Chapter 12tnlp.valuescentre.com/.../The-New-Leadership-Paradigm-Chapter-12.pdf · Chapter 12 General Practices ... • Johari window: A comparison of the values that define who

Chapter 12

General Practices

Several general practices will support your progress and help you to speed up your personal evolutionary journey. The most important of these are measuring your performance, self-coaching, finding balance, learning to stay in the flow, making a difference in your world, and creating a leadership journal in which step-by-step, you build your self-knowledge and keep track of the lessons you have learned about becoming a full spectrum individual.

Measuring Your Performance There are two ways of measuring the progress you are making in learning how to lead yourself: carrying out self-assessments and inviting others to give you some form of structured feedback.

Two self-assessments are suggested:

• Personality profile: Self-evaluation of multiple dimensions of your personality, including extroversion, emotionality, thoroughness, openness, agreeableness, and thinking mode preferences (sensing versus intuiting, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving) (http://personalitybook.com).

• Individual values assessment (IVA): Self-evaluation of your values, the values you see in your organisation, and the values you would like to see in your organisation. The IVA measures how aligned you are with your working environment (http://valuescentre.com).

Two feedback assessments are suggested:

• Johari window: A comparison of the values that define who you think you are and the values that define who your

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friends think you are. It measures agreements, blind spots, and your façade.

• Jobari window: A comparison of the values that define who you think you are and the values that define who your work colleagues think you are. It measures agreements, blind spots, and your façade, includes potentially limiting values.

In the following section—leading others—I am going to focus on a more sophisticated instrument for getting feedback, the leadership values assessment (LVA), which forms part of the Barrett Values Centre’s Cultural Transformation Tools.

Feedback is important because, even though you think you know yourself, you don’t know how others perceive you. What may appear in your mind to be one of your strengths may, viewed from the perspective of others, be one of your weaknesses. There may be things that you do that others find irritating. These are your blind spots, things that others know about you that you don’t know about yourself. Feedback helps you to reduce your blind spots. Modifying how you operate to eliminate these behaviours is part of personal mastery and will support you in enhancing your ability to bond and cooperate with others.

My point here is not just that self-leadership is intimately linked to the full expression of who you are (authenticity), nor that it is a lifelong journey, but the only way you have of understanding who you are and where you are on your personal evolutionary journey is by getting feedback from others so you can improve your ability to get your own needs met.

You can adopt five attitudes regarding feedback. These are shown in Figure 12.1. Which of them is your attitude? If you are not using feedback to understand and develop, then you are not moving forward on your journey of self-discovery.

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Figure 12.1. Five attitudes towards receiving feedback

Self-assessments The following self-assessment tools will provide you with insights into who you are and how you operate, as well as indicating the degree of alignment you have with your current work environment.

• The personality profile (personality book) is available from Personality Net Inc. This assessment has many dimensions to it, all of which provide valuable insights. There is a modest cost involved in this assessment.94

• The individual values assessment (IVA) is available from the Barrett Values Centre. This assessment provides you with valuable insights into how aligned you are with your working environment: your personal values, the values you see in the culture of your organisation, and the values you would like to see. An example of the results of an IVA can be found in Figure 10.1 and 10.2. There is a cost involved in the use of this assessment instrument, and you will need

94 http://personalitybook.com


to find someone who is an accredited user of the CTT to feed the results of this assessment back to you.95

More information on these survey instruments can be found in the workbook of the Leading Self module of the New Leadership Paradigm learning system.

Feedback Assessments The following two assessment tools will allow you to get feedback from other people. The Johari window96 can be used for getting feedback from your family and friends. The Jobari window can be used for getting feedback from your work colleagues or co-workers.

Johari Window If you build a four-quadrant matrix about what you know about yourself, what you don’t about yourself, what others know about you, and what others don’t know about you, you will have a created the Johari window. See Figure 12. 2. This is a feedback instrument for comparing how others perceive you, compared to how you perceive yourself.

Figure 12.2. The Johari window.

95 To find out more about this IVA, go to: http://valuescentre.com/products__services. 96 Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham created the Johari window in 1955 in the United States.

