Navigating the spaces between those three turns

We are having a lot of fun developing and recording the Third Turn Podcast.  Some spectacular conversations are coming with people who care passionately about the welfare of our grandchildren’s grandchildren, people who are working out how stewardship of their enterprises and lives can build this important future value. The podcast grows out of the Maestro-level leader initiative of Design Group International and the 2021 cohort we are forming for senior executive leaders.

 

On a forthcoming podcast (episode 5), we will be talking about the spaces between the Three Turns of the Executive Leader.  Those Three Turns are:

 

Turn One - Leadership of self (Artisan)

Turn Two - Leadership of an organization and of others (Artist)

Turn Three - Leadership toward future value (Maestro)

 

Each Turn can be its own ending point; we do not have to walk through a doorway if we do not wish to. What we hope is that people don’t get stuck, wishing for one thing but feeling helpless or forced to do another. Each Turn layers on to the previous as we move more deeply into leadership and determine whether a larger, broader scale of leadership is really our highest and best. Obstacles exist to getting through those doorways, some put in place by other people or systems out of our control and some self-made.  

 

We can move through the doorways - or we can be stuck in the spaces between.

 

The following are descriptions of approaching the doorways into those turns, what the stuck space might look like, and how we might know we are passing through.

 

 

 

• What walking through looks like: becoming an Artist
• Desiring to learn leadership just as one learned previous professional skills
• Continued mastery of self, particularly one’s use of time
• Heightening one’s ability to be aware of people and how they can also grow into their highest and best.
• Humble acceptance of the steward role given to an executive leader
• Pursuit of operational excellence
• Some will stop here without moving toward the Turn Three doorway and will have full lives, incorporating elements of Turns One, Two, and Three as Artists.

• Approach to this door: awareness of larger systems, with both long-term and future value
• Developing operational excellence in the organization one leads, both the hard and soft skills
• Mastery of the current value of the organization
• Construction of a sustaining and renewing enterprise that gives opportunity for others in Turns One and Two
• Deeper awareness of systems and complexity, with a growing yearning to make a difference where these connect
• Being asked to join thought leadership and policy-making conversations
• What stuck looks like: continued reshuffling of senior leadership and key talent
• Isolation in the C-Suite
• Inability to delegate
• Focus on mid- and short-term results
• Mission drift
• Mid-life crises
• Some will get stuck in the doorway to Turn Three and continue competing for their current or future role(s).

 

 

A fully-functioning Maestro does not rest in this space. We live in it with an ongoing reality of what comes next at the same time.

 

 

 

As we approach any of these doorways, we can see both ways, the coming and the going - at least if our eyes are kept open. These doorways do not close behind us, although we are not likely to return once we’ve moved completely through to a next Turn.