Thank you so much, Natalia. I'm so happy to be here with this group today. I loved hearing that this group is so committed to transformation, so this is going to be a great topic. I look forward to hearing everyone's feedback.
Cultivating Transformation: A Leader's Guide to Connecting the Soulful and the Practical
Do you identify with any of these terms? Feel free to throw them in the chat if you do, or share similar terms that resonate with you:
- Change agent
- Disruptor
- Truth teller
- Pioneer
If you identify with any of those terms or others, go ahead and share them in the chat. By the very nature of you being on this call, you are a transformational leader—even if you're not in charge. As John Smart said earlier, "Everyone's a leader," and I totally agree. Everyone at least has the opportunity to be a leader. If you're on this call and you care about transformation, you have that opportunity.
But it's a tough job. There's a lot of information out there about agile and agility, but not a whole lot about being a transformational leader. That's why I wrote the book Cultivating Transformations: A Leader's Guide to Connecting the Soulful and the Practical. It's a tough job, and most business schools haven't trained us to be transformational leaders; they've trained us to be operational leaders.
So, over the next few minutes, I'll walk you through how to navigate being a transformational leader.
What is a Transformational Leader?
A transformational leader is part spiritual leader. Now, just a quick note—by spiritual or soulful, I don’t mean religious. I mean attending to the spirit of individuals and the organization. The soul, the ethos, what’s really inside us as individuals and as we come together as an organization.
A transformational leader is:
- Part spiritual leader
- Part work manager (because we need to get things done)
- Part inspirer
- Part community builder
Transformational leadership encompasses all of these roles and more. But how do we navigate these different roles?
The Three Lenses of Transformational Leadership
I want you to look at transformational leadership through three lenses:
- Me: What do I need to work on inside myself?
- We: How do we come together as a group?
- System: The structures and processes within the organization.
I love systems thinking, process, and structure. So, I initially thought I could start there. But what I found was that it didn’t work. I came in like a wrecking ball. I once went into a client, talking about structure and process, and telling them where they were wrong. I explained how they had too much work in process, and I could mathematically prove why they should stop doing that.
But every time I spoke, I was met with resistance and anger. The leader in the organization was visibly upset, and his frustration escalated as I kept restating my case. Afterward, my colleague asked, "Did you notice Bob getting mad?"
I said, "Yeah, but I was right. He just doesn’t get it."
My colleague responded, "When you see someone getting mad, you might change your approach."
That moment was a revelation. I had always thought being right was enough—that it was my armor. But the reality was, I wasn’t aware of my impact. I wasn’t aware of how I was showing up or how I was affecting the system.
How You Show Up Matters
You can be the most knowledgeable person in the room, but if you show up like a wrecking ball, you won’t enable transformation. That’s why self-awareness is critical.
Self-awareness is not a binary—it's not something you either have or don’t. It’s a journey. The paradox of self-awareness is that the more you gain, the more you realize how much you lack. Each time you open a door to self-awareness, you see how unaware you were before.
Building Connection: The "We"
Once we get our self-awareness under control, we can focus on building connection. This is the "We"—how we bring people together.
One key to this is healing the pain. If an organization is in pain—whether due to overworked employees, a toxic culture, or overwhelming workloads—you cannot start a transformation. You need to solve that first.
Another key is balancing resonance and dissonance. You need to be resonant enough to be heard but dissonant enough to create change. If you are too resonant, people like you, but nothing changes. If you are too dissonant, people dismiss you as radical or unrealistic. The art is in balancing the two.
Creating Conditions for Transformation: The System
Organizations are not machines—they are human systems. And human systems are living systems. Given the right conditions, living systems flourish. So, instead of thinking of transformation as building a factory, think of it as growing a garden. You plant, water, and pull weeds as needed.
A transformational leader doesn’t "drive" the work. They create the conditions for the transformation to emerge.
Managing Tensions
Organizations experience tensions—like stability vs. change. If we don't manage these well, we end up lurching between extremes. But a transformational leader brings these together, using stability to support change and using change to strengthen stability.
Attending to the Soul
Living systems are fueled by soul—not in a religious sense, but in the ethos of the organization. Some organizational processes are "soulless"—they drain energy and engagement. But in five steps, you can bring soul back:
- Clarify the soulful purpose of the process.
- Identify what is making it soul-crushing.
- Determine if it violates power, freedom, or connection.
- Identify the tensions at play.
- Reimagine how to bring soul back into the process.
Navigating Transformation
Transformation is not linear. It’s a winding path. You don’t need to see all 10 steps ahead. Just find the next stepping stone, stand on it, and look around for new possibilities.
As the saying goes, "Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths." People may later ask, "Why didn’t you just tell us this in the beginning?" The answer is simple: They wouldn’t have been ready to hear it.
Final Thoughts
I’m leaving you with some resources:
- Structural Agility White Paper
- The Five Steps to Soul
- My book (available on Amazon and for Business Agility Institute members)
Connect with me on LinkedIn—I’d love to hear how these ideas are playing out in your work.
Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to hearing from you!