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The instrument is used in the following way. You, the subject of this exercise, are given a list of fifty-five positive adjectives from which you pick ten that best describe who you are. Ten to fifteen people you know (the assessors) are given the same list, and they also pick ten adjectives that they believe best describes who you are. These two sets of adjectives (your choices and the top ten choices of your assessors) are then mapped onto the Johari grid and compared.97

Words that you and your assessors selected are placed in the Arena quadrant. Words picked by the assessors and not you are placed in the Blind Spot quadrant. Words picked by you and not the assessors are placed in the Façade quadrant. You then tally the scores and examine the words in each quadrant. The objective of the exercise is to discover your blind spots and uncover your façade. More information on this survey instrument can be found in the workbook of the Leading Self module of the New Leadership Paradigm learning system.

Jobari Window The adjectives used in the Johari window are general in nature. The Johari window focuses on positive personality traits; the Nohari window focuses on potentially limiting personality traits. These assessments are not specifically tailored for an organisational setting. For example, they do not include positive traits such as accessible, ambitious, reliable, or potentially limiting traits, such as blaming, demanding, or dominating.

In order to make this tool more appropriate for business, I have developed the Jobari window, which includes both positive and potentially limiting words customized for an organisational setting. Mixing both positive and potentially limiting values makes the instrument more suitable for getting feedback on your personal mastery skills. More information on this survey instrument can be found in the workbook of the Leading Self module of the New Leadership Paradigm learning system.

Arena The more words that appear in this quadrant, the more self-awareness you possess. These are the matches between you and you assessors. 97 A similar exercise can be performed using negative adjectives. This is known as the Nohari window. For more information on the Johari and Nohari windows and a list of the adjectives that are used in both assessments, consult Wikipedia.


You can increase your self-awareness by becoming aware of your blind spots, particularly the potentially limiting values, and developing behaviours that make the values that appear in your façade more visible to others.

Blind Spots The words that appear in this quadrant are descriptors that your assessors chose, but you did not. You may not be aware that you are coming across in these ways. You should discuss these items with your assessors to deepen your understanding of what you are unknowingly projecting out into the world, both positive and negative characteristics. The benefit of knowing your blind spots is to increase your potential for personal mastery and support you in improving your internal cohesion and external cohesion skills and capabilities. See Figure 12.3.

Figure 12.3. Feedback that helps to support personal mastery

Façade The words that appear in this quadrant are the things you consciously or unconsciously keep hidden from others. Based on what shows up in this quadrant, you can decide how important it might be to reveal more of yourself in the future. Reducing your façade requires you to become more honest and open with your thoughts and feelings. This builds trust and supports empathy, thereby enabling bonding and cooperation.

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The benefit of revealing more of your self is that you increase your potential for authenticity. See Figure 12.4.

Figure 12.4. Feedback that helps to support authenticity.

The dual focus of reducing your blind spots and removing your façade expands the Known to Self and Known to Others area, thereby increasing your level of authenticity, openness, and transparency and making you more trusted by others. See Figure 12.5.

Figure 12.5. Working on feedback helps to build trust.


Self-coaching The goal of personal evolution coaching is to increase your self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-responsibility, and self-management so you can explore and achieve your full potential. These four abilities are the keys to successful personal evolution:

• Self-knowledge: the ability to know your motivations in any situation

• Self-awareness: the ability to read your emotions, recognise their impact on you and others, and use your feelings to guide your decisions

• Self-responsibility: the ability to own your negative as well as your positive emotions, recognise that you created them at some level of your being, understand your negative emotions represent unmet deficiency needs, and formulate requests in a manner that will enable you to get your needs met more frequently

• Self-management: the ability to manage or master your emotions so you can adapt more readily to changing circumstances and meet your own needs

Two of these skills and capabilities (self-awareness and self management) are the skills and capabilities that determine your level of emotional intelligence. When combined with self-knowledge and self-responsibility, these skills and capabilities enable you to achieve personal mastery.

As much as feedback instruments are important for helping you to identify your blind spots and making you conscious of your façade, they are not enough on their own to move you forward on your journey. Moving from conscious incompetence to conscious competence requires coaching, either self-coaching or professional coaching.

In my opinion, the best person to support you on your personal evolution journey is you and your own self-witness. I believe that, in the new leadership paradigm, it will be essential for everyone to learn self-leadership skills. I make this proposal for the following four reasons:

• You are the best person to coach yourself because you are the one experiencing your feelings. You know more

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intimately than anyone else what your motivations are in any situation and what is going on inside your mind.

