Deploy Yourself School of Leadership

A new kind of leadership (Deploy Yourself) is required in the 21st century. Covid has turbo-charged what was already a VUCA environment – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. More importantly, people today want to be led differently and have different expectations from leaders – they seek not only productivity and salary but also joy, meaning, purpose, wellbeing, and constant growth from their leaders. If you are a leader, you probably know that the old way of working is not working anymore. You probably already see that trying to control people and what they do, motivating them by rewards or punishment, and just doing ‘more’ and working ‘harder’ is no longer working. Leadership in the 21st century is like surfing in the ocean. You are either riding a wave, or you are under it being thrown around. Either way, you can not control the wave. You can learn to ride it or be thrown around by it. You can make surfing an enjoyable sport if you know how to ride the waves, or misery if you are just being thrown around by the waves all the time. This is what is happening in many organisations today. “Deploy Yourself” is a continuously evolving set of first principles that are always present under the surface of our awareness. Just like gravity, it does not matter whether we agree with them or not, like them or not, and understand them or not. The only choice we have is to leverage them or not. When we are unaware of these principles, we lead our teams like being thrown around by the waves in the ocean. That is no fun – I am sure you would agree. And workplaces today need to be fun and healthy as well as productive and results-focused. The good news is that productivity increases massively when we are able to Deploy Ourselves because having fun and stress-free workplaces allow for creative thinking, constructive conversations, better relationships, and a better mood and energy for not just our people but also their families.