The Authentic Self: Leading from the Heart

  

     

The most successful managers of people, whether they are supervisors of a creative team, contractors with groups of artisans to oversee, directors of corporate divisions, or teachers of young children, all have one thing in common: they lead from their hearts. Since the world judges performance through a bottom line prism of results, many managers mistakenly believe that an iron fist approach that instills fear as the prevailing group ethic is the best way to achieve results. While this may work initially, a stressful environment may very often lead to group defections or loss of interest in common goals and create an atmosphere of one-upmanship as workers compete for personal credit.

In several Forbes Magazine articles online, Glenn Llopis explores the prerequisites of good management. He writes that a good manager builds rapport, which requires good listening skills, timely follow through, and proactive solutions to employee needs. These managers, he adds, are good at dealing with difficult personalities and handling stressful situations. Here is where a person who leads from the heart has an advantage. When you lead from the heart, you are sensitive to the needs of the other. You engage the other person where he or she is. To do this, you must first have learned how to observe yourself. You know how you feel in stressful situations and can use this information to present facts, strategies, and requirements in a non-threatening way, thus creating win-win solutions and furthering group goals.

Leading from the Heart

How do you learn to observe yourself? For the next week or two, try this experiment. Set the intention to become your silent observer. Call upon your silent observer to be a witness to the conversations you have with others. Carry a little notepad with you. Make three columns. Head the first column “Relationship,” the second “Outcome,” and the third “Feelings.” The next time you have a conversation with someone, record information in the columns immediately afterwards. Be brief. Under “Relationship” note with whom you spoke. Was it a co-worker, your spouse or partner, your parent, your sibling, your child, a neighbor? Under “Outcome” note whether the encounter was generally positive or negative. Be honest. This is for your eyes only, and when you look through the eyes of your silent observer you look without judgment. Under “Feelings” make a brief note about what feelings you brought into the encounter and what feelings you took away from the encounter.

At the end of the experiment, look over your notes. Can you pick up any patterns? Were the conversations more positive than negative, or just the reverse? Were your feelings and expectations positive before the conversation or negative? How did that affect the outcomes? The law of attraction in personal interactions is quite simple: in general, we attract to ourselves what we hold within. This is not an easy concept to grasp or accept, especially when we look only through the eyes of our persona, the ego personality we chose to inhabit for experience in this lifetime. Becoming your silent observer gives you a chance to step outside of yourself and to watch yourself reacting to people and situations. When this happens, you can begin to identify the emotional triggers that lock you into your persona and prevent rational appraisal of an interaction. How many times have you thought better of an earlier interaction and recognized that you had overreacted?

Try for a moment to look through the eyes of a loved one with whom you have just had a negative encounter. Sit comfortably in a chair with your feet firmly on the floor. Call the light to yourself. See a cone of light above your head and breathe deeply through your nose. See the light come into your body. As you exhale through your mouth, see the light move through your body to your feet. Ask Mother Earth to accept your light and send it deeply into the earth. You are connecting with the healing energies of the earth and aligning yourself with a consciousness that can allow you to be in a space of non-judgment.

Breathe deeply—in through your nose and out through your mouth as if blowing out a candle. Just be in this space. Now see your loved one as the being of light, or soul, he or she really is. Recognize your connection on a soul level. Set the intention to honor the other person in his or her perfection, just as you desire to be honored. Acknowledge that your loved one is on a soul journey that is no more or less important than the one you are on. Step outside your persona with its built in fears and defensive patterns of thinking. Breathe deeply. You are in a neutral space where you observe without judgment.

Review the negative encounter. Interactions can become negative when certain triggers unleash fears and uncomfortable emotions. As you think about the negative encounter, do you feel them now? Surround those feelings with light and send them to your feet. Inhale deeply and send those feelings from your feet into the earth, Think: “I am not those feelings. I let them go.” Remember that the quickest way to clear yourself of the energy of negativity is through breath and thought.

Don’t worry if you can’t let them go completely. There is no success or failure in this space. There is only exploration and recognition.

Over time, you will develop the ability to step into your silent observer role each time you encounter a stressful situation or are called upon to deal with a difficult person. Eventually, you will recognize the stressful situation as an opportunity for growth and the other person as an extension of us all, another soul experiencing life through his or her chosen persona. When that happens, you will look for solutions that empower you both.