• Personal evolution is a lifelong journey, so it is important to learn how to manage yourself as soon as possible in your life. Once the skills have been learned, they can be a resource that you can use every time you feel out of alignment.

• Once you have learned how to be your own self-coach, you will have the skills and capabilities you need to coach others in their personal evolution, an essential skill for a new paradigm leader.

• The principal skill in self-coaching (learning to be your own self-witness) is key to developing your self-transforming mind. Your personal evolution will be accelerated to the degree that you can view your ideas, opinions, and worldviews objectively rather than using them as a filters to judge everyone else.

There will be times, particularly when you are learning your self-leadership skills, that you may need additional coaching. There will be times, even when you have become proficient at self-leadership, that you may need expert advice. These are the times you may wish to fall back on the skills and capabilities of a professional coach.

There are three stages involved in learning to be your own self coach that align with the three stages of personal evolution: self-coaching for personal mastery, self-coaching for internal cohesion, and self-coaching for external cohesion. The key self-coaching elements involved in each of these three stages are summarized below. Each of these elements was discussed in detail earlier in the three previous chapters.

Self-Coaching for Personal Mastery • Release your emotions: If you are noticing any pent-up

emotional energy or hurt, pause while you allow it to dissipate.

• Engage your self-witness: Move into the balcony, and observe what happened to you on the dance floor of your life.


• Identify your feelings: Name your feelings and describe them to yourself in detail. Write down your feelings.

• Identify your thoughts: Notice what you are thinking and the judgments you are making. Write down your thoughts.

• Identify your fears: What are the fears that lie behind your thoughts? What are you afraid may happen? Write down your fears.

• Identify your needs: What needs do you have that are not being met? These needs, together with your fears, are motivating your upset. Write down your needs.

• Identify your beliefs: Develop a belief statement about what you lack and what you need.

• Question your thoughts/beliefs: Differentiate between perception and reality, reshape your thoughts/beliefs, and re-evaluate your needs.

If someone else is involved:

• Inquire about the needs of the other: Be curious about the other person’s needs. Try to understand what fear-based thoughts may be motivating him or her, what needs he or she has that are not being met.

• Communicate your needs: Identify your needs, and make a request of the other person to see if he or she is willing to support you in getting your needs met.

• Dialogue: Take time to hear one another and explore various strategies to meet both of your needs. This takes patience. You may discover that you are not able to meet one another’s needs.

Self-coaching for Internal Cohesion • Identify your values: Gain an understanding of what values

drive your decision-making and the beliefs and behaviours that support them.

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• Understand your motivations: Get clear and focused on why you do what you do each day and, in particular, your motivation for going to work.

• Understand your current purpose: Get clear on your most important goals and the outcomes you want to achieve.

• Find your mission: Understand and get clear on your life purpose.

• Create a vision: Understand and get clear on what outcome you would like to create by following your life purpose.

• Get aligned with your work: Evaluate to what extent your current work environment supports you in achieving your purpose, mission, and vision, and change it, if necessary.

Self-coaching for External Cohesion • Deepen your self-connection: Develop your intuition and

inspiration through reflection and meditation.

• Work with other people: Develop your empathy, compassion, humility, and wisdom to build partnerships and strategic alliances.

• Manifest outcomes: Move beyond intention, vision, and trust in the forces of inspiration to provide for your needs.

• Focus on the eleven strategies for staying in the flow: Develop your ability to find long-term fulfilment by staying at the top of your game. (See following section in this chapter)

Balance Evolution would never have happened if all the entities and group structures that exist today had not found a symbiotic way of living with each other and their physical environment, a way of living that minimized stress. You cannot exist as an entity or group structure in the physical world if you are not able to keep everything in balance.

For the human body, this means living in a symbiotic relationship with its natural physical environment. For the human ego, it means living in a symbiotic relationship with its body, other individuals, and


your soul. Thus, you need to focus on three relationships if you want to keep yourself in balance: the body’s relationship with its physical environment, the ego’s relationship with the body, and the ego’s relationship with the soul. See Figure 12.6.

When these three relationships are in good order, you are able to find fulfilment and operate at high levels of performance because the needs of the body, ego, and soul are all being met. All three decision-making authorities are in alignment, each of them is experiencing internal stability and external equilibrium, and the whole human being is living in harmony with its environment.

