Happiness in Leadership

Leaders are at their best when they are balanced, relaxed and happy. It is our fundamental nature to be happy. “Really?” you say, with a skeptical cock of your head. Then why is happiness often so incredibly fleeting and illusive?

We live in a culture that identifies happiness with material and creature comfort, and even though we may intellectually know better, most of us have bought into this paradigm. The truth is, happiness is not reliant on external factors, nor can it be obtained through our five senses. Our basic needs transcend the sensual, a reflection of the complexity of our species. There are people who have unending material comfort, and yet are not content. So, too, there are people that live under material deprivation or physical duress, and yet remain fundamentally content and joyful.

***

Read the rest of this article on Medium.  Published by Thrive Global.

The Day the Music Died: A Path to a New Way

There comes a point in both communal and individual life when what we have created no longer sustains us; we are often disoriented when we realize that this is so. Similar to immersion in a coherent piece of music, we have been going along in a certain octave and key, and the flow of that music carries us well enough.

But sometimes we reach a point when we need to change octaves or shift to a different key. The piece of music that has carried us is no longer sufficient, no longer true. Yet, nothing new has been written. We experience the loss of the old without anything to replace it. In Greek mythology, the phoenix burns down to a pile of ashes before it rises. This pause between a destructive cycle and rebirth is most difficult.

Read more of this blog on the Huffington Post:

Meditation in Business: A Potent Medicine with Potential Side Effects

A recent article in Harvard Business Review stated that meditation is “close to taking on cult status in the business world.” Indeed, in the past year the use of meditation in business seems to have hit a tipping point. A number of prominent leaders have begun to speak openly about their own personal meditation practices. General Mills, Proctor and Gamble, AOL Time Warner, Google, Target, Apple, Nike, McKinsey, and Goldman Sachs are only a few of the companies that are now offering meditation on the job. A strong case can be made for teaching meditation and mindfulness practices to leaders. We cannot be our best self in a chronic state of stress. We cannot lead at our highest level if we are chronically anxious. Many organizations are beginning to recognize that well being is integral to the foundation of good leadership. This awareness has been born out of the painful fact that the speed at which we are working and moving has outstretched our human capacity to keep up.

The typical response to this inordinate pressure is to go into emergency mode, triggering a fight/flight response. When this happens, all functions in the body that are not needed for emergency are tamped down including digestive and immune function. Clearly, this is not a good baseline state from which to work and live. And yet this is the inner state of most leaders. Over a decade ago, in an attempt to help my clients liberate themselves from this chronic state, I introduced contemplative practices into my wok.

This eventually lead me to ask the question, “What is the ideal inner state of a leader?” This is a critical question because every management and leadership skill passes through this inner filter. The ideal state of a leader is a paradoxical combination of being both relaxed and alert, calm and efficient, open and focused.

Read more of this blog on the Huffington Post:

When the Intellect Serves Intuition: A Portal to Innovation

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Albert Einstein Artists, innovators, and the wise have found a way to tap into a creative field that has no boundaries and is directly accessible to all. This infinite field is sometimes referred to as pure consciousness or pure awareness. It cannot be fully grasped by the intellect. Often, in the midst of a creative act, people say “my work comes through me,” an attempt to describe the experience of being caught in a creative stream that is beyond the mind. When we tap into this boundless field we find ourselves in a rich flow of energy, insight, and innovation, ushering in a tremendous sense of well being.

We access this interconnected field of awareness through our intuition. Intuition comes to us through direct perception. It is holistic, integrative, and it arises from within.

Our intuition is guided by the context in which it appears. A farmer’s intuition will serve his or her relationship to the natural world, an artist’s intuition will inform color, content, and style, and a business leader’s intuition will inform vision, strategy, the organization of complex variables, and the ongoing, moment-to-moment interface with others. High social intelligence, which is the ability to accurately read other people, is largely informed by intuition.

Many of us long for those rare occasions when we are caught in the flow of creative expression. When this happens the mind is relatively quiet, time stands still or disappears, there is a high degree of focus and presence, and, paradoxically, a greater sense of spaciousness. How can we more consistently access this state?

