If, like me, you have been in the game for a while, I am sure you have noticed how leaders who have been on highly-regarded and more than likely very expensive leadership programmes, often come back to the ranch inspired at the start, but, in the longer term, show little change in their behaviour and how they lead others.

We know from our experiences that many leadership development initiatives fail, and yet large sums of money continue to be poured into this area. So, what’s going wrong?

Having spent many years working with talent and leaders in organisations, as well as having been on my own leadership journey, I have come to the conclusion that what’s often missing is an appreciation of the fundamental complexity of what lies beneath our behaviours. We humans are highly complex products of all our experiences, and, until we start to foster a higher level of self-awareness, we are often being run by patterns of the past. These patterns most commonly reside firmly in the subconscious and, as Jung said ‘until we make the unconscious conscious , it will direct our life and we will call it fate’.

Our behaviours are the tip of the iceberg. Underneath them lies a vast array of mindsets, emotions, feelings and beliefs, many unconscious. Exploring this realm can feel like a dive into deep, unknown waters; it can feel uncomfortable, or even scary and overwhelming. But this deep dive is key to unlocking the self-awareness it takes to truly change. If, as leaders, we are operating primarily from a place of logic and reasoning, we simply don’t have access to the full remit of our potential, which undoubtably will affect how we engage with others and build relationships.

We are hard-wired for growth, and the uncomfortable truth is that if we cling on to what we know, what we have always done and rely on what got us to this stage, we will surely come unstuck. Growth requires courage and a degree of humility. The willingness to say: ‘I don’t have it all figured out’, and the willingness to stop judging, pointing the finger ‘out there ‘ and to start to take full ‘response- ability ‘ for ourselves and what is showing up on the big screen that’s our life. It may surprise many to waken up to the realisation that what’s being created ‘out there’ has so much to do with what’s being created inside, consciously or unconsciously. Few things give me greater joy than to witness and walk alongside a leader on this transformational journey; to watch the magic happen, see it translate into happier teams, greater collaboration, better alignment and more peace of mind.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. A few years ago I worked with a senior leader  who talked a good game in terms of empowering others and the importance of delegation. He understood these concepts intellectually and theoretically. In reality though, when we looked at the staff engagement scores in his area they told a different story. This leader was brilliant in terms of his strategic understanding, his intellect, his knack of grasping extremely complex issues quickly, and his outstanding ability to stay calm in a crisis and communicate clear messages to the troops. So what was going wrong? Why the poor engagement scores?
Together we discovered that he was being run by a deep need to be in control of everything and to consistently prove to his organisation, and the world at large, how amazing he was. He struggled with the concept of failure, and he also struggled with those who didn’t operate at the same pace as him. These were ostensibly the behaviours that were getting in the way – however the root cause lay somewhat deeper. This man had been brought up by a father with exceptionally high expectations for his son and for whom nothing was ever quite ‘good enough’. In his childhood home failure was something to be ridiculed, and he had spent his whole life driving himself to go faster, and to be more and more brilliant. Added to this was a boarding school education in his teen years, where he learned to become an expert at blocking out his feelings and showing the world how self-sufficient and capable he was.

The reality is that if we have never healed our ‘childhood wounds’ – and we all have them by virtue of being human, then this will prevent us from accessing our ‘whole being’ as leaders, from using our head, heart and gut to make decisions As this leader shone the light on what was really running him, he started to become more self-aware, moment to moment, and realised he had been perceiving a separation between himself and others, and operating in a highly individualistic way. When he was able to respond from a more conscious place, rather than simply to react to those around him, he found that collaboration, workplace engagement and relationships took a dramatic turn for the better. When he was able to demonstrate a bit more empathy and understanding of employees – of who they are and not just what they do – he actually felt more connected, both to others and to himself.

It is my firm belief that if we want changes in leadership behaviour to last, then we must start to address the whole person and be prepared to open the ‘Pandora’s box.’ The process requires courage and commitment, but the benefits in the long run are nothing short of transformational, for the leader themselves and everyone around them.

Thirteen years ago, when I was given a cancer diagnosis, after the initial shock, disbelief and grief, I made a choice; I would navigate through the experience in the best way I could, obviously with the desire to survive, but also with a desire to emerge on the other side knowing the experience wasn’t for nothing. I wanted to put it all to good use at some point in the future.
I didn’t know how that would look at the time, but I did know that it felt really important to me to look at myself from the perspective of mind, body and spirit.

The first thingI looked at was what I was putting into my body – not just what I was eating and drinking, but all the products my body was being exposed to. I’d never had particularly bad habits on that front before, but with my diagnosis came a new level of cleansing and detoxing in order to support myself. So out came any caffeine, alcohol, and meat, and in came a plant-based diet, which so many people have spoken about in relation to reversing disease. The shift helped me feel more vibrant quite quickly.

Secondly, I looked at what was going on with my mind and my emotions. I knew I’d been sitting on some issues that I hadn’t fully resolved, so I took the decision to open Pandora’s Box and clear some of that stuff out. That process left me feeling lighter, carrying less anger and resentment about things in my past, and arriving at a place of greater forgiveness and compassion for others in my life who had treated me in a way I felt I didn’t deserve to be treated.