To live in such a way, you need to develop your self-coaching abilities. Self-coaching for personal mastery supports you in keeping the ego-mind in balance. Self-coaching for internal cohesion supports you in keeping your ego-soul relationship in balance. Self-coaching for external cohesion supports you in keeping your soul in balance.

Figure 12.6. Keeping body-mind, ego-mind, and soul-mind in balance.

When these three relationships fall out of balance, the result is stress, that is, stress on the body, stress on the ego, or stress on the soul. You reduce stress on your body by creating a healthy living environment, eating organic nutritious food, and keeping yourself physically fit. You reduce stress on your ego by creating a safe, secure environment, building a strong family life, and participating in

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activities that interest you and challenge you to excel. You reduce stress on your soul by finding work that aligns with your soul purpose, being part of a community of like-minded souls, and maintaining a spiritual discipline.

To keep the nine aspects of your life in balance, you will need to constantly bring into play the five evolutionary characteristics: adaptability, continuous learning, the ability to bond, the ability to cooperate, and the ability to handle complexity. There will always be changes in your life. Nothing ever stays the same. Managing change means being able to maintain internal stability and external equilibrium in all situations and circumstances in all aspects of the balance wheel of human life. See Figure 12.7.

Figure 12.7. The balance wheel of human life.

There is a natural order to the balance wheel of human life, which is evolutionary in nature. When we create the right environment, we will produce food that nourishes us. When we eat the right food in the right amounts, we will keep the body healthy. When we exercise our optimised body, we will be able to defend ourselves and find work that provides us with an income so we can create a safe environment for our family. The security of family life will enable us to go out into the world and explore our interests. By exploring our interests, we will


find the work that aligns with our purpose. When we find our purpose, we will be drawn into our (soul) community. Through this community, we will experience a deep connection to the source that enlivens us, and we will want to preserve and enhance that link by maintaining a spiritual discipline. This discipline will remind us of the energetic oneness of everything that will lead us into caring for our environment. And the circle is complete.

During the first half of your life, you will be focused on keeping the body-mind and ego-mind in balance, living a healthy life, and managing your deficiency needs. If you have been successful in this regard, during the second half of your life, your focus will shift to keeping your soul-mind in balance while still maintaining the internal stability and external equilibrium of your body-mind and ego-mind. You need to focus on three areas in keeping each of the three minds in balance.

The Body The principal considerations for keeping your body-mind stress free (in internal stability and external equilibrium) are your physical environment (living in a nontoxic, sustainable, ecologically balanced environment), your nutrition (eating organic nutritious food), and your physical fitness (keeping your body healthy and in good shape).

Physical Environment98 The purpose of living in a nontoxic, sustainable, ecologically balanced environment is to minimise the stresses on the body. The more you can live in a natural symbiotic relationship with your surroundings, the less work the body has to do to maintain homeostasis. This means surrounding yourself with nature and all things natural so chemicals that disturb the internal stability of body do not contaminate the air you breathe and the food you eat. Smoking, excessive alcohol drinking, drug taking, and so forth are all ways that we create stress on the body.

98 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution

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Nutrition99 It is not enough to just eat organic food. The food you eat should also provide you with a healthy, balanced diet that supports the life of the body. You are what you eat. When you get it wrong, you can develop a variety of medical conditions. Some of which can be life-threatening. You no longer have the energy you need for optimal functioning because the cells of the body are constantly stressed while trying to correct the chemical imbalances you have created. Regularly monitoring of your blood composition and analysing the toxins stored in the body should be high on your body maintenance priorities.

Physical Fitness100 Keeping the body in shape is not just about living in a nontoxic environment or eating the right things. It also has a lot to do with exercise. Everyone should have an exercise regime that targets body composition (fat), cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, muscular endurance, and muscle strength. The older you are, the more important this is. It gets harder and harder to keep your body in peak condition if you let yourself go.

The Ego The principal considerations for keeping your ego-mind stress-free (in internal stability and external equilibrium) are your security and safety (creating an income and environment that allows you to provide for your needs and needs of your family and keep them safe from harm), your family life (developing loving relationships that engender a sense of belonging), and your interests and activities (physical or mental pursuits that enable you to develop your talents and encourage you to excel).

