What is the most important quality of a tri-sector (public, private, and social sector) leader? When I applied for the Tri-Sector Leadership Fellows Program (TSL), I assumed it was knowledge: knowledge of how the other sectors operate, overlap and support one another. I still think knowledge is essential, and I’ve gained a great deal of it through the program. But TSL helped me develop two still more important qualities for tri-sector leadership: humility and faith.
In a world as dynamic and interconnected as ours, it is essential to have visibility into other sectors. I had no idea how much I would learn by being part of TSL. We gathered perspectives from the diplomat to the doctor, from the lobbyist to the military officer, and many more. We heard not only about their professional challenges, but also how they balanced their personal life or dealt with tensions between their values and those of their employers. It was a valuable look into the everyday lives of leaders working to advance our world across the three sectors.
However, something even more valuable came out of our discussions after each leader who presented, when students from the business school, public policy school and law school came together to process what we’d learned. It was during these conversations I finally understood that tri-sector leadership isn’t primarily about bringing the sectors together. It requires something still more complex: bringing the people in those sectors together.
During our discussions I learned that those of us in each sector approach problems differently. We prioritize concerns differently. We use vocabulary differently. There were tensions that surfaced as we dealt with the ”culture shock” of discovering these gaps – and growth as we learned to build bridges across them. Humility is required to understand that our way is not the only way, that criticisms of our sector can have value, that we must learn to work with others’ priorities and address their concerns to make progress.
Along the way, though, I discovered that even more important than humility is faith. We must have faith in each other: faith that those in other sectors are also doing their best as they see it, that we are better together, that adding new voices will bring harmony rather than discord. Before even this, we must have faith in the future: faith in our collective power to create change and the potential of the world and the people in it for good. Only when we believe in each other and the difference we can make will we work together to make that difference.
It took me almost the length of this program to understand what a tri-sector leader is. It is not enough to have individuals in business or public policy with knowledge of the other sectors. We need those with humility and faith to rally people across sectors and collectively drive impact. A tri-sector leader, first and foremost, is a leader. And in a world changing as fast as ours, it is vital that we have leaders who can bring all of us together to fight for a better future.