Next was the spiritual aspect. This was about really cultivating the idea that we are more than our body. It’s something I’d probably always believed on some level, but I really started to honour that thought, and to nurture this idea of a higher self, of a spiritual part of me that’s beyond the body. It gave me immense strength.
One thing which really supported me there was regular meditation, a practice that enables you to connect to a higher wisdom which is present in each and every one of us. When we take enough time to stop and listen, to be silent, we can start to hear the voice of our higher self-coming through. I’ve heard some people call it spirt or soul, others prefer to call it their future self, or their wiser self. The name doesn’t matter – what does matter is cultivating this sense of a higher, wiser aspect of ourselves, that’s far more connected than we realise.

Creating the time to listen to that voice, and doing what I could to support myself in this facet, as well as in my mind and emotions, and in my body, was incredibly powerful.
While, thankfully, most of you will not be going through a battle with cancer, taking stock of yourself in this holistic way can be a powerful tool for anyone to uncover where something is throwing them off balance.
Eating well and looking after your body is great, but are you in relationships that drain you? Or, do you find yourself getting hooked into negative gossipy behaviour, though in your heart that’s not who you are? Perhaps you’re really fearful about things that haven’t even happened? And, though you might not consider yourself religious, are you taking care not to neglect the spiritual side of yourself altogether?

I would invite you all to take an inventory across mind-body-spirit, and see if it can help you discover where you might be losing some energy.

You’re having one of those mornings. The children are taking eons to complete the simplest of tasks, your email is pinging with news of crisis upon crisis developing at work, and your first meeting of the day has been moved forward half an hour so you’re already late. As you hastily grab your bag to leave, you send a cereal box flying, and its entire contents skimming across the floor… you’re about to blow….

What do you do next?

I’d like to talk to you about what happens when life isn’t going according to plan – when things aren’t the way that you intended them to be. It might be a simple as running late, or something bigger – a piece of bad news, perhaps your plans have been badly thwarted, or the rug has been pulled from under you. What happens then?

I’m not necessarily thinking about what you’re doing, but how you’re being – who it is that you choose to be, because you truly have a choice. You can choose to say ‘ok this has happened, it’s not what I would have chosen, but I’m going to be courageous, I’m going to be calm, dignified, and I’m going to focus on finding a solution.’

Make your choice

We need to make a conscious choice at times of strife because otherwise we risk flipping back into what I call trigger behaviours and habits – under which, of course, sit certain beliefs. Those beliefs might be something like ‘this always happens to me’, or ‘it’s not fair’, or perhaps ‘I don’t deserve this’. You could end up feeling like a victim; feeling angry, bitter and resentful.

That’s not to say you should deny these feelings – if they are coming up they are important and need to be examined rather than repressed, but you do have a choice in how you view a situation and in who you want to be.

What I can tell you from past experience is that choosing the victim route is no way to happiness.
So next time the cereal hits the floor, so to speak, will you rage, or go with it? Curse it, or calmly crunch your way through? Remember, you have a choice… so who do you want to be?

“Poor Laura Linda Tucker! Almost nothing was the way she wanted it to be.”

So goes the opening lines of Next Door to Laura Linda – a 1960s children’s book about a girl who is dissatisfied with her life, from the colour of her house, to the sex of her sibling.

 

Without wishing to spoil the ending, she figures out that not everything has to be just as she thinks she wants it to be in order for her to be happy. For a while though, Laura Linda is stuck in the ‘suffering gap’ – that is the space you can sometimes occupy between how things are in reality and how you would like them to be. While few of us will waste much time wishing our eyes were a different colour like the character in this children’s story, we can all get pulled into the trap of wanting things to be a certain way; wanting things to look a certain way, and wanting others to show up in a certain way.

Mind the gap

But what happens if you spend too much time in the suffering gap. What happens to your energy? What happens to your levels of motivation? What happens when you’re trying to change others so that they show-up in the way you’d like them to? As much as we’d sometimes like to, fundamentally we cannot change the behaviours of others. We can influence them, of course. We can tell them that a certain behaviour is unacceptable, for example if it oversteps our boundaries, or we can walk away – but we cannot change them. What we can do is change how we respond, and we can take a look at ourselves. It’s worth finding a moment to think about where are you expending huge amounts of time and energy trying to mould and change someone else because they don’t reflect how you would like them to be? Consider what it is about that person that is pressing your buttons? What is it that they are doing that you find unacceptable? If it is simply a case of unacceptable behaviours, do you need to remove yourself from the scenario? Perhaps you’re that person’s boss and you need to have a very honest conversation with them about the impact they’re having? Or are your buttons being pressed because someone is needling something within you that you haven’t addressed?

Lighting up the shadow work

Sometimes, when there are things about ourselves we don’t want to look at, we can project them outwards – so seeing them reflected in another person rattles us; there is an emotional charge to it.
Taking a deeper look at what’s upsetting us can help us uncover what we may have disowned, pushed down or disregarded. We call it ‘the shadow work’, and this ‘shadow’ stuff will show up at different times in our lives, through different scenarios and situations, and crucially through other people.
So, perhaps it’s time to shine a light on your ‘suffering gap’, and examine what’s really