Security and Safety101 Interestingly, research shows that, once you reach a certain threshold (about US$15,000), the amount of income you earn does not bring you extra happiness. Although this research is disputed in some circles, there is broad agreement that increases in income have diminishing

99 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition 100 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_fitness 101 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_and_money


returns on increases in happiness. What is important is to achieve a level of income that allows you to meet you and your family’s basic needs and allows you to provide an environment where you and your family can be physically safe and secure.

Family and Friends Relationships are fundamental to our existence as human beings. Without the feedback we get from relationships, we would not know who we are, and we would not be able to grow and develop. Without warm, loving relationships with family or friends, we are unable to relate to the world. Why would you bother relating to your world when you feel you don’t belong? The quality, not the quantity, of relationships in our lives measure who we are. We get to know ourselves more deeply when we examine the ways in which we relate.

Interests and Activities How you spend your time outside of your family and your job allows you to explore what is meaningful to you. It can also provide you with an avenue for achievement and a way of building a sense of self-esteem. It doesn’t really matter what you do. It is about how you apply yourself to whatever task or interest you choose. We learn by trial and error and what is important to us. We learn dedication and discipline, and we learn what it takes to excel. We gain the confidence we need to be fully who we are in the world.

The Soul The principal considerations for keeping your soul-mind in internal stability and external equilibrium are your work (finding work that aligns with soul purpose or what you are passionate about), your community (finding or creating a support network of people who share the same passion and purpose), and your spiritual discipline (finding and practicing a spiritual discipline that nourishes your soul).

Work Most of us begin our working lives in jobs that fulfil one or several of our deficiency needs: survival, relationships, or self-esteem. We really have no idea of our purpose or what lights the flame of passion in our lives. When you find that passion or purpose, then you step into

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alignment with your soul. It is then and only then that your works take on meaning and become the pathway to the fulfilment of your life. When you reach your forties or any other age and you begin to question why your work is not fulfilling you, you know it is time to find your passion and align with your purpose. If you ignore your calling, you will regret it for the rest of your life.

Community When passion and purpose are at the heart of what you do, then you will find yourself attracted to and wanting to be in the company of those who share the same sense of meaning in their lives. You will do this because you will not only be resonating at the same frequency of vibration. You will also be able to converse and know each other in a deeply intimate way. You will be building a sense of connection that reflects the energetic nature of the universe.

Spiritual Discipline Through your sense of purpose and the connection you have to your community, you will recognise the unity of the world. As you see it and feel it, you will want to live it more deeply and more fully than you could imagine. This will lead you into a spiritual discipline that aligns with who you are. There are many spiritual disciplines, but there is only one source. Finding your route to the source and keeping it open will enliven your life and connect you with your intuition and inspiration.

Staying in the Flow How do you get to and keep yourself in a state of flow? I can only answer this question from personal experience. In this sense, my response is extremely subjective. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that most of these techniques can possibly be extrapolated to the general human condition:

• Become unbelievably adaptive: Let go of any idea of the way things have to be. These are just your assumptions. Learn to go with the flow. Whatever wants to emerge and energetically feels right is the right thing to do. Focus on what you have energy for, and let go of anything that does not spark your juices. Go with your inspiration. The most


successful people and companies are unbelievably adaptive. They are not attached to their idea of how things have to be. These people and the people who run such companies have self-transforming minds. They are constantly reinterpreting reality.

• Surrender to the process of going with the flow: This is hard at the beginning, especially when it means letting go of things that you identify with. I have let go of relationships, homes, and even being CEO of my own company. Letting go is a hard thing to do. However, only by letting go do you find the freedom to do what you need to do. You have to become the servant of your soul if you want to fulfil your destiny and experience fulfilment. In this situation, surrender does not represent defeat. It represents the victory of the soul over the fears of the ego. Surrender is your pathway for becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of your soul.

• Never trick yourself into believing you have the best answer: Forget everything you think you know. It just serves to block your intuition and inspiration. It stops the emergence of new ideas. Knowledge is a two-edged sword. It can be amazingly brilliant at helping you to solve a problem, and it can be amazingly obstructive to getting to a state where you can think out of the box. What you think you know is a filter you apply to your experience. Always challenge your assumptions/beliefs. I frequently remind myself and even state it in front of others that I don’t know anything. I do this so I can stay open. I know that only when the cup is empty can it be filled. Only when you become a void can you be a channel for things to flow through you.