Read more of this blog on the Huffington Post:

Want to be a Better Leader? Deepen Trust

The foundation of leadership is trust. You can lead without trust if you base your leadership on fear. Arguably, this is coercion, not true leadership. How do you establish trust? Building trust begins by examining your underlying intent. Followers will ascertain, often unconsciously, “Are you serving the mission of the organization or bolstering your ambition and ego?” It is rare that a leader serves purely for the sake of the organization. Most leaders will, on occasion, unconsciously subvert the needs of the organization for an outcome that is, at some level, self-serving. However, trust can be established without perfection in this regard. As long as you primarily put the needs of the organization before the needs of your ego, career or department, trust will emerge.

However, sometimes the intent of the leader is trusted, but theintegrity of the leader is perceived as shaky, and this, ultimately undermines trust. In this context, integrity is defined as the quality or condition of wholeness. This is an internal state. Your intent may be to serve the mission of your organization. And yet you may not have the internal integrity to carry this out. As a result, trust is undermined.

Read more of my blog on the Huffington Post.

Mission Over Profit: Slaying the Hungry Ghost Within

Recently, one of my clients left her position as head of human resources because she could not reconcile her company’s stated commitment to the wellbeing of its employees with the reality that its highest priority was wealth creation. The employees were stretched to a breaking point; chronic exhaustion and burnout were ubiquitous. The CEO clearly recognized that the health of employees impacted the bottom line and, as a result, he deemed this a core value. He directed my client to lead a key initiative to support “employee well being.” But in so doing, she became the face of hypocrisy since employees knew that the quality of their lives would continue to be sacrificed for the sake of aggressive corporate growth. Ultimately, it is not possible to serve two masters. We can collaborate, cooperate, and reconcile, but eventually we will be asked to choose. I have been thinking about this in relationship to two essential ‘master’ principles: organizational mission and the bottom line.

In the 1990’s John Elkington coined the phrase “triple bottom line,” arguing that business success should be defined by measuring profit, environmental responsibility, and social responsibility. This attempt to create a more responsible business ethic has been both revered and critiqued. In order to be effective, this kind of framework must be a living one - fluid, contextually responsive, and adaptive. In the end, any company attempting to live by this model will find itself, in certain moments, having to choose.

By contrast, a social enterprise serves one master: its purpose is to respond to societal needs in a creative and entrepreneurial way. There is a purity of intent in this, and, as a result, a clarity that arises in the decision making process when we are confronted with those moments of choice. With this clarity, the mission of an organization is, without a doubt, the guiding principle, and this increases the possibility that the values of the organization can also prevail.

How did we get to the point where, in mainstream business, the financial bottom line was placed above the very mission of our businesses?

Read more of my blog on Forbes

Grandma's Groceries: A Lesson in Becoming a Changemaker

My grandmother’s name was Flora, and she was all heart. Born and raised in Bristol, Tennessee, she had a deep connection to Appalachia. On occasion, I would ride with her into the Appalachian Mountains with a station wagon full of groceries to be delivered to several dirt-poor families that she watched out for. There wasn’t an arrogant bone in my grandmother’s body, a sense that she understood poverty from the inside out and took it in stride – both the fact of being poor and her service to those that needed help. As a result, there wasn’t shame in these exchanges, and I so loved accompanying her. There were other times, however, when I was embarrassed by my grandmother’s service. She had a compulsion to give, and this meant that she wasn’t always able to discern when to step in and when to step back. On occasion, I stood as witness as my grandma insisted on paying for someone else’s groceries – a random person that she thought might be struggling. There were times when this gesture was a lovely act of generosity. Other times, standing next to her, I wanted to sink into the earth, my body full of dread - a dead giveaway that my grandmother had overstepped an invisible boundary.

How do we figure out what is ours to pick up and what is not, particularly when we are exposed to problems around the globe 24/7?

“Dharma” is a Sanskrit word with multiple layers of meaning, referencing, in part, individual conduct that conforms to the principles or laws that order the universe. We discern our dharma not by measuring up to expectations from the external world but rather by searching for the truth within. When we respond to the demands of the world by aligning those demands with our inner truth, we are responding dharmically. When a child is born as a musical protégée, the relationship between dharma and service is relatively easy to discern. In my own life, it is quite clear that it is not my dharma to become a pilot or an electrical engineer.

