Two reasons why leading with your head and hands is not enough.
The deconstruction of good leadership and what it entails has been an age-old endeavour. Bill George, ex-CEO of Medtronic and Practice Professor at Harvard Business School, talks about being an authentic leader. The US Navy SEALs focus on extreme ownership and taking full responsibility. Simon Sinek, author and organisational consultant, emphasizes starting with why to inspire and lead.
These are good beginning, but far from enough.
Leadership should not be about learning concepts and skills to lead well. Leadership must be experienced and uncovered within you. It is an immaterial manifestation of your power to produce, drive and sustain a collective force—one that moves people beyond their existing tendencies, to do things in a different and better way.
The core of leadership is found in yourself and your development, not in learning what good leadership looks like and the leadership “skills”. The ability to lead others starts with knowing yourself. That is why LinHart so intensely prioritizes a whole person approach to leadership development in our counselling sessions and LIFE programs that we have created for a wide range of ages and seniority.
Here are the two reasons why you need to be in touch with your heart again to lead well.
1. Being in touch with your heart evokes your latent energies and unleashes your fullest potential
A recurring theme that we commonly see among senior executives who are overworked or overdriven is that they are not maximizing their fullest potential. They may be fully engaging their head and occupying their hands, but are missing something deeper. Lackluster, uncertain and pessimistic feelings creep in more easily.
Your smarts are not representative of your whole self. The wellspring of leadership is internal. You have to find in yourself the courage and conviction to carry out a purpose or calling that draws you. While your brain provides the processing capacity and your hands enable the execution, the spark that gets the wheel turning comes from the heart. In fact, your lesser known energies that reside in your heart play a larger and more significant role in moving yourself and eventually other people.
2. Being in touch with your heart facilitates relationships and empowers others
Today, the increased communication and information have eroded the stronghold that governments and large corporations once possessed. Society has became more levelled. Consumers and the public can leverage their influence too. Engaging stakeholders matters more than ever before. Leaders have to move people—inspire, motivate and mobilize. Business leaders need to move their stakeholders. Politicians need to move their nation. The deeper way to get to people is through their heart. Great leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. knew that well.
Leadership produces empowerment, and relationships are important for passing the empowerment on. In order to reach that level of might to influence the people around you, you first need to have strong personal relationships and genuine networks. This requires you to determine your purpose and calling, refine your talents, and master your fear and anxieties. Only then can a leader create a force bigger than himself to move people. When you are in touch with your heart, then can you apply your head and hands in the heat of the moment to produce the necessary empowerment.
How LinHart can help
Our senior counselors know this difficult and uneasy process extensively. In order to adequately address this pain-point that many executives experience early on or midway through their career, we have designed LIFE2 to provide an end-to-end comprehensive program that places you—your whole person—at the nucleus of leadership development. At the end of LIFE2, our participants have emerged with greater passion, purpose and positive energy. They are able to engage their whole self to work on something that can sustain them intellectually, physically, emotionally and spiritually. This is what we call living a whole life, and leading with your whole self.
Now that you know what needs to be done, will you do it? While the world values your work, you need to first value yourself. Personal growth is a life-long journey, and our counselors are able to accelerate the process and short-cut the lifetime of work involved. Speak to us to find out how our programs can help you. Go, and take the action now.
Published in April 2019