• Be at ease with what is: You always give everything that happens in your life all the meaning it has for you. It is hard to believe that everything that happens is neutral. It may feel right or wrong or good or bad, but, from the quantum perspective (a place without judgment), it is what it is. It is nothing other than an event or a situation. As long as you know this and remind yourself of it, then you are free to

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examine your feelings and emotions from a place of neutrality. If you have to, allow the meaning you want to give to the event to unfold. So often, I have found that what felt like something bad when it happened turned out to be something really good. If you cannot hold off on your judgment, you will never be able to develop a self-transforming mind.

• Focus on what is in front of you: Do not get distracted. By the time you get to this stage of your evolution, you will have become a powerful person, someone who attracts the attention and interest of others. You are someone other people want to be near or want to be noticed by. This is a potential ego trap. If you allow this attention to mesmerize you, you will lose your way. You must keep your energies focused on your soul purpose and your next immediate priority while allowing yourself quiet time for reflection or meditation so inspiration can flow. Don’t seek the limelight. Choose your friends carefully. Don’t let them choose you. Increasingly, you will know what to do by following the guidance of your inspiration.

• Stay at ease with uncertainty: Sometimes, the best answer to a situation is to do nothing. Just standing back and letting the situation unfold with the energies that are driving it will be the perfect thing to do. Allowing things to fall apart can be a positive strategy. At other times, intervening in a situation is totally the right thing to do. Knowing when to intervene or not is a valuable skill that relies on intuition and inspiration. This means there will be times when you consciously decide to live with uncertainty. Being able to stay in a place of uncertainty is impossible if your ego is hanging on to fear. The urge to control what is happening is how the ego creates certainty. To live with uncertainty means detaching from your need to get to an outcome. It is amazing to me how so-called intractable problems can just disappear over time. Everything is in a state of ebb and flow. Nothing stays fixed. Change is what life is about. When you know this and embrace it, you are able to choose just the right time for your intervention, or you may find


that you need to do nothing because the problem or issue resolved itself.

• Stay unbelievably curious: Never stop asking questions. Unseen patterns are behind everything. You will not be able to find them unless you engage in constant inquiry. You will be amazed to see patterns building on patterns if you stay in the inquiry. Sometimes, the inquiry is never complete. It just keeps getting more profound and, at the same time, simpler. Simplicity is intimately connected with truth.

• Try to include everything: This follows on from and assists with the previous strategy. Whenever you are considering ways to solve a problem or situation, always bring into the picture everything that is related in some way, even if the relationship at first appears tenuous. This is when patterns and paradigm shifts appear. The more complete the artist’s palette, the more vibrant will be the picture.

• Consider the whole system: Always stay in touch with the bigger picture. Whatever is going on and whatever issues present themselves, ask yourself, “What is the big picture? What are the needs of the whole system?” It is so easy to be stuck in trying to resolve a situation when the situation you are trying to solve is a symptom of a larger problem. There is always a bigger picture to everything. This whole book is about seeing the bigger picture with regard to the role of leadership in the twenty-first century. Everything exists in a framework. And every framework exists inside another framework. There is nothing in our physical world that does not exist within multiple frameworks. What framework are you operating in? How much complexity can you handle?

• Stick to your values: The only way you can maintain your authenticity is to keep using your values in decision-making. Let your values guide your decision-making in everything you do. When you are faced with a choice every day, ask yourself, “What are the values you want to use to guide you in this situation?” Your values become the needs you are trying to satisfy and therefore become your

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motivation. Not only is this how you maintain your authenticity, it is also how you live with integrity.

• Follow your passion: Whatever shows up in your life as your soul’s purpose, follow it until you die. This is your ticket to fulfilment and your passport to passion. You will quickly realise that there is nothing else for you to do.

These eleven strategies for staying in the flow and leading a life of fulfilment will seem like a step too far if you are living in a state of anxiety with unresolved conscious or subconscious fears. That’s fine. You must remember the process of personal evolution is a journey in consciousness. Just because these strategies seem too far-fetched now does not mean that they are wrong. It just means that they are not right for you yet. All I ask of you is to suspend judgment and do the work of personal mastery and internal cohesion. When you have done this, you will find your perspective will change. You will begin to see the world differently.