The work of Ashoka, an organization that supports the social enterprise movement, calls on “everyone to be a changemaker.” There is a sense of urgency in this mission, a recognition that the problems in the world have grown so complex and intertwined that we need all minds, hearts, and hands on board to respond. This is best done through honoring the notion of dharma. As we call on every individual to become a changemaker, we are really calling on each person to discern and respond to his or her dharma.

Read more of my blog on Forbes

Dear Marlboro Man

Dear Marlboro Man,

It’s time to retire. You have held up so beautifully, waving the flag of individualism for sixty years. You have reminded us to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and valiantly embodied an ethos of self reliance. You have graced us with your iconic stature as the Man on Top. You are toppling. You can either step down graciously, or not. But you are toppling.

It was inevitable that things would end this way because your message was fundamentally flawed, built on bad information. You were never independent. You were brought into the world by a mother and a father. Your ancestors reach far back in time, affecting you now. You were fed and sustained by food grown by another. The growing of that food was dependent on a vast and interconnected ecosystem. You were inculcated into the culture by your people and offered some skills in order to survive. Someone taught you to ride that horse. Someone helped you learn how to care for that horse.

The story of separation that you perpetuate is a tragedy. Ironically, you probably don’t know this. Having lived this story for several generations you feel separate. As a result, your myth is experienced as fact.

Read more on my blog at Huffington Post

Respect the Creative Process: Wake Up and Let Yourself Rest

All of existence cycles between movement and rest. The breath flowing in and out of the body animates and then is released. When we work out, we tear muscle and then rest that muscle so that it heals in order to get stronger. Yet our organizations, more often than not, do not respect this oscillating rhythm. Somehow, we have gotten into the habit of putting the gas pedal to the floor and driving as fast and as furious as we can. Most organizations respect one rhythm only, and that rhythm is relentless. Creation cycles through four stages: 1) birth; 2) a time of sustenance that nurtures growth; 3) a time of concealment in which what is at work cannot be directly observed; 4) and a period of decay and death. Within organizations, we tend to favor birth and periods of growth and ignore concealment and decay or death. Cycles of death are often hoisted upon us, such as a committee that has outgrown its function or a company that winds up in bankruptcy. But the cycle that is most glaringly absent in business is concealment.

Read more of my blog on Forbes

Compassion: The Bedrock of the Capacity to Serve

Social entrepreneurship has given me, and many others, a great deal of hope. With the overwhelming number of social ills in virtually every sector of our society, it is heartening to see the growth of a movement that combines the discipline, rigor, flexibility, and innovation of the entrepreneurial business sector with the core mission of delivering social value above all else, including wealth creation.  The movement, in part, challenges innovators to ask, how can we better meet the enormous challenges of the world around us, or, how can we better serve? The Dalai Lama, in his brilliant work “Ethics in a New Millennium,” postulates that the most basic truth which binds all humans together is our shared wish to be happy and to avoid suffering. He notes that this desire knows no bounds and that everything that we do, both as individuals and at the level of society, can be understood in terms of this fundamental aspiration.

Our universal desire to avoid suffering and to be happy is a starting point for establishing ethical principles. At its most basic, an ethical act is one that does not harm. A social mission, by definition, promotes happiness or addresses some aspect of culture that is harmful. In this way, social entrepreneurship is a gesture of ethics, an attempt to eradicate suffering and increase happiness. Implicit in this model is a recognition that that which is self serving leads to suffering.

With this as a starting point, we can understand the importance of cultivating our capacity to recognize the suffering of others. This recognition comes through empathy. The Dalai Lama notes that our innate capacity for empathy is the source of our most precious human quality, called “nying je” in the Tibetan language, and roughly translated as compassion. Empathy is a gateway to compassion, our inner tuning fork that allows us to perceive the inner state of others. Compassion is a deeper and more comprehensive construct, encompassing such virtues as love, humility, kindness, gentleness, generosity, and an innate awareness that all of existence is intricately interconnected. Compassion is the bedrock of our capacity to serve.

Read more of my blog on Forbes

Leadership: What's Love Got to Do With It?

