It has become more important than ever that organisations focus on developing their leaders to cope with the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) times that we work in. We have been talking about VUCA for the last 15 years, it has arrived and to be honest it is more dysfunctional than ever as organisations struggle to deal with the many complex adaptive challenges that they are facing; coming off the back of the pandemic many organisations are simply drowning in these problems.

Today I talk to my friend and colleague Deborah Pascoe who is a leadership development expert about how we develop these leaders and why it is important. Deb began her career in the corporate sector where she worked in a range of business roles before quitting in her thirties to work out what she really wanted to do. She fell into consulting by accident really and realised very quickly that it was her great love. Now thirty years later she has worked with many organisations from all different sectors and has a deep and broad understanding of leadership and adult development.

This is a varied conversation where we talked about:

why leadership development is so important and why organisations should invest in it,
why collaborative problem solving is integral to solving adaptive challenges,
How organisational purpose keeps us anchored in tough times and the ability to articulate our organisational purpose is the single biggest driver of employee engagement,
How our individual north star helps us to navigate the intracacies of life when we lose our way,
Why people get stuck in the personal development and how learning trauma stops us from pursuing growth on a personal and professional level,
What the learning cycle of the brain is, the dopamine-opioid cycle and we we can hook into that we can keep on learning and growing throughout our life.

Deb talks about her own midlife journey and how it was transformational for her in many ways and now in her sixties she really feels she is in the prime of her life. There is a lot of wisdom and reflection in this conversation that is grounded in a deep understanding of what it means to be a human in these times we live in. You can find Deb at Phronesis Foundation.