The sources of leadership
This post was an open source assignment for Nina El Badry’s Ph.D Student in Leadership
The practice of leadership covers the span of over 3,000 years of human history, and throughout it, few scholars did not emphasize the importance of a leader’s ability to connect to their inner source that provides strength, insight, inspiration, and meaning.
The source of leadership encompasses three domains:
Recognition
Integration
Attunement
A pioneer of contemporary leadership studies, Warren Bennis (2009) stated that one of the critical lessons of leadership is the ability to listen and trust the inner voice.
A senior Massachusetts Institute of Technology lecturer and co-founder of the Presencing Institute, C. Otto Scharmer theorized that the leader operates from the source that has a direct effect on the quality of their leadership, or “the success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener” (Scharmer, 2018).
A systems scientist, Peter Senge emphasized personal mastery as one of the disciplines that resonates with the ability to connect to the inner source. He describes it as the discipline of personal growth and learning that goes beyond competence and skills, and beyond spiritual unfolding and opening (Senge, 2006).
Whether we are leading ourselves or others, almost everyone can identify a moment in their life where they felt connected to a bigger force of life energy that provided needed motivation or peace. How does an emergent leader gain access to this inner source? I theorize that the source of leadership encompasses three domains: Recognition, Integration, and Attunement. In other words, the R.I.A. of leadership can provide much-needed wisdom for inner strength, insight, inspiration, and meaning.
Let’s explore each one of them.
Source of Leadership: Recognition
Recognition refers to the ability to identify our mental models and why we act the way we do.
Senge writes that “our “mental models” determine not only how we make sense of the world, but how we take actions” (Senge, 2006, p.164). Most of us live our lives, communicate, and act without a clear understanding of where our thoughts and actions are coming from. Our assumptions, our beliefs, our values, and our behavioral patterns are all dictated by several external as well as internal factors. Those factors include our cultural upbringing, socio-economic status, education, race, sex, age, spirituality, basic human psychology principles, and many others.
Mental models are incredibly powerful as they affect what we see. If you think of a famous story where two people were looking out from prison bars with one seeing the mud and the other one seeing the stars, you can see their mental models in action. I believe that mental models create our reality by employing our underlying philosophical worldviews and attribution biases.
Philosophical worldviews reflect our “basic set of beliefs that guide action” (Creswell & Creswell, 2017, p.5). Those beliefs can be that there is one single, observable, stable, and measurable reality, or that the reality is socially constructed leading to multiple realities or interpretations of a single event (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). In addition, there is an assumption that we can only know what we are experiencing through our subjective interpretation and awareness, and therefore, our experiences are inexplicably linked to the way we interpret them. In other words, “there is no “objective” experience that stands outside of its interpretation” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, p.10).
In psychology, attribution bias is based on our constant need to make judgments and assumptions about the world and others. It is virtually impossible to act as objective observers and so we are prone to make biases of the events in the social world. There are many ways where these attributions lead to errors such as the fundamental attribution error, the actor-observer bias, the self-serving bias, the group-serving bias, and the victim-blaming bias (Jhangiani et al, 2014). The key point here is when we are experiencing an event, we interpret it according to our beliefs and attributional skills which could lead to certain biases, which in turn lead to the formation of a mental model of the experience based on that interpretation.
“It is virtually impossible to act as objective observers and so we are prone to make biases of the events in the social world. There are many ways where these attributions lead to errors such as the fundamental attribution error, the actor-observer bias, the self-serving bias, the group-serving bias, and the victim-blaming bias.”
The mental models we create are connected to the blind spot of leadership. The leader must be able to recognize their own blind spot, i.e. the source, or the inner place that dictates thoughts and actions (Scharmer, 2018). It is not critical to change those models or to try to shift that blind spot. What is critical is to recognize that they exist and why they exist. Understanding personal behavioral, mental, and emotional patterns is the first step to effectively managing them. Unlike the famous saying that if you want truly to understand something, you should try to change it, I ask you to recognize that your blind spot exists and try to understand the reasons why they exist (Brummelman & Walton, 2015).
This recognition must be accompanied by softness and loving and kind curiosity for the change to even be a consideration in the future. If you truly want to understand something, try to sense its’ reality and surrender to it.
Source of Leadership: Integration
Integration refers to the connection between the body and the mind, the ability of the mind to draw from the intelligence of the body, and vice versa. The state of integration provides for harmony and open communication between physical and mental systems.
As a dance and yoga instructor who has been practicing, performing, and teaching movement for over twenty years, I can see this disconnect in my beginner students all the time.
For example, when I ask them to move to the left, they move to the right, when I ask them to isolate a part of the body, they move all the adjacent parts, and when I need them to move as a whole, they isolate and freeze. In more advanced dancers it manifests as a mental conviction that they are doing the movement one way because they “feel it” and “sense it” that way and it must be correct since that is what their mind is telling them at the moment.
They may say that they are doing what I ask until I record them on video and show the tape. After a moment of disbelief, a new awareness is created, and they start to feel what it feels like when the body moves in that way, and what the sensations are like.
The disconnection between the body and the mind often leads to a state of dis-ease. It happens when the mind is so powerful that it stops listening to the body altogether until it is too late. It usually starts with structural misalignments, like posture and back or knee issues, leading to internal problems such as headaches, heart conditions, or diabetes. How we feel on a physiological level and where we are in terms of our physical wellness has a tremendous impact on the way we process information, act, and make decisions. If a person is sick, feeling down, or depressed, their leadership ability will be dramatically impacted.
