Let’s talk about what it takes to lift leadership consciousness in order to be different so as to do different.
Lifting leadership consciousness is enabled by becoming aware of (a) how I engage with the world and (b) how I perceive the world.
How I Engage With The World – Vertical Axis:
This involves becoming aware of my desires, fears, paradigms, worldviews and values and how these shape my behaviours and interactions, the actions I take, my impact on others, the culture I create and the outcomes I deliver.
In order to lift my impact as a leader, it is important to understand where I currently sit on a continuum that ranges from fear-based (head) to love-based (heart) motivation. There are a number of developmental states on the continuum between these two polarities. Where I sit will be my ‘centre of gravity’ position reflecting my typical modus operandi.
With each developmental state as I move from fear-based to love-based, I gain access to and am animated by an increasingly more positive, expansive outlook and motivation. This outlook defines the respective value I accord myself and others and more broadly the nature and breadth of my awareness and understanding. This in turn determines the behaviours I express and the actions I take.
How I engage with the world is governed by how I move through, integrate and transcend each of the ‘consciousness’ stages on the continuum, increasingly lifting towards a heart based way of being.
How I Perceive The World – Horizontal Axis
This involves becoming aware of whose needs I habitually perceive, value and prioritise – my own and others. This shapes my behaviours and interactions, the actions I take, my impact on others, the culture I create and the outcomes I deliver.
In order to lift my perspective, it is important to understand where I currently sit on a continuum that ranges from focus on self (it’s only about me, my needs) to a focus on the collective - me, others, my community, the world (it’s about us, our needs). Where I sit will be my ‘centre of gravity’ position reflecting my typical modus operandi. With each developmental state as I move from ‘me-centred’ to ‘we-centred’, I increase my scope of awareness, understanding and valuing of an ever-broadening group of ‘others’, their needs and importantly, our inter-dependencies.
This growing realisation that whatever happens to others can have a knock-on effect that impacts my own interests leads me to taking an increasingly more holistic view when making decisions and taking action. This awareness brings with it the capacity for ‘strategic’ and ‘big picture’ insight.
How I perceive the world is governed by how I move through, integrate and transcend each of the ‘consciousness’ stages on the continuum, increasingly lifting towards a more holistic level of awareness.
The critical transitioning point on each of the two axes is the mid-point state of ‘acceptance’.
Along the vertical axis (how I engage with the world), reaching and crossing this mid-point means I start to realise and accept that I am responsible for who I am and what I create in my world. I begin to realise that the source of my unhappiness or happiness is within, not outside of me. This includes becoming curious about how my current modus operandi in the world (desires, fears, paradigms, worldviews and values) helps shape my reality and how I impact others. As I understand that I can only change what is within me, not others, I start questioning some of my inner perceptions and responses, and making new choices. Reaching this level of consciousness also involves realising that others are likewise influenced by their own unique desires, fears, paradigms, worldviews and values. I become curious about these, opening to a new level of empathy and an expanded range of options for how I respond (not react).
Along the horizontal axis (how I perceive the world), reaching and crossing this mid-point entails accepting that others exist in their own right, having equally legitimate, albeit often different needs. I become aware that I/my tribe is not the centre of the universe but a member of a greater human enterprise, and I start perceiving and understanding the significance of the inter-relating systems at play in any situation. In other words, I look beyond myself/my tribe and glimpse a much bigger world out there with whom I will need to engage if I am to fulfil my needs, ambitions and aspirations. This opens me to an expanded range of potential actions. I start respecting others’ right to choose and act according to their self-perceived interests, and I begin cooperating with a broader range of stakeholders because I understand that in many ways, our fates are inter-dependent.
Just like a cork in the ocean, each of us rises and falls until we find our current level of understanding (consciousness) on each continuum, expressing this through our outlook and actions, and encountering the consequences.
My awareness of how I engage with and perceive the world evolves as I pass through these developmental levels of consciousness, deepening and expanding my leadership impact.
We have identified 4 generic styles of leadership. Where I am situated on both continuums determines which of the four leadership styles I most frequently adopt:
- Fear-based
- Benevolent
- Strategic
- Conscious
Some of the Characteristics of Each Leadership Style Are as Follows:
Fear-based Leadership
Fear-based leaders generally perceive the world in individual terms – I, me, mine (tribe, family, team, organisation, political party etc.) and do not see or prioritize others’ needs and interests unless they are relevant to satisfying their own.
Fear-based leaders are head-based (utilising deductive logic that is rational, linear, sequenced) minimally heeding the intuitive promptings of the heart or the quiet whisperings of conscience. They perceive that the greatest imperative at stake is their survival. This is because they largely perceive the world as a jungle of competing interests where the principle of ‘zero-sum gain’ operates - for me/mine to survive/win, others must lose, and vice versa. Therefore they frequently blame others or themselves for what is happening, falling into a victim/persecutor dynamic in their relationships.
