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, that 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 and embrace (rather than ignore) the often uncomfortable meanings that ground one’s own existence. It is to reject the many untruths of the culture and world…even one’s own tendency toward self-delusion and to adhere to a relentless pursuit of one’s truth. Deepening self awareness for the leader brings a commitment to continually explore who one is, why one exists, the end-purpose for which one exists and the manner in which one will live out the purposeful existence. The author postulates that deepening self awareness is inexorably tied to accepting and understanding the impact and revelatory nature that emerges as a leader accepts and interprets their own emotional pain and personal suffering. There is no greater illumination of the self then that which comes from accepting, rather than denying and eschewing, pain and suffering that emanates from one’s personal or professional world.

This paper will explore the process of deepening the self awareness of the leader by exploring the following affirmations. First, that the world of organizational leadership often contributes toward the fabrication and maintenance of a false sense of self. Second, that leaders who fail to deepen self awareness by refusing to embrace the profoundly arduous experiences of life cause significant damage to themselves and others within and beyond the organization. Third, that refusing to accept pain and suffering profoundly stunts the development of self-awareness and effects the exercise of transformational leadership. Fourth, that leaders who embrace suffering, become increasingly self aware, develop a humility, rather than an ensconced hubris, that magnifies and exponentially increases the positive impact of the leader. This author will argue that the acceptance and integration of suffering and pain is a critical glide-path that accelerates positive and holistic leadership development.