Lead Self before leading others

I have had more trouble with myself than any other man. I have never met a man who has given me as much trouble as myself.

—D.L. Moody

What does leading self mean? Leading self encompasses being awake to life and moving forward in a purposeful manner. A leader of self has eyes wide open to countless opportunities available to live a life of meaning, as opposed to wandering through life hoping for the best. And as part of living a purposeful life, the leader of self is engaged in fulfilling visions and creating outcomes within the construct of conscious values.

However, many leaders of others fail to formulate a life plan for leading themselves. A life plan is a written document outlining their purpose, vision, values, and operating principles. As leaders of organizations, they may adhere well to an organizational mission statement, vision, and values. As a leader of others, they probably can articulate these important organizational elements even without a wallet card. But what about self? Should not the leader of others first become an intentional leader of self?

The leader of self uncovers his or her reason for being (life purpose), moves toward a vibrant vision, and operates within chosen principles flowing from well-defined values. With these life plan components, the leader of self remains awake to life despite pressures to fall asleep in a hectic world. And when obstacles are encountered, and his or her vision does not immediately materialize, learning is opted versus blame and perseverance selected versus hopelessness. The alternative to not having a life plan is a life of wandering where the leader simply responds to the conditions and stimuli of the world, avoiding pain and seeking delight. Trusting that working hard and being smart will all add up to something one day is a fool’s dream, far from creating a life of meaning or a distinct vision.

Like an organizational plan that has an overall mission, leading self begins with delving into the big question, “Why am I here?” It is an individual purpose statement. Mark Twain was attributed to have said, “The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”

Moving from Intelligence Quotient to Spiritual Quotient

Over the past 100 years, there has been a dramatic shift in how leadership is viewed. One only must look at the titles of previous leadership books to discover this shift. The website CEO.com lists 24 leadership books to read before you die. There are titles in this list of books such as How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, The Emperor’s Handbook, Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Art of War, and Liar’s Poker. Other famous leadership books include Jesus, CEO, and Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategy for Basketball, Business, and Life (the head coach of Duke men’s basketball team). Wow, this is a very diverse set of titles! It would be difficult to combine insights from the Art of War and Jesus, CEO.

While there has been a broadening of leadership books and leadership insights over the past 100 years, leadership development has expanded to first include deeper relational awareness and, more recently, a self-­awareness combined with the ability to thrive in times of transformational change.

The first real leadership training considered leadership as a set of skills. Thus, leaders were thought of as people with high intelligence quotients (IQs). IQ is a score derived from standardized tests created to assess human intelligence. Although IQ as a term originated from psychologist William Stern early in the 20th century, it has become an expression to indicate strong rational, logical, learned, and cogent thinking. In the case of organizational leaders, it refers to their ability to understand organizational systems and comprehend their complexities. Developing leaders was largely a process of promoting smarter, more data-driven individuals.

Over time, a shift occurred. Part of this shift was driven by an increasingly diverse workforce and an acknowledgment that there was one best way to treat everybody. Thus, what was needed was emotional intelligence or EQ. When Daniel Goleman coined “emotional intelligence” in his 1995 book titled Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, this course work was further legitimized. Goleman capitalized on the similarity to human cognitive intelligence, IQ, to make his case. In addition to IQ skills, leaders now need empathy, appreciation, and emotional awareness skills. Over time, the term EQ has come to be used to describe a broad array of skills and characteristics best used in relational leadership.

This book draws upon IQ and EQ, but connects to different foundations for leadership, spiritual intelligence. While having individuals develop their leadership skills in terms of IQ (financial, planning, meeting skills) and EQ (empathy, emotional awareness, appreciate skills), what has become apparent is that some leaders were missing skills that fostered passion, creativity, resilience, and drive. Given the increased pressure for results born from a faster changing world immersed in complexity, resilient leaders were succeeding where others failed. The ability to bounce back from setbacks was an enormous advantage. Growing in internal strength was needed as organizations were in almost constant transformational mode. Beyond intellect and relationship acumen, self-knowledge apart from the organization seemed to nurture resiliency, tenacity, and perseverance. Developing a personal mission, vision, and values began to be a part of the leadership development curriculum. And this work of self-reflection and inquiry to become more conscious and self-directed is fundamental to spiritual intelligence, or SQ. SQ was the missing ingredient to leadership development.

