The leadership needed for the future of work
7 principles to make leadership at once more humane and more uplifted
Last week I gave an overview of “Inner Switch,” a wonderful new leadership book by executive coach Susan S. Freeman. This week, I take you deeper into her ideas, showing you how and why they spoke to me, and exploring how we can put them into practice to create leadership for a better future of work.
Susan brings together yogic philosophy and business leadership principles to create a portrait of how to be an enlightened leader, a practice that is deeply necessary in today’s complex, chaotic, exhausted, and messy world.
Today, burnout and disengagement are high, workplace abuse by leaders and managers is at a scary level, workplace bullying is distressingly common, and stress is making people sick in record numbers. Need I say more? (If you want to read the stats, see last week’s post).
It’s time to remake the future of work in ways that actually work. And for that we need many things — one of them, a new leadership model.
Susan’s Inner Switch offers that. The Inner Switch approach to leadership honors our human nature and our human needs, while identifying ways to completely shift our perspective on and perception of our limitations, through deep inner work.
This counterintuitive combination (honoring human nature + seeing our limitations in an unlimited way), is precisely what must be done to unlock a new paradigm of work and leadership.
Leadership: Your Growth Sandbox
One of the fundamental truths of leadership is that it will call on us to grow.
We’ll be guiding a meeting where people clearly want to claw each others eyes out, rather than have this conversation, and we’ll sit there wishing we could be off meditating on a tranquil beach somewhere. But as the leader, we can’t just go to the beach, we have to DO something about it, to guide the growlers in the room to listen to each other and reach consensus.
We have to find a way to feel for the basic beasts on each side of the table, even the ones shooting us the dirty looks, like they’re half a beat away from tearing at our throats. And then we have to be like Michele O and go high, even while they go low.
If we don’t rise to the occasion, we wreak havoc, creating toxic environments and in the long run, costing opportunity, productivity, and profit.
We snap at the idiots ruining our meeting. In frustration, our voice grows loud over their bickering, our eyes flash in irritation, and we tell one of them to pipe down and bring a stronger case next time, and tell another to consider her sources before speaking up. The rest avert their eyes, and the room quiets. The meeting convenes with tails between legs.
The folks in the room return to their work tribes, feelings hot, and vent their rage, pitting their people against the other fiefdoms around the office. Work slows as the back-channeling begins. Projects teeter on the brink of collapse as former friends shoot daggers of mistrust rather than collaborating as they once did.
To avoid this, we must shift ourselves and others in that meeting, and bring some of those beach meditation vibes right there to the board room to change things for the better.
But in being that beach-vibey leader, in being the bigger person, we have to be careful not to become toxic to ourselves. If we shove down our own feelings and then turn the session into therapy for the rest, we do all the emotional labor for our team at the expense of our own energy. We emerge exhausted. Other people may feel better, but not us.
At the next meeting we do it again, overjoyed to see consensus building, even as we return home at night too tired to cook, speak, or move. But we’ve set ambitious goals for our organization, and they seem finally within reach, so isn’t that worth it?
No. Prioritizing external goals while neglecting our own needs is a short term strategy at best, and a disaster at worst.
To find our way to sustainable leadership we have to handle our own emotions, get clear on and let go of our limiting beliefs, tap into the expansive inner peace and universal energy that is available to us all, and turn our newfound wisdom and power into deep connection and uplift for others.
Below is an overview of the 7 principles Susan lays out as she guides us to be the best leaders we can be. As a long time yogi, the Inner Switch concepts were familiar to me, yet it was a joy to see how they support leadership in practice, far from the mat.
I hope my reading of her concepts gives you new tools to balance your human limitations and needs with a sense of your own unlimited inner world.
The 7 Principles of the Inner Switch
Each principle offers a distinct mindset shift and set of practices to help you get into action.
1. Open
Susan defines opening as “embracing the beginner’s mind, which is open to the new and unknown.”
I’ve allowed myself to open on the mat at the start of many a yoga session. As I sit there, breathing into the present moment, the opening feels like a quieting of the mind and an expansion of the heart at the same time.
Opening is also the first step in what I call “a Gentle Shift.” It entails being willing to allow in new ideas and changes to create the possibility of a new future direction.
