Business,
leadership, and consciousness are connected through the concept of conscious
leadership, which involves a heightened self-awareness and ethical approach to
managing a business. A conscious leader works to understand their own biases,
values, and how their actions impact others, fostering a more responsive,
authentic, and wise organizational culture. This approach is crucial for
navigating complex modern environments by focusing on holistic decision-making,
clear communication, and long-term organizational and employee well-being.
Key components of conscious leadership
Self-awareness: Conscious leaders are aware of their own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, which helps them to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively. This includes understanding personal biases and how they might affect decisions.
Authenticity and integrity: By aligning their outward actions with their inner values, conscious leaders build trust and genuine connections with their teams.
Holistic decision-making: This approach involves considering the wider impact of decisions on the entire organization, its people, and the broader context, leading to wiser and more strategic choices.
Clear communication: Conscious leaders prioritize clear, concise, and transparent communication to avoid misunderstandings and create a constructive feedback culture.
Humility and responsiveness: They are humble enough to seek feedback and acknowledge their own limitations but also assertive and responsive to the needs of the organization, rather than being driven by personal ego.
Delegation and trust: Conscious leaders are able to delegate responsibility and relinquish control by trusting their team while also maintaining the necessary structures for security and guidance.
Why it's important in today's business world
Navigating complexity: In today's fast-paced and unpredictable business environment, conscious leadership provides a framework for making sound, long-term decisions amidst uncertainty and constant change.
Fostering transformation: Conscious leaders go beyond transactional management to become catalysts for positive transformation within their organizations.
Driving growth: An awareness-based approach helps leaders to spot their own blind spots and make more inclusive decisions, which can lead to organizational growth, says The Diversity Movement.
Conscious Change Leadership
Conscious Change Leadership is a comprehensive Field of Study and Practice about human development and large systems transformation.
It contains a vast knowledge base and innovative methods for evolving human systems and performance.
Conscious Change Leadership is key to solving our social, environmental, organizational and cultural challenges.
This Approach is leadership at the highest level. It expands leaders’ abilities to take on the biggest problems we face in our organizations, communities and world.
Conscious Change Leadership is comprised of three distinct, yet fully integrated areas of development represented by the three words:
Transforming leaders and teams from the inside out.
This area of development catalyzes breakthrough performance in leaders and teams and initiates their journey of self-mastery.
Leaders become self-aware of their interiors, able to see their mindsets and beliefs in action so they can move beyond those that limit results. Their self-discovery and personal change increases their mindfulness and generates new perspectives and possibilities.
Your leaders develop the self-management skills of high performers. They become able to transform their mental, emotional and behavioral patterns. They learn to overcome personal barriers to innovation and creativity, and how to operate in the “flow” of optimal performance. This work fundamentally is about the “vertical leadership development” that expands leaders’ worldview, makes them more strategic and better able to solve complex strategic challenges.
Designing and leading organization and culture transformation successfully.
This capability teaches your leaders how to consciously design and implement complex organization and culture transformation, from start to finish.
It includes – yet goes far beyond – change management and project management to provide the strategies, roadmaps, methodologies and tools to address all the human, organizational, technical, cultural and process dynamics required in transformation.
Your leaders learn strategic roadmaps for leading transformation, specifically The Breakthrough Process and The Change Leader’s Roadmap (CLR). These powerful navigation systems are built on four decades of proven best practices. They enable leaders and change consultants alike to lead transformation like pros. Fully customizable, these guidance systems ensure leaders are attending to the right change activities in optimal ways, for any type or scale of transformation.
Leading co-creatively to unleash human potential and performance.
Leaders learn how to lead “co-creatively,” beyond the limitations of command and control.
They develop a more relational way of being, working and relating that stimulates others to contribute more of themselves and their talents. They learn to partner across hierarchical and functional boundaries to generate greater innovation.
As they develop co-creative leadership skills, they naturally promote positive cultures of accountability, collaboration and trust, where people are committed to enterprise success above personal agendas. They communicate more openly and authentically, listen deeply and speak their truth without attachment. They align people to vision and strategy and engage them in ways that instill a deep desire to contribute to the transformation required to achieve them. Co-creative leaders coach, build strong relationships and bring out the best in others.
Conscious Change Leaders deliver breakthrough results.
With larger worldviews, advanced transformation strategies and a co-creative style, Conscious Change Leaders see solutions and innovations and know how to get them implemented.
