Leadership is not about position, but perspective. On this episode of Innovation In Compliance with Tom Fox, guest Zoe Routh shares how her deep connection with the wilderness informs her leadership principles and the importance of shared experiences and real interactions. She and Tom delve into her central belief that perspective is power, how to cultivate an explorer mindset, and the importance of adaptability in a rapidly changing world.

Zoe Routh is a leadership development expert based in Australia. Her career began in the great outdoors, leading canoe trips at a summer camp in Canada, where she discovered her passion for understanding human dynamics in a wilderness setting. This led her to Outward Bound Australia, where she spent nine years honing her leadership and personal development skills. For more than 35 years, Zoe has been working in this field, folding her love for wilderness adventure into her leadership programs. She is the author of multiple books and is dedicated to examining the future of leadership and how we can best prepare for what’s next.

You’ll hear Tom and Zoe talk about:

• The powerful impact of an “explorer mindset” on individuals, teams, and organizations. Zoe encourages actively seeking new inputs and different perspectives.
• The significance of mapping in leadership: you can use personal maps to understand individual behavior preferences, team maps to appreciate collective dynamics, and idea maps to chart out problems and possibilities.
• Experiences in the outdoors can foster authentic communication, real connections, and contribute to a heightened leadership consciousness.
• Adapting involves adopting new behaviors, ideas, and beliefs to meet future challenges. Zoe remarks that it’s important to shift from constantly being in disaster recovery mode to being proactive and adapting to potential changes. This includes anticipatory thinking and developing the skills to better prepare for the future.
• By seeing challenges and opportunities from multiple perspectives, we can avoid a tunnel vision approach to problem-solving and goal pursuit.
• Using a root cause analysis as part of leadership training can teach leaders to dig into the causes of a problem and find opportunities for change within an organization, by tracing effects, identifying causes, and suggesting interventions.
• Zoe explains the use of tools such as Values Mapping to understand the diversity, complexity, and maturity of values within a team, and the Culture Compass to determine the behaviors that are acceptable and those that aren’t in a team dynamic. 
• Zoe discussed her new book, The Olympus Project, which is a near-future science fiction book set in a climate ravaged environment. The central concept of the book revolves around a new industry of “world designers” who create human environments to contend with the changing climate. It explores larger themes of leadership and community building in a challenging environment and looks at how we can create environments and systems to facilitate leadership development and community harmony.
• Zoe’s previous book, People Stuff, won the Australian Business Book of the Year Award in 2020.

KEY QUOTES:

“One of the things that I believe very strongly that we need to embrace is that perspective is power in leadership. What I mean by that is when we see more, we can lead better.” – Zoe Routh

“Adapting is about adopting new behaviors, new ideas, new values and beliefs so that we can better meet what’s coming for us on the horizon.” – Zoe Routh

“So between those two things, the Values Mapping and the Culture Compass, we have a way of doing things that will help advance our goals and our mission while keeping the people safe, intact and productive and healthy and happy at work. And that’s really what we want, right? We spend so much time at work, it’s so important that we feel happy and safe and that we enjoy what we’re doing.” – Zoe Routh

Resources:

Zoe Routh on the Web | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Zoe Routh Leadership Podcast | The Olympus Project | People Stuff