The Emergence of SQ

Danah Zohar introduced the term spiritual intelligence, or SQ, in 1997 in her book ReWiring the Corporate Brain. SQ was a cleaver approach to have the aspect of spiritual development considered alongside IQ and EQ. Others have joined the SQ inquiry and its measurement. Spiritual intelligence speaks not to a religious doctrine (the practice of a spiritual belief) but to spiritual aptitude. The concept of spiritual development includes a keen self-awareness, living into purpose and vision, alignment of a vocation with purpose, viewing life challenges and adversity within the context of spiritual growth, and alertness to larger patterns and connections.

SQ aptitude serves to recast many of the simple tools and approaches from past leadership curriculums. Aligning personal goals with organizational goals is recast from an indoctrination process to a discovery process. Seeing alignment as needing self-awareness in addition to the organizational assertions of itself changes the approach. Bruce ­Tuckman’s ­forming–storming–norming–performing model of team development needed to evolve. A shift to community models such as M. Scott Peck’s pseudo ­community-chaos-emptiness-community better reflects the high-­performance team process. Peck’s emptying stage is dependent on a high level of self-awareness of all participants as a condition for success to reveal individual mind-sets and motivations. In short, SQ is not only the addition of a third ingredient in the leadership development mix, but it also alters both IQ and EQ approaches.

SQ focuses on the grounding of a leader through self-awareness of personal mission, vision, and values apart from the organization. Through strength of living a life of meaning, the leader is better able to determine if true alignment with an organization’s mission, vision, and values exists. And by leading others to undergo a similar self-inquiry, the organization benefits from increased employee engagement and creative spirit.

Leadership programs can still be found without a word on SQ, but only an emphasis on IQ and/or EQ. They tend to take the form of a speaker’s bureau, where subject experts, authors, existing leaders, and ­consultants present their ideas. These presentations can be considered as ornaments, attractive and holding value in and of themselves. But they are not necessarily tied together in a comprehensive architecture—no tree onto which the ornaments could be placed. So, as interesting as these individual ornaments are, they tend to be quickly forgotten. Without a mental framework of individual purpose and vision, absorption of abstract concepts or lessons gained through others’ experiences is weak and minimal. Leaders with a healthy dose of SQ develop a way of thinking and an individual configuration to organize the different ideas, to absorb the ideas. They assimilate the concepts into who they are and where they are going.

Many Voices of Wisdom

While the term SQ was coined in 1997, the concept of SQ, purpose, leading self, or developing consciousness has been around for centuries. Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher wrote, “At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” Solomon, a major figure of the Bible’s Old Testament exclaimed, “Counsel in the heart of man (is like) deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.” In the New Testament, Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.” Ralph Ellison, writer of the book Invisible Man, said it this way, “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”

The wisdom displayed in these quotes and found in many other texts suggest that the concept, practices, and reflections of leading self have been extolled over the ages. Uncovering a unique life purpose, forming a vision in which to create, and operating within a moral code are the ­universal elements of a life of meaning, instrumental in leading self. While an exhaustive history of the different methodologies for developing these elements would be a book in and of itself, there is a need to locate the idea of leading a life of meaning, self-awareness, and willfulness sourced from purpose in context. For that, a place to start might be with the seminal work of Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning.

Victor Frankl was a Jewish psychologist and neurologist living in Austria at the start of World War II. He was offering therapy for Jews who were losing their freedom during the Nazi regime. In 1942, Frankl, his wife, and his parents were deported to the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt. There Frankl worked as a general practitioner in a clinic. When his skills in psychiatry were noticed, he was assigned to a psychiatric care ward, establishing a camp service of “psychohygiene” or mental health care. He organized a unit to help camp newcomers to overcome shock and grief. In 1944, Frankl and his wife Tilly were transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Later, he was moved to two different camps affiliated with Dachau, where he survived working as a slave laborer. When his camp was liberated on April 27, 1945, he was freed.

Before Frankl was transported to Auschwitz, he was working on a book. That book was confiscated once he got to Auschwitz. While in Dachau, he suffered from typhoid fever. As a way of dealing with the disease, he started rewriting the text, remembering his original thoughts. The book, Man’s Search for Meaning, was not his first but clearly his most well-known writing. Of the numerous key messages in the book, one that might stick out the most is presented here. “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Man’s Search for Meaning is a fascinating tale, part autobiographical and part conceptual, as Frankl’s describes his life and time in a variety of concentration camps, discusses how he was able to survive the camps, and ends with his concept of logotherapy. Logotherapy is the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one’s life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. The three basic tenets of logotherapy are Freedom of Will, Will to Meaning, and Meaning in Life (for more information about logotherapy, visit http://www.viktorfrankl.org).

