Leaders - As Agents of Consciousness? (1)

The Absence of Conscious Leadership

In today’s world, we hear a lot about leaving behind the command-and-control leadership model. It’s a common refrain in leadership circles: “We are evolving, we are becoming more conscious”.

Yet, recent global events - including government and corporate mandates during the C-19 restrictions and the current international silence in the face of our humanitarian crises - show us that command and control are very much alive.

Today, we explore how each of us can become Agents of Consciousness, acting as a collective force to heal our leadership stagnation.

But what does it mean to lead with consciousness?? And more importantly, how do we define "consciousness" in a leadership context?

To answer this, we must first understand what consciousness truly entails and the essential qualities needed to transcend the limited frameworks being passed down through generations - Frameworks that keep us stuck in a cycle of repetition rather than genuine evolution.

Defining Consciousness Consciousness, in its purest form, refers to a heightened awareness of self, others, and the interconnected nature of reality. In the context of leadership, it means leading with intention, attention, emotional clarity, and a deep awareness of the consequences of one’s actions on both immediate and larger scales.

Conscious leaders make decisions with absolute consideration for the well-being of individuals, communities, and beyond, not just for short-term gain or control. Of course, some leaders will already aspire to and embody some of this, yet many remain unaware, fake or play into it.

Why would we fake such a thing?? Then becomes a critical question.

The answer comes from what is probably, the most essential action inherent within consciousness.

The ability to not collapse into and act out of fear - As a politician, a senior leader or a team manager. Is it safer for me to pretend I am fully dedicated to self-awareness, Selflessness and emotional transparency or admit I need to grow in these?

It’s why politicians can spend so much time and money protecting and projecting a positive self-image. The fear - of being found out - running this part of the leadership show.

I find it’s always interesting inviting leaders to talk about their inner fears. Mostly the initial response is to talk about perceived threats to the marketplace, innovation uptake, the pace of technology and the rate of change, but hardly about themselves.

This kind of unconscious avoidance comes from many things and is a sign of our difficulties and emotional dysfunction as a species. Considering the years we’ve been on the planet, I still find it amazing that I often have to start at step one beginning with a basic list of different kinds/descriptions of feelings and emotions. Just naming them is a common challenge!

Caught in a dysfunctional relationship to fear is not just a leadership game. It’s ours too. We are all in the same game. How do we know that?

Because we continue to remain fearful about calling out the fear we witness and experience in our leaders. We feel we can’t call it out - how can we - if we aren’t doing our inner work on the same difficulties.? That’s why I am calling it out, not because I am some kind of healed emotional Guru but because I am open and active in doing the inner work.

Once we recognise when and where we tend to be triggered and react out of fear, we are given the next small but crucial challenge: to choose not to act from that fear.

Here are a few examples of how fear often drives leadership actions in everyday workplace environments:

1. Over-Controlling. Leaders who fear losing control or believe that things will go wrong unless they oversee every detail. On the surface, this can stem from a fear of being seen as ineffective or failing to meet targets but can also reflect their own self-doubt or imposter syndrome that stifles creativity and trust.
2. Avoiding Difficult Conversations Many leaders shy away from giving constructive feedback or addressing performance issues because they fear confrontation or damaging relationships. This avoidance can lead to long-term problems festering within teams and ultimately hurt productivity.
3. Making Decisions Based on Short-Term Results In environments where leaders are pressured to deliver immediate results, fear of not meeting targets can lead them to make short-sighted decisions. This could include cutting corners, ignoring long-term strategy, or pushing employees to the brink of burnout to hit short-term goals.
4. Fear Suppression Via Asserting Authority Leaders who feel insecure about their worth, position or authority may compensate by making unnecessarily rigid or authoritarian decisions. This fear of losing respect or control can create a toxic work environment where team members feel undervalued and disengaged.
5. Resisting Change When leaders fear the unknown or losing their status quo, they often resist change - even when it's necessary for growth. This fear-based leadership stifles innovation and keeps teams stuck in outdated ways of working, ultimately holding everyone back from evolving.

In reality, fear is not a single emotional entity, as it is surrounded by other feelings and emotions as indicated in the above examples. Including vulnerability, low self-worth, panic, anxiety, anger and helplessness. Fear is such a pervasive, often unconscious force that to truly see it and its day-to-day impact, we have to bring a tremendous light to it, to loosen its grip.

‘The light of consciousness’ can sound more like a new-age phrase but that’s what we need. Walking along a dark, scary, unknown, ill-trodden path full of obstacles - we can't see and yet they are mostly ours - isn’t so scary when we have a strong torch.?

What makes a good torch, I hear you think!? Here are some of the qualities of a conscious leader that can light that path.

• Self-awareness: A deep understanding of our own unconscious patterns, hidden fears, and biases, and how these impact our decisions/behaviours
• Being Vulnerable: An essential doorway to not acting out of our unrecognised fears
• Dissolving Stuck Survival Patterns: Moving through and beyond our outdated, unconscious survival strategies. Everyone has them!
• Empathy: The ability to truly feel and understand the experiences and perspectives of others, including those we disagree with or who don’t have a voice in decision-making processes. That turns into compassion for ourselves, in facing our difficulties.
• Emotional Transparency: To feel full enough to share our emotional difficulties in real-time. Instead of blowing these away with ‘Toxic positivity’, sticking to bullshit narratives or chasing an immediate personal benefit. (More on 'Toxic Positivity' next week)
• Self-Less: When we can see beyond the armour of our own self-rejection - for example, the parts of us that make us feel inadequate - we start to understand how this feeling of "not being enough" drives our actions. From this place of insecurity, we often prioritise our own agenda, trying to prove our worth or to protect ourselves.