I have been pondering how love became conceptually separated from leadership. For the better part of 20 years I have given multiple lectures and seminars exploring emotional intelligence, self-knowledge, and empathy within the context of leadership, but I have never spoken about the heart, and I have certainly never spoken about love. Perhaps there is no place for a conversation about love if leadership is understood as a charismatic gesture that either hypnotizes or controls. However, at this point in history, the conversation in leadership seems beyond the framework of command and control. Most of us recognize that with the level of specialization that now exists, the speed of change, the transformation of culture through social media, the overall complexity of a global business environment, and the enormous social challenges that we face, collaboration is central to leadership. At the heart of collaboration is love. Most of us think of love as an emotion. There is a love that is emotive, often referred to as affection. In his book, The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis describes affection as the most natural, emotive, and diffuse of loves. Affectionate love, however, is not necessary for collaboration. It is love without emotion, that is, compassion, which lies at the heart of a true collaborative process. Compassion arises when we recognize something universal about the other, dissolving judgment and separation and promoting understanding and oneness. It is an essential part of agape, defined by the Greeks as the highest form of love. In this case, love is an act, not an emotion. It is a selfless, spontaneous and consuming commitment to the well-being of others. There is, within this kind of love, recognition of the truth of the interconnection of all of existence. Agape is not based on preferences, on our likes or dislikes. It is the rare human being who develops this kind of love to its fullest potential. Nonetheless, we are born with an innate desire to develop and promote selfless love. Barbara Frederickson, in a wonderful piece called, "The Science of Love" shares research that demonstrates that the body is designed to love, noting that love energizes our entire system, broadens our mindset, deepens our attunement to others, and enhances creativity.

Read more of my blog on Huffington Post

Empathy: A Gateway to Objectivity in Leadership

Most leaders have learned along the way that empathy is a critical leadership skill but few have an understanding of why. Empathy is a form of attention that goes beyond the intellect and involves directly sensing what it is like to be in someone else's shoes. How do we do this?We sense what other people are experiencing or feeling by sensations that arise in our own bodies. All of us are like walking antennas, receiving and registering the felt experience of those around us. Some of us are better at this than others. To accurately register this kind of information requires being in touch with our own emotional responses. To be in touch with our own emotion, we have to be in touch with the physical sensations in our body. For example, I know that I am fearful because my heart rate begins to speed up, my stomach clenches, and my hair stands on end.

Read more of my blog on Huffington Post

Paying Attention to How We Attend

The way that we pay attention is integrally related to the reality that we perceive as "true." By the time we have grown into adulthood most of us live within a certain repetitive and narrow band of attention; boredom and a certain degree of numbness is the result. Often, we can sense a kind of spaciousness outside of our habits of attention but rarely do we feel capable of accessing this. Our attention is habituated on many levels: We have a repetitive range of emotion that we continually return to, a narrow and habituated way of using our vision, a narrow range with which we attend to auditory input, a belief system that narrows our perceptual field and a way of processing intellectually that reinforces our view of the world. Often a "midlife crisis" or other kinds of struggles in adulthood are, in part, crises related to this narrow way of attending. We become bored with ourselves, longing to access a more spontaneous way of being in the world. We assume that our boredom has to do with the exterior world, so we buy a new car or get a new haircut. We are often unaware that our boredom arises from a self-created prison of habituated attention. We lose touch with the fact that the way we are attending affects the degree to which we feel connected to the world around us and to life itself.

Les Fehmi is a forerunner in the field of biofeedback and he has studied how we pay attention for over forty years. He contrasts two ways of attending when he describes a pride of lions relaxing together on the African savannah. They are breathing slowly, their muscles are relaxed, and their attention is diffuse and wide open. An injured animal comes into their sight, and suddenly the lions move from this relaxed state to an intense, single-pointed focus. Their muscles tense and their heart and respiratory rates increase. The lions have shifted to an emergency mode of paying attention. Once the injured animal has become dinner the lions quickly return to a state that is wide open, alert, and relaxed.

