Why Outsight is as Important as Insight for Leaders | Article

The notion of “outsight”, or an outside-in approach to developing ourselves as leaders, has been written and spoken about eloquently by organisational behaviour guru and leadership specialist, Herminia Ibarra.  Why do we have Ibarra’s seminal text, “Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader” consistently on our pre-reading for mid to senior leaders when we provide cross-sector learning experiences to develop them? Because we also believe with a passion that changing behaviours comes through acting and doing - by challenging ourselves through stretch experiences, rather than by introspection and heightened self-awareness of our strengths or leadership style.

Seeking to change our own mindsets by internalising and introspecting alone will merely encourage our rigid adherence and loyalty to the past.  This behaviour does not help us to evolve, develop and grow as collaborative and relational leaders who are focused mindfully on understanding the present whilst being future-aware, intuitive, and responsive to the step changes going on around us.

Mindfulness practice reminds us that we only have moments to live so we had better appreciate those moments of experience through presence - to live fuller lives, embrace new experiences and different kinds of people, and experiment with unfamiliar ways of getting things done.  In this, we are actively approaching our new projects with a beginner’s mind and with joyful curiosity. We become less judgemental and more creative in our approach and attitude to all that we do and more open to developing outsight.

Developing outsight is characterised by intentionally coming off being constantly in an introspective autopilot zone by instead thinking about how to approach or define our jobs differently and really working to diversify and redefine our networks out and across the sectors.  We can ultimately have some fun with redefining ourselves so that, as Herminia puts it, “we can act our way into a new way of thinking”.

Helping leaders to develop outsight has been at the heart of The Whitehall & Industry’s approach for the past nearly forty years through our events and our talent and leadership services. We intentionally bring the “outside in” through all of our activities which are designed to empower the development of our cross-sector membership to act like collaborative leaders. 

WIG does this through encouraging cross-sector “athletes” to learn and stretch via secondments in very different contexts, through focusing our numerous events that actively bring diversity of thought and experience into a safe space of learning and challenge, and through our connecting leaders via immersive programmes that focus on exchange, supportive challenge and peer learning.

WIG takes “learning by doing” to the limit, in that we provide a place for leaders where experimentation, widening perspectives, inclusion and active collaboration, are at the very heart of all that we offer.

WIG offers a suite of talent and leadership development services that are  specifically created for individuals to learn, collaborate and grow from the outsights enabled by cross-sector collaboration.

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