Mindful, authentic leadership: Joining head, heart, hands

What is authentic leadership? Some people think authenticity has to do with just “being yourself” but authentic leadership goes far beyond this. It has to do with genuinely offering the best of who you are in service to others. So it is not enough just to be “real;” you need to also be mindful and emotionally connected with others in order to be effective.  Leaders who can authentically connect with their employees can help to bring meaning and relevance to their work lives, which can translate to the bottom line as commitment and performance.

If authentic leadership is so important, where do we get off track? The head, the heart and the hands are all important ways that we experience the world. Each of us has a preference for one of these ways of knowing. However, when we focus on one or two of them to the exclusion of the others, we limit our experience of reality. And, if we become overly identified with one, we also have difficulty communicating with other people who see the world differently. Our own preferences create a separation between ourselves and our world. We need to find a pause or gap in our usual approach in order to allow the possibility for freshness and authenticity to occur.

Head people like theories, facts and figures and want to answer the question “why?” I can be one of those people. The more I know the better it gets. Facts are like brain candy for me. However, I can also get lost in them and begin to believe my thoughts are real and wonder why other people don’t share my brilliant conclusions.

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Heart people are all about emotions: their own, other people’s, even their pets’. They can walk into a business meeting — or a family gathering — and immediately sense the overall mood. Who’s happy? Who’s falling part? They can’t be happy until they know everyone else is. As a result, they may forget to listen to their own needs while taking care of everyone else’s.

Hands people mostly want to get things done — to get their bodies moving, and everybody else’s too. They are less concerned with facts and feelings. They just want to know what’s going to get done next. They can cut through a lot of red tape, but they can also make a mess if the need to “do things” gets out of control. They can sometimes ignore facts and run over other people in their hot pursuit to get something done.

Each of us tends to spend most of our time in one of those areas. You may probably also have a secondary area that you favor some of the time; and a third area where you tend to be least comfortable.

People in one group tend to have misperceptions of those in another. Head people think heart people wear their hearts on their sleeve, and hands people just aren’t listening…to the facts. Heart people see head people as cold fishes. Hands people see everyone else as just wasting time.

Clearly, there is a need to bring them together. As Saint Francis of Assisi said:

• He who works with his hands is a laborer.
  He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
  He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

So integrating all three areas — head, heart and hand — is a necessary for artistry and innovation as a leader. This is really a metaphor for whatever we create in our lives and in our workplaces that is genuine and that is authentic. And this is especially important in leadership since good leaders need to create a share a vision, build a team, and remove obstacles to getting things done. Your body, heart and mind, and your team’s body, heart and mind, contain enormous amounts of information and wisdom that are needed in order to solve whatever problem you are facing, if you can access them.

Authentic leadership has the potential to bring people together in new and innovative ways if we are willing to show up and step into this powerful space of coherence and alignment.

Susan Skjei, Ph.D., is the director of the Authentic Leadership Center at Naropa University and author of the online course Mindful at Work.  Reach her at sskjei@naropa.edu