Read more of my blog on Huffington Post

Innovation and the Quiet Mind

Buzzwords rise and fall in the world of business, and at their highest, serve as flags marking a place where we need to drill down. For some time, the need to “innovate” has been creeping into the lexicon of my clients, reflecting the fact that old paradigms on so many fronts are breaking down.When my daughter was in third grade, I had the pleasure of watching a creative little boy shift the paradigm of his art assignment. He, along with his classmates, was given scraps of paper to paint and paste onto a large sheet of paper. His classmates dutifully painted and pasted within the confines of their pages. However, this child asked for a pair of scissors. He began by reshaping his rectangular paper. As he glued his fragments of paper onto his redesigned template none stayed within the margins; curly cues, concentric circles, and folded accordions spilled over the edges redefining the boundaries. What began as one-dimensional became two. It was a paradigm shift in motion. Too often, when there is a call for innovation, we tackle whatever problem we face through the same mind that was shaped by the previous paradigm. We look at the problem from the confines of the past or the confines of expectation. How do we escape this paradox of the mind and its repetitive subversion of creative thought? Most of us make the assumption that consciousness itself emanates from, and is bounded by, the mind. However, when we quiet the mind through contemplative practices such as meditation, we eventually discover that awareness or consciousness exists beyond it. True innovation, along with any act of creativity, draws from this infinite field of intelligent awareness that exists beyond the mind. This is sometimes called pure awareness. And this state is directly accessible to all. How?

 Read more of my blog on Huffington Post...

A Dialogue on Leadership in Uncertain Times – Session 8

January 29, 2010 Today, I said goodbye to my client, JFM.  I did not see this coming.  A month ago, she was securing a position in a flagship company in her industry.  Shortly thereafter, she was accepted into one of the finest international MBA programs in the world.  This is the final piece in an eight-part series, chronicling our work together as we have tracked JFM through a full year of unemployment, exploring the inner journey, and its relationship to leadership.  She sought me out as a leadership coach a year ago, after being fired from her position as president of a medium-sized company.

JFM:    When I was in college, I became very ill.  I was in and out of the hospital, and my grades suffered as a result.  When I applied to this MBA program, I never thought that I would be accepted.  The school contacted me earlier this week, offering me a place in their program.  I have been teary for the past two days.

To accept this invitation is not the easy choice.  We are selling our home to make this happen.  I never thought that I could sell my house.  I worried about this as a possible outcome all year long.  For the past year, I have been driven to maintain my life as I have known it, to recreate all that was familiar.  But when it came time to make the decision to sell the house, somehow, I was ready to let it go.  I am learning to release my death grip on life. For years, I have turned away from a strong intuitive knowing.  I feel like I have betrayed myself by ignoring this voice.  I was always trying to do the right thing, to be perfect in the eyes of those around me.  My career offered me a well-travelled trajectory.  I watched others follow this trajectory; I watched many people ‘advance.’   I was on this same path and I never strayed far.  I lost my inner guidance along the way.

Now, it is as if the world has blown open.  There is no trajectory.  I am going to Europe, and I will study for the next year.  I feel like a dry sponge; I can’t wait to soak up knowledge.  As I step away from what  is known, and the illusory sense of certainty that it offered, my life feels a little more frightening, but also unshackled.  I do not want to betray myself any further.

Jan:      Everything that you have learned this past year, including both the experience of not listening to your inner voice, and your present sense of self-betrayal as a result, is grist for the mill.  In this sense, you can make friends with your ‘self-betrayal.’  It has been such a teacher. Long silence.  JFM gently cries.

Jan:    You are experiencing what it means to live according to the guidance of your own true Self.   Our true Self arises from an infinite field of intelligent awareness.  To lead from this place of truth is the highest form of leadership.

It requires tremendous discernment to know when we are deciding from this place of inner truth, and when our actions or decisions are generated from the mind, or ego.  Our true Self  embodies the highest virtues - Truth, Joy, Equanimity, Courage, Unconditional Love, Authenticity, Hope, Humility.  Our mind, however, tends to be fear-based, preoccupied with our survival and well-being.  When our decisions arise solely from the mind, we begin to feel alienated from ourselves, and this, in turn, creates a sense of alienation from the world around us.   We experience the world as chaotic, as though we have to fend for ourselves, hold ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  We feel separated from the very fabric of existence, and the matrix of interconnection that we are embedded within.  This sense of existential separation is a root cause of greed.  Our response is to hoard, plan, and obsessively strategize.   If we do not have the experience of living any other way, then the thought of releasing the illusion of a ‘planned trajectory’ is terrifying.  You were standing at this crossroad when I first met you.  A part of you wanted to live differently, and a part of you was terrified of leaving your well-worn path.

