On the Capability to Lead

Hear me read this post.

Capa­bil­i­ty, mean­ing the skills, intel­li­gence, spir­it, and desire — the full men­tal and emo­tion­al poten­tials to lead. For some of us, this word, capa­bil­i­ty, is a tough one. It means “equal to the task.” I know a num­ber of peo­ple, clients and col­leagues, who strug­gle with inte­ri­or “voic­es” that tell them they are not ready to lead and may nev­er be. For these folks, “capa­bil­i­ty” has come to mean “ade­qua­cy,” and is attend­ed by feel­ings of frus­tra­tion and self-crit­i­cism, some­times depres­sion. Actu­al­ly, my sense is that the best lead­ers, not the worst ones, are clos­er to these feel­ings, pre­cise­ly because they val­ue lead­er­ship so much and are not blind to its require­ments. There cer­tain­ly have been times in my own life when I’ve known these feel­ings, too, and won­dered about my own capacities.

I am remind­ed of the famous words of author, Mar­i­anne Williamson, often incor­rect­ly attrib­uted to Nel­son Man­de­la’s inau­gu­ra­tion speech.

Our deep­est fear is not that we are inad­e­quate. Our deep­est fear is that we are pow­er­ful beyond mea­sure. It is our light, not our dark­ness that most fright­ens us. We ask our­selves, Who am I to be bril­liant, gor­geous, tal­ent­ed, fab­u­lous? Actu­al­ly, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your play­ing small does not serve the world. There is noth­ing enlight­ened about shrink­ing so that oth­er peo­ple won’t feel inse­cure around you. We are all meant to shine, as chil­dren do. We were born to make man­i­fest the glo­ry of God that is with­in us. It is not just in some of us; it is in every­one. And as we let our own light shine, we uncon­scious­ly give oth­er peo­ple per­mis­sion to do the same. As we are lib­er­at­ed from our own fear, our pres­ence auto­mat­i­cal­ly lib­er­ates others.

As pow­er­ful as this state­ment is, it cer­tain­ly can be in con­flict with our actu­al per­son­al his­to­ries and past con­di­tion­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly the mes­sages we received ear­ly in our lives regard­ing “step­ping up” in more inter­per­son­al­ly exposed places. Step­ping up may have been regard­ed as arro­gant or impo­lite, fool­ish or use­less, or sim­ply reserved for oth­ers on the basis of cul­tur­al norms.

What can we do, if these feel­ings per­sist and stop us from liv­ing our dreams? How can we remove the whole mech­a­nism of cul­tur­al belief and per­son­al self-decep­tion that keeps us from liv­ing our true capa­bil­i­ties? How can any of us real­ize and actu­al­ize our­selves as instru­ments of con­scious, pos­i­tive, con­fi­dent change?

To me, the answer to these ques­tions has to do with what a per­son sees when look­ing with­in for his or her own lead­er­ship. If I look and see noth­ing or feel drawn into a dark vor­tex of uncom­fort­able feel­ings, then I know I am at the start­ing point. If I can see and acknowl­edge my most pos­i­tive attrib­ut­es and val­ues, then per­haps I have begun to move down the path. If I have gone even far­ther, to exam­ine my own blind-spots, dis­cov­er­ing a true gift or two and feel a ris­ing tide of light with­in, then I know my con­fi­dence is begin­ning to gen­uine­ly express itself. And if this light, this “inner wis­dom,” this “genius” is a radi­ance I can no longer con­tain, if it is music that I no longer play as an instru­ment of change but instead is what plays me, then sure­ly, this is the way.

