The impacts of our behaviors and actions as leaders, regardless of how small our organization or department may be, can no longer be considered in isolation. We participate in a global marketplace where ripples from decisions as small as what kind of coffee we provide in the break room move outward and impact the lives of families, plants and animals in countries many time-zones and thousands of miles away. This web of global connections offers immense possibility as well as huge concerns, including poverty, hunger, conflict and environmental degradation. The enormity of these issues as well as the potential we hold to help alleviate them calls for a transformation in how we lead.
We’ve spent the last decade exploring, researching and teaching what such a transformation can look like. We teach an approach to leadership that both creates results and enables life to flourish. This approach is born from an evolution of consciousness that acknowledges humans’ ability to choose the behaviors they use to influence others. Choice opens possibility, and we’ve found that individuals who commit themselves to learning, self-exploration and regular practice are capable of learning and choosing behaviors that enable them to lead through styles that are life-affirming.
Life-affirming leadership begins with the leader cultivating internal balance and wholeness. From this foundation, it spirals outward to create caring, need-satisfying environments conducive to the growth and development of others. This approach assumes that leaders are capable of becoming effective stewards of their internal needs and that when a leader’s internal needs are in balance, the outer environment that they influence will mirror this balance. If, however, a leader is unable to maintain a state of balance, usually from negative thinking and a corresponding emotional state or mood, then the behaviors, decisions and actions that they choose will manifest this imbalance in some way in their external environment.
How does all of this tie into results?
We put forth that life-affirming styles of leadership address a broad swath of the universal needs in humans and in other living things. These needs include, but are not limited to, clarity, purpose, effectiveness, respect, emotionally and physically safe environments, community, connection, self-expression, creativity, enjoyment and learning. Simply put, when leaders create need-satisfying environments, others are freed up to grow and perform their best work.
A growing body of research in the area of emotional intelligence and brain research shows the powerful effect that leadership style can have on group climate. Leadership authors Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee draw on this research in their book “Primal Leadership” to explain how styles that produce a more positive emotional impact are more likely to generate tangibles, like stronger financial returns, and intangibles, including increased retention of talent and greater morale and commitment.
Our capacity to choose and selectively employ a variety of life-affirming leadership styles is what offers such grand possibility in the face of enormous challenges. It enables us to accept much greater responsibility for being stewards of the success of our initiatives and for our impact on others. Ultimately leadership is a very personal choice. Does your current leadership presence embody what you most want to give back to the world?
The Whole Leaders approach to life-affirming leadership draws from evolutionary theory, emotional intelligence, cognitive-behavioral psychology and practices that link mind, body and spirit. At its core, life-affirming leadership is about nurturing energy–your own as well as others. It is powered by inspiration and flows outward through relationships by creating need-satisfying environments that free others to grow and perform their best work. The offerings described here serve as an invitation to step onto the path of mindful and compassionate leadership where your presence enables life around you to flourish in the pursuit of realizing remarkable goals