If you're living inspired, there's no doubt you'll want to take the lead in whatever you do in life.
Whether it's family business, corporate life, sport or social development you'll be inspired to express your best and share the gift with others.
To be inspired, that's easy. To stay inspired, that's where the work is.
According to Einstein, "we can't solve problems at the level at which they are created" for us, this really exemplifies the essential demands on any leader to rise above and see order in chaos where others can't.
The New Role of the Leader
The irony of team or group leadership is that the leader may see their role as being to inspire or motivate the team, and in doing so may express to the team how important it is for them to turn up inspired. Such irony seems to slip past the guardians of change, change agents and leaders, in that the person leading the change is, themselves, a part of the system on which they are working.
It leads clearly that a leader cannot lead at the level of the team on which they hold responsibility. Hence the role of the leader is to do to themselves, what they are distributing to the team, Turn Up Inspired.
There are many change agents who become inspired by teaching others to be inspired. This is akin to doing the complete opposite to what they’re preaching as a leader.
Turning up Inspired at work, home, community, family, friends, relationship brings a significant realisation with it, and that is, to do anything with others in order to cause ourselves to be in a better state of mind, can only fall to the realm of the EGO. Winning, being better, seeking approval, raising the bar, improving, changing, fixing, developing, modifying, advising... It is all, the domain of the EGO if, it is not seated on pre existing Inspiration.
And yet, it is all to easy for the Leader to preach inspiration but not be inspired. To ask team members to Turn up and Be inspired and yet, have aggravation at home that is unresolved, EGO pain at work.
There are limits to being who we are, those limits are defined by our EGO in forming definitions of us. For example: I am Chris Walker, Male, Australian and of the Walker Family.
Those are the boundaries in which I choose my ways of interaction with the world, it is hard for me to know myself outside of those parameters because it would cause those definitions to be questioned, I may no longer feel that I am Chris, male, even just Aussie and certainly I would be expunged from the Walker family if I broke their rules of engagement.
Hence, it makes it hard for me to Turn up in groups where my pre-existing definition of ME and the group’s expectation of me, conflict.
My EGO defines me, and yet, I am also a leader, and those that I lead are growing, they may even expect things from me that are beyond what my family, relationship, team, group, community allow. And now, I may arrive at a team meeting all nicely defined by those boundaries and find myself operating at, or below the level of inspiration of the team. This is really a core breakdown in corporate and many team functions. When leaders to not rise to be more inspired than those they lead, they are no longer a leader, they are a manager and actually prevent Dr Cox’s list from manifesting. Only mechanical interaction can proceed in that case.
While our beliefs have amazing social benefit from that moment of birth in helping us get what we want and need, and creating a sense of belonging when a deep conflict comes into our lives, like the loss of a loved one, or the confrontation of a team member refusing to let go their EGO, then, it’s possible that the beliefs of our group or tribe do not resolve the conflict. In this case, we need a new shell, a new skin because the old one is just too small.
Now there can be a conflict because rising to that new level is most often blocked by who we define ourselves to be. I said I was Chris Walker, but when I went through the pain of my divorce, I was unable to resolve that pain within that definition of myself. I was left with no option either stay in the pain or re-define myself as more than who I believed Chris Walker to be, In other words, expand my EGO.
It’s also revealed in a relationship where are couple are in conflict. They are both defined by their roles in the family, mother, father, partner, brother, sister, auntie etc but they are also defined by their life outside the family. If the pain of relationship escalates it may require an expansion of EGO beyond that which is defined by their colleagues and employer. What then? To resolve the family crisis, a shift if work based leadership and team response is essential, and if it’s prohibited by blocked leadership, then the individual is left with options to either exit the relationship or confront the paradigms at work, simply put, change jobs.
So, the first key to Turning Up, is to know the separation between EGO and INSPIRATION. So we know where one stops and the other begins. This is vital otherwise self delusion can be expressed in the name of Inspiration. I’ll demonstrate the tools for this later.
The second key, as we’ve seen above, is the capacity to expand and reshape the EGO. This is called unlearning or detachment, and basically it requires that we re-invent ourselves whenever the existing skin cannot deal with and stay healthy with, current circumstances.
You will hear the EGO of those resistant to growth complaining, criticising, judging, rejecting, holding onto traditional ideals that belong to the tribes they empower. The consequence for them is difficult because, they must, by necessity, make sure all those who report to them in life remain within the same confines of belief that encircle their own life. If people turn up more inspired than such a person, they will do everything in their power to train, coach, cajole, or violate them to reduce it. This is classic corporate modelling.
The size of your vision determines the size of your life but the size of your vision and the conversation you have with yourself about that, is limited by your EGO. A tightly bound sense of possibility in a tiny safe ego, can only create life in it’s own kind.
New Expectations an Inspired Leader Can Expect......
From “The Discipline of Conscious Conversation: Principles and Practices By Louis D. Cox, Ph.D. © 2008
New expectations of a group or team utilising techniques for Inspired Self Leadership, Conscious Conversation and collaboration beyond the EGO.
- truly original collective thinking
- the generation of a radically different and genuinely shared collective vision
- solutions to collective problems that appear too complex to solve
- working with competing interests and contradictory needs both within the team and within the team’s field of endeavor
- real commitment to continuous breakthrough change and innovation
- dealing with multiple, complex realities
- confronting real unknowns
- deep shifts in mental and attitudinal perspectives
- inclusion of stakeholders outside of the normal operational boundaries
- the increased well-being of all stakeholders involved in or affected by the team’s work
- stronger, clearer collective ethical behavior around complex decisions
- an increasing desire to manage from love and aspiration rather than from fear
- helping your clients become more conscious, authentic, and open
- developing wisdom
- developing compassion
- deepening interpersonal bonds, respect, and satisfaction
- deepening sense of collective meaning and purpose of work driven by a desire to create rather than fix
- willingness to regularly step into “not knowing”, and create and discover anew
- uncovering unseen positive collective energies within the group
- uncovering unseen forces of interpersonal resistance to change and the collective creation of effective ways to move through them
- the attraction of curiosity and support from the ‘outside’
- performance beyond the group’s current level of expectation as a regular occurrence.
- the discovery of greater and greater collective capacities for competence, effectiveness, creativity, innovation, learning, community, satisfaction, and meaning.
- unanticipated and unintended positive outcomes become regular occurrences.
- individual group members regularly discover capacities for effective action, risk taking, courage, creativity, care for self and others, intimacy, and insight at levels that exceed what they had believed personally possible.
- processes collectively evolved for organically resolving internal interpersonal conflicts that result in learning, discovery, growth, and a deepening of bonds, trust and respect.
- increasing financial responsibility and acuity, and a long view of what choices today might best ensure social, economic, and ecological sustainability.
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