“The old leadership models increasingly no longer apply. A new type of conscious leader is emerging whose style is fit for 21st century purpose.” Jamie Pyper
There’s been a lot written on leadership in recent years. We’ve heard of visionary leaders, charismatic leaders, strategic leaders, and even servant-leaders. Less has been written about conscious leaders. Conscious Leaders lead conscious businesses.
A conscious business is a business that is able to sense internally and externally in real time. It is awake and aware, a bit like a person, not just in its “head” but also in its ability to sense emotions and act on intuitions. A conscious business is led, not only by one or more leaders but also by leadership as an inherent process. Leadership can arise in different people, at different times in a conscious business, even though there may be people designated with the more permanent role or title of “leader”. In a conscious business, leadership never becomes stuck in habits. It is flexible and emergent. Leadership is a conscious activity inasmuch as it forms itself appropriately around organisational needs.
The leader in a conscious business will tend to exhibit some identifiable behaviours that reflect the notion of being “conscious”. Here we present some of the major elements of conscious leadership that we have identified so far in working with conscious businesses largely in an European context.
Nine Characteristics of a Conscious Leaders
Conscious Leaders…
…are reflective, and invest in lifetime learning
…act as enablers not dictators
… distribute power where it is needed
… share credit
… share knowledge
… are collaborative
… are future focused
… invest in relationships with all stakeholders
… are awake and responsive to real need rather than a filter for their own ego
Conscious Business Leaders are reflective, and invested in lifetime learning
Too many businesses are almost compulsively in ‘action mode’ for too much of the time. Too many leaders tend to equate “busyness” with productive business. Yet silence is vital in so many areas of performance. The silence of a pause in a play, and the silence of resting after a long day. Silence and pausing are the essential spaces between activity. They are opportunities to pause to reflect. When we reflect on our experience we can turn that reflection in learning; we can develop wisdom from experience. That wisdom can be put to good use, but only if we take time to reflect. Reflection is an essential part of the ‘cycle of learning’. Reflection helps us to harvest wisdom from experience.
A conscious leader experiences reflection as being as essential as being active. Reflection is the means of making action more productive and effective, via the process of learning that arises: Learning from mistakes, learning from success, identifying knowledge and skills gaps, developing new insights for innovation.
Reflection is a life time process, necessary as long as we are in action. A conscious leader practices reflection and ongoing learning and embeds this as a critically importantbehaviour in the rest of the organisation.
Conscious Business Leaders act as enablers not dictators
In a conscious business it is a sign of strong leadership that the leader enables work to get done. This isn’t about ordering people but, instead, encouraging “order” around the realisation of work in action. The leader directs, not the work, but the narrative, holding the role of providing overview when needed, guidance and direction when situations rise into such complexity that a “helicopter view” is needed. The leader inspires others (literally “breathing in”) by acting on behalf of the organisation and sensing externally and internally needs to be done , then becoming the assertive and motivating mouthpiece for it The leader articulates direction through dialogue. The leader holds authority as a role not a rule. Authority is given by the organisation. Leadership is always a response to the organisational and community need. That response will often be proactive, anticipatory. Sometimes it will be reactive, arising from a direct response to urgent, real time signals.
Conscious business leaders, when needed, articulate the conscience of the organisation, encourage its conscientiousness, and raise the quality of its consciousness. A conscious leader waves the flag for the need for the business to act consciously and consistently.
Conscious Business Leaders distribute power where it’s needed
Conscious business leaders are never power-mongers. Power in organisations to the more or less bounded permission and resources to get things done. When power is linked to formal consequences and threat, people are “forced” to comply. When power is born of dialogue and freely given mandate, it becomes “empowerment”. A conscious business leader, with an often unique helicopter view, senses the power needs of the organisation ensuring resources, and mandate to act is located where and when it is needed, with whom and for how long. The culture of the business is one of respecting power to act; power is temporary and moves in different places. In a company making computer games, project leaders may become very powerful at different times. Power is given to enable work to get done, not to boost egos or allow power games. A conscious business leader removes power when it is misused.
A conscious business needs leaders who understand power as resources mandate to act in the best interests of the organisation. It is a skill and draws on negotiation, diplomacy, assertiveness and dialogue. It requires humility and sensitivity, an ability to be flexible and to hold a clear overview. Literally, with this kind of power role, comes great responsibility (Response-ability!).