The stum­bling block around ade­qua­cy is the assump­tion that con­fi­dence is about force rather than prac­tice. If I try to force my con­fi­dence, all that is awak­ened are the brood­ing inse­cu­ri­ties that hide with­in my uncon­scious Shad­ow side. I may be able to accom­plish some things, but at a cer­tain moment — quite pos­si­bly the one in which I need real con­fi­dence the most — I will be betrayed by the inse­cu­ri­ties I am con­ceal­ing. How­ev­er, if I make a prac­tice of sim­ply stand­ing in what I know to be my own inse­cure spaces, then light can begin to come in and begin to grow — light that can even­tu­al­ly dis­arm the ego and be the change for which I learn to stand. True con­fi­dence is always based on an acknowl­edge­ment of the truth about myself and my ulti­mate inse­cu­ri­ties, and this truth in turn is what opens a por­tal to the greater wis­dom that can pour through me. Inad­e­qua­cy is not “over­come.” It is erased by a greater wis­dom, pas­sion, or beau­ty express­ing itself in a human life.

Let me share, with her per­mis­sion, an exam­ple from the work of Jory Des Jardins, an accom­plished writer, media con­sul­tant and co-founder of BlogHer. In two espe­cial­ly beau­ti­ful posts on her weblog, Pause, (here and here), she shares her dis­cov­er­ies of how her writ­ing is an aspect of what flows through her.

Since I was in high school I liked to go on long walks or bike rides, immers­ing myself in music on my Walkman/iPod. I always came back from these walks renewed. I start­ed to pay atten­tion to the thoughts that gen­er­at­ed dur­ing these walks and real­ized that I’d always had con­ver­sa­tions going on in my head, but I’d often ignored them. I also noticed that I did­n’t “write” these conversations–they wrote them­selves. The voic­es seemed to pre-exist–I nev­er sum­moned or con­jured them inten­tion­al­ly. I asked myself, what if these voic­es that I’ve ignored have some­thing to say? I learned to still my mind and lis­ten to the con­ver­sa­tions play out, like I was lis­ten­ing to music. I also learned to take note of the inter­est­ing parts.

One day I chal­lenged myself to write down one of these con­ver­sa­tions. The process felt like dictation–like I was writ­ing down some­one else’s words, not my own. I pulled the dia­logue into a short sto­ry and asked my writ­ing group to review it. They thought it was the best thing I’d ever writ­ten. It occurred to me, almost painful­ly, that amidst the years of forced prose I had in old file folders–reams of bad writ­ing, that divine ener­gy, or flow, was tap­ping on my shoul­der, say­ing, in effect, “Lady, you asked for insight, and you got it! Here it is!” I just nev­er acknowl­edged it because it was too easy; I did­n’t slave over each word or sculpt the writ­ing. It wrote itself.

Jory’s words rep­re­sent the non-ego­cen­tric pow­er of a true gift, the thing that flows through with­out think­ing, with­out the paral­y­sis of an embar­rassed or inse­cure self-con­scious­ness, with­out the neg­a­tive cen­sor­ing voic­es that can cut any of us off from the source. The flow is not forced, but also requires a com­mit­ment to the prac­tice of stay­ing open; in Jory’s case, to a flow of words that write them­selves. The gift just is. If you take the time to savor both of Jory’s posts, they may, as they did for me, remind you of what flow means for you. It is safe to say that her writ­ing is an essen­tial part of how she leads in the world.

Our lead­er­ship is a reflec­tion of the Radi­ance pour­ing through us. For some, the process of awak­en­ing and allow­ing this Radi­ance is eas­i­er than for oth­ers. You might say, “Well, you are real­ly describ­ing the unfold­ing of a myth­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal or spir­i­tu­al quest.” And you would be right about that, although this quest is not one I would asso­ciate with any par­tic­u­lar reli­gion or fram­ing psy­chol­o­gy as much as just my per­son­al effort to find metaphors and images for our growth into true human beings. My words and sym­bols are just my own ways of speak­ing about some­thing that is essen­tial­ly divine. Radi­ance, I believe, comes of itself, and may be halt­ed only by try­ing to coerce it. And this, I sense, has great impli­ca­tions for the nature of gen­uine­ly human lead­er­ship. Our job is prac­tice, not pressure.

