Download our ebook inspired by the WiLD Conversation series, “Desperate for Trust in your Team”. You can listen to the WiLD Conversation Podcast for more on any of these chapters in the ebook.

We have an epidemic of trust in our world today. While some might argue that we have an epidemic of distrust in our world today, the reality is that we all trust in something, but maybe it’s the wrong thing.

Creating a culture of belonging on your team is a process of both seeing people more clearly and helping them to see each other and themselves more clearly. That’s the spirit of what WiLD Leaders is all about for teams, and it is the purpose behind the whole and intentional leader development system we built. Before I provide some actionable and practical steps forward, here are a few important things to consider regarding belonging. 

What do you need to live your best whole and intentional life, and what is the relevance to our work in the area of whole and intentional leader development?

Our deeply rooted competence in a technical area often provides the springboard into the deep end of our leadership capacity.

If you are reading this, you already know that developing the capacity of your leaders is one of the most important moves on your strategic agenda. The question isn't whether or not it's important, but how to actually do it. Deep and lasting change in human beings who are leading takes time. Change doesn't happen overnight, but we often buy in to solutions that tell us it does. Developing whole and intentional leaders is achievable, but it does take an ongoing commitment to invest in their whole story.

What would change if you had whole and intentional leaders, exceptional teams, and a culture that worked for you rather than against you? Every one of us knows that the answer is that everything would change. Our leaders set the tone, our teams get it done, and the culture keeps us in it.

Being a department chair or dean on a university campus is one of the most challenging quasi-management jobs in the world. I describe it as quasi-management because most academics don’t see the job as a management job, and yet, it has all the same attributes of any other leadership role without being felt as one. While the job looks different in many contexts, the reality is that being a leader of an academic department isn’t something any of us prepared for, or in some cases, even desired. Nevertheless, these roles are some of the most important jobs on a university campus.