Purpose Driven Leadership

Understandings one’s relationship with leadership requires some reflection. For most of my life I have rebelled and reacted against any form of leadership. I guess primarily because I found myself in a system whose rules I didn’t agree with, which made leading anything a real challenge. You can only really lead a set of ‘rules’ or principles that help you to make sense of the world around you. I believe I have finally found something that has enabled me to achieve this. I have discovered that it is possible to make sense out of what appears to be chaotic. I have come to see that all chaos is a perception. For within the chaos there is order, which emerges when you allow yourself space and time to reflect. When you see the order, certainty emerges which is key in building leadership.

At junior school I was elected as head-girl. This was a big mistake. I was more focused on breaking rules than I was on leading this set of rules. Half way through the year, the headmaster realised that I was spending half my day in the corridor having been thrown out of the class by various teachers, and acknowledged that I was perhaps not a model schoolgirl. They called my mother into the office and told her they were going to de-headgirl me. For my mother’s sake, I agreed to tow the line for the rest of the year.

In Matric I again had an interesting run with leadership. We had an unusual system where leaders where voted into position by the class and teachers. We were then each given an opportunity to declare to the headmistress what role we wanted to play. I told the head mistress, in no uncertain terms, that if I was given any position of leadership I would not accept it. Again, my mother was called into the office, as they wanted to make me head girl and couldn’t understand my position. By this time my mother knew that I was pretty headstrong and advised them to take my word for it. So this time I got off free.

I reflect on this with great interest. What was it that made me so anti taking this position of leadership? Most girls of my age would have been honoured. It has taken me a long time to be willing to step into any form of leadership. To really acknowledge and embrace my leadership potential. A year before my first encounter with leadership in junior school, my father died, which obviously had a big impact on my life. I was angry at the world. I felt that the carpet had been pulled out from under me and I didn’t know what to make of it, and my response was to rebel. Nothing seemed to make sense. Deep inside me I knew that losing him was also somehow a blessing, but I couldn’t fully understand this at age 10. Strange as this might sound. But I was still angry. Most of my life, my decisions have been driven by this anger. I felt trapped in a world that I didn’t want to be in, one that I was constantly rebelling against.

It was only decades later that things really shifted, and the driving force behind this was that I started to exercise my uniquely human ability to reflect, to find purpose and meaning in my life. I learnt that there was a difference between being reactive and being reflective. That there are different parts of the brain responsible for these two functions and that I could choose which of these I wanted to use to govern my life. It was at this point that my life changed trajectory from a linear curve of growth and development, to experiencing an exponential curve of leadership development. Over the past three years I have gone from not knowing what my 2 year vision is, to now having a 40 year vision to lead a global business inspiring people that make cities and making cities that inspire people. Instead of fighting against life, I now embrace it. This shift has been profound.

Connecting with this purpose has been the most meaningful thing I have done in my life, but on it’s own this was not enough. I needed to find a tool that I could use to develop a practice of refection, enabling me to master my reactive emotional self. I wanted a tool that could help me to discover how the challenges that I had faced were the very things that I had needed to grow. I wanted to find meaning in my chaos, to help me make sense of it all. What I discovered was so inspiring that it has driven me to find a way to share what I have learnt. Connecting with your purpose and learning to manage your emotional reactive self are two of the most powerful steps you can take towards allowing your innate leader to emerge. We are all leaders, regardless of whether you seek to lead yourself, your family, your community, your department, your business, your city, or the world.

I’d like to share the three things that I have learnt that might help you to discover and connect with your innate leader:

  • To become a leader of my own life and destiny, I had to master my ability to reflect. I learnt that to reflect is more powerful than to react.
  • This ability to reflect helped me to find purpose and meaning in my life. Connecting with meaning gave my life a new vitality. I looked forward to living my life. I wanted to go out and make an impact doing what I love.
  • As I do more of what I love and learn to manage my emotions through reflection, I have more energy and power available to continually drive my life in a direction to make a meaningful contribution and be in service to others.

This is available to each of us. I encourage you to discover your innate leader and gain clarity on what it is you would love to lead, your service to the world. If you’d like to learn and practice the tools that provided me with a way of discovering this for myself, then please join me for the Purpose Driven Leadership masterclass. I look forward to sharing this with you. http://www.acturban.com/training-purposedrivenleadership/

Much love,

Shannon Royden-Turner

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