What does authentic engagement mean in the context of being a leader?

Most of us are culturally trained to be externally focused; we are unconsciously driven by mental constructs and a belief system built over the years to help us maneuver through the complexities of life.  These constructs predispose us to certain assumptions designed to keep enforcing our belief system and our relationship to reality … “we have come to know certain things and we like what we know and want to keep it that way; it makes life more manageable.”  This system of beliefs makes us feel protected from life’s perceived risks when in fact it is providing blinders that hinder our clarity and restrict our effectiveness in the world.

When we are externally focused we become unable to be present to what is “alive” in front of us in the moment; instead we are more likely to be responding to projections of our assumptions and mental constructs. In essence we tend to be in a trance state in which things are a few degrees separate from our full awareness; it’s as if we lose the eyesight to see things clearly.  It’s a foggy place in which we only sort and filter for the familiar and the things we want to hear or see.  In a way we are not quite connected to our center, nor are we connected to the environment around us; we are sitting at the edge of ourselves,

Reality at this foggy edge of ourselves leaves us cut off from the vitality of our authentic life force; it tends to be thin and brittle.  At this place we are more likely to defer to our well-crafted professional persona with its pre-determined tools, analytic criteria, forms and processes.  We are not aware that we do not inhabit our center; we are therefore untethered and ungrounded, easily distracted and lack a sense of true presence with others.  From the perspective of those we provide leadership for, they feel managed rather than joined-with, teamed up with and understood; they may experience being directed to do the work but not truly guided or encouraged to rise to their highest and best.

So what is required for a more authentic engagement?  Initially we need to recognize that the filters and mental constructs we have erected around us are a scaffolding designed to keep us from experiencing the vulnerabilities of life, ours and those of our colleagues.  This is a normal human response, however these filters obscure us from the core experiences of reality, a reality in which each other’s humanity can be touched and attended to; an authentic experience in which our human frailties and vulnerabilities are accepted and attended to rather than avoided.  These vulnerabilities are at the center of people’s essential truth and courage; they are common to the human condition and when acknowledged in modest ways can open immense pathways for trust and loyalty.

Loyalty and trust in one’s leadership are essential elements of a positive corporate culture teeming with innovation, creativity and enthusiasm to produce extraordinary results with everyday limitations.

Part Two of this article will explore a particular path towards authentic engagement.

The post Beyond Our Professional Persona – Part One appeared first on Catalyst.

So many books have been written about the subject addressing many of the important facets that the act of leadership demands; clarity of vision, strategic thinking, high level management skills, cultural acuity,  influence and emotional intelligence, to name a few.

I find that the most challenging aspect of training up the leadership ranks in an organization lies in the work around emotional intelligence.  A leader’s emotional intelligence is tied directly to their ability to create influence within the ranks and to build a high functioning culture.  Though these “soft skills” may be considered secondary to basic skills of good management by some, emotional intelligence tends to be much harder to teach on an individual level and embed within teams.

Why is it so difficult to teach?  Three words:” honest self-observation.”  It requires developing within oneself the “Observer;” this is the honest broker within each of us that tends to steer us in the right direction by witnessing our behaviors and thoughts and their impact on our surroundings.   The Observer exists in all of us; one may consider it the voice of our conscience, the whisper of our intuition.

The challenge we face is that more often than not we don’t pay attention to this voice; we choose to either consciously ignore it, or by course of habit, we turn its volume so far down that we can’t hear it.  The loss of clear access to this voice over time begins to blind us to our impact on our environment and those around us; as leaders we begin to risk creating the positive influence we seek in our organization, and over time we risk becoming less and less effective in how we lead.

When we talk about “leadership”, we are addressing the issue of how someone can lead people, be it individuals or teams.  Technical skills aside, a leader’s primary job is to influence and impact the people around them in positive directions towards the business goals that need to be met.  What differentiates an effective leader from a mediocre one are the skills inherent in their emotional intelligence, and one’s emotional intelligence is explicitly connected to how well their inner observer is developed.

How then does one develop their inner observer? 

1. Start by committing to do a professional assessment, something like a 360 assessment, once a year.
2. Collate the feedback and solicit someone’s help to create a plan to address the issues found in the assessment.
3. Follow the plan with the support of a mentor or a coach.
4. Begin to notice how the issues raised in the assessment may correlate to some things that you already were aware of within yourself, or that you may have had indications about.
5. Focus on these issues and begin to pay more attention to what the voice of your inner observer is telling you about these issues as you interact with your colleagues.
6. This focus will strengthen your awareness of the observer within you; over time it will expand your ability to hear its voice more frequently.
7. Develop your trust in it as you develop your willingness to listen to it and heed its feedback.

The inner observer is a necessary vehicle to grow our emotional intelligence, and being emotionally skillful increases our success in influencing people in positive and productive ways.  A leader who understands the value of their people, and in his endeavors works intelligently to create a positive impact will build a contagiously positive culture where success results are the norm, not the exception.

Related articles

• Linking Emotional Intelligence to Neuroscience (neurocapability.wordpress.com)
• Business Leader Richard Zahn Says “Emotional Intelligence” is Critical to Leadership (virtual-strategy.com)
• Are You Emotionally Intelligent? EI – The Inner Side of Leadership: Part I (changingwinds.wordpress.com)

The post Leadership and the Inner Observer appeared first on Catalyst.