Becoming a Conscious Leader

When it comes to leadership, there are many tasks you have to stay on top of in order to help your business succeed, from continuously building and developing your team to fine-tuning your sales processes. But while these are undeniably important, there’s a more personal area that’s just as essential to give attention to: your leadership style. After all, how you lead can have a huge impact on your company’s culture and employee retention, which can ultimately influence your bottom line.

That’s where the concept of conscious leadership comes into play. It transcends the pursuit of mere metrics, placing greater emphasis on becoming an authentic and self-aware leader. By adopting this mindset, you can develop into someone who more employees want to rally behind and more businesses want to work with, enabling you to take your company to new and incredible heights.

What is conscious leadership?

First outlined in the 2014 book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, this approach has since gained traction as a valuable means of becoming a more effective leader. Kelly L. Campbell, a conscious leadership coach, writes that “conscious leadership refers to guiding others with full awareness of the self and cultivating growth in organizations by supporting the people in them.” This means that conscious leaders delve deeper than simply achieving objectives. They focus on creating a “we” centered work culture rather than a “me” centered one, fostering an environment of trust and innovation that empowers their employees to thrive while under their supervision.

Given that this strategy is all about leading with a comprehensive understanding of yourself and your guiding principles, it requires a unique blend of traits:

• Self-awareness: Conscious leaders possess a keen awareness of their strengths, limitations, and inherent biases. Such self-knowledge allows them to navigate situations with greater objectivity and emotional intelligence.
• Authenticity: Conscious leaders shed the mask of pretense and lead with genuine transparency and integrity, creating a foundation of trust within their teams, fostering open communication, and encouraging greater collaboration.
• Empathy: Conscious leaders have the ability to connect with their team members on a deeper level and understand their perspectives. They actively listen to, acknowledge, and address any concerns, striving to create a space conducive to open dialogue.
• Purpose: Conscious leaders have a firm grasp of the organization’s vision and mission and can clearly communicate both to their employees, which promotes a shared sense of meaning. Such a purpose-driven environment can lead to greater engagement, with individuals feeling that their work contributes to a greater good.

Embracing conscious leadership

Conscious leadership isn’t something that can be achieved overnight; rather, it’s a continuous voyage of self-discovery and development taken step-by-step. The first one involves becoming comfortable with the reflection necessary to grow and improve as both an individual and a leader. You must take the time to regularly assess how you’re directing your team and the impact your leadership has on them. Consider engaging in mindfulness techniques like journaling or meditation and gathering feedback from fellow managers, your employees, or even peers in your industry, which may yield valuable insights you can then use to improve. By enhancing your self-awareness and emotional intelligence, you can adjust your behaviors as needed and respond more thoughtfully to challenging situations.

It’s worth noting that with this level of assessment, you may naturally become more open and vulnerable in the workplace, but that vulnerability can be an asset. Sharing your own struggles and imperfections is often a powerful way to connect with people since they typically relate better to true authenticity. And through these deeper connections, you can gain more opportunities to empower those within your organization.

So instead of keeping yourself separate from your team, observe, listen, and engage with your employees to learn more about their goals and abilities and help them get to know and trust you in return. Then take measures to continually help nurture their strengths and support their growth, such as by providing professional-development training. After all, their individual successes will only help your business.

Another crucial step to developing conscious leadership is cultivating your purpose. It’s not enough to simply know your organization’s mission and vision—you need to internalize them and live them out through your actions. Only then can you help each team member see how their role contributes to the bigger picture, giving them something to continually work toward. This commitment to your purpose will also inform the future decisions you may have to make for your organization, which can better ensure that they’re aligned with its central tenets.

Ultimately, conscious leadership is a philosophy style that places the good of the whole above the good of oneself. These leaders recognize when something isn’t working and put in the effort to change so they can build a more positive and productive work environment for everyone. In this way, they don’t just lead people—they inspire and leave a lasting impact that extends far beyond the walls of their organizations.

TAKE ACTION:
Examine your current leadership style, and determine what steps you can take to become a more conscious and authentic leader.