My True North and Leading in Complexity

Throughout the last several weeks, I was able to develop my purpose and how it will let me lead myself as well as those around me in a growing complex environment. I discovered who I am as a leader (in a stroke of luck I took this course just as I was stepping into my first leadership role and that has been invaluable in learning what works and what doesn’t). As a leader, I am goal oriented and I aim to pursue the success of a team by encouraging strengths and working through critical weaknesses by leading by example. My leadership purpose is driven by my overall purpose which was guided by the ideas presented in Finding your True North: A Personal Guide and Complexity Leadership: Enabling People and Organizations for Adaptability (George et al, 2008) (Uhl-Bien, Arena, 2017).

How I Developed My Leadership Purpose

I developed my leadership purpose by a series of lessons from Finding your True North (George, et al, 2008). I defined what was important to me and my values by first understanding my motivations and then ideating my ideal life and the impact I want to leave. My leadership purpose is to help led others in the healthcare field in a manner that allows for best practices to be adhered to while promoting collaboration in teams while promoting community health.

Leading Authentically

In an ever complex and changing environment, a guiding principle is “rich interconnectivity” when “things interact, they change one another in unexpected and irreversible ways” (Uhl-Bien, Arena, 2017). I aim to remain authentic by ensuring that I understand my decisions and the long-term impact they will have on all potential systems it can impact. By using system thinking I will help design solutions that work well in the long run. I will come back to my core guiding principle of “leave nothing overturned” when making these decisions. Using my purpose, I will consistently make decisions that validate it and that in turn will help me lead authentically.

What Insights Will I Implement and What Will I Work On

I will use what I learned on meaningful collaboration immediately. Teamwork is essential to success especially in complex environments. Promoting a team members strength can be used for a quick path to success instead of focusing on one’s weaknesses. Strategic planning is something that I will work on bettering in the future. To plan strategically I need to spend learning and analyzing the current and past state, then use trends identified there to plan strategically. I aim to work on asking for

Closing Thoughts

In this course I have learned my leadership purpose and who I am as a leader by learning my purpose. I aim to remain authentic especially in complex environments. I will implement insights from this course while I work on bettering strategies I can use in the future.

All views expressed are my own.