I used to think success was all about goal-setting and alignment. If I didn’t achieve my goals, I was off-path, I needed to be re-directed again.

But a conversation with leadership researcher Marcos Salazar changed this for me. Marcos described how alignment is not always what is needed. Sometimes it is the creative things we do where we wander that allow us to come back to something profound when we connect the dots later. Sometimes we have to follow our instinct, rather than just follow what we wrote in a goals statement. There is an important balance between these two.

When did you trust your instinct, fall ‘off-path’ and only later connect the dots?

My passion for feminine leadership development stems from a desire to connect with others and help them connect with themselves. Last week, I met Jennifer Berger from Cultivating Leadership based in New Zealand. We discussed two key questions that I am thinking about:

• How do I use my leadership work at Harvard and develop it into something into my career?

• How do I create spaces for others to learn this that will conducive to their learning and stage in development?

Most of our development is not a beautiful path, it is a tangled web of vines as we try to figure out what belongs and what does not. Many people commonly take personality profile indicators such as the Myers Briggs test to better understand themselves. I had three major takeaways from our conversation:

1)     “In order to understand anything well you need at least three good theories” -Bill Perry

The more we can gain new theories of thinking, the less we hold to one but combine a set of theories to push our own thinking. More theories help us be psychologically spacious.

2)     “The wise man doesn’t give the right answers he poses the right questions” -Claude Levi Strauss

What helps me ask different or the “right” questions? Often having the space and time to reflect, whether a meditative process, asking people you know well or connect to, and finding community to be curious with. Again, this is about how to live with the questions and not just about solving problems.

3) “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” -Marcel Proust

What helps me get out of one perspective and take multiple perspectives?  This could be travel, getting into uncomfortable situations, creating dissent, stepping into shoes of other person, reading, writing, conflict, or failure. These interventions help us take notice of what is around us.

The big news of the 21st century is that the world as a whole has got to be managed, not just its parts. What has helped me look at systems? It is about constant learning and development.  We can all come up with new ways of working if we become the author of our own story, make time for reflection, and observe and experiment to  create new structures and practices.