It’s Time for Conscious Leaders to Question and Listen Deeply

Questioning everything helps us begin a journey of a lifetime as it opens us up to what is possible. Do you know what your greatest opportunities are as an individual or as an organization?

When you allow yourself to create what is needed most, you gravitate towards environments and a way of living (and working) that encourages experimentation and play. Isn’t that what having meaning and purpose is all about?

Have you given yourself permission to play? Do you get up every morning excited about what’s possible and your part in creating it?

The irony is that most of us don’t really know what we truly need and spend much energy on what we believe others need or what will increase our bottom line or keep us sustainable. Have we simply been taught to give our attention to what others expect or want and ignore the whispers of our own hearts?

Imagine if right now, you can have a healthcare or government system or a work environment that truly supports your needs, would it be the same as what exists today?

The beauty is that you don’t have to live in the past and try to fix or save broken systems that no longer serve you. You have an opportunity to create a healthier version of yourself and your organization. But it takes work and a capacity to end and begin. You don’t have to drag the past with you.

That’s what was so magical when I joined Cisco in the late 90s — the focus was on creating the impossible by coloring outside the lines of conformity because we could. People thought I was crazy but we created a daily portal in IT and the first online community when the technology was yet to be readily available. By focusing on our greatest opportunities, we had a vision of a system that would serve the organization’s needs. The technology was simply the enabler that was integrated in how we needed to work as business partners.

Making Conscious Choices is Personal

You can control the volume on the amount of negative or positive energy you bring into your life. It is one of the biggest opportunities you are facing right now: to choose to become aware of what’s possible or stay mired in never-ending problems that require fixes. And it’s equally available to each of us when we adopt a heart-set of an opportunity-creator, instead of a problem-solver.

The world will not be changed by fighting against the current systems but by creating the vision of what could be and remembering to trust ourselves as powerful creators. 

When something is forgiven in the past, it ripples through the present and into the future. Forgiveness is about learning how to let go and move on and is it not time to focus on what’s possible?

Leadership is Not Outside Ourselves

There are so many opportunities to transform our existing systems and operating models right now — some need to die and some need to be birthed. Anäis Nin reminds us that “life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

The magic happens when instead of focusing on transactions and the mechanics of running a business, for example, we invest our energy on human dynamics, which are at the core: trust, relationships and community. The foundational element of a business, which often gets missed, is the need to have lasting human-to-human relationships. With experience and holistic approaches, we can learn to navigate the fragile threads that bind us to each other.

Being a leader means recognizing that everything you do has an impact on the people around you. Conscious leader have high self-awareness and are in tune with feelings, thoughts, and actions. There is alignment between words and actions. Are you guided to serve with compassion, and care about the impact you create by truly engaging and driving your life’s mission? Are you leading from your heart in harmony (actions) with your mind (words)?

What’s Your Greatest Opportunity?

Each of us is standing at the intersection of the present moment and future possibilities. Trekking into the unknown is a message of hope. When we worry about what’s going on in the world and fear for our future, we can find solace in the natural world where so much is invisible to us.

Why wait for someday—treading water until the perfect time arrives—to blaze the trails and explore opportunities?