It is important to note that six of these eleven strategies depend on your ability to develop an attitude of nonattachment:

• Nonattachment to how you think things should be

• Nonattachment to the status quo

• Nonattachment to what you think you know

• Nonattachment to your beliefs

• Nonattachment to glamour (image)

• Nonattachment to certainty

I am saying to stay non-attached to what is going on in your mind. I am not saying stay non-attached to people. On the contrary, you will find that staying non-attached to what is going on in your mind will bring you closer to people. You will become less judgmental and more authentic.

It is also important to remember that, at the quantum level of existence, everything exists in an energetic state of ebb or flow, into alignment, and out of alignment. When you act, you need to do what feels right (what brings alignment), even if it your actions do not appear to meet your (fear-based) needs. These are the difficult parts of the journey. Overcoming your own resistance is the hardest thing to


do. Your head (ego rational mind) is telling you one thing; your heart (soul feeling mind) is telling you another.

One of the toughest parts of my life journey was giving up the security of my job as a transportation engineer at the World Bank that, ten years later, would have given me a six-figure pension. Leaping into the world of personal and cultural transformation without any significant level of financial stability was very scary for my ego, but it was what my soul was asking me to do. There have been many more letting goes since. Every time I let go, I find a new level of freedom to pursue my passion and find a deeper level of fulfilment.

Making a Difference in Your World Ultimately, at a very practical level, we judge a person’s ability for self-leadership in the same way we judge leadership in general, that is by the ability to make things happen, manage change, and achieve results. Committing to your personal evolution and learning the skills involved in personal mastery, internal cohesion, and external cohesion are a means to this end. Internally, the result we want to achieve is a sense of inner peace and personal fulfilment. We do that by maintaining balance in our lives by living stress-free. Externally, the result we want to achieve is to make a positive difference in the world and live in harmony with others and our environment.

Making a difference in your internal world and in the world around you requires you to challenge your beliefs and assumptions, connect with your points of power, and leverage your influence by collaborating with others who are focused on the same goals, mission or vision.102

Challenging Your Assumptions Your assumptions are beliefs that you hold to be true. They may or may not be true, but they colour your perception of reality. Beliefs manifest as thoughts. When you challenge your assumptions, you need to ask yourself, “Are the thoughts I am thinking really true?” You will recall that this is the step 8 of the personal mastery process.

If you want to make a difference in the world, you need to make this way of thinking a way of life, not just challenging your assumptions, but also the assumptions of others. You need to become a

102 Ken Blanchard, Leading at a Higher Level (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, Prentice Hall, 2007).

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seeker of clarity. This means being unafraid to question authority. You cannot do this if you are holding on to fears about meeting your deficiency needs. It takes courage to challenge authority. This is why individuation is so important. You have to become your own master if you want to maximize your impact in the world. You need to become independent, and you need to develop a self-authoring mind if you are going to challenge other people’s assumptions. If you are going to collaborate with others, you will need to go further. You will need to recognise your interdependence and develop a self-transforming mind.

The biggest challenge we face is our own self-belief, especially when we are young. We assume that others with more experience know better than we do what needs to be done. We tend to follow instructions because we are used to operating from our socialized mind. You need to let go of this constraint. Speak up, speak out, and be willing to take feedback. Always remember that it is not about being right. It is about getting things right. Therefore, don’t identify with your position, which is what tends to happen with a self-authoring mind. Get beyond your attachment to being right and seek out what is true.

The following words spoken by Nelson Mandela at his inauguration as president of South Africa in 1994 address the issue of self-belief:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the World. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that’s within us. It’s not just in some of us. It’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Clarity, courage, and self-belief are the three most important values in challenging assumptions.


Connecting with Your Power Everyone has multiple sources of power. Even if you are just starting out on your career, your youth, your naivety, and lack of training (ignorance) can serve you in this regard. You will be able to ask questions that no one else is asking and bring a different mind-set to the situation. You cannot ask a stupid question if the question you are asking is in the service of clarity, yours or anyone else’s. The five most common sources of external power are position, knowledge, task, relationship, and personal.

• Position as power speaks to your authority, the position you hold in a hierarchy of decision-makers. This type of power enables you to bring resources (people and finances) to a situation. It is about who you are in a hierarchy or pecking order.

• Knowledge as power speaks to your special expertise, experience, or skills in a particular domain. You use your credibility to bring insight to a situation. It is about what you know.