As a leader, opening often means being willing to see your goals and results in a new light.
“Working hard in an effort to control outcomes so that you can feel good about yourself and impress people is a trap.”
Achievement is no longer what an Inner Switch leader strives for in and of itself. Achievement becomes the outcome of how you show up, day in and day out.
Opening to the possibility of a totally new way of being, is like that moment in the nasty meeting where you allow for the potential of those beach meditation vibes to be here now. You might not feel it yet, but you decide that maybe, just maybe, you could.
It may not be easy to let go of the ingrained habit to work hard in an effort to control outcomes. It may be difficult to let go of identification with your overflowing workload. It may be difficult to see a different path.
But opening makes it possible to change your intention. When you are open, you will find new answers unfolding for you. You have created space for inspiration.
2. Learn
Susan defines learning as “understanding the limitations of your mind and its reliance on conditioning.”
In general, learning is an essential skill for a leader. Leaders are constantly bombarded with new challenges to tackle, and in today’s fast changing world, things frequently come up that have never come up before.
Learning about your limiting beliefs and conditionings deepens this core skill in a way that allows leaders to innovate not only their own views and beliefs, but also to leapfrog the practical solutions that they bring to the table, finding unexpected, bold, non-incremental options that weren’t visible before.
If a leader is unable to develop and grow in this deeper way, they will eventually block the growth and success of their organization and those they lead.
Learning from an Inner Switch perspective starts by getting your brain and nervous system into a state where you’re actually ready and able to learn. Turns out, when the fight or flight system is activated, the learning modules in the brain get completely shut down.
In that nasty meeting full of growling beasties, this is the moment when you actually do something to get your body back into alignment. Something like a couple of minutes of deep breathing, which is enough to shift your nervous system out of fight or flight and into rest and digest.
This matters, because in order to learn, our bodies can’t be in fear mode, which shuts off blood flow to all functions except the ones your body determines that you need in order to survive, all while it floods you with adrenaline. In other words, your limbs get all your energy so you can run or fight, while your rational mind is shut down by a big adrenaline burst and your blood has stopped prioritizing your brain, digestive system, and other organs. You become a bear, just with less lethal claws and teeth.
So to avoid going full bear-mode, breathe long, slow, and deep, tune into your body and how it is feeling, and and notice your physical and emotional sensations. Take a beat to just BE.
This lets you lead and learn from a centered state of being. You now can take a moment of self inquiry before action, to process emotions and make the shift out of fear.
In the face of a nasty meeting, or a massive mountain of work, or the launch of a terrifying new product competing with ours, how many of us have been unwilling or unable to slow down and tune in, rather than rushing ahead to tackle our challenges with brute force?
How many of us have tried to solve our problems through more effort and greater work, leaving no space or time to be here, now—the state from which you can actually see the reality of your options?
To be in the here and now requires awareness of your own energy and a willingness to care for your physical body in ways that relieve and energize your mind (due to the intrinsic connections between body and mind), so that you can bring your best energy to each situation. It requires witnessing your own reactivity in an honest, neutral way, without judgement and with full self acceptance.
It takes practice and repetition to be able to bring this skill to bear in a heated moment.
One of Susan’s clients, Trisha, was a high-achieving legal professional stuck in a life that was a “never ending to-do list that depletes me.” She relied on her strong intellect to do her work, but her mind had trapped her where she was. She was considering a career change but felt “heavy and chained,” since she felt afraid about needing to prove herself in a new field, and about the idea of leaving a lucrative job while helping family members manage health challenges.
Trisha started doing yoga, walking, and drawing. She learned the importance of accessing her energy, and the importance of feeling relaxed. She started visualizing and accessing positive images that stimulated her creativity. She said she was “learning to accept herself and observe.”
This is how we discover what triggers us, what past experiences introduce bias into our ways of perceiving now, and how we are being reactive.
Real problem solving research begins the moment we can see our truth clearly from a neutral mindset. Once Trisha was able to accept and learn about herself from a neutral place, she was able to “let go of the expectations she was ‘hooked into,’” and see something new.
3. Let Go
Susan defines letting go as “moving from stressful reactivity to stimuli toward conscious responding.”