Gordon Allport (himself a prominent psychologist and the person many credit with bringing Viktor Frankl’s work to America) wrote in the preface to Viktor Frankl’s book describing how Frankl’s own life offers an amazing look into the concepts of logotherapy:

From this autobiographical fragment the reader learns much. He learns what a human being does when he suddenly realizes he has “nothing to lose except his so ridiculously naked life”… . It is here we encounter the central theme—to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. 

Allport goes on to say that Frankl was fond of the Nietzsche quote “If you have your why for life, then you can get along with almost any how” .

A key theme from the book is that individuals need to find a purpose in their lives. Taken from Frankl’s own words,

When I was taken to the concentrate camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this publication anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in. For instance, when in a camp in Bavaria I fell ill with typhus fever, I jotted down on little scraps of paper many notes intended to enable me to rewrite the manuscript, should I live to the day of liberation. I am sure that this reconstruction of my lost manuscript in the dark barracks of a Bavarian concentration camp assisted me in overcoming the danger of cardiovascular collapse. 

He goes on to say that having a reason to live is important, and that it does not matter the reason.

I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking similarity to each other—In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished. 

As can be seen from the examples of different “whys” (to use the line from Nietzsche), Frankl suggests that purpose statements do not have to be inspirational, or even ambitious. But they do need to be clear and they also need to mean something to the individual. This is where a life plan starts to answer the big question like why am I here? Maybe the answer is noble, or maybe the answer is mundane. The key is that the answer must mean something to the individual; thus, a life plan is an individual’s life plan.

Again, drawing from Frankl’s words as he describes how he was able to survive the concentration camp,

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves, and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. 

Another major author in the realm of leading self is Deepak Chopra. While there are many critiques of his work on “perfect health,” his book The Soul of Leadership connects the most to the ideas of SQ found in this book and provides a strong foundation for developing a life plan. While the old definitions of leadership centered around power, Chopra prefers to see those who head a business, organization, or community group as “the symbolic soul of the group.” Thus, if the organization is to have a soul, the leader needs to develop his or her soul.

Chopra discusses the thrust of leading from the soul by developing an acronym of the word LEADERS. “L” stands for “look and listen” as leaders need to sense what is happening around them. “E” stands for “emotional” bonding that connects to EQ. “A” stands for “awareness” as Chopra contends that leaders need to develop their own awareness of themselves. “D” stands for “doing” as Chopra also reminds us that the goal is not just self-awareness, but it is self-awareness that leads to action. This is consistent with Frankl’s idea of logotherapy. Once you have the answer to your “why,” then that should motivate you to “do.” “E” stands for empowerment or developing your team to do its best. “R” stands for taking the responsibility of leadership and “S” is for synchronicity, which reminds us that it is not just being in the right place at the right time but making the most when you are in the right place at the right time.

Does Developing SQ Enhance Performance?

If that is the work on the evolution of SQ, the obvious next question is: does it matter, and do people with a high SQ achieve more benefits, than people with low SQ? While not phrased in that way, the work on mindfulness or consciousness has been trying to answer this question for years. Fortunately, there have been some answers to this question and the initial answers are a resounding YES!

In the 1990s, there was psychological research that examined how individuals writing about trauma helped them to overcome their trauma. The thought was that writing about traumatic events helped individuals release the pent-up emotions that came from experiencing the event. Over time, this research found that it might be more about writing than the event itself as some researchers found that writing about another person’s traumatic event had positive benefits for the writer. In a landmark study, Pennebaker (1993) found that it was not just writing that produced benefits, but it was the use of “insight words, causal words, and words associated with cognitive activity that were associated with health improvements” . Thus, it was something about finding connections between the traumatic event and a person’s current state that led to improved health outcomes. And what were the health outcomes? The dependent variable in these studies (the effect they were monitoring) were sick days. In short, people who wrote insight words and causal words in their stories were sick less often than those who did not use those words.

