Published:
06/01/2012 02:10am
Access Your Unrealized Leadership Potential
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” ~ Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
As the greatest self realized sages profess, mastering yourself is true power. And as one master’s oneself and moves to higher levels of consciousness (or self actualization), he or she organically becomes the leader those with lesser development want to follow. Thus the need for prevalent fear based leadership tactics - command, control, cleverness, manipulation, hierarchy, and force -disappear.
From my own experiential journey along Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self actualization brings the gifts of acceptance, humility, faith and an uncluttered desire to serve the present moment. From that “leadership orientation” execution becomes clear, powerful, authentic, conscious and ethical. Inspired action arises from clarity.
So how does a leader raise consciousness, and move to higher levels of self actualization? Based on my research and personal experience, the steps can be aggregated into three non-linear practices.
Three practices to raising consciousness
1. Identify Your Ego
As Beatle, George Harrison realized and wrote, “All through the day, I Me Mine, I Me Mine, I Me Mine”, it appears to be an endemic part of the human experience to obsessively identify with the content of the ego - “the story of me”, and compulsively ruminate on how to protect and enhance “the story of me”, - my job, my salary, my accomplishments, my reputation, my house, my bank account - and the list goes on.
Scientists tell us we have 60,000 thoughts per day, and 80% of them are repetitive. I would assert, that 90% of the 80% are fears and desires on how to protect or enhance “the story of me”, often driven by a desire to be “more than” or a fear of being “less than” the other.
Since reality is temporal, and we will always perceive people as “more than” and “less than”, this habitual thinking process is entirely devoid of skill. But more importantly, for business leaders, if we let the ego get into the driver seat, in a self striving pursuit of wealth, power and prestige we can easily get caught up in driving the story of me, and go blind to our higher natures.
In so doing, we fortify our perception of ourselves as separate, experience a primal lack of safety, and slip into the societal based competitive adversarial mind-set - win lose thinking - crush the competition - kill or be killed.
By understanding and acknowledging the nature of ego, we can begin to observe it’s destructive potential, step outside “the story of me” and 'let go". We can set aside the self-serving drives of the ego, in favor of acting for the greater whole - our business stakeholders (employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers, community environment) and personal relationships (friends, family, community, self, planet). The net result is greater connection, empathy, compassion, trust, communication, effectiveness and efficiency - the DNA of ethical leadership.
2. Expose Your Leadership Shadow
I view leadership as the power to influence others to create positive change. And we’re always influencing those in our businesses - regardless of our title or position, so it’s critical to get intentional about our values, and live our values daily. Understanding beliefs here is key, because beliefs drive values, values drive behavior and behavior extends to the creation of culture.
The issue is many of our beliefs are self-limiting and unconscious, typically falling into three core areas:
• Inadequacy - I’m not (rich, smart, attractive etc.) enough;
• Scarcity - I’m don’t have enough (money, attention, power, love etc.); and
• Trust - I don’t trust (you, myself, life, God etc.).
They’re programmed into our minds as children, further conditioned throughout life, and often the source of unconscious fear and shame. We then create masks to hide these unconscious beliefs, which creates inaut