For Trisha, this meant releasing her expectations. She quit reacting in difficult situations once she was able to sit with discomfort and let the toxicity of others pass through her without impacting her feelings or her day. She started to focus on what she could control and let go of the rest, letting other people’s stuff flow through her.
Letting go is about clearing out everything that is not the true self, so the true self can take the lead.
“Letting go requires us to release the binds that keep us tied to memories and reactive patterns born from experiencing situations similar to our present ones. These patterns live in our physical, mental, and energy bodies, so to make truly sustainable change, we need to let go on all those levels and become wiser about how we tend to be triggered.”
In letting go, a leader must turn to face the hard things and let go of what keeps those things tethered to us.
By letting go, Trisha felt freer and at peace even when the people around her had “huge storms raging.” And over the course of nine months working with Susan she developed a vision to transition to a new career outside the law. “Your premise is you lead through inner peace. That’s what I want to focus on now.” she said.
One wonderful way to practice letting go is in physical activity.
I’ve experienced letting go in yoga in the way that Susan talks about in her book. The physical aspects of yoga (the Asanas) are a practice designed to help us find our edge, then explore it, accept it, and master it.
On the mat, I have pushed my body to the edge of discomfort. As I lean hard into a reverse warrior pose, my outer side stretches hard, my back knee wobbles, and all of a sudden my mind shouts “stop you idiot, you can’t do this! Who do you think you are, the teacher?”
But when I’m willing to be mindful of my reaction and explore what’s going on, I see I’m reacting to the discomfort. Then I can wonder about it: why did I react with this critical, fearful thought? Was it a real warning, or was it just inexperience with being uncomfortable in this particular way?
While exploring my edge and the thoughts and reactions surrounding it, I simply let it be, without labeling, judging, or changing my pose. I breathe into the discomfort and find I can relax and soften. Once the emotional heat is gone, I let the feeling be what it is. Ultimately, as I relax, I am able to deepen further into the pose.
Working with our bodies and minds in this way trains us to respond to discomfort consciously in the moment, instead of reacting.
This can be done even without yoga. Anything that’s uncomfortable can be your edge, leading you to explore the discomfort, breathe through it, accept it, and master it. You simply explore your internal state, from your body to your mind, noticing what you are feeling and thinking without judgement. Explore your emotions by naming them and observing them, and allowing them to move through you. Then ask yourself what you need in that moment in order to let go.
For a leader, this mastery can change the energy in a room or even a whole organization due to how interconnected we all are.
“Organizations are unified fields of energy. They are complex systems made up of networks of people in relationships. The connections are expressed through conversations, memos, and the sharing of energy… When a leader can shift away from their conditioned way of reacting, to a conscious, in-the-now response, they will experience entirely different conversations… others will engage with them differently.”
4. Drop In
Susan defines dropping in as “experiencing the way of being that arises from neutral observation.”
Dropping in is a practice in being present. Finding our center. Connecting to our own energy. And being with it.
Susan posits that presence is what will solve the lack of employee engagement at work today, when ~70% of US workers do not consider themselves engaged. And it’s obvious that a present leader — smiling at us just as we are and asking us honest questions without judgement — can engage us much more than any number of ping pong tables, Zoom happy hours, or free snacks.
When we drop into presence, we open to higher consciousness that allows us to access a massive supply of information, creativity, and energy.
One of my favorite examples of this is from the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle. She’s sitting at her computer asking Google, “What should I do if my husband is a cheater but also an amazing dad?” Then, suddenly, she realizes she’s just asked the internet “to make the most important and personal decision of my life.” It was a rock bottom moment for her.
After clicking around through a bunch of contradictory but equally disheartening articles, she sees that there isn’t an objective answer out there. “Out there” offers nothing but “culturally constructed, artificial, ever-changing cages created to maintain institutions.”
She decides it’s time to just stop.
“StopMovingStopTalkingStopSearchingStopPanickingStopFlailing”
“If you just stop doing, you’ll start knowing,” she writes.
So after her kids went off to school the next morning, she went into her closet, sat down on a towel, closed her eyes, and did nothing but breathe. She did it again and again, day by day, until she started to drop lower during each session. Eventually she sank deep enough to find a new level inside her she’d never known existed.
