After many years, Alan E. Shelton discovered that it doesn't matter whether you are seeking awakening, or authentic leadership, or union with God, or peak performance. In order to lead authentically, perform at the very peak, expand awareness, or enter into union with the whole, the bondage of ego-definition must be dissolved.
Leadership Development is Self-Development
For corporate leadership to be true leadership, it must result in--and derive from--the felt experience of the leader himself. This requires that the tools and devices for personal clarity track side-by-side with those of leadership development. A leader with a clear vision of himself extends this capacity to see to all who follow him.
The personal journey, inseparable from the leader's quest, makes awakening the lifework of those who pursue either goal. When we as leaders are in the awaken state, we find ourselves being lived perfectly in the realm where we belong. Only this can be properly called Awakened Leadership.
Simply put, the term "awakening" is a placeholder for the arising of the internal, felt sense that your actions seamlessly reside in who you really are and move in a perfect flow. Moments of direct insight into your own experience provide some sweet relief from the limitations of meanings derived from cognitive thought, but you are not meant to rest there for long either. The function of understanding and insight is to point you to the next stop, which is beyond either of these: the actual experience of awakening. Awakening is the experience to which all of these concepts simply point.
The first step in any personal process is to find our blind spots--that is, our conditioning as they developed in childhood in response to our early environment. These are held in the unconscious, ready to spring forth whenever a triggering situation arises. The energy that could be directed toward more adaptive and creative behaviors remains stuck in our repetitive defensive patterns, and the behaviors that result from our reactive tendencies block the positive outcomes that we desire. So the first objective on the path called transformation is to build the bridge out of reactive responses and into the realm of creative activity.
In personal coaching, the use of one or more self-assessments are designed to highlight reactive tendencies and serve as an entryway into an intuitive discovery process. The candidate answers an in-depth series of queries relating to his behavior. The self-assessment reflects the recognition that reactive tendencies, which are obstacles to maturity, lie beneath the conscious mind. It is this maturity that must be developed in order for a leader to reach his awakened potential.
The review of the personal assessment(s) report with the coach is meant to evoke from the person being coached the experiential responses that remain largely controlled or completely hidden during the course of their interactions with others in the workplace. Even though most people cannot see their reactive behaviors coming, we can count on the fact that, given the proper trigger, those behaviors will always arise in the debriefing portion of the process. These reactive responses point right to where the coaching process needs to start in order to make a real difference in the person's relationships and performance.
Rather than acting as another participant or object in the drama, the coach becomes the doorway to the creative space simply by being at one with the field of unity that is present in every meeting between the coach and the person-being-coached. It is through holding space that a coach helps the seeker to find his or her own hidden reactive tendencies.
A critical step toward this type of breakthrough is the transition in acceptance. It is in accepting the truth of what is that we expand, allowing reactive traits to shift and move into the creative arena. And this natural expansion will flow into an awareness of other reactive characteristics, which can then be transformed as well. The outcome--not just for the coaching process but in any area of leadership--is fast becoming a recognizable destination.
Source: Alan E. Shelton: Awakened Leadership: Beyond Self-Mastery