July 13, 2009
Self-Awareness and Leadership
How We Think
During my career I have worked with thousands of individuals around the world as a corporate consultant, trainer and coach. Rather than just coach for outward accountability, I have utilized the tools of Humanistic Neuro-Linguistic Psychology (HNLP) to create change at the deep structure of my client’s personality. The concepts presented in this article blend leadership principles together with the foundational qualities of HNLP so that individuals can achieve fulfillment in their personal lives, organizations and families.
Humanistic Neuro-Linguistic Psychology is literally the owner’s manual for your mind. Humanism is a belief that each person is infinite possibility and potential. Neuro refers to the science of how our nervous system receives millions of bits of data input from the external world and deletes, distorts and generalizes that data into our awareness. Linguistics stands for the language we utilize to symbolize our thinking patterns and experiences and how our language shapes our reality. Psychology refers to how the data is received, the responses we create that influences the patterns of behavior that develop over time, eventually becoming unconscious strategies for our lives and relationships.
When we can understand how something works we can fix it, modify it or improve it. It is almost like programming an electronic device or tuning up a car. If you have an owner’s manual, or an instruction manual, you can make adjustments that will bring about the desired results. Similarly, without an owner’s manual we generally remain a little lost about how to modify ourselves and get what we desire.
As I progressed in my career and experience, I began to hold the principle that we all require leadership skills in order to function optimally. This holds true whether we are a parent, a spouse, CEO or family member. We all belong to some form of an organization and generally we all will belong to a large array of different organizational structures requiring us to participate in different roles in our personal or business systems.
When seventy-five members of the Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Advisory Council were asked what that the most essential ingredient for the development of true leadership was, the near unanimous answer was “self awareness”. (Harvard Business Review 2007) Self-awareness requires self-exploration whether we are a member of a fortune 500 company building the culture of the organization or a new mom who desires only the best influence for her child. The deeper the self-awareness obtained, the greater the leader that is born out of the quest to understand oneself.
To begin our self-exploration, we require an understanding of where we are now and what is possible for each and every one of us. We require a working knowledge of how we became who we are, what our unique personalities and individual beliefs are, and how our values, perceptions and attitudes were formed. We require a fundamental understanding of how to operate our perception of reality in order to create maximum fulfillment.
We have resting underneath our cranium the most powerful computer on the planet capable of operating millions of functions simultaneously. We utilize approximately 10% of our potential consciously with the other 90% latent at the subconscious. If 90 % of who we are rests at the subconscious level, it makes sense to discover how to effect change at the subconscious level within ourselves first. If we are to effect lasting change within ourselves, our organizations or our families we require starting at the subconscious level.
As I work with individuals and organizations throughout the world I notice that there is a recurring theme, which lies at the foundation of why consulting or coaching is sought out. An underlying river of unresolved issues stops people from creating fulfilling and functional relationships, establishing rewarding careers, and most importantly, growing in compassion and regard for themselves.
This river of unresolved impressions that halts possibility is the culmination of what each one of us has experienced in the past. It consists of what we made up about those experiences and how we continue to out-picture our beliefs and perspectives, projecting them onto our partners at home and in the office.
Childhood experiences consisting of the triumphs and tragedies of all that we have experienced while growing up are the foundational blueprint of what we have built our personality upon and what at a subconscious level guides our emotional landscape and governs our behaviors.
We were born into a specific genealogical line, the combination of both our father’s and mother’s issues colliding into one household and creating a environment which would help form the you that you became. The ecology in which we found ourselves as children was a result of a complex emotional environment handed down through the generations that culminated in the personalities of our mother and father. This combination became the laboratory where we constructed our model of our world. Some of what we made up and modeled from our parents will be the best of who we are. While some of what we model can cut at the very root of life fulfillment and our ability to achieve emotional freedom from over-responding emotional states and inflexible perceptions.
Every person I have worked with for the last twenty five years, from top level executives in billion dollar corporations to students in massage school, have at the root of their life issue these sacred wounds from their mother and father. These issues are the underlining reason that life becomes out of balance, relationships become unmanageable and self worth becomes unstable.
Life consistently desires to express itself and evolve. What we have un-healed and out of balance within ourselves manifests in the dynamics of our professional and personal relationships. As we believe so it is. How we think and what we dwell upon influences our perception of reality and defines our experience. If our perception of our co-workers strangely reminds us of our family dynamics, or if our life partners become strangely similar to that of either our mother or father (or both), then we are reacting from a subconscious level. All we know is that we feel the old fear, shame or anger again. We experience our current reality through the filters of our past cumulative experiences. If our past has unresolved emotions linked to it, if our past relationships remain unresolved and painful, we will carry more of a reactive perspective to how we deal with the dynamics of our families or the relationships in our professional organizations in which we belong.
Self-awareness obtained through the deeper understanding and exploration of how we are constructing our perceptions and attitudes is the foundation of true leadership. There are over one hundred techniques for harnessing the power of the mind for leaders contained within the science of Humanistic Neuro-Linguistic Psychology. It is the science of self and the foundation for the natural leader.
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Love & Light
Gary De Rodriguez