You have asked, ‘How do I know when a decision is coming from my mind versus my highest Self?’  Many times, I have said, ‘Study your own process.  Test what is true, and how things work, through your own experience.  Observe carefully within your own life the place from which your actions and decisions arise, and notice what happens.  Practice discernment.’ Discernment begins with becoming more alert to the ground that is right under your feet.  We sometimes refer to this as presence.  It often requires beginning to notice how you actually pay attention, opening and widening your perceptual field, so that you have the capacity to attend to the inner and the outer world at the same time.  The mind plays the critical role of discrimination in this process.  It does this best when it is spacious and open. To better discern we have to be willing to face into the dark side of being human – our greed, fear, deceit, judgement, impatience, and limited capacity to love.   This is necessary so that we begin to identify what makes us vulnerable to not facing our inner truth.  These limitations are a part of being human.  To face ourselves requires humility, and a tremendous amount of courage.

You have demonstrated that courage.  Our work together this past year, most of which has not been chronicled, has been an invitation to take an unflinching look at yourself.  You have been willing to face moments of self-deceit, shame, arrogance, insecurity, grief, and self-imposed limitations.  As you do this, you begin to sort out the image that you hold of yourself from what is true.  You are better able to discern when decisions are arising from the darker places within you, and when they are arising from your true Self.

As we were coming to the end of our last session, you began to cry.  You said that you were going to miss this process, and me.  I did not see this coming.  I said, ‘We don’t have to say goodbye quite yet.  You can come back next month.’  I then heard from that place of knowing within myself, ‘No, Jan, let her go.  She is saying goodbye to you, and this is correct.  It is time to let go.’  But my mind protested.  I repeated, ‘You can come back.’  You did not say anything, but, instead, wept quietly.  Again, I heard, ‘Let her go.  Turn towards this moment in which she is saying goodbye to you.’  I shared with you that I am one of those people that slips out of the backdoor at a party, instead of saying goodbye to the host.  In that moment, I watched my own resistance to separation, to endings.  We both cried, saying goodbye, with your intuitive knowing – your own true Self - as the voice of recognition that it was time.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jan-birchfield-phd/a-dialogue-on-leadership_b_441665.html

A Dialogue on Leadership in Uncertain Times – Session 7

January 11, 2010 For JFM, the year 2009 was fraught with all that comes with unemployment – economic insecurity, a gnawing sense of uncertainty, questions about what went wrong, and struggles with a sense of identity and self-esteem.  At the same time, this past year gave her an opportunity to get off the corporate treadmill, to slow down, reflect, and go inward.  After sharing with me that she has been offered a position at a flagship company in her industry, she began to speak about her concerns as she considers making the transition back to the corporate world.

JFM:     The person who wishes to hire me invited me to go out for a celebration dinner.  But, without a contract in hand, I wonder if it is premature to celebrate.  With the possibility of a new position I am fully aware that even though I act as if I know what is coming I am in perpetual unknowing.  Having lived for the past year with a constant sense of uncertainty I can no longer hide from the fact that we never know what is going to happen next.  Even so, I find myself trying to anticipate this transition, assuming that the contract will come through.

I feel like I have had a year of grace.  It has changed my life.  I am coming out of winter.  When trees head into winter, they drop their leaves.  This past year I did this—I shed old and tired parts of myself.  Parts of me just dropped away.   As this happened some part of me has opened.  My heart has opened.  For the first time in my life, I do not want to be my story. Now that I am returning to work, I wonder:  how do I go back into the corporate world without returning to my old story, without wearing the masks of my old corporate persona?

Jan:     Listening to you reminds me of what it is like to go on a retreat, experiencing profound change, and the subsequent challenge of returning to daily life, with a desire to integrate what has been learned.  Although it is the nature of one’s mind to anticipate what is coming, rehearsal of this integration is not possible.  One of the most significant changes in your life has been the work that you have done on strengthening your connection to the present moment.  Perhaps what is most important at this time is to continue to deepen your capacity to be awake and aware moment to moment.  The desire to rehearse this transition is a training ground for this practice.  Watch the mind’s tendency to anticipate, and gently pull it back.  As you observe the mind in this state of anticipation, you are, by definition, returning to the moment.

