Conscious Leadership

This week’s theme is leadership. I cover several leadership principles that have inspired me over time with a particular focus on a new contemporary leadership model called Conscious Leadership.

Conscious Leadership comes from the book ‘The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership’ by Diana Chapman, Jim Dethmer, and Kaley Warner Klemp. According to the authors, current leadership models are outdated, based on fear, and need extrinsic rewards to work. Conscious leaders tend to be more creative, healthier and happier.

However, we cannot become a conscious leader by simply reading this book. We become one by first becoming self-aware and then practicing the fifteen commitments covered in the book.

The most critical construct from this book states that at any given moment, a leader is either above the line or below the line. When we are above the line, we are open, curious and genuinely interested in learning. When we are below the line, we are closed and defensive, and proving that we are right is more important than learning. While conscious leaders take full responsibility, unconscious leaders complain all the time and are known to blame themselves or others.

The fifteen commitments provide a roadmap to shift from unconscious to Conscious Leadership. Each commitment has an ‘above the line’ version, and a ‘below the line’ version. Once we become self-aware that we are below the line, we can start the process of shifting from wanting to be right to wanting to learn.

Ask yourself these three questions and watch the short videos below for more context.

1. Where am I?

2. Are you working from presence or drama triangle?

3. Are you taking 100% responsibility?

Some more leadership favorites:

Great Leadership Comes Down To These Two Rules: This is a TED talk from Peter Anderton who was a Organizational Development Manager at 3M. Peter uses his own experience to break down the true essence of leadership. Must Watch!

The Secret: This is one of the most inspiring stories last year from Dani Alves. It’s a must read if you missed it.

The Essence of Leadership by General Colin Powell: “Only leaders can take teams beyond what science of management says is possible”

The 14 Leadership Principles From Amazon: These principles are very general purpose in nature and can be applicable to most teams.

The Leadership Journey of Abraham Lincoln: “To concentrate on the most important issues while relinquishing the rest — depends on a leader’s willingness to recognize two things: first, he or she cannot do it all, and second, by saying no to that which is not mission critical, one is actually saying yes to that which is.”

What it Takes to be a Great Leader: Roselinde Torres shares three crucial, but straightforward questions leaders need to ask to thrive in the future.

How Real Leaders Melt The Iceberg Of Ignorance With Humility “Yoshida further found that, even though 100% of front-line problems were known to the front-line employees, only 74% were known to team leaders, 9% to middle management and just 4% to top management!”

Here are a few more things that I thought were worth sharing this week:

Loon and Wing ‘graduate’ from X moonshots to independent Alphabet businesses

Pokémon GO Revenue Hits $1.8 Billion on Its Two Year Launch Anniversary

Thanks for reading. Here’s my previous article, ‘3 Questions Leaders Need to Ask to Thrive in The Digital Age’, in case you missed it.