Additional researchers extended this line of research by questioning if instead of having a person write about trauma they could write in the future tense (write about who they want to be, not just write about what happened in the past) and would causal words in the future tense lead to less sick days. The answer here is also yes! In 2001, a psychologist named Laura King had one group of individuals write about their life goals, a traumatic event, or write about what they were going to do on that given day (a control group). What she found was that those individuals who wrote about their life goals had less physician visits than those who wrote about their given day. She concluded by saying “writing about one’s life goals was associated with feeling less upset, more happy and getting sick less often” .

In another study with interesting outcomes, it was found that individuals with a keen sense of purpose lived longer than people who did not have a sense of purpose. Psychologists Patrick Hill and Nicholas Turiano, wanted to know if having a purpose in life led to any positive health outcomes. Considering the data from MIDUS, a national longitudinal study of health and well-being, they looked at individuals’ responses to statements such as “some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them,” “I live one day at a time and don’t really think about the future.” Those individuals who responded positively to these statements lived longer than those who responded less positively.

There are many more studies that show that leading self (developing a spiritual quotient, having a life plan, developing consciousness, finding your “why”) leads to positive health and life outcomes. In the pages that follow, we will discuss the different parts of having a life plan. After that, we will provide you a tool that you can use to create your own life plan.

Master Coach Insights: Heidi Scott

The leadership journey starts with a declaration of intent to discover the purpose of being here on earth.

This journey is the difference between living each day at the mercy of fate and starting out each day constantly aware of ­intention and ­purpose—the self-directed ability to make a difference (self-­determination). It is the difference between selfishness and being attuned to how the self is interconnected with, and actually responsible for, others and our environment. It is the difference between a vocation to pay bills and a calling.

The life plan is a guide for this journey to a purpose statement. Do not just “think it through” as a mental exercise. It requires plenty of thinking and also “writing it down.” This allows for review, revision, and refinement not only during the initial process, but throughout. The life plan is not static. At the end of this plan, it will not be “Shazam! This is the life plan and purpose—The end!” Instead, the life plan is a dynamic process of discovery and experimentation that can be challenged and updated as circumstances change and the journey progresses. However, the essence of a well-thought-out purpose statement will remain the same. For ­example, purpose statement “A” may be found to be too broad or too narrow. Purpose statement “A1” may be further refined 5 to 10 years into the journey.

Core values help inform the purpose statement, and both provide an anchor and grounding during times of chaos and doubt. For example, conscious leaders may question their value at work or be uncomfortable with organizational leadership decisions. Core values and purpose statement are the standard to determine if the circumstances are in direct conflict. Leaders can ask, “Does this decision or situation create an inability to continue to honor their values and purpose?” If not, play, experiment, and explore ways to get back on track. If so, it may be time to change the circumstances.

Conscious leadership and self-awareness are the better way of being. Knowing one’s purpose gives direction, meaning, and well, purpose. It gives one the ability to be intentional every day, and a foundation to remain curious when things do not go as planned. “Hmm. That didn’t work as intended. What might work next time?” However, this way of Being is not necessarily welcomed by everyone. There is an ease in the familiar and comfort in “just going through the motions.” Mother ­Theresa had a favorite poem with a repeating stanza regarding one’s response to others’ poor treatment or resistance, “Do it anyway.” Find a purpose and core values and stick to them. The journey is focused and dedicated to awareness of self and how that self is interconnected with others. It is a daily experiment and leads to myriads of possibilities.

Conscious leadership is-

• disciplined
• a journey
• adaptable
• creative

Conscious leadership requires

• continuous attention to self-awareness and self-management
• willingness to
• admit errors
• be vulnerable
• be open to learning and exploring new things
• play, experiment, practice, discard what is not working
• Conscious leadership is not
• a “final destination”
• static

Workout

While we talk a lot about leadership, we do not mean it in the formal sense. Parents are leaders of their children, the coach is the leader of the team, and you are leading yourself. Feel free to use any of those aspects of your life as you respond to the following questions:

1. The IQ question: How do you lead? How would you describe your leadership skills?
2. The EQ question: Whom do you lead? What is your relationship to the people you lead?
3. The SQ question: Why do you lead? What is your purpose for leading the people you lead?

Thanks for reading my blog.

Are you Leading?

Dr. Deepak A. Patil

CEO, Lead ThySelf