Change is not linear.  Integration after a long period of inner work is not linear.  There will be times when you will find yourself falling into old habits and patterns.  Habit has a strong magnetic pull, and it will continue to exert itself, until it does not.  The challenge is to avoid self-judgement, and simply to observe.   Each time you bring your attention to the underlying habitual patterns themselves, they begin to loosen.  Nothing is more powerful than where we place our attention.

The way that you are presenting this question has imbedded within it judgement, as if there is something to fix, to get right.   There is nothing to fix.  There is nothing to get right.  There is simply the work of waking up, noticing your inner world, and its relationship to the world around you, its relationship to the company and the people that you are serving.  Your leadership will grow and evolve as you deepen this capacity to observe this relationship without judgement.

One reason we burn out or lose a sense of inspiration is that we start to live life largely defined by habit.  The moment gets absorbed in the suffocating coccoon of expectation and anticipation. Expectation and anticipation carry the burden of a chronic underlying sense of anxiety and worry.  At the heart of rehearsing what is to come is a desire to control the future.

As a leader, the more “experience” you have, the greater the possibility of falling into the trap of leading from this state of anticipation.  Although it is true that experience is a great teacher, it can also be a profound blindspot for seasoned executives, precisely because there is a tendency to continually overlay or impose this experience on the present moment.  The truth is, every meeting, every deal, every interaction is its own configuration.  When you release into uncertainty, and show up for each moment, life becomes more spontaneous, more delightful.  Leaders that show up every day with this capacity for “presence” are inspiring.  Work becomes dynamic and joyful under their leadership.

In our world today, as we begin to recognize the unsustainability of many of our business practices, those leaders who have the internal equanimity and “presence of mind” to see the present with clarity will lead change.  There is not a model or a paradigm for many of the challenges that we are facing, particularly since the world has been knitted together into a global community.  With the lessons learned from the past, combined with a sober and clear sense of what is unfolding in the present, there is recognition of what the future is calling us to do differently; we call this vision.

Your industry has not been on the cutting edge of change.   Given the state of the industry, it desperately needs leadership that is willing to take an unflinching look at where things stand, without relying on the illusion that somehow business can go on as usual.  Imbedded within this conscious appraisal of the present is opportunity.  This past year, in the silence that you have cultivated within, you have found the capacity to lead with greater equanimity.  You have strengthened your inner knowing, and you have begun to understand the relationship between this inner knowing and the vast field of interconnection that we are imbedded within.  This helps to take the pressure off of you as an individual, as you tap into a deeper, collective wisdom.  Your challenge in 2010 is to continue to practice taking action - and leading - from this place of inner stillness.  The pace of the corporate world will challenge this practice.  It will require that you continue to uphold your meditation practice, and most of all, it will require courage.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jan-birchfield-phd/dialogue-on-leadership-in_b_418208.html

A Dialogue on Leadership in Uncertain Times – Session 6

December 3, 2009 After a full year of unemployment JFM came into our last session confident that she was on the brink of securing a challenging position within an innovative brand in her industry.  Although there was palpable relief at seeing “light at the end of the tunnel,” she was, at the same time, wistful about the past year.

JFM:    I look back at this past year with a certain kind of yearning.  I was aware throughout this ordeal that I was going through something painful but special.  Sometimes I wonder why I had to suffer so much in order to learn a lesson.  But at the same time it is clear that, for the most part, I needed this wake-up call in order to change.  I mean, who wants to change, really?

Read more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jan-birchfield-phd/dialogue-on-leadership-in_b_378268.html

A Dialogue on Leadership in Uncertain Times – Session 5

November 4, 2009 After last month’s entry, I received multiple inquiries similar to this one:  “What happened to JFM?  Is she still working?”  I laughed; I had been so focused on the Big Important Ideas that had emerged in coaching that it hadn’t occurred to me that people were equally, if not more interested in the storyline.  When I shared with JFM that people were curious about what had happened to her she responded with this:

JFM:    That’s interesting…For the first time in this process, the fact that people are asking about the person behind the drama makes me feel a little self-conscious.  What has happened to me on the inside is much more valuable than what has happened on the outside.  Externally, I’ve been on some interesting job searches, even following one overseas, I’ve taken myself on a 10 day meditation retreat, and, while I am still looking for a position, I’m also considering an MBA.

