Leadership Confidant — A new and more focused way of thriving on my ‘multitudes’

“A self-portrait as a fortified town, the wall perhaps my skin. Each day I worked on it I finished by marking the point with the date to highlight the passage of time in the production of art to reflect the forming and reforming of one’s identity. The ‘self’ I think is not a single fixed thing but a lifelong shifting performance. My sense of self is a tiny man kicking a can down the road.” — Grayson Perry, A Map of Days (2013)

“I am large, I contain multitudes.” — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Leadership Confidant

We don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflection on experience. Reflection happens through conversation.

‘Provoked’ by Ian Sanders and Richard Martin, I wrote On towers, maps and résumés. It was early July and the beginning of a long process of reflection and the search for a new ‘career curve.’

In The Magic of Beginning, Steve Marshall expressed exactly how I felt when he wrote, “I have become increasingly convinced that we need to find ways to drop our habitual mental models before we can sense into something new.” But it was Steve Taylor who gave me the final nudge when he told me, during one of our conversations, “What you are actually saying is ‘I want to work with people … one-to-one or in small, conversational settings.’”

Both Steves were right, of course, and so, through a ‘random’ series of posts and conversations, I was able to find a new ‘career curve’:

Helping senior executives and leadership teams navigate complexity with confidence & clarity of thought.

This is, as Sanders writes, “the one area I want to be known for” and I will do this through mentoring of senior executives, conversations with leadership teams, speaking for mixed audiences and, of course, my writing.

It is still about change, ‘thoughtful’ change to be precise, but concentrated on improving the quality of leadership and decision-making by enabling leaders to think clearly. Also, it isn’t a new ‘me’ but a new form for expressing myself — a better, more focused way of thriving on my ‘multitudes’ and of having a positive impact in and on the world.

So if you are a senior executive or part of a leadership team and you struggle to make sense of today’s complexity and ambiguity, let’s start a conversation. We could go for a walk or maybe visit a museum. But there is always time for an unhurried online chat or a quick look at my ‘uncluttered’ website.

Please note that I am also happy to work together with executive recruitment firms, leadership development consultancies and others who are also eager to improve the quality of leadership and decision-making by influencing how leaders think, learn, behave and impact society.

markstorm.nl | mark@markstorm.nl | +31652092271

Metamorphosis I, by M.C. Escher (1937 Woodcut printed on 2 sheets. 90,8 cm x 19,5 cm; photograph courtesy of the M.C. Escher Foundation)

“As for who I am. I am continually shaping and reshaping my map. It won’t be as beautifully designed as Perry’s A Map of Days but it will have dead-end streets, dark alleys of rejection, career lanes (the third and current one quickly reaching a crossroads), demolished buildings, unfinished ones, a mind palace, a public square which I imagine as Sienna’s Piazza del Campo or the ancient Agora of Athens, a boulevard of broken dreams, deckchairs for undisturbed reading, conversational spaces, a safe house for values, buildings designed by M.C. Escher for changing perspectives, a cabinet of curiosities, and, of course, parapets for seeing far and wide.” — From: On towers, maps and résumés