Conscious Business Leaders share credit
Egoism can be what gets a dream realised. It can also atrophy and become a barrier to consciousness. Conscious Businesses do not set their employees up against each other. Motivation tends towards being intrinsic. Self-motivation is linked overtly, not to bonuses and “prizes” but to organisational need. Employees are committed citizens, freely committing to the organisation’s evolving purposes, exiting when that commitment wanes. Self-esteem arises from personal and collective victories and successes. Naming and celebrating success energises and this is recognised fairly and consistently by conscious business leaders. Conscious business leaders are “tuned into” the local challenges of individuals and teams, as well as the overall business goals. When success is realised, celebration is specific and aimed at authentic recognition and motivation. Conscious leaders do not take the credit for the hard locally based work. Credit is also shared openly so that local learning from success can take place fully and usefully.
Conscious Business Leaders share knowledge
Knowledge is a vital part of internal and external “sensing” in a conscious business. Conscious business leaders ensure that knowledge is located where and when it is needed, in the right form and with as much clarity, accessibility and accuracy as possible. Knowledge is never couched in bullshit and unnecessary acronyms. Knowledge is never “tossed over the wall” nor is there information obfuscation or overload. Knowledge sharing is focused on learning, proactivity, needed reaction and innovation. Often a conscious business leader ensures that the right “inquiry” is taking place – targeting research and the asking of questions to elicit further knowledge. Conscious business leaders foster a climate of openness to enable knowledge sharing. Staff are trained to knowledge share effectively, and the conscious business leader leads by example.
Conscious Business Leaders are collaborative
A conscious business does not respect departmental or functional boundaries that inhibit openness, learning and flexibility. Roles and job descriptions are designed to capture the needs of the moment, and are never fixed forever. A collaborative culture pervades, through skilled overlap between systems, shared access to knowledge as needed. Collaboration involves developing trusting group behaviours, internally and externally. Trust is a core value and forms part of the leadership’s strategic agenda. Conscious Business Leaders do not lock themselves away on office, are accessible and treat others as colleagues, bot subordinates, trusting that their “strategic leadership role” will be honoured and respected. When don’t mind being told what to do because they trust the role of the leader and “suspend disbelief” in favour of longer term trust. Equally, there is no collusion of niceness, and feedback is welcomed in ALL directions.
The business uses collaborative platforms (including digital platforms) that foster collaboration, seeking synergy where collaboration creates a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.
Conscious Business Leaders are future focused
Through a culture of continuous learning, the conscious business leader harvests learning from the past, clearly senses emerging business needs in the present, and then ensures a realistic and inspiring vision is created, shared, agreed, and regularly reviewed. This vision is based on a pathway into the future that the organisation is awake to and committed to. Consensus has been reach where, even if there is disagreement, all have authentically committed to the plan of action.
The future begins to reveal itself and the conscious leader articulates this, adapting to it, and ensuring the vision is never unhinged from emerging “reality”. This is always openly shared and also open to correction from real time feedback from internal and external “viewpoints”
The future is never framed in unrealistic dreams and, though the leader may offer a “vision” for the organisation, sometimes this vision will be offered by other people inside or outside the organisation. Not all conscious business leaders are personally “visionary”; some will articulate and realise the vision created by other connected to the enterprise. In all cases, the vision is drawn from a clear picture of the “future”.
Conscious Business Leaders invest in relationships with all stakeholders
A conscious business is only “conscious” in terms of the relationships that help it to sense effectively internally and externally. Conscious Business Leaders are an overview “hub” for that dialogue, ensuring that relationship nurture the quality of its consciousness as an organisation. A conscious business leader ensures that all of its stakeholders are able to give useful and often vital input into the organisation’s strategy and activities. Suppliers feel safe to be open and honest, and share in the schedules of the business, able to plan and innovative in harmonious ways. Customer feedback becomes part of the lifeblood of innovation.
The conscious business leader invests time and resources into the development of partnerships that enable learning, knowledge sharing, innovation, and the lean and effective use of resources.
Conscious Business Leaders are awake and responsive to real need rather than a filter for their own ego
Being a leader of a conscious business requires that leader to work on themselves – to remain awake and self-aware, in tandem with the organisation they lead. A conscious business leader will regularly “check in” with others, may have a mentor, and will seek out feedback on their own biases.
Conscious business leaders are humble. Their humility ensures that their own ego doesn’t become a distorting filter for truth.This humility doesn’t mean they are weak or lacking in assertiveness; quite the opposite, conscious business leaders need to be highly responsive, prepared to challenge and to keep challenging, prepared to be formal and directive if needed. But this comes from organisational, not personal need. Conscious business leaders regularly check in with their own behaviour, attitudes and ensure their personal and professional development harmonises with unfolding change in the organisations they lead.
