New leaders with new hearts and new spirits have new focus and new energy. (952 words. Read time is 5 minutes 45 seconds.) 

On pages 7 & 8 of GOOD SUCCESS: Learning Good Lessons from Bad Leaders, the following formula for success is discussed:

PD (Proper Direction) + HW (Hard Work) + E (Enablers) + GL (Good Lessons) = GOOD SUCCESS.

I see the COVID -19 pandemic as an enabler, rather than as an inhibitor, if the response to it causes new hearts and new spirits to be created. Focus refers to the Proper Direction component and Energy refers to the Hard Work component of the formula.

New leaders with new hearts and new spirits have enhanced sensing ranges.

A sensing range is the field or region within which a sensor can detect what is in or not in a given area. A sensor can detect such things as proximity, size, direction and speed of motion, dimensionality, temperature, color, and void, among others.

Sensing range is related to the types of Radar and vision systems (Lidar) used in robots and autonomous vehicles, but can also be a characteristic of good leaders having new hearts and spirits. A sensing range can also be an acute level of awareness. Good leaders will be required to have better sensing ranges post COVID-19 than they had prior to it.

When someone learns a new concept or observes an atypical behavior, their sensing range will have been prompted, much like a robot is “jogged” when finding a new position from which to operate.

Take, for example, the omnipresent usage of the term “new normal” by leaders and social commentators who have no more idea of what of a permanent nature lies ahead than anyone else.

While understanding that my “old” normal will not return, I do not want a “new” normal, I want a “better” normal.

 Good leaders will understand this distinction via an increased sensing range. They will strike a balance between the temporary and the permanent irregularities certain to occur. Both types of irregularities can result in a better normal than before, if competently managed.

People and organizations will need to be sustained and positioned to thrive by living between temporary and permanent irregularities.

Irregularity within all aspects of culture, society, life, and work requires management by new leaders with new hearts and new spirits. These leaders are much more likely to help followers create a fruitful response to irregularity and abnormality than those with old hearts and old spirits.

Knowing that things will never be as before, is for some people a relief, for others an obstacle, and for yet others an opportunity. Given how profound the pandemic has been for everyone, it is a challenge requiring fine-tuning and modifying not our hopes and expectations but how we approach realizing our hopes and expectations. Aspirations are aided immensely via new hearts and new spirits within us and the leaders we follow.

A leader’s sensing range (LSR) is aided when working in physical proximity with others. Leading remotely requires a greater commitment to actuate one’s sensing range than when working in the same physical space. Leaders must sense differently and better given distance. No matter how helpful conferencing technologies have become, they do not replace the necessity of immediacy for high-level sensing and being “in touch” with others.

New leaders with new hearts and new spirits will have an expanded sensing range to discern what is “really” going on in the thoughts and actions of those they lead.  A leader with an old heart and old spirit would rely upon an earlier sensing range, if they had one at all, and their old normal seem good enough for them, yet inadequate for followers and insufficient for creating a better normal.

Leaders with skills abundant enough to imagine and create useful cultural and market-changing innovations as a result of an expansion of their sensing range are not content with “normal,” even though it may be “new.”

An expanded sensing range enlivens thinking forward and minimizes looking backward with longing or with a sense of loss or regret. There is no possibility of going back, whereas there is great promise in going forward differently.

Some of the greatest innovators, influencers and thought changers were those thought to be unconventional, if not abnormal. In this respect our Founding Fathers had a broadened sensing range and did not want to be subjects of the British crown any longer. They did not want a “new” normal, they wanted a “better normal”. They wanted to do government differently. They envisioned “self-government” of, for and by the people. What was created was uncharacteristic because it was dissimilar to any other form of government at that time and because it had personal and collective liberty and commonwealth as its main objectives.

LSR (Leader’s Sense Range) illustrates a leader’s heart and spirit to be new. That is, their insights and interpretations are keener and more different than they were prior to having a new heart and new spirit. Thus, LSR will help form a “better” normal.

Although everyone has a sensing range it can vary widely. Someone who has an undeveloped sensing range is often referred to as someone that just “doesn’t get it.” They are unaware of events and emotions taking place within their immediate surroundings thus most opportunities to lead well go undetected. Therefore, one’s sensing range needs to be greater now than before COVID-19.

One’s sensing range is generally binary, either on or off. New leaders with new hearts and new spirits will have their sensing ranges continually “on” despite pandemics and the pressure to create a “new” normal rather than a “better” normal.