• Task power speaks to your ability to support or hinder progress by virtue of the fact that you are in a position to control who and what is seen or not seen by decision-makers. It is about your power to block or promote people or ideas.

• Relationship power speaks to the connection or bond you have with people who could be influential in making a decision. It is about who you know.

• Personal power speaks to your strength of character, passion, inspiration, and wisdom, as well as your emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills and capabilities. All these attributes and skills come together to enable you to inspire and persuade others. It is about who you are on the inside.

So before you convince yourself that there is nothing you can do in a situation, take a few moments to analyze your points of power and then strategize how to use them. Focus on what you can do and challenge your assumptions about what you believe you can’t do.

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When you approach people to move your ideas forward, tell them what you need. “I need twenty minutes of your time to get your point of view on something that is important to me. Can I see you today?”

One of the most important lessons you can learn in life that is applicable to all situations is to always ask for what you need. Asking for what you need is the most empowering thing you can do for yourself.

Collaborating with Others Collaborating with others has many advantages, not the least of which is to get more ideas on the table. For the moment, what you need to know is that collaboration significantly depends on your ability to bond and cooperate with others on a specific project or programme. Your ability to trust and be trusted determines your ability to bond. Your ability to display empathy determines your ability to cooperate. Your ability to stay in alignment with your authentic self determines your ability to trust and display empathy. When you stay in alignment and learn how to bond and cooperate with others, you will move into a state of flow.

My Leadership Journal: Leading Self Ultimately, to achieve the goals of personal mastery, internal cohesion, and external cohesion, you will need to have an intimate knowledge of yourself, your values, your beliefs, your fears, your strengths, your weaknesses, your talents, and your unique abilities. You should be able to access this information and understand where you are on your evolutionary journey at any moment in time.

To keep track of this, you may want to consider creating a journal that tells your leadership story, a personal reference manual that becomes a living encyclopaedia of your leadership journey. I have created such a journal, along with a workbook with practical exercises, to support you in your personal mastery, internal cohesion and external cohesion, as part of the New Leadership Paradigm learning system. You can find out more about the Leading Self module of this system by visiting the New Leadership Paradigm Web site.103 Here are the principal chapter headings of the Leading Self leadership journal.

103 http://newleadershipparadigm.com


My Self-Leadership Journey Explores the past to the present, where you have been and where you are now.

• My life story

• My leadership story

• My positive role models

• Leaders I admire

My Potential Explores possibilities for the future, who you can become and where you want to go.

• My authentic in-flow days

• My personality profile

• My strengths/unique abilities

• My personal values inventory

• My values/beliefs/behaviours

• My sense of purpose at work

• My vision/mission at work

• My workplace alignment

My Challenges Explores the reality of where you are now and the hurdles you have to overcome.

• My inauthentic out-of-flow days

• My anxieties

• My stressors

• My upsets

• My conflicts

• My fears and needs inventory

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My Personal Mastery Explores how you manage your day-to-day reality and get the outcomes you need so you can get to where you want to go as quickly and effectively as possible.

• My self-management skills

• My personal mastery log

• Using my values to make decisions

• My balance wheel

• My goals and actions

My Evolution Explores your evolutionary progress, your latest feedback/performance measures, and your commitments to continued growth and learning.

• My feedback/performance (Johari Window)

• My personal growth (Jobari Window)

• My levels of identity

• My levels of motivation

• My psychological evolution

• My level of happiness

• My type of mind

• My levels of personal consciousness

• My commitments to evolution

Self-Coaching Supports your evolutionary progress by providing a checklist of actions you can take when you are confronted by specific issues.

• Self-coaching for personal mastery

• Self-coaching for internal cohesion

• Self-coaching for external cohesion


Conclusions As I explained in the introduction to this part of the book, the purpose of the Leading Self module of the evolutionary leadership development programme is to support you in becoming all you can become, thereby supporting you in fulfilling your potential as a human being. This journey begins by you deciding to consciously evolve and take responsibility for every aspect of your life.

In the next part of the book, we will explore the second module of the four-part leadership development learning system, leading others. The understandings you have gained from learning how to lead yourself will be essential in helping you to lead others.

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Chapter 12tnlp.valuescentre.com/.../The-New-Leadership-Paradigm-Chapter-12.pdf · Chapter 12 General Practices ... • Johari window: A comparison of the values that define who