“This place is underneath; low, deep, quiet, still. There are no voices there, not even my own… Since the chaos stills in this deep, I could sense something there I was not able to sense on the surface… I could sense something circulating inside me. It was a Knowing.”
This is the dropping in that lets us consciously create our future. It requires us to move through layers of consciousness and tap into our own energy in such a way that we can hear our inner wisdom.
In Inner Switch, Susan points out a connection between yogic philosophy and neuroscience that helps explain this phenomenon.
Both yogic philosophy and neuroscience attest to the fact that we have layers to our consciousness. Yoga calls them the Koshas, Sanscrit for sheaths, while neuroscience identifies them as clusters of cells in the brain which are each responsible for processing different elements of conscious.
This matters, because as we tune into each of these different elements of our knowing, we learn different things. They each are tuned into different aspects of the world, from the chaos of the external world, to what we see as ours to control, from the feelings and sensations of our biology, to the storage box of our memories, from our hopes and dreams for the future, to the quantum energy flowing inside all the atoms of all our cells.
The energy within each atom is the same energy that flows throughout the universe, and quantum physics has found that this energy is connected in ways that stretch far beyond the easily understood laws of Newtonian physics. Since neuroscientists have found parts of our brain and body designed specifically to interact at the energetic level, it’s little wonder we’re able to access new kinds of knowing at the deepest level.
Dropping in helps us access this deeper, bigger, more universal connectivity and energy.
Susan suggests that the best time of day to drop in is right after waking up, since we’re already very close to our subconscious mind, and it’s before our brain waves and circuitry have been changed by external stimuli. What we do in those moments can set the tone for the rest of the day.
The practice can be as simple as a breathing exercise, somewhere comfortable with our eyes closed. We breathe in slowly, then out slowly. Eventually we pause between inhale and exhale, holding our breath, and again between exhale and inhale. In those moments, in the pause of the cycle, we experience the effortless space between our thoughts. Focus on the spot between and slightly behind your eyebrows and just feel what you feel.
You become the observer in the space between the conscious and subconscious mind. In this space you are in the present moment, free of past or present. You are free from reactive patterns and at peace. Here you can access the higher realms of creativity, synthetic thinking, and innovation. Here you can use all human capacity to assimilate information, process or digest it, and respond.
5. Integrate
Susan defines integration as “bringing body, mind, heart, and being together to act spontaneously in balance in the present, as we become the observer.”
Integration relies on more than “rational thought.” It makes use of all our faculties. Outcomes are no longer the sole focus or the purpose, as being in connected relationship, being present, and being whole become the goal.
Integration is achieved through a practice of bringing together information from our whole being so that we can unlock our highest capacities.
To integrate, we practice letting go and dropping in, then we set an intention, focusing on the thing we desire in positive, expansive language. We tune into the tension of the body, hold it and let it build, and then consciously release it till we’re fully relaxed. Once relaxed, we can feel the universal energy within and around us, and note that we exist in a state of unity with everything. Our intention becomes infused with this energetic alignment.
One of Susans clients said, “when I’m centered and integrated, the rest of the team picks up on it. But when I turn myself inside out to be what people need, I go in all directions at the same time. In order for me to put myself out there as a leader, I have to be present to what is. It’s not about catching up—it’s about leveling up. The yogic skills you taught me help me to shift from focusing on my tactics to feeling thoughtful and inspired.”
When we’re integrated we feel grounded and relaxed, and time seems almost to expand. In reality, it’s a shift in our perception, along with a reenergized condition.
From a state of integration we can lead with intention, solve problems, and co-create in a way that achieves results, gaining intuitive, creative insights and making nonlinear breakthroughs.
6. Connect
Susan defines connecting as “tuning into your internal state of harmony before communicating with others.”
We’ve probably all experienced leaders who made a room feel warm and welcoming, who could light us up with one smile, and who certainly got our best. These were integrated leaders, skilled in connection.
If you use the tools of opening, letting go, dropping in, and integrating, you will set yourself up to connect and communicate more effectively with others.
“Connection originates in the energy of love, from which we can access our higher intelligence and creativity. Love helps us resolve internal conflicts before we interact and communicate with others. Instead of looking to others to get what we want, we begin with ourselves and the understanding that how we are being is affecting them.”
