Sharon Eden – Inner Leadership

Less is more!

A great maxim I learned over and over in my trainings as a psychotherapist, coach and trainer. Get out of your own way and you get out of your client’s or group’s way.  It’s all about them, not you.

Unless, of course, you want to be the sort of leader who acts like the worst kind of guru or super star.  Showmanship, power trip and little substance.

Having set the vision and outlined the outcome, trust your ‘group’ to achieve it.  Be available for consultation where needed and, when it is, be a coach. It’s not an opportunity to show how clever you are.  It’s an opportunity to be of service.  To help your people  expand  their abilities and their own Inner Leadership.

Unless, of course, you want to be the sort of leader who gets their rocks off with control and power over others.  The sort of leader who constantly interferes, disables their people and creates dependance on themself as leader.  ‘They need me!’  Who says???

Create clear and wholesome relationship which offers potential for others to respond similarly.  Act unselfishly and they’ll respond by simply doing what it is that needs to be done.

Unless, of course, you want to be the sort of leader who manipulates rather than influences.  The kind of leader who’s always got a hidden agenda.  The kind of leader who’s always out for ‘what’s in it for me?’

Personal development is essential for good leadership.

The ability to lead yourself, to make choices about who you are and how you behave is essential for good leadership.  The ability to disable your historic behavioural reactions, narcissistic needs and the dramas they create is essential for good leadership.

Good leadership is always, always about doing less and being more!

Just read a blog by Mindy Gibbins-Klein ‘Be bold, be opinionated or don’t bother’ And I realised how lazy I’ve got by being ‘busy’ with 28 hour days.  What a great way to keep myself from being sharp and at the edge of my thinking.  What a great way to keep myself safe from being shot down or receiving validation!

There’s no room to grow when a leader plays safe… for others, for the organisation or for their self.  And lack of growth guarantees paralysis, depression and death by atrophy because the market is always moving on.

Definitely time to get off my butt!

The deepest essence of  leadership is Inner Leadership.  Logic tells me that no Inner Leadership means no followers.  But I’ve known some seriously untrustworthy leaders with generous followings.  So, how on earth do they do that?

Suddenly, thinking of Inner Leadership, I realised naive superb me had been seeing through her idealistic glasses again!  It was obvious why untrustworthy leaders can have generous followings.

Firstly, ‘presence’ is the stuff of leaders while charisma is the stuff of ‘gurus’ and ‘superstars’… who also have followers.

No surprises then that the untrustworthy leaders of whom I’m aware absolutely excel at doing charisma.  They’re very, very, very affable.  They’re so good at consciously creating high levels of rapport that they’re almost ‘snake oil salesmen’… convincing to the point of ludicrousness.

Secondly, I’ve followed untrustworthy leaders myself  in the past, one over many years.  And, guess what?  I did so for my learning!

I found out exactly how it felt to be on the receiving end of untrustworthy leadership.  When reality dawned, it wasn’t a pleasant experience or one I wanted to ever inflict on anyone else.

Plus those untrustworthy leaders mirrored back to me my own untrustworthiness, my own ability for ‘snake oil’ salesmanship.  I discovered my own superifical ‘guru/superstar’ and the part of me who could shaft other people  in the name of self-preservation and success.

Happily, being aware of your personality ‘parts’ can bring you freedom from them.  Only when you can identify with a part can you then learn to dis-identify from it; to have mastery/mistressy over it rather than it being in charge of and running you.

So I feel much gratitude for the untrustworthy leaders I followed.  I am thankful for their pivotal role in my growth as a human being as well as a leader; for their contribution to my own Inner Leadership.

And, as well as learning from trustworthy leaders, here’s a big ‘Yayyyy’ for their opposites, the untrustworthy ones and all they can teach us… however challenging that might be.