Basic Instinct: The One Thing Every Great Leader Knows
Brian Gast
President, Quadrant Corp - Executive Life Coach, Team Alignment and Facilitation
Know Thyself. – Inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi
The most important work leaders can do is anything that increases our awareness of our brilliance as well as our shadows. This awareness increases self-mastery and leadership capacity. Self-aware leaders have the capacity and courage to give real answers to these important questions:
“How are you feeling? Why are you doing this? What are you thinking?”
When we replay our response to any situation, we can often see that we were driven by deeper instinctual impulses than we realized or were willing to admit in the moment. When we are disconnected from our deeper motivations, we radiate an incongruence between what we say and what’s going on inside us. Unless we know ourselves, we are stuck with an inability to rise above our habitual, limited thinking and action.
We come into the world with core, survival-based, instinctual, deeply unconscious drivers of thoughts and behavior. Because these drivers are the hardest to identify and regulate, they get us into the most trouble. Self-awareness does not make these internal triggers go away, but it does help us regulate them.
An Essential Tool in Your Tool Box
According to Enneagram experts, humans are motivated by three basic instincts: the instinct to preserve our life, to connect, and to create and operate within a social structure. Remove any one of these instincts and humans would not have made it very far.
The Enneagram provides a map that helps identify which of the three instincts is a primary driver for you and how the instinct influences your thoughts, feelings, and behavior.* If you want to be more self-aware, understand the role of your primary instinct. Or to get unstuck, put just a bit more effort toward strengthening your weakest instinct and watch what happens.
* If you like this article, please Like, Share, and/or Leave a comment. You might also like my previous posthttps:// www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/how-build-healthy-conscious-relationship-money-brian-gast/