Grace – the elusive leadership trait

What is grace? Some call it class but this is only a sheen with grace being a deeper, fundamental element.

Michael Swinsburg, Managing Partner at Alexander Hughes Australia, reviewed how to build our Grace to solve today’s VUCA challenges. Grace is a DIY job, writes Michael Swinsburg – leaders need to grow, model, and commit. Grace is inclusive and inspirational.

Over Easter, with its message of service and sacrifice, I decided to revisit Grace, that most elusive trait of great leadership. I found two book reviews that show us how to build our grace and the need for graceful leaders in our VUCA world. We will see that grace is a DIY job — leaders need to grow, model, and commit to it.

What is grace? Some call it class but this is only a sheen with grace being a deeper, fundamental element. Forbes writes “Grace is the act of being open to empathy and compassion (allowing) people to reveal more of themselves and feel safe doing so. Leading with grace benefits our organizations. When people feel psychologically safe and valued, at work and in their lives, they bring their best selves …give their discretionary effort.”

From childhood we are taught to be graceful winners and losers. We learn more about ourselves through adversity vs success thereby developing our grace. For leaders, grace requires perspective beyond ourselves to a greater purpose.  It is linked to service hence we expect it from our senior leaders. We see it with the likes of Angela Merkel and Jacinda Ardern; struggling to find many others. Help please!

Building our GRACE: Generosity, Respect, Action, Compassion, and Energy

In John Baldoni’s Grace: A Leader’s Guide to a Better Us , we are shown how to build our grace.He states “we may like to do the right thing (from our values) but grace pushes us to act”. Baldoni offers five perspectives with his acronym GRACE summarised here.

Generosity – Gracious people leverage themselves for to benefit others. Gracious leaders share time, knowledge, kudos and power with their teams and society. They give with a growth mindset. Adam Grant would categorise gracious people as ‘Givers’.

Respect – Self-awareness opens the door to respect for others. Humility kicks in and hubris gets kicked out of play!

Action – Grace is an intentional action. Grace is often manifested in clarity of purpose and civility. A graceful leader ensures civility in the workplace and across society. I would add this leads to a more open, safer place where feel free to express their best ideas, leading to greater prosperity. We certainly need that right now!

Compassion – Gracious people draw on their gratitude to enable their compassion. History has great leaders who have shown exceptional forgiveness e.g. Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King Jnr. In my coaching, I see leaders with a daily practice of listing three things they are grateful for. This constant gratitude awareness builds our capacity for compassion and well-being.

Energy – Grace requires energy. We draws energy from our positivity and our growth mindset.

We may like to do the right thing but grace pushes us to act.

Baldoni covers a diversity of leaders, actionable behaviours, a self-assessment tool to check your grace and see where you can take it. He asks us to see grace as a way of life and set a daily example.

As grace declines so does regard for our leaders

In Professors Mark Dodgson’s and David Gann’s The Playful Entrepreneur [iv]they found many leading entrepreneurs didn’t rate highly on grace.  They state the “robust personality” of Western business culture e.g. The Apprentice TV show’s slogan “You’re Fired”, means grace is barely considered. Across society, the less we see of grace, the less we regard our leaders.

Beyond their entrepreneurs, the authors found many leaders capable of displaying great grace. They contend that in our VUCA world, problems are too complex to solve one company or I would contend, one nation, at a time. Collaboration is crucial for greater creativity and intuition to provide breakthroughs. We have seen Covid vaccines developed in record time with many teams cooperating and also competing. Graceful leaders stimulate collaboration, they ‘grow the pie’ with their growth mindset.

Dodgson and Gann found more female leaders recognized that competition doesn’t need to be a ‘zero-sum’ game. I’m reminded of Simon Sinek’s leadership advice for the ‘infinite game’ stating “that we will leave our organisations in better shape than we found them; organisations that inspire people to want to continue to build without us.”The authors give examples of graceful leaders, many of whom are pioneers across new industries, science and medicine. We see that like any leadership quality, grace can be grown. I’ve planted my seeds!

Grace moves us towards finding agreement, to joining up our many divisions.

Grace is the understanding that leaders don’t achieve much alone. Grace reduces the distance between us, intentionally leverages the positive, finds connections and promotes mutual success. Through grace we can find the agreement that already exists vs burning up energy and sadly relationships on our often passionately held and ultimately minor differences.

Our public leaders often the lack courage to let us know who they really are; too ruled by opinion polls; too keen on power; too poorly skilled to wield it for the greater vs their tribe’s good. They often play the small, ‘finite’ game. We need leaders who help all win together where no one is left behind!

Grace is inclusive and inspirational and need not be elusive. Grace is sorely needed today. Now to implement my improved GRACE plan!