Trusted Leaders
To Become A Trusted Leader (Person), You Will Need To Dance With Some Ghosts.
Radical Self Enquiry Is Central As A Leader And A Human
In life and life in business, a critical quality required of leadership is trustworthiness. Leaders need to be able to trust others, but most crucially they must be worthy of trust. My mother taught me this about being a good person. Defining it in terms of leadership in organisations is merely an extension of the good guidance given by our mums.
Dr Rachel Botsman in her book Who Can You Trust, has identified trust as central to good leadership.
She identifies these qualities in good leaders:
Credible - you are high performing technically and personally.
Reliable - you do what you say you are going to do and are consistently contactable and engaged. People can depend on you.
Authentic:
Empathetic - you are skilled at putting yourself in another’s shoes.
Integrous - you say what you mean, mean what you say.
Vulnerable - you are willing to risk your comfort and have the hard conversations with others that holds you and them accountable to each other.
I would go a step further and argue that compassion and forgiveness are central skills required of a trustworthy leader.
To become such a leader requires ongoing, and sometimes radical, self enquiry. In order to dance well with other humans you will need to get used to dancing with your own ghosts!
Finding The Ghosts.
It is much easier to dance, if you can see who you are dancing with. The “ghosts” to which I refer are the unconscious drivers in our lives. The experiences of our lives in family, culture, relationships, religion and education, build the landscape of our unconscious. Though for most of us these experiences are integrated well enough, we all have limiting beliefs, emotional responses and fears, from the past, that impact our present day experience. We all have experiences and patterns that, upon conscious evaluation, could be better understood, and integrated. By definition they are not easily revealed. Discovering them, and working (dancing) with them, requires a high level of commitment, persistence and courage. Good leaders are the ones who choose not to avoid this search within.
With my clients in business I use a method based in kinesiology to bring to conscious awareness these ghosts in the machine. This method is one of many pathways to this conscious discovery. More fundamental than the method is the commitment and courage to be ready to recognise the ghosts, look them in the eye, and dance. If you are not willing to look them in the eye then they, without your conscious awareness, will lead you in a dance that usually ends badly. How often have you been triggered by a look or a word in a meeting with others that caused you down a pathway of defensiveness or worse? How is that some of your team are so easy to work with and others drive you to drink? Why is it that you will avoid some conversations, even when you know they are necessary and important to the outcomes you are seeking?
In my own life I discovered a pattern that I learned from my dad danced me in unhealthy directions for many years. My dad lived through the depression in the 1930’s, and an ongoing mantra of his life and his parenting was…”you have to work hard to make a living”, and “what, do you think money grows on trees”! A consequence of that ghost (the fear that I could never work hard enough) was my inability to risk being an entrepreneur, or to take a holiday. I had to dance often with that ghost. I was unconsciously stuck in a definition of hard that involved the number of hours and making sure the work was not enjoyable...my father’s lived experience. Only when I really faced that fear could I have real agency over my decisions in relation to work, and money.
The More You Dance, The Better You Get
Some of the ghosts living in the landscape of our unconscious are more scary than others. My experience is it is best to practice with Casper the friendly ghost first and then when you have a better sense of the steps go looking for more difficult dance partners.
Parker J Palmer, in his book A Hidden Wholeness - The Journey Toward an Undivided Life makes an important point about the approach to discovering your ghosts.
“The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek.”
Catching a glimpse of your ghosts is very similar to catching a glimpse of your soul, or what I call the Wisdom Within. Go quietly and watch. Dig for them like an archaeologist with a brush, not like a bulldozer driver.
With that approach in mind here are some questions to help you discover and dance with your ghosts. My experience is that journaling your responses to these steps can be exceptionally helpful. I am quite sure most of you will have asked yourselves these questions. My challenge to you is to dig deep, and listen...listen. I recently took a course with Marc Lesser, author of Seven Practices Of A Mindful Leader. I loved two questions in his questionnaire in preparation for the course. Question One: Why did you decide to take this course? Question Two: Now really, why did you decide to take this course?
What makes you Cry, And Who Makes You Cry?
It is worthwhile revisiting the question of what is most important in our life. Having done that we can then consider if my work aligns with it. It is my experience that it is worth re-asking myself these questions at least a couple of times a year. When you do this exercise, look for the ghosts peeking around the corner of your unconscious, who say…”you don’t deserve to do what you love”...or “your not that lucky”. There is a Wisdom Within that will help you find your ghosts, you just need to sit quietly enough to hear it speaking to you.
Which Areas Of My Life Am I Stuck In?
Look at these four key areas of your life -
Relationships
Self Actualisation
Career and Money
Physical/Emotional Life
Ask yourself these questions:
When I look closely at my life in relation to this part of it, the following thoughts and feelings arise. (Take time...sit quietly...don’t rush...give this time to arise)
My experience of this part of my life in my childhood was this….
My experience of this part of my life in relation to my family was this…
My most significant struggle in relation to this part of my life is this...and I think it is the most significant struggle because…
My most significant positive and important experiences in relation to this part of my life is this….and why it is so significant is because…
What I think I need to do in relation to this part of my life to improve my current experience is…
When Am I Most Defensive?
Ask yourself:
When do I act most defensively?
When I do act defensively, how do I feel and what is my usual response?
When you have answered those questions, then ask:
Where does that behaviour come from?
Did I learn that from someone?
What are the most likely scenarios that will cause me to jump to this reactive behaviour?
Think about and write about your plan to change this behaviour. What do you need to do to change this?
More Of This
After more than 50 years dancing with my own ghosts I still notice that when I look through these questions there are corners I have not yet ventured into. To the extent that I am not willing to be honest and vulnerable with myself I discover the limitations of my honest and vulnerable relationships with others. Therein lies the limitations of my leadership.
Ghost dancing is a lifelong practice.
Is This All Really Necessary?
There are those who think that this focus on self enquiry and self knowledge is unnecessary navel gazing and self-centred, and has nothing to do with the important work of a business or organisation, or life itself.
On the contrary there is nothing more important in your role in your business, organisation or family, than to more completely understand yourself. This is a striking paradox when it comes to leadership. Great leaders, and great parents, are servants. The pathway to service is to know who you really are, and to experience the part of yourself that cannot be lost nor threatened by serving others.
Don’t avoid dancing with your ghosts. In the end, if you can look them in the eye and dance, they are like those best of friends who won’t let you get away with deluding yourself.
