In this article, we will discuss in detail the concept of conscious leadership and the conscious leadership 15 commitments as defined by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Waner Klemp.
Conscious leadership
Conscious leadership is an important technique where the leaders possess a radical responsibility to be self-aware. They instil a culture of working as a group and not an individual or “me” concept.
What is conscious leadership?
Conscious leadership is about practising being aware of oneself and how to behave in the external world. It’s about realizing our internal beliefs, core values, assumptions, and principles and our perception of the outside world. This helps to define one’s personal identity and interact with the team in creating a working environment of empathy, cooperation, and collaboration.
The leaders need to constantly interact with the various external forces like risks, challenges, varying emotional behavioural characteristics of people, changing technological and domain trends. The conscious people or leaders need to understand the impact of all on the organization and drive the people to mitigate problems or issues jointly.
Also read: John Maxwell’s 21 leadership laws explained with examples
Consciousness leadership and its benefits in organizations
Consciousness leadership is to realize yourself, your inner leadership qualities and to be self-aware. It is about creating and managing an environment of trust, confidence, and belief among the team members in an organization. The key benefits of conscious leadership are:
- Understanding the mission and vision of the company and translating the same to the team for pursuing the values
- Bring about a good working relationship between the leaders and the team
- Opportunity to nurture the talent of the team and bring in harmony for better productivity
- The motivational and inspirational level of the employees’ increase resulting in a lower attrition rate
- A marked difference in company growth is visible through conscientious leadership as employees tend to be driven by the leader in pursuing the deadline and objectives proactively
- Increase in job satisfaction since the employees are empowered to take decisions and assume responsibilities to accomplish the work
15 Commitments of conscious leadership
We will now discuss the 15 commitments of conscious leadership as defined in the book. The book states that a leader is either below the line or above the line. When leaders are above the line, they are dedicated, committed, curious, and eager to learn. And when leaders are below the line, they are inside a cocoon, defensive, and seldom open up to the team. In conscious leadership, the leader needs to self-evaluate and find out at which position of the line he or she is in.
1. Responsibility
Above the line, the leader is committed to assuming complete responsibility for the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing of oneself and supporting others too. Below the line, the leader is bound to blame oneself and others for whatever wrong is going around. So the focus towards responsibility determines the commitment level of the leaders and whether they consider themselves as the hero or the villain.
2. Curiosity
Above the line, the conscious control is to flourish in self-awareness. The interaction with peers and supervisors or any external stakeholders is considered as an opportunity to learn and gain knowledge. Hence a gradual progression towards learning. Below the line, conscious leadership groups tend to be defensive while trying to establish something right.
3. Feelings
As part of the 15 commitments of conscious leadership, the feelings of a leader determine the traits of conscious leadership. Above the line, the leader allows the feelings to flow through and do not stop or bar it from being spread across. Whereas below the line, leaders tend to be apologetic for the feelings expressed and tend to avoid and withhold them.
4. Candor
One of the 15 commitments of conscious leadership is candor. Above the line, conscious coaching says to be committed to what the leaders believe in or think is true. Others can express their desire to be with the leaders and support them. Below the line, the commitment is to be a non-listener, withholding facts and trying to manipulate results.
Also read: Leadership philosophy: 8 philosophies of great leaders [with templates]
5. Gossip
Above the line, the leaders are committed to interacting directly with the employees to discuss a problem or issue. They focus on creating an environment where the employees can directly talk and express their situations to the leaders. Below the line, the leaders do not focus on what people want to say and seldom listen to their concerns and issues for resolution.
6. Integrity
Integrity is one of the value commitments of conscious leadership. Above the line, the leaders are committed to being empathetic. They practice the art of integrity and acknowledge the authentic feelings of employees. Below the line, leaders withhold the truth and ignore the feelings and empathy of the employees. They don’t tend to assume full end-to-end responsibility of a program in an organization.
7. Appreciation
As part of the commitments of conscious leadership, appreciation occupies a significant value. Above the line, the conscious leadership group tends to be open to accepting appreciation from the company or other external stakeholders. Also, they are open to reciprocating the same as a gesture of showering appreciation. Below the line, the leaders tend to claim which is theirs and do not appreciate being not granting proper value to the work done by them.
8. Genius
In this commitment of conscious leadership, the focus of leaders is on understanding or realizing the potential and applying the same to either influence others. Above the line, the leaders are bound to influence and inspire others for showcasing their creativity. Below the line, the leaders are not committed to realizing their full potential and are more into being incompetent.
Also read: 5 levels of leadership by John Maxwell
9. Play and Rest
Above the line for this type of commitment, the leaders maximize the energy for completing the activities with ease and introducing improvisations as and when needed. Below the line, the leaders consider completing the work following traditional methods and consider improvisations or breaks as distractions. For them, only hard work and struggle can lead to success and not rest or breaks from work.
10. Opposite of my story
As part of this commitment and above the line, the leaders believe in hearing out the opposite side of the story and try to interpret the world around them. They try to weave in the stories of others in their stories to bring out a positive dimension to it. On the other hand, below the line, the leaders believe that their stories only portray the truth and they derive the positive meaning out of their lives only.
11. Approval
One of the interesting commitments of conscious leadership. Above the line, the leaders believe in themselves as the source of security, control, and approval. Whereas below the line, the leaders are committed to believing that security, control, and approval come from the outside world.
12. Enough
Above the line, the leaders are happy and conscious of everything that they possess which includes time, space, money, energy, resources, etc. And for below the line, the leaders are always sceptical about the scarcity of things around and always try to preserve for themselves.
13. Allies
In this commitment for conscious leadership, for above the line, the leaders consider the people and the circumstances around as allies. They learn from them and utilize them for their growth and achievement. Below the line, the leaders are committed to considering people and circumstances as obstacles in achieving what they want.
14. A win for all
Above the line, the leaders are committed to creating a win-win solution for themselves, the team, the organization, and the external stakeholders. They strive to achieve the same through focused dedication and effort. Whereas below the line, the leaders are more into a win-lose solution for any problems, issues, and concerns.
Also read: Laissez faire leadership: What is laissez-faire leadership & its importance [with examples!
15. Being the resolution
The last of the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. Above the line, the leaders are bound to resolve problems by providing solutions. They possess a positive attitude in mitigating the issues and do not blame others for the problems. On the other hand, below the line, the leaders are more focused on blaming others for the problems, issues, and concerns faced.
How to become a conscious leader?
Now that we have understood the concept of conscious leadership and its benefits. Let us now focus on how to become a conscious leader. The different ways that need to be followed are:
- Practice being self-aware. Discover your strengths and weaknesses. Learn to understand your feelings and eagerness to work.
- Check the impact and influence of the people around you on your daily activities and work. You must note down their attitude, and behaviour to verify whether you are satisfied to connect with them
- Bring intention in every activity you do, be it activity, work or any other personal activity. Without a mission and vision, you tend to get deviated from the actual objective
- Meditate for sometime in the day for increasing your concentration level and to develop focused attention
- Be empathetic towards people and try to understand their issues and concerns. Do seek for mitigating the problem
- Do not assume the situation but ask questions to clarify the matter as appropriate
- Never take anything personally, but be professional in dealing with arguments
- You must be proactive in understanding what is a thought loop or looping thoughts. It’s very much needed to know how to stop thought loops.
Kuntala is a versatile writer with a focus on diverse areas around work, productivity, collaboration at work, hiring, management, HR, and training. Her background of past experience in technology and consulting helps in molding razor-sharp insights into the research and user-focused content she creates. Professionally she is an IT consultant in a sales role and also a writer of short stories and poems, travel blogger, and fashion influencer.
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