The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman & Kaley Warner Klemp
“The first mark of conscious leader is self-awareness and the ability to tell themselves the truth”
3 Main Messages:
Every leader needs to take the time to consider where they are, where they need to be and to know how to make the shift
Successful cultures are built through honesty, positivity, curiosity and play.
Great leaders focus less on what they are doing and more on how they are being.
At a leadership conference about 10 years ago, one of the delegates mentioned that they had a chaise longue in their office. The rest of us were curious. What do you do while lying down in your office? When would you have time to relax, we wondered? What do the staff think when they see you reclining there? When he said that he sometimes took a nap there, I’m ashamed to admit that the rest of us moved from curiosity to contempt. “Take a nap? I barely have time to take a ****”, said a friend who shall remain unnamed!
Grind culture has been celebrated and championed for so long now. Even today there are companies in China and the USA who boast of a 9-9-6 Culture, where staff are expected to work from 9am to 9pm for 6 days a week. Having worked in education for over 30 years, I can already tell you that this may not be the expectation, but it is often the reality in schools too.
No-one working at this pace and under this pressure is bringing the best of themselves to work. Without recreation, rest and reflection, we start to react rather than respond and bad behaviours thrive.
Dethmer, Chapman and Warner Klemp offer a solution here. It is a line. Good leaders know whether they are above or below it and know how to shift into a better mindset. The concept sounds simple and I notice, since reading this book some time ago, that the language of being above or below the line now lives in my lexicon and is increasingly a part of the professional conversations I’m having with others.
In reality, the mindset shift needed to lead consciously is enormous, challenging and sometimes deeply uncomfortable. This book, however is a great place to start.
It begins with two stories: an example of a leader operating below the line, and one operating above, the authors continually refer back to these highly recognisable styles of leadership. Each chapter explores a different aspect of conscious leadership, offers steps to take and shares questions we can ask ourselves in order to improve. Really, this book does all of the work for you in order to help you to do the actual work of shifting your mindset and behaviours to be a better leader.
The first two commitments are the most important: Taking Radical Responsibility and Learning Through Curiosity. “Awareness and acceptance are the first two steps of all transformation.” We need to internalize, integrate and master these two ways of thinking and being in order for the remaining commitments to be possible. And these two are not easy; they involve being curious rather than critical and being more interested in the context of conversations than their content. They involve being present, reflective, non-judgemental, open-minded, patient and loving. They involve change.
Fortunately, Dethmer, Chapman and Warner Klemp have been doing this work successfully for many years and are able to provide rich stories which support understanding and deep reflective questions which intentionally offer challenge and growth. Because “Conscious leaders look at life through the perspective of learning and growth”.
As I slowly read, reflected on and responded to the remaining commitments, it struck me that I have seen many of these demonstrated by some of the strong leaders I work with. Ten years ago it would have surprised me to know that there are workplaces where people ‘possip’ instead of gossip; where appreciation is generated and encouraged, where people speak candidly with each other, where feelings are recognised and employees are able to work within their zone of genius.
Each chapter in the book feels like a vital part of creating a cohesive, caring and successful work culture. Through the next steps provided, these all seem possible. The chapter on Excelling in Your Zone of Genius asks questions which help determine how to find the best role for you and allocate the right tasks to your team through delegating, dumping or doing differently. The chapter on Speaking Candidly shows how to move from withholding, withdrawing and projecting to revealing, sharing and owning.
Perhaps the chapter I found most challenging was Exploring the Opposite. We all like to believe the stories we tell and that our perspective is the correct one. When we “let go of being right and get deeply curious about how we see ourselves and the world around us” we realise that there is no ‘correct perspective’ and we are then open to new solutions. Still - I found some of the questions here clunky. Perhaps then this is wthe area where I most need to change.
Having experienced working within a team that operates around all of these 15 commitments, I can highly, highly recommend reading this book and incorporating the principles into your own behaviour and workplace.
That takes time and reflection, which means prioritising protected time for resting and thinking. Maybe we should all be investing in chaise longues? It’s certainly something to think about!
