Leadership from the Inside Out

Becoming a Leader for Life

Kevin Cashman

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781605098906
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Leadership from the Inside Out, Kevin Cashman's breakthrough business bestseller that clearly connected personal growth to leadership effectiveness, is now completely revised and updated with:
-an explosion of new validating independent research
-impressive new case studies
-new tools and practices
-an even more powerful virtual coaching experience Still framed in seven simple yet profound “mastery areas, ” this book serves as an integrated coaching experience that helps leaders understand how to harness their authentic, value-creating influence and elevate their impact as individuals, in teams, and in organizations.Cashman demonstrates that his trademark “whole-person” approach— we lead by virtue of who we are— is essential to sustained success in today's talent-starved marketplace and provides a measurable return on investment.For everyone from CEOs to emerging leaders, this long-awaited second edition advances the art and science of leadership and is even more relevant today than when it was first published.

CHAPTER ONE
PERSONAL MASTERY
Leading with Awareness and Authenticity

I once heard a poignant story about a priest who was confronted by a soldier while he was walking down a road in pre-revolutionary Russia. The soldier, aiming his rifle at the priest, commanded, “Who are you? Where are you going? Why are you going there?” Unfazed, the priest calmly replied, “How much do they pay you?” Somewhat surprised, the soldier responded, “Twenty-five kopecks a month.” The priest paused, and in a deeply thoughtful manner said, “I have a proposal for you. I’ll pay you fifty kopecks each month if you stop me here every day and challenge me to respond to those same three questions.”

How many of us have a “soldier” confronting us with life’s tough questions, pushing us to pause, to examine, and to develop ourselves more thoroughly? If “character is our fate,” as Heraclitus wrote, do we step back often enough both to question and to affirm ourselves in order to reveal our character? As we lead others and ourselves through tough times, do we draw on the inner resources of our character, or do we lose ourselves in the pressures of the situation?

BREAKING FREE OF SELF-LIMITING PATTERNS

Joe Cavanaugh, Founder and CEO of Youth Frontiers, in one of his powerful retreats on character development, tells a moving story about Peter, an elementary school student who suffered burns on 90 percent of his body. Peter’s burns were so severe that his mouth had to be propped open so it wouldn’t seal shut in the healing process. Splints separated his fingers so his hands wouldn’t become webbed. His eyes were kept open so his eyelids wouldn’t cut him off from the world permanently. Even after Peter endured one year of rehabilitation and excruciating pain, his spirit was intact. What was the first thing he did when he could walk? He helped console all the other patients by telling them that they would be all right, that they would get through it. His body may have been horribly burned, but his strength of character was whole.

Eventually, Peter had to begin junior high at a school where no one knew him. Imagine going to a new school at that age and being horribly disfigured. Imagine what the other kids would say and how they would react. On his first day in the cafeteria everyone avoided him. They looked at him with horror and whispered to one another. Kids got up and moved from tables that were close to him. One student, Laura, had the courage to approach him and to introduce herself. As they talked and ate, she looked into Peter’s eyes and sensed the person beneath the scarred surface. Reading her thoughts, Peter, in his deep, raspy, smoke-damaged voice, said, “Everyone is avoiding me because they don’t know me yet. When they come to know me, they’ll hang out with me. When they get to know the real me inside, they’ll be my friends.” Peter was right. His character was so strong that people eventually looked beyond the surface. People loved his spirit and wanted to be his friend.

Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount. —Claire Booth Luce

When I consider Peter’s situation, I’m not so sure that I would be able to come through his experiences with the same courage. But that’s the beauty of Personal Mastery. Peter was challenged to awaken his extraordinary strength and to walk down his particular path. It was his path to master, not yours, not mine. Somehow his life had prepared him to walk that path with dignity. Although usually under less dramatic conditions than Peter’s, each of us is challenged to master our own unique circumstances. Each of us is being called to lead by authentically connecting our own life experiences, values, and talents to the special circumstances we face. Our ability to rise to the challenge depends on our understanding of our gifts, as well as how prepared we are to take the journey with grace and contribution.

INTEGRATING ALL OF LIFE’S EXPERIENCES INTO
A MEANINGFUL CONTEXT

Personal Mastery is not a simplistic process of merely affirming our strengths while ignoring our weaknesses. It is, as Carl Jung would explain it, “growth toward wholeness.” It is about acknowledging our talents and strengths while facing our underdeveloped, hidden, or shadow sides of ourselves. It is about honestly facing and reconciling all facets of self. Personal Mastery involves appreciating the rich mixture of our life experiences and how they dynamically form our unique existence. Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline, wrote, “People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas, and they are deeply self-confident. Paradoxical? Only for those who do not see the journey is the reward.”