There is less available energy accessible within their psychological/emotional systems that would enable them to give out to others, unless this further secures their own survival. Their stance is dualistic – either/or. Therefore they readily end up in conflict with other either/or ‘protagonists’. Fear-based leaders perceive differences as a threat, viewing the world through an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ lens. As a consequence of the self-protective actions they take, they magnify differences. They have not accepted that others rightly exist, have intrinsic worth or needs that, in being different, are none-the-less legitimate. For fear-based leaders the notion that they might help another outside of their immediate ‘tribe’ to get their needs met is an anathema. They are unable to view situations holistically, instead acting and reacting within the immediate bounded sphere of what currently captures their attention. They are quickly alerted to situations of threat and opportunity.
Benevolent Leadership
Benevolent leaders are opening to their heart and acting upon its impulsions, intuitions and empathic concerns. These typically guide them more than head-based logic and deductive reasoning. Benevolent leaders can therefore have a simplistic view of the world, either not perceiving or not comprehending the reality of its complexities, ambiguities, conflicting interests, and inter-reacting systems. Consequently the solutions they propose on complex matters, while well-meaning, can be naïve, ineffectual and sometimes damaging.
Benevolent leaders readily cooperate with others because they intuitively feel for and with them, believing that we can all get along if only we try. Whilst they may care about broader issues, because their focus is directed towards those within their immediate circle of family/ friends/community/team/organisation, they often lack broader strategic insight and holistic oversight in the views they hold and actions they take.
Benevolent leaders are often genuinely nice, caring, well-intentioned people. They are vulnerable to ending up as victims through misplaced kindness due to a lack of discernment and can easily resort to rescuing.
Where they become ideologically driven in their mission to ensure that kindness and inclusiveness prevail, they may fall into a perpetrator role. Benevolent leaders accept there are others in the world – in fact they can sometimes lose themselves in responding to or advocating for the needs of those others.
Strategic Leadership
Strategic leaders are still head dominated. Hence they make sense of the world primarily through their thinking rather than their feeling modalities. Their critical analytical and conceptual abilities are more sophisticated than for fear-based and benevolent leaders. They utilise systemic analysis, logical induction and divergent thinking approaches as well as rational, deductive and linear thinking skills.
Strategic leaders can see more broadly, sometimes with great astuteness and insight. This includes discerning other systems (structural, social, cultural, political etc.), the obstacles and challenges to agendas being realised (their own and others’), and the most effective/efficient way forward.
Strategic leaders can accept that others legitimately exist and readily identify the potential impact others may have on the successful achievement of their agendas. However because they have limited self-awareness and do not draw upon the intuitive, expansive intelligence of the heart, their achievements, while sometimes stellar, are not transformational. These leaders are often effective operators, sometimes brilliant, but only within the relative bounds of existent thinking and possibility.
While more likely to lapse into the role of perpetrator when reactive, they can sometimes take up the role of victim, either unintentionally when out-manoeuvred by another strategic leader, or intentionally if there is benefit in doing so. They have enough awareness to play the long game if this suits their ends. Strategic leaders understand where others’ are coming from and will cooperate if this promotes their interests. Otherwise they won’t.
Conscious Leadership
Conscious Leaders are connected to their heart, allowing access to the wisdom and care of a deeper intelligence, holism and inclusiveness. Their heart-based feelings, intuitions and discernments inspire and guide them. The heart also has access to a field of awareness beyond current taken-for-granted assumptions. Being connected to it creates an open system for new understandings to emerge from within. For conscious leaders, their heart provides inspiration while their head makes this realizable through testing, design, organisation and application.
In being connected to their heart, conscious leaders are alert to their own internal state (feelings) and have a sensing awareness of the internal states of others. They intuit and seek to understand others’ feelings and beliefs and how these impact behaviors and actions. This makes them not only more ‘switched on’ to what’s happening around them but authentically compassionate.
This enables them to understand rather than judge others’ differences, reactive emotions and dualistic actions. In understanding these, they are able to rise above reactive tit for tat behavior and instead seek ways to bridge divides and bring people together in shared recognition of larger common interests and needs. Conscious leaders are uncompromisingly and selflessly committed to discerning the right thing to do in any situation.
Because Conscious Leaders are in touch with their internal feeling states, they are quickly aware when lapsing into judgement and reactivity, taking responsibility for their responses and the underlying drivers within their psychology. They willingly do the internal work of embracing, challenging and re-setting these to lift back to a higher level of response. This means they don’t stay in persecutor/rescuer/victim roles for long but operate from their higher-level states of creating, promoting and allowing.
Because of their breadth and depth of outlook, conscious leaders discern and understand complexity - the whole, the parts and their interacting complexities (systems within systems). Because they also understand people, they continuously seek the most effective points of entry in any situation, no matter how complex. They bring people together, fostering collaboration to enable an upward, unifying shift that re-casts purpose to lift the situation beyond impasse and into potentiality.