About Unlearning Leadership®
Leadership is our most urgent area for social change right now. Those in power in workplaces and the world make decisions everyday that impact our quality of life and the longevity of our planet. But these leaders have been chosen based on an old narrative about leadership. This outdated narrative is fostering more inequity, more exclusion, and more harm to people and planet, while continuing to benefit the very people that formed it in the first place.
The industrial age has gone. So has the information age. We are now in the age of connection and in a new century. What does that mean for leadership? What does that mean for what we value in leadership and who gets elevated to positions of power? And ultimately, what do we need to unlearn about leadership to make the kind of changes we want to see in the world?
I am on a journey of unlearning.
In this newsletter, I deconstruct stories and norms we hold about leadership and work, examining them within the current context and sharing ideas about what we may need to unlearn moving forward. Adding ‘new’ ideas related to leadership is not going to fundamentally shift our deepest stories about what a leader ‘looks like’, no matter how many workshops we attend. So we need to do some unlearning first.
Here, we critically think about where certain ideas about leadership have come from, who benefits and who doesn’t, in order to be able to see what we need and want next. If we unlearn what we think we ‘know’ about leadership, we can then co-create new ways of leading that will lead to stronger, more inclusive organizations.
Join me on this journey!
Why? So we can make the world a better, more inclusive place for ourselves, and for the next generations of leaders that will need to focus as much, if not more, on people and planet, than profit to build a more sustainable future - for all.
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About Lianne Picot
I am a lifelong change-the-world type. I worked and led in the non-profit sector in the UK, Ireland and Canada for over 20 years. I have been a leader at all levels, and truly believe in the power of leadership to make a difference in people’s lives and in the world overall. I also fundamentally believe that leadership is our most urgent area of social change right now. If we want a different workplace and world, we need a different narrative about leadership.
Over the past decade I have been a leadership coach, consultant and facilitator in all sectors. I also teach courses in leadership and organizational effectiveness at a number of universities and colleges.
I earned my Master’s in Education at the University of Toronto in 2019, specializing in leadership and workplace learning. I am now undertaking my PhD to examine the ‘broken rung’ on the leadership ladder that is impacting women’s advancement into senior leadership roles in all sectors. Find out more about that below!
Researching stories about what a leader ‘looks like’…
I am currently doing my PhD examining the intersection of gender and leadership. I will be researching the stories, stereotypes, and biases that we carry that impact who we view as having ‘leadership potential’ and who gets promoted to senior levels of leadership.
In this newsletter I will be also be sharing my learning, unlearning, and insights from the research when relevant to contribute to the unlearning and help inform our collective co-creation of a new leadership ‘story’ that will benefit ALL genders.
If you are able to financially contribute to this publication, you will not only be supporting my writing but also my research! Paid members will get special invitations to live discussions about my findings along the way.
If you know someone that might benefit from this newsletter, please do not hesitate to share! The more of us there are unlearning, the more likely it is that we can make a change how leadership is learned and lived.
