Buena Casas for Leadership

I recently spent some time working with a board.  At the end of the day, one of the participants talked about how impactful it was to spend time discussing how to support the leader.  She said that she had participated in many board retreats – both in business and in spiritual communities – and this topic had never been explored.

Leadership is challenging, especially in today’s world.  We have high expectations for leaders, but rarely take the time to consider how we can contribute to their success.  And yet, their success is intimately interwoven with the success of the organization they lead.

Some years ago, I read Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals to Becoming an Exemplary Leader, by James M Kouzes and Barry Z Posner.  This book speaks about creating a Buena casa (good house) for leadership.  The term “Buena casa” is derived from the practices of coffee growers in El Salvador who create Buena casas for their coffee plants by digging deep holes, filling them with nutrient rich soil, and placing the young coffee plants in them.  Coffee plants will grow without Buena casas, but they will not thrive or produce as much fruit.  Kouzes and Posner make the point that leaders also need Buena casas.  To thrive, leaders require a deep foundation and a nutrient rich environment.

I invite you to have intentional conversations with your boards and teams about creating Buena casas for leadership.  Some essential components of this discussion are:

·        Cultivating Trust and a Feedback-Rich Environment: Excellence requires open conversations and environments in which feedback flows freely and is imbued with honor and respect.  Encourage feedback regularly.  Let people know that their perspective is valued.  Indeed, it is mission critical.  Encourage feedback and enter the vulnerability of feedback conversations with curiosity and a desire to learn from others.

·        Collaboration Around Mutually Agreed Upon Expectations: Have frequent conversations about how you will be with one another and what you wish to accomplish together.  Together create clear goals and expectations and hold one another accountable to those expectations.

·        Nurturing a Learning Environment Through Experimentation and a Commitment to Fail Well: Excellence in leadership is supported in a learning environment.  This requires a willingness to try new things and to embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.  As a team, create little experiments that help you to try out new ideas.  When things don’t work out as you expected, unpack the failure together, see what you can learn from the experiment, make adjustments, and then try again.

·        Ongoing Leadership Development: Keep expanding your skills through ongoing leadership development that engages the whole team in learning together.  Use outside facilitators if possible.  Their neutral perspective will place all team members on the same footing, allowing everyone to embrace the adventure with more openness and vulnerability.  The team could also choose to study a leadership book together.

Creating Buena casas release the rich potential of each member of the team, increase creativity, enhance engagement and empower leadership at all levels.  Keep exploring together how you can create nutrient rich environments and a solid foundation for success.