While in community with others, continue to work on your own energy. Continue to recalibrate. Continue to drop in and access the insights and energy the people around you need.
Then you can create clarity. If others are anxious, agitated, or judgmental, you can step in and model connection. You can help them let go of their fear and manage their reactivity as you explore together what is happening, what is blocking them, what they may be afraid of, what resolutions are available, and what one step they can take to move forward here and now.
“Organizations need leaders who are openhearted. Such leaders can communicate their vision, increase good energy, and open other people’s hearts as well. Co-creative teams are marked by people who are connected to themselves, so they have the capacity to collaborate and connect with others.”
Connected leaders often take steps to make sure everyone is aligned and present. For instance, they may open meetings by inviting participants to share a check-in, which might be a one or two word description of what they are feeling, or it might be something personal, or a story from their past related to the topic of the meeting — whatever will create relationship, connection, and resonance among the team.
“Connected leadership permits people to be joyful as they accomplish their goals. When all the individuals on a team are going through the sequence of steps required for effective self-connection… the team responds as a living entity… such a team has the potential to become a highly focused, remarkably self-sufficient entity over time—and one requiring little oversight. The human connections within the team are fundamental to establishing trust, collaboration, and breakthrough results.”
7. Illuminate
Susan defines illuminating as “cultivating a space where others may release their unconscious reactivity so everyone can respond powerful in the present.”
The true meaning of the Sanskrit word Guru is one who is a “remover of darkness,” and ultimately this is the goal of all leaders.
A leader’s true power comes from removing their own darkness, revealing their inner light, and using their presence to connect with the people the lead. In this process, they then help those people remove their own darkness and reveal their own inner light as well.
Another of Susan’s clients ran a business filled with the stress of high growth, a constant pressure to deliver, and reactivity. As the CEO, he was making things harder on everyone by taking a directive approach to leadership, filled with ego and reactivity in himself.
As he learned the skills of letting go and dropping in, he gained the ability to manage his own inner state and start responding consciously. Soon he found he was more compassionate and curious towards others, which began to shift how he led. He became an integrated, connecting leader, listening and recognizing others. He started asking better questions.
Finally, he, “had a eureka moment… I now have the tools to see how physical awareness leads to new mental awareness… to recognize when ‘not good’ is my own fabrication… I’m moving from reaction and judgement to compassion, wonder, and communication. I’m working hard to walk and talk with a proactive and compassionate voice. I’m delighted with others’ energy. I see it now, whereas I didn’t see it before.”
He shared these skills with all the leaders in his organization and they came to collectively act as sensitive, compassionate leaders. “Now when we have meetings, we co-create as to how to have them. We center ourselves before beginning… We choose one topic and set an intention for what we want to have at the end.”
They had learned to lead through illumination.
Soon the company was hitting ambitious annual goals, and enjoyed a significant liquidity event, all without the stress and striving of ambition based action.
Their outcomes came through inner work.
The process of illumination is thus one in which we constantly remove that which blocks our light, shifting out of ego mind’s reactions and expectations, hurtful memories, fears of the future, and other tricks of our minds.
“Many of us have big dreams we never fulfill. Although we want to have and be whatever we want, our inner power is diminished by our fears. We live in proverbial darkness, constricted by walls of insecurity. While growing up we absorb the idea that the world is not safe. Undigested emotions from traumatic events haunt our present-day lives, so we create emotional walls to protect us from further pain…
Before co-creativity can occur in any organization under our leadership, we must take down the walls that hide our inner radiance, release our inborn capacity for clarity and connection, and show our colleagues and employees a path to reveal and express their own light.”
Illumination becomes a practice in making decisions, coaching and leading from a state of harmony and resonance.
From that place we invite co-creation of solutions and growth. We can inquire how things are going, what’s working, what obstacles have come up, what options do you have, what choices did you make, and how can I support you? An Inner Switch leader will create a safe space of unconditional acceptance for this conversation.
Future of Leadership
If we want to reinvigorate work and the workplace, new leadership is a critical step in the right direction.
In a world so deeply in need of more connection, more love, and less reactivity, enlightened leadership must be the way of the future.
To start practicing Inner Switch leadership, I highly recommend reading the book.
May you all lead with inspiration and joy!
xx
-Marisol