too.
Two years ago I explored the organisational equivalent of this idea with a group of 100 senior leaders from 40 countries who I brought together for a high-potential leadership programme in Vietnam. Leaning on the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Patrick Hollingworth, we explored a spectrum of responses to volatility: fragility, resilience and anti-fragility.
We did so through three simple metaphors:
A china cup: If it falls onto the floor, it will shatter. You could, with enough time, patience and skill, rebuild it. But it will never be the same again. It is fragile.
A rubber ball: When a rubber ball hits the floor, the side that makes contact is depressed and distorted. The shape alters. But it quickly returns to its former self. You cannot distinguish any change in it. It is resilient.
A tree in the wind: A tree that grows in the wind develop a thicker trunk. It becomes stronger in response to adversity. And in so doing is better equipped for future adversity. It is antifragile.
The question I posed from the stage that day was this: how can we configure teams and organisations to be not just resilient, but anti-fragile? So that, in Taleb’s words, they “benefit from shocks” and thrive and grow in volatility.
Which brings me back to where I started. What about the individual? How can individuals benefit and grow from the shocks, stresses and strains of life and work? How can they experience post-traumatic growth rather than stress? How can they become anti-fragile?
Some of this may be down to character and disposition. Optimism. Growth mindset. But even these can be learned.
It turns out there is also a process that can create the conditions for this kind of growth. The Centre for Creative Leadership identified three elements.
Heat moments: challenging, high-stakes situations that stretch a leader beyond their current way of thinking. CCL describes them as moments where the leader’s normal habits or mental models are disrupted because the situation is complex, pressured or disorienting. The point is not just “difficulty”; it is difficulty that makes someone realise their current way of seeing the problem may be insufficient.
Colliding perspectives: exposure to people who see the world differently: different functions, backgrounds, levels of seniority, cultures, personalities, disciplines or opinions. Other perspectives challenge the leader’s existing assumptions and widen the range of ways they can understand a situation.
Sensemaking: the reflective process that helps leaders integrate the heat and the different perspectives. Sensemaking involves pausing to reflect, creating shared understanding amid complexity, and using facilitated dialogue to explore current reality before rushing into solutions.
Together, this is often described as vertical development: a form of development which, rather than just adding new skills, expands a leader’s capacity to handle volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Rather than filling the glass, we expand the capacity of the glass.
I’ve seen this in action a few times. I helped build an in-house programme 10 years ago for an EMEA-wide organisation which consisted of multiple cycles of heat moments, colliding perspectives and sensemaking. I saw it again in more recent years during a global leadership programme for high-potential leaders. We used disruptive experiences: speakers, cultural experiences and highly emotive stories to provoke, to change the lens.
You can take a group of talented leaders and have a discussion about leadership concepts anywhere in the world and it’ll be interesting. But if you give them a disruptive experience first, that discussion is entirely different.
I’m now going for a third iteration, as I work to build a new offer: Leading in Disruption.
If you’re interested in this topic, let me know. I’d love to chat.
