Leadership of the Future: Why Consciousness Matters
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Learn about conscious leadership's great potential for transformative change in organizations and in people’s lives, powered by deep awareness and authentic, value-aligned actions.
Awakening to Conscious Leadership
To people unfamiliar with it, the term conscious leadership immediately evokes questions.
For starters, how can a business leader (or anyone performing a task, for that matter) be anything other than “conscious”? What’s the alternative – sleepwalking through their job?
Fair point, if by “conscious” we mean physiologically awake. But conscious leadership is about much more than mere cognizance of one’s surroundings and the ability to respond to stimuli.
What Makes Leadership More… Conscious?
I’m talking here about “consciousness” in a much deeper, more profound sense – one that makes a qualitative (and, ultimately, quantitative) difference in how we live our lives and lead our organizations.
The pivot from traditional leadership to conscious leadership is effectively a paradigm shift having to do with expanding and deepening our awareness and leading with all of the advantages that awareness offers.
Awareness: The Heart of Conscious Leadership
Awareness is the foundation of conscious leadership. Being aware of what’s going on within and around us provides rich information that up-levels our decision-making. Awareness opens doors to fresh insights, greater clarity, and wisdom, all while dramatically reducing our stress levels.
With greater awareness, we’re able to see a much clearer, less distorted, and more holistic view of what’s going on. Awareness heightens our intuition. We’re able to be more present and empathic, which means that people feel we’re truly there with them, hearing their concerns, addressing what’s actually going on.
When we lack awareness, we can miss noticing negative feelings we’re having like being agitated in a meeting, which can easily lead to us having an angry outburst that creates additional energy draining and costly problems. Or in another case, if we’re not aware of the overwhelming tension our team is feeling, we might miss opportunities to prevent a loss of talent or productivity.
From Reactivity to Proactivity: The Power of Conscious Leadership
As conscious leaders, here’s how we might approach the above situation differently.
Conscious leaders are less likely to unknowingly let pressure build in us until we have no choice but to launch a damaging outburst of anger.
If we are aware of the agitation we’re feeling, we give ourselves an opportunity to see what’s irritating us and to deal with the source of it directly.
And if we are aware of the team’s overwhelming tension, we can, with skill and care, surface it in conversation with the team to see what supportive steps we can all take to resolve the issue that’s driving the problematic tension.
We’ll dive deeper into these tenets in future blogs, but let’s touch on a few to help you get a sense of what conscious leadership is all about.
The Approach of Conscious Leaders
As conscious leaders, we approach our teams, clients and customers, decisions, etc. from an empowered, grounded, calm and compassionate way of being. We’re deliberate in our assessments, and incorporate more than just our minds and intelligence.
Thanks to being more present, we’re more in touch with our feelings, our values, what’s transpiring all around us, our genius, which gives us access to different types of invaluable information.
Greater insight becomes available as the wide range of subtle and nuanced information provided by our enhanced awareness enriches our objective view.
When merged with our intelligence and business savvy, the result is a far greater capacity for wise decision-making.
The Pillars of Conscious Leadership: Transparency, Authenticity, and Core Values Alignment
Conscious leaders are committed to operating with more transparency and authenticity.
Here again, mastering awareness is crucial, because we need to have sufficient self-awareness to know what there is to be transparent and authentic about, and to know whether or not we’re actually being transparent and authentic.
Conscious leaders are also dedicated to ensuring that our decisions, actions, and communication are all in alignment with our core values.
There is an aspect of intent for our leadership to be transformative for ourselves, our businesses and the world around us. This guides us as to how to best invest our resources in care for our company, our employees, and ourselves — in the present and for the future.
The Transformational Power of Conscious Leadership
Indeed, this proactive style is a sure sign of evolved leadership. It recognizes that issues must be addressed head-on rather than swept under the proverbial rug and ignored.
As conscious leaders, we must face our challenges and work with our teams to find viable solutions that serve all of us. That “failure” is a learning and growth opportunity, an invitation into something better.
Finally, conscious leaders have an evolving awareness of what makes us who we are, what motivates us, and what drives us to behave as we do. We are becoming more and more comfortable in our skin, more present and grounded, learning how to best serve and enjoy all that life and leadership has to offer.
That’s all for now. I invite you to take the journey with me as we explore how conscious leadership can bring greater satisfaction, success, and joy to our lives.
Unleash your Brilliance as a Conscious Leader
It's my mission to support people in leading with unyielding integrity, clarity, and authenticity. If you'd like to tap into your deeper insight and practical wisdom to lead more powerfully and effectively, feel free to reach out at connect@evolvingceo.com to set up a time to connect.
To see what others have to say about the work we do together, please check out the testimonials here. I look forward to connecting.
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