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men, true nobility is being superior to your former self. —Lao Tzu

Research by Lominger International, a Korn/Ferry Company, indicates that defensiveness, arrogance, overdependence on a single skill, key skill deficiencies, lack of composure, and unwillingness to adapt to differences are among the “top ten career stallers and stoppers.” A research study by Kenneth Brousseau, CEO of Decision Dynamics, Gary Hourihan, Chairman of Korn/Ferry’s consulting division, and others, published in the February 2006 edition of the Harvard Business Review, connects the significance of personal growth—an evolving decision-making and leadership style—to leadership and career advancement. This global research, with its extraordinarily high degree of statistical credibility, which used the Styleviewt^sm Decision Styles assessment tool on 180,000 individuals in five levels of management from entry level to the top, shows that if people don’t develop, they do not advance.

DEEPENING AUTHENTICITY FOR
SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP

Of all the principles supporting sustainable leadership, authenticity may be the most important. It also can be the most challenging. Most people never realize that it’s an area of their lives that needs attention. In almost three decades of interacting with thousands of leaders, I’ve yet to meet an executive for coaching who comes to me lamenting, “I’m having real trouble being authentic.” If authenticity is so important, why don’t we recognize it as an issue? The answer is both simple and profound: We are always authentic to our present state of development. We all behave in perfect alignment with our current level of emotional, psychological, and spiritual evolution. All our actions and relationships, as well as the quality and power of our leadership, accurately express the person we have become. Therefore, we conclude that we are “authentic,” because we are doing the best we can with the information and experience that we have at this time.

There is a big hitch, however. While we are true and authentic to our current state of development, we are inauthentic to our potential state of development. As Shakespeare wrote so eloquently in Hamlet, “We know what we are, but not what we may be.” As humans and as leaders, we have an infinite ability to grow, to be and to become more. Our horizons are unlimited. If there is an end-point to growing in authenticity, I certainly have not seen it. In The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, Daniel J. Siegel explains that the mind is shaped continually throughout life by the connection between the neurophysiological processes of the brain and interpersonal relationships. “When we examine what is known about how the mind develops, we can gain important insights into the ways in which people can continue to grow throughout life.” He goes on to say, “We can use an understanding of the impact of experience on the mind to deepen our grasp of how the past continues to shape present experience and influence future actions.”

Dig inside. Inside is the fountain of good and it will forever flow if you will forever dig. —Marcus Aurelius

To deepen authenticity, to nourish leadership from the inside-out, takes time and attention. In today’s world, the amount of distraction and busyness we all experience keeps us from undertaking the inward journey and engaging in the quiet reflection required to become more authentic human beings. By middle life, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves. John Gardener writes:

Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves. We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world within.

To penetrate the commotion and distraction of our lives, to explore the depths of ourselves is the prerequisite for self-awareness and authenticity. So what is authenticity? Based on our experience coaching leaders over the years, we define authenticity as the continual process of building self-awareness of our whole person—strengths and limitations. As a result of this awareness, more often than not, the authentic person’s beliefs, values, principles, and behavior tend to line up. Commonly referred to as “walking the talk,” authenticity also means being your talk at a very deep level.

Another prominent feature of highly authentic individuals is openness. Whether they come to authenticity naturally or work hard to attain it, the most real, genuine, sincere people tend to be open to both their capabilities and their vulnerabilities. They have an inner openness with themselves about their strengths as well as their limitations. They know who they are and don’t apologize for their capabilities. They also have an outer openness with others about their whole selves. They try neither to cover up their weaknesses nor to “hide their light under a bushel.” They have managed to avoid the pitfall that Malcolm Forbes elucidates, “Too many people over-value what they are not and under-value what they are.” Self-compassion, being open and receptive to our vulnerabilities, is an important aspect of authenticity. By acknowledging our own vulnerabilities and appreciating our whole selves, we can truly be compassionate to others. As David Whyte, poet and author of The Heart Aroused, has written, “We need to learn to love that part of ourselves that limps.”

In Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t, Jim Collins’ research points out the interesting duality in “Level 5 Leaders,” who were both modest and willful, humble and fearless, vulnerable and strong, interpersonally connected and focused—in short, leaders we would say “had grown toward wholeness” and authenticity. Their “compelling modesty,” as Collins puts it, their authenticity as we would term it, draws people to come together to achieve.

Authentic people—people on the path to personal mastery—value all of who they are. A dual awareness of their own strengths and vulnerabilities allows authentic leaders to focus on the tea...