“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it’s also that difficult.” Warren Bennis as quoted in Your Body is Your Brain

Let’s Read

Our local chapter of the International Coach Federation (ICF-SC) has chosen to read a book together this summer. A book list was collected and a virtual vote decided we would read Your Body is Your Brain by Amanda Blake. A book that has been on my “To Read” list jumped to the head of the line. I couldn’t get my hands on the paper copy fast enough. ICF-SC had its first in-person training in the spring with Miranda Holder focusing on Somatics in Coaching. (“Somatics is a field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience.” From Wikipedia). This book promises to be an excellent follow-up to that training. 

I’m only half way through this book. Already Blake has introduced and explained how much more fully we can experience our world when we include the many levels of our body sensing. As a person who most often will push through discomfort and pain (see the story of when I walked on a broken leg for 10 months), the concept of my body holding valuable information that I can be tuning into is a groundbreaking shift. I am being moved from a ‘my body gets in my way’ and ‘my body just houses all the important parts of me’ mindsets to one of being in partnership with her in a listening and trusting relationship. 

Let’s Lead

What does this have to do with the leadership? 

The Bennis quote included at the beginning of this book strikes at two falsehoods that I have held about leadership (and I think others might as well). When we hear ‘leader’ we automatically think about who is following. There is always a group, a gathering, a pool, a collective. In this paradigm, leadership is only externally focused. Leadership answers the question ‘how much power or clout do you have?’

The second falsehood about leadership is that leadership is a solo position. Being a leader puts a person at the tip of the organization chart or on an untouchable and lonely pillar. This is a great model of leadership for people who want a mascot, but it will lead to death of an organization and fossilization of leaders. This leadership falsehood either believes in their own echo-chamber that they are creating and is slowly dying as their resources (personal and organizational) are depleted. 

When the definition of leadership shifts to include becoming fully yourself, you know what your strengths and deficits are. You are able to rejoice that you need others and celebrate their brilliance. Leaders learn and lead together. When leadership means finding satisfaction and joy in what you bring to the table you are able to elevate other voices and create a continuous stream that feeds you – and others. When you are able to lead from a place of knowing yourself, you aren’t twisted and turned by the multiple voices and opinions around you, rather you are able to notice them, evaluate them, and decide whether they should alter your path or be left to their own path. 

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Let’s Grow

“I view leadership as a process of connecting to what matters, envisioning what could be, and taking actions to bring that vision to life. When you care about something enough to ask others to care about it with you and you effectively collaborate with others to co-create a new future, then you are leading.” Amanda Blake

Remember when you were little and learned to draw your first tree? It most likely included a trunk and a cloud-like structure to represent the leaves. At some point over the years, you become aware of the branches and roots. Recently I’ve become enamored by the hidden social and biological world that surrounds a simple tree. Moving toward an embodied awareness in leadership is like an ever expanding appreciation of the tree. Continuing to press into our somatic awareness will lead to even stronger experience in leadership.