Category: leadership

Leadership at home

Leadership for me came from my experiences at home, as an only child often home alone and later as a single mom with a demanding job and an only child of my own. I grew up exploring independence and freedom, and I matured discovering the challenges of non-attachment. Issues of leadership in the work space felt much easier in comparison, and often came naturally. With hindsight, I believe that parenting is where leadership becomes most challenging and offers the biggest rewards. I long felt that the hardest thing for parents was to allow their children to experiment for themselves and become whomever these children wanted for themselves, first leading and then supporting them from behind. Then I discovered that perhaps the biggest challenge of all lies with appreciating and embracing the opposite of leadership and nurture the needy child behind the leader, not only in a child but in ourselves.

Successful parenting is a balancing act between the requirement to love and nurture our children, on the one hand, and to let go of them at the appropriate time, practicing this challenging non-attachment to the result. We all experience this fierce love that causes us to overstep our boundaries and want to determine what they become in life, pushing them in one direction or another, guarding them to help them feel more secure, helping them with their homework, protecting them from unhealthy surroundings, seeing our children as an extension of ourselves. The more attached they are, the more challenging it becomes to finally set them free, and yet we all know intuitively (even if we find it hard to accept and practice) that true love is giving freedom.

You will be called to let your children go in directions you fear, do not respect, or simply do not understand. You will gradually honor them by treating them as peers who no longer need your guidance, even if they still seek your understanding at times to validate their own feelings. The biggest gift you can offer them is to trust them to know for themselves, to lead their lives the way they choose as equals, making their own way, exercising leadership for themselves. Your confidence will give them wings, and you can trust that the soil you provided for them to grow roots is more than enough to see them find their own path.

You may also have to realize that there is always a needy child behind a leader. I often felt uneasy, even critical towards needy young adults, the same way I would repel any feeling of neediness within myself. I became more lenient and open to this “weak side” within. I can see that this deep resistance to neediness and attachment has ultimately been the engine that propelled me towards leadership qualities. I also came to realize that pushing away and condemning this neediness in an effort to glorify freedom and independence can actually uproot the most nurturing qualities in a leader.

Now more than ever, we need nurturing leaders who will allow for those who rely on others to make their way, fully dependent on their family structure or the social fabric around them. Successful leadership is about accepting both the fiercely independent and free spirit born to lead and the needy child whose vulnerability provides the very soil for nurturing us all. As a parent, you are called upon to raise both and love them equally, and ultimately nourish and integrate both sides within yourself.

If you are ready to explore your leadership instincts and how to lead with emotions, I’d be happy to show you the path and work with you. We are just an email away: isabellefrancoisbe@gmail.com

Time to lead the way

As a little girl I grew up under the false belief that I just had to wish my dreams into being. The rude awakening of life taught me that one needed to take action to get to one’s desires. Growing up, however, I noticed that many of us were afraid to step out into the world and make things happen. We need to venture out, beyond our comfort zone.

Of course, there are not too many courses teaching how to manifest what you want in life, short of the common false belief that we need to work hard to get to what we want. No one ever explained to me the need to “work smart” to manifest my desires. And what is “working smart,” you might ask? I would venture to say that it is essentially to align your thoughts (vision) and emotions (passion) and step up to make it happen concretely, beyond your dreams. I have learned over the years that working smart was actually to stop struggling. Life is not a struggle! You may fail and fail again at reaching your goals, but who says it is a struggle? Watching a baby who starts to walk, you get the picture: it is an adventure!

Some of us walk early, others late: does it matter? Indeed, many of us are afraid to step out into the world and make things happen, and so we hang back, dreaming and waiting and watching, wondering. There are times in life when pondering is the right thing to do, and inaction is a form of action. In leading our lives, contributing to the world around us, what we choose to do can be just as important as what we choose not to do. Not every cause or action is appropriate for everyone at all time. So when is it time?

It is time to lead the way when a situation speaks to you (you actually “know”) and fires you up (you feel it..), and when there is alignment between the thought and the emotion (i.e. when they are both going in the same direction). That is when you need to step up to the plate. When you feel the alignment, it is actually hard to resist the impulse (do you know what I mean? But the determining factor, in the end, is the courage to venture beyond your comfort zone.

Relationships and leadership

The most important relationship we may have in life is the relationship to ourselves. While we do not become our best self by ourselves, our relationships to others are essentially determined by the way we relate to ourselves. Not only is our relationship to ourselves the most important one, but it is also the most difficult one. It takes real leadership to get to know oneself and to be willing to embrace it all – the good, the bad, and the ugly. We all want to look smarter, younger, thinner, better, willing to forcefully reject what we do not like. Rejecting or even simply ignoring what disturbs us is, however, the cause of major suffering for ourselves. Until we are willing to investigate the dark corners and know ourselves, we will find it difficult to spend time on our own. It is also a cause of suffering to others, for as long as we feel uncomfortable with parts of ourselves, we will find it challenging to accept others and nurture relationships with others.

To some of us this will translate to the need to spend time on our own. To others it will point to the need to create sufficient space to be alone within relationships, or at least to be our true self with others. Being true to ourselves in relationships comes with the ability to stand without the mask of the various roles we play in society from parent, to colleague, friend, boss, adviser, sister, son. Integrating all the roles we play in life to let our true self shine through is another option, but that takes personal leadership. It stems from the ability to accept ourselves, and always choose our own voice over the expectations of others in any given role we are playing.

It takes courage to forget the mask and present our true selves to the world, as we are often feeling inadequate, not enough, or too much… We are usually our harshest critics. Yet for those who can keep off the mask, this is an opportunity to lead the way and give others permission to be themselves. Have you ever come across people like this? They walk in a room and bring a feeling of ease, warmth, and curiosity with them. They seize opportunities to discover, turned onto others and the world, free of limiting internal barriers. They are open and willing to engage. They acknowledge their idiosyncrasies and laugh at them lovingly. Their imperfect lives can always turn into glorious success. Through them we become alive, confident, and passionate. This is transformational leadership.

Leaders and inner strength

When I look back on my life, I am amazed at how I managed to survive the many trials and tribulations in my path, and I am sure this resonates with many of you. We all seem to underestimate how much we can handle, but life has a way of showing us the way to a hidden reserve. Whether we get to it through sheer willpower cutting through our resistance, or whether we overcome our inner blocks through compassion for our predicament, we always seem to reach for a new level of understanding of our inner strength.

Over time men and women have developed their own leadership styles, either fighting their way through, enduring one loss after another, opening the way for others to catch their breath, wondering when life will offer a break, or simply accepting overwhelm, exhaustion and offering compassion and unconditional support to themselves and others. Yet, women and men alike have suffered from internal barriers to receiving the level of support they need to succeed.

Have you noticed how this manifests in your life? You do not want to appear weak, inadequate, or needy. You do not want to be indebted to someone else. You do not want to burden others with your problems. How many of you are actually seeking support to overcome your challenges? In our western masculine culture, we celebrate the power of the individual and we have long held the belief that we are weak, inadequate, and somehow flawed when we cannot master our own lives by ourselves. We are essentially suffering from a “support deficit.”

There is an alternative based on a different belief, i.e.: “you cannot become your powerful self by yourself.” Through this different approach, leadership for yourself and others is more of a team sport than a solo race. Leadership becomes less and less about inner strength to face up to your personal or collective challenges. It anchors instead in a shared commitment to feed each other power and to support one another to step into our full potential. For this type of leadership we need to level up our relationships, rather than rely on inner strength. This approach speaks of trust and the willingness to be vulnerable, and will be addressed in our next blogs. See you there!