Below you will find three dia­grams behind the head­ing links, three man­dalas, intend­ing to describe the course of devel­op­ment in our capa­bil­i­ties to lead. The stages are not nec­es­sar­i­ly lin­ear and are not all-encom­pass­ing. Some aspects of our per­son­al­i­ties may be more open in some cir­cum­stances than oth­ers, so we most­ly hold these stages simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in dif­fer­ent parts of our­selves. Know­ing we are in part imper­fect, incon­sis­tent and inse­cure, we can prac­tice the art of grad­u­al­ly allow­ing more of these parts to open, allow­ing more of the Radi­ance intend­ed for our per­son­al “chan­nel” to flow through us into the world. 

Stage One: Defending

When we are defend­ing, the inte­ri­or world is a dark and vul­ner­a­ble place. We pro­tect it, and we wear the mask of a fencer who is most­ly “on guard” to defend our unknown ter­ri­to­ry. The dark­ness leaks out as we con­tin­u­al­ly make sure nei­ther we nor oth­ers see what is going on inside. If there are prob­lems, they are caused by what is out­side of us, not within.

Stage Two: Learn­ing to Open

If, by chance, we become curi­ous about the inte­ri­or world and just brave enough to begin the jour­ney, we enter the stage of open­ing. Here we dis­cov­er that there are more and less con­scious aspects of Shad­ow — our uncon­cious side. The more con­scious aspects some­times appear as self-crit­i­cal voic­es that remind us of our weak­ness­es and can some­times over­whelm us. The more we enter, the dark­er it seems to get but, in truth, some­thing waits for us on the oth­er side of the Shad­ow’s dark­est walls. Even­tu­al­ly light and life begin to appear in new forms. A seed we plant ger­mi­nates. We dis­cov­er some aspect of our inte­ri­or light that, like an angel, con­tains the mes­sage of a des­tiny or pur­pose. Like the Roman god, Janus, the god of door­ways and win­dows, we begin to iden­ti­fy with look­ing both inward and outward.

Stage Three: The Radiance

As more areas with­in us awak­en, as we dis­cov­er and break old pat­terns in our con­di­tion­ing, we find our­selves to be chan­nels for a Radi­ance that gets brighter the more it is allowed to pass through. While some Shad­ow ener­gies always remain as mys­ter­ies to be grad­u­al­ly unlocked, the Radi­ance wipes out the dis­tinc­tion between look­ing out and look­ing in. What is left is the flow, an infin­i­ty that is nei­ther whol­ly one or nor whol­ly the oth­er, but both combined.

The trend-line in three dia­grams depends on our will­ing­ness to enter into the dark­ness of per­son­al and social uncon­scious­ness in order to learn. The cen­tral learn­ing is how to lose an ego-life in favor of a high­er Self. How we express this real­iza­tion in our own lives does not have to be in big ways. As much as we may want to change soci­ety or the world at large, the most imme­di­ate expres­sions may be in the small­est dai­ly acts of lead­ing: in com­pas­sion, in gen­eros­i­ty, in acknowl­edg­ing mis­takes, in con­nect­ing with oth­er peo­ple, in telling a good sto­ry. And then, per­haps, fate will bring us our pos­si­bil­i­ties and our larg­er chance to be of service.

So now, what is it that defines our capa­bil­i­ty to lead? Only this: the prac­tice of allow­ing our Radi­ance to express itself in the world. If I have no idea of my own Radi­ance, then my lead­er­ship will at best be a par­tial thing; at worst, it may do dam­age. A per­son locked into defend­ing an unex­am­ined per­son­al dark­ness, who nev­er turns to find the inte­ri­or Shad­ows, can loose incred­i­ble destruc­tive­ness and violence.

Instead, I must have a sense that there is some­thing much larg­er than my ego at work and pass­ing through me, even at this moment. And for that to hap­pen, I may have to con­stant­ly ask myself, fol­low­ing Williamson’s famous affir­ma­tions, “Who am I not to lead?” Because of past con­di­tion­ing, I may have to con­scious­ly learn as much as I can about my crit­i­cal voic­es in order to still them. I may have to prac­tice let­ting go the ego ener­gies that erupt each day like small fires only to burn them­selves out. I may need to clear the pipes of all my pri­vate nega­tions so that Radi­ance pours like water out­wards to do its heal­ing work in the world.

Technorati tags: Radiance, Shadow, Adequacy and Leadership