5 - Ladder of Self-Awareness - Michiel Kruyt on Deliberate Calm – How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World

Michiel speaks about the arc of his journey and how he shifted trajectories over time and over time his interests and passions shifted from Sales, Marketing and General Management at Unilever to driving Personal Transformation at McKinsey and beyond.

Michiel speaks about how he takes various retreats (3 days, 10 days, 6 months etc) at various points in time and how that often creates the space for new things to emerge.

Michiel speaks about how our behaviour comes in the way of our learning when the stakes become higher. He speaks about the link between how team members listen and the link with learning.

Michiel speaks about how leaders can access their skylight and what rituals they can build before, during and after an event.

Michiel speaks about the different levels of Self-Awareness and speaks about how we can slowly move up the ladder. 1) Bliss or Ignorance 2) Delayed Awareness. 3) Perceptive 4) Resilient 5) Adaptive. He speaks about the timing of when things come to our attention and our ability to regulate ourselves.

Michiel speaks about how Ambition can be a finite resource which could empty at some point in time but Purpose can be a perennially replenishing driving force if we tune into it.

Michiel speaks about the criticality of rest and recovery for a leader to be effective. He speaks about how the recovery period could actually spark some creativity and new possibilities.

Michiel speaks about how in a team, we can have a chain reaction where people end up triggering each other and that could really be counter-productive. He speaks about how teams can collectively access “mini – balcony moments” to deal with these situations.