Read more...

A Dialogue on Leadership in Uncertain Times – Session 4

October, 2009 In this session, my client recalls that there were clues along the way indicating that she was “out of sync” with her leadership, and her company.  She is grappling with why she chose to ignore the signs. JFM:    After years in the corporate world I treasure the time between Christmas and New Year, a rare stretch of quiet time in which I slow down enough to catch up with myself.  I recall that last Christmas I was sitting by the fire and I thought, “I need to speak to the board, to be honest about the fact that this situation is an untenable one.”  I imagined the dialogue going something like this:  “There are things I need to tell you.  At the end of this conversation you may decide I’m not the right person for the job.  And if this happens, we can talk about next steps.”

Read more...

A Dialogue on Leadership in Uncertain Times- Session 3

This is the third article in a series that invites the reader to eavesdrop on coaching sessions between JFM, who has been fired from her role as President of a medium-sized company, and her advisor, Jan Birchfield, Ph.D., of Princeton Leadership Development.  In this conversation, we explored the relationship between leadership and power.JFM:    I keep trying to understand what happened to me, how I contributed to having been fired.  My CEO had a strong personality, and at the same time he was insecure, had to be treated with “kid gloves.”  Looking back, there were many situations where I capitulated – I didn’t speak up and offer my point of view, I didn’t fight hard enough for what I thought was true.  I need to address this, so that I don’t repeat this mistake in my next position. Jan:     You are talking about your relationship to power.  It is critical that leaders have a clear understanding of this relationship.  It is rare to witness someone who holds power in a balanced way; most leaders either over- or under-power.  Many bounce back and forth, underpowering in some situations, overpowering in others.  Leaders who have a balanced relationship to power evoke trust.  It sounds like your tendency is to underplay your power. JFM:  Absolutely.  I tend to hold back, particularly with those above me. Jan:    What strikes me is how much power you actually hold.  You have a natural authority about you.  You stand out, even when you aren’t trying to, because of your innate authority.  At the same time, you are highly attuned to the feelings of others with a dislike of making others uncomfortable.  I suspect that you do not want this strong presence to overwhelm people or evoke envy.  So, in part, you hold back in order to protect people from discomfort they may have in relationship to you.  From what you have described with your CEO, you could sense that he was easily threatened, so you took care of him emotionally by throttling back, at the expense of standing firmly in your own shoes, in your own power. JFM:     Yes.  We had an unspoken agreement that I would tread lightly. Jan:    I’ve seen this many times, particularly with female leaders, although this isn’t exclusive to women; there are men who do the same.  But women seem particularly prone to this.  You have incredible capacity, but there is a way in which you are afraid of it.  In the end, this does not serve your organization.  You deprive the decision making process of the refinement in thinking that comes from dissent.  You end up in service of your boss’s ego, as opposed to being in service of the mission of your organization. At the opposite end of the continuum are those who are seduced by power, overidentifying with it and using it for personal gain.  When a leader exploits power there is a loss of deep listening to context.  The field of connection or the larger matrix that the leader operates within falls out of view, and again, the mission of the organization is not served. JFM:      So I need to accept the fact that the power that I hold may make people uncomfortable, and to step into it, anyway. Jan:  Yes, recognizing that this does not mean that your only other choice is to move to the opposite pole, which is to overidentify with power.  When you observe power you begin to recognize that holding authority is a gift.  In this sense, it isn’t “who we are.”  In Ancient Greece and Rome a person would be described as “having a genius,” not “being a genius.”  Similarly, when we “have power,” we are actually tapping into a field that is larger than us; power comes through us.  If you understand it in this way, you will hold it lightly, and you won’t be so afraid of it.  One of the dynamics at work when leaders exploit power is an overidentification with it; the leader shifts from “I have power” to “I am powerful.” To be in a balanced relationship to power requires tremendous humility.  This is true with our children, at work, with friends, with strangers, with those that we lead.  Humility arises when we see through the illusion of personal identification with power; this increases the chance that we will use it in service of something larger than ourselves.  Equally important, if you see power as a gift, than to not use it is to waste it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jan-birchfield-phd/a-dialogue-on-leadership_b_279512.html