(Part 3 of Navigating Men's Midlife)
Men’s midlife and the andropause coincides with the career phase where they as leaders carry most responsibility for organizations, people and businesses. What superficially could be seen as an overwhelming amount of change at the same time, can in fact be a unique opportunity to bring about fundamental shifts in leadership consciousness, presence, behaviours and impact. Midlife is perhaps be the most inspiring “senior leadership development program”, and it’s free of charge.
In this third essay on the transformational opportunities for mid-lifers, I focus on a potential shift that is available for the mid-lifer’s leadership practice and identity: To lead as a gardener, instead of as a mechanic. This shift can have a dramatic positive effect on how employees and stakeholders experience you as a leader.
You, as a midlife leader, are part of a bigger ecosystem. People around you sense you, and react or respond to you, your vibe and your actions. Therefore, it is important to not only look at your own inner situation and work, but also to intentionally work on how others can experience you differently. After all, leadership is really about human and systemic impact.
With this systemic lens on midlife, I hope to enrich the discussion and provide additional inspiration for the personal inner work as a person and leader.
The shift from lead as a mechanic to lead as a gardener.
When we during midlife revisit our identity and how we live our lives, we dive into new existential questions and new realizations. We become aware that we, our life and our interactions are organic by nature. Personally, I felt a call to become more “organic” in my ways of being and doing – pretty much like a gardener. That’s why I worked to transform myself and the work I do. In my mid 40s it became more important for me to empower people and teams to bloom, and to positively influence the growth of the entire ecosystem.
Earlier in the career, younger leaders often tend to adopt leadership as a mechanical exercise; “We drive the transformation, get the right people on the bus, accelerate the business and fix things”. It manifests in our identity, thinking, language and behaviours. Deep diving into KPIs with Excel, and wanting to engineer the organization through Powerpoint. Sure, it works to a certain degree, but I have yet to meet an employee who say that it inspiring to be seen as someone who needs fixing or get onboard a bus.
As a great side-effect of the inner personal transformation work, we evolve our being and ways to connect, interact and move people with more intention and openness. We look both inwards and outwards, assess our own values, beliefs and patterns, and we assess if these serve ourselves and others. When the leader’s identity and repertoire expand, I have witnessed many positive effects. Here are 4 examples that I found impactful:
1. People are moved by the leader’s presence of calm determination.
2. People and business alike benefit from the leader’s ability to create and co-create creatively – with a both/and mindset across domains, complexity and paradoxes.
3. People and teams benefit from the leader’s ability to empower and “make people bigger, not smaller”.
4. Teams and ecosystems benefit from the leader as a catalyst who brings about shifts in context, energy and direction.
In essence, the midlife leader becomes an organic positive influence for people, teams, ecosystems, stakeholders, business and outcomes, and thereby make things possible that were in the past much more difficult to achieve. The mid-lifer’s growth as a person creates an impactful presence of gravitas and lightness, and makes it easier to create, empower and being a catalyst.
9 “Leader as a Gardener” abilities that energize people and systems.
Looking deeper into how people may feel the midlife leader is becoming different as a leader, I want to call out 9 “gardening leadership abilities” that can be observed and felt by others, although they are often subtle. (See the outer circle in the illustration).
These are not technical and commanding skills, but rather it is the caring approach of a gardener who grows a garden. The gardening presence and abilities emerge out of a leader’s evolved organic awareness and mindset. In my client work it sometimes occurs that the leader unconsciously has changed their way of leading, and they are surprised to realize these shifts in retrospect. Other clients, however, are still stuck in their midlife frustration and irritation that they do not work as they used to. Some decide to consciously explore the “leading as a gardener” opportunities through reflection and experimentation. They let the borders between their identity as a person and as a leader slowly disappear, and become more authentic and “whole”.
Coming back to the systemic aspect of change in midlife I referred to at the beginning, the mid-lifer’s path of evolution starts to enable an organic and symbiotic oneness with the world around. The midlife leader can address culture, context and paradoxes as a “system worker”, instead of only a high performing individual. It becomes easier to co-create, and make things happen that cannot be achieved alone. We can play the game in a different way.
This is one of the big gifts of midlife.
As always, please do not understand this essay as a blueprint, but rather as inspiration for what is possible in the midlife journey.
If you want to go deeper into the leadership possibilities in midlife self-work, I recommend 2 books that I find inspiring as a late mid-lifer and in my executive coaching practice.
In Soaring Beyond Midlife: The Surprisingly Natural Emergence of Leadership Superpowers in Life’s Second Half, Aneace Haddad, dives deep into the potential superpower of midlife leaders, and how to bring them about.
In Turn The Ship Around, Captain David Marquet introduces the concept of Intent based leadership, which I find valuable both as an inspiration for mid-lifers’ new leadership mindset, and for executive to reconsider their need for certainty and control.
Yours,
Henrik