At the beating heart of leadership is vulnerability. When things go pear-shaped, the world turns out not to be how we thought it would be, or things turn out how we never dreamed they would that’s when we need to find the courage to show up with an open heart.
Just showing up is not enough. Being present, able to listen, able to connect on a humane level, that is what takes courage because it is so easy to show up as closed, hard and unreachable.
This is as true if you are a mother, sister, brother, father. President, Prime Minister, doctor lawyer, retail assistant or none of these things.
Sometimes, just being you in the world requires courage.
This is the learning that I am putting into practice as I travel through my first reading of Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. I recommend it highly for those who wish to learn how to be truly resilient. Resilience is not about bending yourself into the shape of whatever comes around, good or bad, in order to survive. It is about having the courage to live into your values, with compassion, consistency, and humanity whatever comes around.
This theme was chosen for the final workshop in the team coaching assignment I have completed recently, and it guides me in my life coaching too.
Emotional responses to challenge and change can bend you out of shape. In the case of the team I have been working with, they are striving to reshape themselves in relation to each other and the emerging demands of change after a visit from Ofsted. Replace Ofsted with any external event over which you feel you have little control and you too can empathise with this struggle.
How to do you follow your own moral compass when there is pressure around to comply with an external agenda? How to do this and not be driven into leading from fear? How do you learn to lean into vulnerability as your source of strength? These and many other related questions will be reflected on in this series of blogs.
What bends you out of shape? What are your strategies for remaining in line with your moral compass? Please share, follow the conversation on social media.