All of these are accessible through consciousness. But here’s the wake-up!

All these qualities are innate within the design of human consciousness. This also means consciousness is not an exam to attain, a qualification or a certificate of attendance. It doesn’t mean we can’t learn to open up and access consciousness, of course, we can, but consciousness isn’t measurable in these ways. It can only be ‘measured’ through our ongoing actions and how we embody it. Consciousness is not a final destination.

Can you sense how those last statements will create fear in many of our existing leadership circles?

It could almost, S..T the life out of any leader who needs to feel good by command, control and all the many other unconscious, dysfunctional patterns.

Every single day, we are shown doorways to act out of consciousness. That enables its qualities to automatically come through us - Even if, at first, they start as a trickle.

But of course, we have to get to step one, which is to open to the possibility these doorways even exist. (More on the doorways in next week’s article)

It’s always available but we don’t access it.

Most of the time we don’t access consciousness because we are rushing around, hardly pausing to notice the available doorways.

Consciousness is always available but we are not. Once we have an idea of what consciousness is, the next essential lesson is that consciousness is already here and is always available.

If it’s always available, then where the hell are we? Unavailable, lost in fearful thoughts and emotions.

To some, consciousness might be the complete opposite of what we’ve been taught to do as leaders. It could even propel a critic or two my way, to suggest my sharing is “gobbledegook”!

Which would be ok because consciousness coming through me would realise that’s coming from their fears!

As consciousness taught me recently, ‘One person’s freedom is another person’s fear’.

The Persistence of Command and Control

As much as we like to believe that we are moving into a new era of open leadership, the last few years have shown us that this is far from reality. COVID-19 brought command-and-control leadership to the forefront once again. Governments, corporations, and institutions responded to the crisis by mandating behaviours, influencing organisations such as Facebook (see Zukerbergs recent admissions) to control the narrative, strip away personal freedoms, and impose solutions without transparency or consultation.

Employees were often forced to choose between their livelihoods and a mandatory or coerced injection, with little to no information about the contents, long-term effects, or ethical considerations. This wasn’t leadership based on dialogue, trust, or mutual respect. It was leadership rooted in fear, coercion, and control and an absence of consciousness.

Another contemporary example is the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Despite the findings of the International Court of Justice and mounting evidence of human rights violations, many of the world’s most powerful nations - specifically the UK, USA, and EU powers - continue to provide tacit support for actions that amount to genocide.

This is command-and-control on an obscene geopolitical level, where the powerful enforce their will without regard for international law or the sanctity of human life.

Conscious leadership would never allow such atrocities to unfold. It would place human dignity above political allegiances and economic interests. Conscious leaders act not from the desire to dominate but from the desire to heal, unite, and ensure justice for all.

But remember this is not just about ‘those other leaders’, at a distance that are easy to criticise. It’s also about us. In our day-to-day roles and lives and at home.

Consciousness opens to vulnerable self-reflection

• When did we last have a workplace meeting about the qualities of consciousness and its blocks? (Not the same as discussing values, purpose or mission)
• When did we last control the narrative of another person? (In our team, with a ‘difficult’ colleague, with the kids or partner at home)
• When did we last acquiesce to a leader or family member who asserts a command and control pattern?
• When did we last question a narrative that we’ve been told can’t be questioned?
• When did we last say no while letting go of the fear of stating this?
• When did we last catch ourselves avoiding a difficult discussion?

What Does It Mean to Be an ‘Agent of Consciousness’?

At its core, it means questioning, listening to and empathically rejecting the conditioning and control that has defined our institutions and our behaviours for centuries. It means embracing the courage to lead from the heart and from a place of deep connection to all life.

In every corner of humanity and not just shrugging it off as something that, “has nothing to do with me”, or “I better keep quiet about” or “You can’t change it, so why bother”?

It’s about personally answering the questions:

1. How am I being asked to evolve as a human being??
2. What’s my gift to give in this shared evolution?

In the workplace, it starts with introductory conversations on

• The nature of consciousness as an independent force that we all have access to
• The doorways and tools that are always available for us to operate out of consciousness (More on those in the coming weeks)
• Recognising the myriad of ways in which WE stop being available to consciousness that is already and always available
• How can we stand firm in consciousness to those most fearful of surrendering to this (R)Evolution
• How can we support each other to evolve through consciousness when we get fearful, because we will.

Leadership must no longer be seen as a set of modules to complete for our MBA or other programmes. That enables us to have our slice of control but as the art of empowering all through what is already available and the consciousness we share.

This requires a shift from the outdated patterns of the mind to the heart - including the science supporting this - from fear to consciousness and from dominate to collaborate.?

This change will not come from the top down; it will be driven by those willing to step up as agents of consciousness.

See you next week as we journey into the tools we all need to live and lead conscious lives. Glenn :)

Transformational learning for leaders and Teams: www.futurevisiontraining.co.uk

Glenn as a Transformational Coach: https://glenn-bracey.com

Connected articles: Psychological Safety, Division and Inclusion (Link to the first of a 5-part series ‘The Elephant in The Room’)

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/inclusion-psychological-safety-first-elephant-room-glenn-bracey-n63nf/?trackingId=2wL38D%2BSF5I72Ip1pdFDcg%3D%3D