Tag: vulnerability

Presence and Leadership

“Who you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.” Maya Angelou

For a few years already, I have offered posts in this blog about the unique contribution individuals can make to the world and the power we all have to impact our context and the international environment more broadly. I have devoted much attention to leadership skills and self-awareness to lead from a place of integrity. I have spent much time reflecting on our unique perspectives as individuals, based on our experiences, our desires and specific strength, on how we think, feel, and act. I also ventured into the power of vulnerability, investigating how our struggles, failures, weaknesses can become our strength and how our vulnerability can be the seat of our own power. I want to write today about our unique presence.

We have all faced situations where we are called upon to help another through difficult times. We are usually more at ease with concrete actions, be it running errands or meeting specific requests, but how to just “be there” for someone is far less obvious and usually more challenging. It is a matter of holding space for someone to express feelings or simply being silent, offering a safe place. We thus become a container for someone else to pour out the overflow or simply share what is too heavy. This is when presence becomes powerful. Our presence alone may liberate others.

Your presence requires steadiness, centeredness, stability, and benevolence for another to lean in, feeling free, safe, and supported. There is no real need to talk or do anything, just be responsive without taking the lead, but still leading by allowing the other to find balance and dictate the flow of conversation. Being aware and open, you can gently steer another to find a stable place and recover his/her own balance. This type of leadership requires humility and awareness. It rests on the ability to be non-judgmental and step out of the way, realizing that this is not about us, simply allowing for the process to unfold. This is a real gift from your part; one that has not yet surfaced and found its place in international settings.

Leading from emotions

Today I want to talk about something controversial. When I developed my Creative Leadership Program, I had an interesting conversation with my coach about leading from a place of vulnerability. Indeed, among leaders and leadership coaches, the idea of leading through emotions is highly controversial. After all, ever since the century of Enlightenment, the mind is meant to be in the lead, not emotions. I have experienced a very different approach, which might serve the leaders of tomorrow.

Why did emotions get such a negative reputation? I wondered about this for a while and came to the conclusion that emotions, especially negative ones like anger, sadness, or frustration, can prompt us to lose control of our emotional state, hence this negative judgment. Indeed, powerful emotions can lead us to explode with little control over the consequences. Yet, have you ever observed the surge of energy that comes with anger or frustration, or the depth that surges with sadness? I would suggest tapping into this magma of energy to lead the way and saddle at the helm of our lives.

How, you might ask? Indeed, harnessing the power of our emotions at the height of their expression can prove difficult. This is where leadership skills are needed. We have that innate ability to feel the power of our emotions and transform that energy into healthy ways of expressing it. I have noticed how anger and sadness–possibly the two poles of the same energy–can be transformed into a source of inspiration towards bringing about the change we want to see in the world. It is no accident that having accumulated significant anger and sadness over decades, I came to develop a program on “Be the Change You Want to See” as a way to make a contribution to the world.

Similarly, you may be able to transform feelings of frustration and stress towards thinking outside of the box. Creative thinking and writing are often the result of frustrations about the way things are, and a way to discover solutions to what originally left us stymied. Perhaps the most challenging emotion to transform might be fear. The need to feel the fear and stay with it allows us to re-examine our circumstances rather than flee and find a different angle, likely to give us unexpected insight into our life.

Where might this transformative process lead us? I would venture to say that this type of leadership is based on the power to redirect the flood of emotions we all experience in life daily towards productive, artistic, or laborious pursuits. I might add that channeling our emotions into constructive action can also prevent us from re-creating and re-living the situation, event, or expectation that originally prompted us to feel negative. Essentially, this is the type of leadership that transforms the negative and spins it into positive by harnessing the energy of negative emotions. Could it be a way out of emotional pain? Indeed, pain is no longer fed by our intellectual and emotional energy once the energy is re-used and transformed. It quickly ebbs away. This type of leadership is neither conceptual nor intellectual. It is rooted in the practice of honestly acknowledging and honoring our feelings, leading from a place of vulnerability.