Conscious Leadership
Top 6 attributes to cultivate + Resources for learning & practice
Recently, I have started to enjoy reading & learning about effective leadership, exploring the application of conscious leadership practices into my own life & also observing how others lead around me. Today I want to share with you 6 attributes that I find helpful & also all the resources that I have been using to strengthen my skills.
First Things First
Leadership is for everyone & not only for those leading teams in corporate organizations. It’s especially important if you are an individual with a strong desire to create a positive change in your society or environment. We may have a great vision for creating positive changes but to make that vision a reality requires cooperation of people around us. I have seen many groups & communities fall apart due to poor leadership.
As with everything else, anyone can cultivate good leadership qualities with conscious practice.
6 attributes for effective leading:
1. Lead by example:
It’s totally ineffective to preach something & practice something else. It is bound to show over time and lead to lost trust & trust lost is hard to regain.
“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”
- John Maxwell
2. Fill your cup:
Ask yourself what you need to feel at your best physically, mentally & emotionally? Attending to that on a consistent basis will help you show up better & enable you to practice what you preach.
3. Allow yourself to be Vulnerable:
Just because you are leading does not mean that you have to be perfect all the time. Investing energy in creating & maintaining a “perfect picture” of ourselves can be harmful in the long run as it adds to unnecessary stress on our journey. And we lose our authenticity which is key to sustainable & effective leading.
“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection" - Brene Brown
4. Let go of expectations:
It’s important to let go of the expectation of creating positive changes even if that’s your intention. Expectations can drain energy which is better reserved for the aforementioned points.
Expectation feeds frustration. It is an unhealthy attachment to people, things, and outcomes we wish we could control; but don’t. - Dr Steve Maraboli
5. Be Resilient:
In the face of disappointments, the easiest thing to do is to give up, get cynical & lose hope. Hence cultivating resilience is key to continue on the path undeterred.
“Resilience isn’t about ignoring what’s hard - it’s about leaning into it, finding meaning, and moving forward with strength and purpose.” - Janine Shepherd
6. Be kind to yourself & others:
A lot of us talk about kindness but we don’t know how to put it into practice. Recently I finished a 7-day Course on practicing kindness by Sharon Salzberg, a Meditation teacher. She spoke about how objectifying others & creating a rigid sense of self and other can lead to disconnection, alienation, and even cruelty. On the other hand, she says, if we can learn to see others as feeling beings who want to be happy (just like us), if we can see a part of us in them, then kindness can naturally emerge. I found this very profound & have become more mindful of my speech & actions. I realize that people are often unsupportive or rude because of their own confusions & suffering than because of anything we may have done.
Another Buddhist teacher, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo talks about “training your mind to think about others”. Sometimes we need to consciously come out of our self-absorption & “I, I, I” way of thinking. Doing so can foster better relationships which is the cornerstone of achieving anything lasting or fulfilling.
“Before you’ve finished eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world.” - Martin Luther King Jr
Useful Resources for learning:
✨ The 15 commitments of conscious leadership: I have just started reading this & loving it.
✨ Elevate your leadership by Subramaniam PG: This book was recommended to me by one of my Uncle's & I just finished reading it on Kindle. The author draws a parallel between Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and leadership.
✨ Quiet Leadership: I loved this book by David Rock. Lots to learn & apply.
✨ Neuroscience of personal excellence: I am loving this MOOC on Coursera. It's part of a larger specialization called: Neuroscience of leadership - leading with your brain and offers plenty of resources to learn from.