Leadership Forums ‘Zooms’ into Evolution of Influence

by DAVID CHMIEL
May 2020

Until we can be together in one place, the Leadership Forum Community’s ‘Incubating Leadership’ series has inspired a global community to share their experiences and insights. Part of an eight-week program focusing on opportunities to incubate leadership.

What does leadership look like to you? It might be a steady hand, an empathetic ear, a different point of view that opens your mind or sets you on a path forward. Are you reassessing your own leadership style in a world turned upside down by a devastating pandemic — and wondering how to expand the leadership capacity of more men and women who can chart the next path for success.

No matter where you find yourself, it is often beneficial to slow down and question assumptions when searching for new solutions.

“The most important quality for incubating leadership is curiosity,” said LaTonya Wilkins, founder of The Change Coaches, LLC, and Board Co-Chair of the Leadership Community Forum, Inc. “You need to be curious about exploring new people, approaches, and perspectives. Coming in with an open mind is very important as well.”

“LFC sessions focus on incubating leadership that integrate corporate, societal, and educational perspectives. We are removing the silos that may isolate industries to make real-world change.”

Since 1918, the Leadership Forum at Silver Bay has helped shape the future of business around the world. Leaders gather to share insights, seek answers, and turn ideas into action that will benefit their companies, the people who work for them, and their communities. They met as the world was coping with The Spanish Flu, a pandemic that infected one-third of the world’s population.

Today, as the global community comes to grips with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Leadership Forum kicked off its Community Summit 2020 (a virtual event, to be held July 8-9) with its “Incubating Leadership Conversations”, an interactive, eight-session, hour-long series of Zoom events (held from noon-1, EDT, Wednesdays through July 1). These sessions connect thought leaders and provocateurs from around the world to share insights that can help define and nurture the art and science of leadership to ensure the evolution of business and society.

In 1918, business leaders were focused on trying to survive catastrophic losses of lives, huge shortfalls, and uncertain prospects for their industries and disciplines. More than a century later, under similar circumstances, Lyndon Rego, Chief Catalyst at CoMetta, the North Carolina-based community empowerment organization, helps businesses reconnect with communities at the local level. Rego, in the May 20 “Incubating Leadership Conversation” focusing on Lessons for Incubating Leadership in Times of Crisis, took participants through a series of questions:

• How have you grown from this crisis? What has helped you grow?
• How can you expand your network? How can you increase empowerment?
• How can you deepen (intention, awareness, empowerment) and broaden (networks, experience, capacity)

“In times of crisis, many things fail. Our relationships and networks become critical to our ability to adapt and respond,” Rego said. “In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, some of Louisiana’s poorest communities came together to rescue and house people displaced from New Orleans. They stepped into the void. That is the kind of community-based leadership we also see in the current crisis, where everyday people are mobilizing to make masks for medical workers and take care of neighbors and those in need.”

Rego’s insights spurred two rounds of inspired breakout sessions on the potential for taking a step back during times of crisis to create clarity from the enormity of the change and uncertainty.”

“To grow our capacity for leadership in a crisis, we must lean into change, deepen our intention and awareness, and broaden our experiences and networks,” Rego said. He closed with a poem “We are the ones we have been waiting for” from the elders from the Hopi Nation:

There is a river flowing now very fast.

It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.

They will try to hold on to the shore.

They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.

The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off toward the middle of the river,

Keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

See who is there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves!

Times of change lead to moments of clarity and opportunity. The Leadership Forum’s Incubating Leadership Conversations give everyone the chance to find moments to take control in uncertain times and find ways to be part of the community that is focused on shaping the future.