Integer Leadership Consulting

To intentionally accelerate leadership development is to purposefully broaden and deepen the leader’s capacity to exercise leadership in any given organizational context. When the objective of leadership development is adding technical competencies or strategic capabilities to the leader’s portfolio of expertise, the acceleration process is normally a matter of expanding the knowledge base and then teaching the leader when and how to access and apply that knowledge. However, accelerating leadership development by deepening self-awareness has little to do with expanding skill sets or operational knowledge bases.

Leaders develop awareness when they become increasingly perceptive, knowledgeable and mindful about their environment…their external realities. Aware leaders are those who maintain a wariness, watchfulness and circumspection about the world in which they exist. They intuit subtle connections and sleuth-out finer meanings where other leaders would see nothing of value beyond the obvious and apparent. They are capable of extrapolating wisdom and insight from the raw and chaotic vicissitudes of human existence. It is a truism that many leaders, by virtue of their position and responsibility, possess some measure of awareness. However, it cannot be assumed that a leader who possesses awareness also possesses self awareness.

For the leader, awareness of the self creates the recognition that the core or “center” of the leader does not reside in the world of external realities and meaning, tools and techniques but rather in the internal realm of identity, meaning, purpose and one’s own sense of truth. The self aware leader continually connects, compares and contrasts deeply held internal values and beliefs to external experiences. It is precisely here, in this delicate yet critical interplay between these two worlds…these two realties, where the leader possesses the capacity to exercise transformational, generative and redemptive leadership as opposed to exercising leadership that enlarges the self while it dehumanizes people and destabilizes organizational systems. Self aware leaders, by virtue of this awareness, understand the importance of consistently “attending to” this inner conversation.

Yet, it is the matter of deepening self awareness that is the focus of this paper. The verb “deepen” means to go further inward and downward and, in the process, to move away from the surface. Deepening awareness of the self is to move toward one’s core identity, toward the mysterious and sublime and away from the superfluous and transitory. It is to willingly encounter the potentially impenetrable and incomprehensible meanings about one’s own existence, that is, to further explore why one exists, the end-purpose for which one exists and the manner in which one will live out the purposeful existence. This paper associates these questions with the process of deepening self awareness. Ultimately, the journey of creating depth of self awareness is a de facto journey of discovering one’s spirituality. It is in this crucible, where the depths of self awareness intricately commingles with spiritual (not religious) meaning, that positive and generative leadership begins. The matter of accelerating leadership development by deepening self awareness is inexorably tied to defining the leader’s spirituality and the context of that spirituality within a global and restorative framework.

This paper will explore the process of deepening the self awareness of the leader from five perspectives. First, self awareness and purpose. Second, self awareness and mission. Third, self awareness and evidence. Fourth, self awareness and reconciliation. Fifth, self awareness and redemption. As the leader defines the meaning of these five components as they relate to the leader’s self, awareness is deepened. Furthermore, the task and responsibilities of leadership, both on a macro and micro level, become profoundly clearer and unobfuscated by the confusion that often results when leadership is defined by self gratification and personal empowerment. This paper will argue that the affirmation and formation of spiritual identity is the sine qua non or critical glide-path that accelerates positive leadership development.