“How we feel on a physiological level and where we are in terms of our physical wellness has a tremendous impact on the way we process information, act, and make decisions.”
To achieve a significant impact on a leader’s interior condition, one must consider integrating influence from both psychological as well as physiological systems.
In fact, the integration of social sciences with biology and psychology holds important implications for leadership development research (Antonakis, 2011). If a leader has a good sense of where they are on psychological and physiological levels and those two systems are functional and integrated, they can not only attune to the intelligence of the mind but also tap into the intelligence of the body.
The science behind the intelligence of the heart has demonstrated some interesting discoveries such as that the heart constantly communicates with the brain and even has its own complex nervous system termed “heart brain” (Lacey & Lacey, 1978), (Armour, 2008), (Achanta et al, 2020). The connection to the heart is often synonymous with a leader’s emotional intelligence which has demonstrated great influence on their leadership effectiveness (Eberly & Fong, 2013).
I almost always start my yoga or meditation class with a simple question: how do you feel right now? Not how you should be feeling, or how you were feeling, or how you might be feeling in the future, but right now.
Every exercise on awareness, for example, “Moments of Awareness” incorporates the physical component of feeling (Senge, 1994). The ability of a leader to correctly diagnose and perceive their entire human system and integrate body and mind will bring them closer to the ability to connect to their inner source and to hear their inner voice.
Source of Leadership: Attunement
Attunement refers to a leader’s ability to connect to a meta-cognitive space of awareness that transcends their Individual Self and taps into their Emerging Higher Self.
According to Einstein’s dictum, “You cannot solve problems with the same level of thought that created them” (Scharmer, 2018, p.55). The leader must go through the processes of opening and deepening to shift awareness and consciousness to one of the emerging fields.
Scharmer describes the connection to this generative field consisting of several experiences such as:
“Time slows down, space widens, the self-other boundary collapses, and the self begins to “de-center”, materiality changes, agency changes from rule-repeating to rule-generating and thinking changes to thinking from the source.” (Scharmer, 2018, pp. 57-58)
The new emerging awareness connects us to the new emerging possibilities and allows our Individual Self to evolve into something bigger and better than it was before. This process sounds incredibly eye-opening yet almost unimaginably hard to achieve, especially in the midst of a busy day where we are simply rushing from one task to another.
One way to practice attunement is to practice meditation. There are many types of meditation, and mindfulness meditation is one of the easiest to practice daily. Mindfulness is the awareness that comes from the ability to pay purposeful, non-judgmental attention to the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2001).
The area of mindful leadership has dramatically grown in the last few years as evidenced by hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, books, and yearly mindful leader summits. The study of mindfulness in leadership demonstrates that it enables leaders to create an authentic, compassionate, nurturing, and positive workplace and promote the well-being of their followers.
“Mindfulness allows us to practice and cultivate our attention, eventually bending it back on our evolving self, and awakening a new level of meta-awareness. ”
Scharmer stated that “energy follows attention and if you attend this way, the reality will emerge that way” (Scharmer, 2018, p.40). Mindfulness allows us to practice and cultivate our attention, eventually bending it back on our evolving self, and awakening a new level of meta-awareness.
This dramatic shift of awakening and illumination has been described by many spiritual mystics of many religious traditions. Moreover, this mystical experience can also be explained by neurobiology and is associated “with a series of observable neurological events”, and unless the human brain changes, we will always have this connection to our Higher Emerging Self (Newberg & d'Aquili, 2008).
Effective leadership requires recognition, integration, and attunement
In summary, C. Otto Scharmer theorized that the leader operates from the source that has a direct effect on the quality of their leadership, or “the success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener” (Scharmer, 2018).
To connect to this source, I propose that the leader follows the concept of R.I.A.: Recognize, Integrate, and Attune. Recognition refers to the ability to see mental models and conditions patterns and responses, integration refers to the ability to tap into the intelligence of one’s body, and attunements refers to the ability to connect to the Higher Emerging Self, meta-awareness or the Divine.
I will leave you with one of my favorite poems on the subject by Juan Ramon Jimenez, “I am not I”, which provide another perspective on the source of our leadership:
“I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.”
References
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Antonakis, J. (2011). Predictors of leadership: The usual suspects and the suspect traits. Sage handbook of leadership, 269-285.
Armour, J. A. (2008). Potential clinical relevance of the ‘little brain’on the mammalian heart. Experimental physiology, 93(2), 165-176.
Bennis, W. G. (2009). On becoming a leader. Basic Books.
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Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.
Eberly, M. B., & Fong, C. T. (2013). Leading via the heart and mind: The roles of leader and follower emotions, attributions and interdependence. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(5), 696-711.
Jhangiani, R., Tarry, H., & Stangor, C. (2014). Principles of social psychology-1st international edition.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2001). Mindfulness meditation for everyday life. London, UK: Piatkus.
Lacey, B. C., & Lacey, J. I. (1978). Two-way communication between the heart and the brain: Significance of time within the cardiac cycle. American Psychologist, 33(2), 99.
Lorca, F. G., & Jiménez, J. R. (1973). Lorca and Jiménez: Selected Poems (Vol. 446). Beacon Press.
Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2015). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. John Wiley & Sons.
Newberg, A., & d'Aquili, E. G. (2008). Why God won't go away: Brain science and the biology of belief. Ballantine Books.
Senge, P. M. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. Currency.
