Just Because You Think Something Is Impossible, Doesn't Mean You Don't Have to Work on It!

• In Event: Interactive Roundtable Discussions & Member Community Information Tables
  In Interactive Roundtable: Leadership Development Interactive Roundtable Discussions

Short Description

Recent political events across Europe and the United States have led to incredulity, amazement, and sheer disbelief — and yet the impossible is becoming possible. Are business leaders living in a bubble? What are the business issues of living in an echo chamber? What are the implications for leadership?

Detailed Abstract

These are times of huge political and social turbulence and questions are being raised as to how we got here, how we should accept the present and best anticipate and lead through future turbulence to come. Simple, nostalgic communications seem to provide clear direction in an ever increasingly complex world and tap into underlying anger and frustration, while simultaneously blind-siding those who thought the impossible could never become possible.

So if:
- Feeling trumps reason
- Anger trumps logic
- Direction trumps detail
- Simple messages trump complex arguments
- And we have ‘post-truth’ as the new word of the year entering the Oxford English Dictionary 2016

(Alistair Campbell Blog, 8.12.16) what are the implications of these phenomena for us as Leaders or indeed for Leadership as a concept?
One could argue that social media echo chambers are strongly related to the concept of group think (Janis, 1972); with many of the same conditions required for group think also required for an echo chamber to exist. Therefore, echo chambers might also potentially come with many of the negative symptoms of group think.

Perhaps Mark Twain put it best when he said, ‘“Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Therefore the roundtable format provides that time to pause and the questions below would stimulate necessary reflection:
•To what extent are we a club of like-minded people, sharing our insights and knowledge in a way that repeats a narrow leadership perspective, bringing about groupthink and leading us into echo chambers?
•Are there any benefits in business/leadership from remaining or entering into an echo chamber?
•Could techniques and processes to avoid group think also help avoid leaders falling into echo chambers?
•Should business leaders be more aware of how social media newsfeeds, algorithms and internet data gathering works in order to help avoid falling into business/leadership echo chambers?
•What impact do business leadership echo chambers have on leadership skills or processes such as: strategizing, building leadership & organisational culture, decision-making (especially in times of crisis/stress/turbulence), networking, team diversity & inclusion, innovation, continuous improvement & intrapreneurship?
•What actions (if any) do we want to commit to?

Goals of the session:
•Participants will be able to critique their own frame of reference in dealing with leadership in turbulent times
•Participants will become more self-aware of their own and other’s processes in assessing new trends
•Participants will discuss personal questions to enable them to step outside of their own comfort zone and broaden their field of concern and action

Participants

• Joanna Jack, Center for Creative Leadership

• Sabina Stritch, CCL