Don’t Reinvent — Reacquaint

"This isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about bringing the best of who you already are into what’s next.”

Reinvention Isn’t Always the Answer

When disruption hits, leaders often swing to extremes:

• Reinvent everything.

• Rewrite the playbook.

• Start from scratch.

But the truth? Reinvention without reconnection rarely sticks.

That’s why the third step in the Futureshift Pathway is Reacquaint. It’s not about becoming a new person. It’s about meeting yourself again, your strengths, your values, your essence.

Catching Up With Yourself

Think of the feeling of bumping into an old friend you haven’t seen for years. After a few minutes, you remember why you connected in the first place.

Reacquainting with yourself is the same. It’s recognising:

• The strengths you’ve underused.

• The values you’ve neglected.

• The parts of yourself you’ve left behind in the rush of leadership.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s reconnection.

A Regional Bank’s Transformation

I once worked with a regional bank in the middle of a huge transformation. They were under pressure to become more competitive, more digital, more market-driven.

But the CEO and leadership team made a critical choice. They weren’t going to abandon their DNA. They weren’t going to ditch their culture of trust and care.

They said: “We need to remember who we are and bring that same spirit into our future challenge.”

It became shorthand for this truth: “Even though our environment is shifting, our essence remains.”

That balance, holding onto who they were while embracing new ways of working, became their engine for change.

The Power of Personal Values

As well as leveraging the essence of who they were as an organisation it was also important that their people were able to bring “wh0 they were” into the transformation. Here’s why this matters: if you don’t lead from your values, you’ll lead from your stress.

Shalom Schwartz’s Personal Values Framework shows us there are 10 universal values that drive human behaviour: Achievement, Self-Direction, Security, Benevolence, Universalism, Power, Stimulation, Hedonism, Tradition, and Conformity.

• Leaders anchored in Self-Direction bring innovation but resist conformity.

• Those driven by Security create stability but may fear risk.

• Leaders high in Achievement drive results but can overemphasise performance over people.

• Benevolence leaders nurture trust but may avoid tough calls.

  
  

Your values aren’t just preferences. They are your deepest drivers. They shape how you respond under pressure, how you make decisions, and how others experience your leadership.

Research confirms it:

• Herminia Ibarra (2015, HBR) argues that leaders who try on new behaviours without reconnecting to their authentic core lose trust and confidence.

• Gallup (2022) found that when managers focus on strengths and values, teams see 12% higher productivity, 8% greater customer satisfaction, and 15% lower turnover.

  
  

If you are interested in exploring the concept of Personal Values through this evidenced based lens then I would encourage you to visit https://valuesnavigator.co 

Reflections

• What part of me have I forgotten to bring to leadership lately?

• What value do I need to live more fully in this next season?

• What strength helped me succeed in the past — and how could it serve me again now?

• What am I still clinging to from past success that might now hold me back?

• Am I leading like myself, or performing someone else’s version of leadership?

Futureshift Phase Three: Reacquaint

Reacquaint isn’t soft. It’s strategic. It’s the phase where you stop trying to impersonate a leader and start leading as yourself. Fully. Honestly. Courageously.

Because here’s the truth: if you don’t bring yourself into the future, you won’t survive the future.