Inner work may seem like a self-indulgent luxury until you’ve been around a leader who hasn’t done that work and see what it costs the leader, the people they lead, and their institution.
Leading change, innovation, learning, and people often puts our focus on others. However, leading others always begins with inner work. It is easier to think about how others (your team, critics, the opposing side, society, etc.) need to change, rather than examining how you need to shift yourself.
“Transformation is an inside job.” – Jim Dethmer, Conscious Leadership Group
When we think about leading others, we often imagine influencing them by speaking to large groups, orchestrating a meeting from the big chair, or engaging in deep conversations. Self-work is not self-indulgent; it is often critical to institutional and organizational effectiveness.
The best leaders begin by investing in themselves so they can get out of their own way and lead from the inside out. Let’s begin here with Part I: Getting Out of Our Own Way. We’ll get into Part II: Leading from the Inside Out in my next newsletter/post.
Part I: Getting Out of Our Own Way
Connecting with Our Humanity and Healing
Many leaders are held up as superheroes. This helps us elevate these icons and appreciate the incredible work they did; however, it also dehumanizes them and keeps us distant from their unrealistic superhero status. One of the things I’ve learned from coaching some incredible leaders is just how human they are behind the titles, courage, accomplishments, and speeches.
We must recognize the messy humanity in ourselves, not as a failure or disqualification of leadership, but as a reality to be valued, embraced, engaged with, and navigated, not only to increase our effectiveness but also to foster our joy, courageous humility, and connection. Getting out of our own way is about removing ourselves as an obstacle to ourselves, others, and processes in times of uncertainty, unprecedented challenges, and crises that higher education is facing. Good leaders can do this for themselves. Great leaders model it and support it in the leaders around them.
Recognizing Human Needs
Each of us has human needs that don’t evaporate with the big promotion. They stay with us. There are different ways of naming these. The Conscious Leadership Group identifies five needs: security, approval, control, uniqueness (I am special), and oneness (we are all interconnected). Neuroscientist and leadership coach Amanda Blake identified three: safety, connection, and respect.
Obstacles to Relationships
When these needs are underserved, unmet, or threatened, we can engage in behaviors and patterns that can undermine our relationships. When leaders allow their underlying insecurities and fears to run unchecked, it often manifests as defensiveness in faculty meetings, reluctance to delegate, or clinging to the status quo.
- We tend to withhold, withdraw, and project according to the Conscious Leadership Group
- The Gottman Institute has observed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
- Relationship therapist Terry Real names these sinister relationship patterns as being right, control, unbridled self-expression, retaliation, and withdrawal.
- On my not-so-good days, I might answer: D) All of the above.
Engaging in Our Healing
As humans, we all have hurts, baggage, and most of us have experienced some kind of trauma. As leaders, we bring this humanness with us, and we might have these experiences related specifically to our leadership role. These leadership traumas are past leadership experiences that hinder our present leadership actions.
We can heal from these through the Rs from our Evolve program:
- Recognize – recognize the past trauma, especially in an embodied way
- Reconcile – separate the useful learning from the unhelpful
- Rewrite – the learning by journaling, talking, role playing, and repeating
Practicing Healthy Non-attachment
Buddhists refer to this as the middle path between not caring at all and caring too much. Psychologists call this healthy non-attachment. I believe that most higher education leaders, especially those in student affairs, would be better at their jobs if they didn’t care so much. Sometimes, caring too much gets in the way of our ability to serve others rather than enable; to keep our identity and self-worth separate from the task, project, or outcome; and to keep our ego out of the way as we focus on serving others.
To be clear, healthy non-attachment is not disengagement; it is an approach to be better engaged. Our inner work helps us get out of our own way, see reality with clarity, and engage more effectively to create something better for us all.
Reflection Prompts:
- How are you getting in your own way?
- What is one step you can take to get out of your own way?
Once we step out of our own way, the next challenge is how we show up and lead others. That’s where Part II, Leading from the Inside Out, comes in.
