What is the key to leadership that changes the world? There are so many books about becoming a better leader. I have read many myself. When I started my first business 18 years ago, I read everything there was about leadership. I must have read about 100 books on leadership and running a business in the first three years alone. Some were very good, but, in my mind, almost all books on leadership needed to go deeper. We need to understand what we are at the deepest possible level because only then can we know others. You must realise your true nature at the experiential level, which allows you to dissolve the illusion of separation. Any advice on leadership that does not look at this aspect will be limited in its effectiveness. We must also understand how to get to this place.

Leadership advice often describes how to treat others, what we must do and how to listen and communicate. How to act, and the way we must view things. This advice is excellent, but it has one fundamental flaw. Often, we do not FEEL we can do these things. Therefore, when we try to follow this advice, sometimes it feels contrived, artificial, and fake. There is an excellent reason for this, which is to do with what we have buried and hidden deep inside us. In other words, our hidden suppressed emotions. What we have hidden within creates this illusion of separation and powerlessness; therefore, to truly become an effective leader, we must release these hidden emotions. Only when we clear our emotions will our actions feel authentic.

When we genuinely feel life’s oneness and connectedness, our leadership is truthful and authentic. We often have glimpses of this, but I am talking about a permanent shift. When we do this, nothing will feel fake and artificial. We will come from a different place entirely.

When we release our hidden emotions, our vision becomes crystal clear, undistorted by our unresolved issues. Leadership then comes from this place.

Our unconscious anger creates barriers. It will repel people and make us less accessible. People will be scared to tell us the truth; therefore, our ability to lead will be limited by the amount of anger we carry inside us. For instance, if we were told not to get angry when we were a child, then those emotions will still be contained within us if we did not find a way of releasing them. They will unconsciously affect our communication, and we won’t even know it. Emotional release is one way of letting that anger go safely and effectively but we must understand how to let go consistently throughout our day.

Our suppressed grief also creates barriers. When we connect with someone, there is love and often a deep bond. However, grief is the natural response to this disconnection when we finish a relationship. Unless we allow that grief to be processed, this disconnection will continue to be experienced not just with the person we lost but with every person, and when I say every person, I mean everyone on the planet. This, of course, limits your ability to lead.

Releasing or integrating our suppressed emotions is the key to becoming influential leaders because the way people respond to our requests has everything to do with what we have buried deep within us. Therefore, if your influence is limited, it usually has to do with something that is hidden deep within. The thing to understand is that your emotions are the unconscious attractors of your leadership experience; this means that you will purposely attract circumstances and people designed to integrate your unconscious, unprocessed negative emotions. In other words, experiences that, on the surface, you don’t want. Understand that many times:

Life brings us what we need, not what we want.

The more we let go, the more effective we lead, and this kind of leadership isn’t based on intellectual concepts. Authentic leadership can only come about when we know ourselves at the level of what I talked about earlier, and we can only do that when we remove those suppressed emotions and change our core beliefs. As long as we hold these emotions deep within us, we will never be able to lead effectively. We may read books and attempt to apply the concepts of good leadership, but our hidden suppressed feelings will limit us. We are looking to get to a place in leadership where we are entirely free from our past and in a completely authentic place. This means you have to dissolve ALL belief systems and internal imbalances at their core level. You cut the root.

Letting go and emotional integration is that godsend that brings together a new paradigm of heart-centred leadership based on truth and deep inner knowing. If we all understood how important it was to keep releasing our emotions, we would prioritise this in our business and personal lives. 

If you are interested in finding out more about how to let go and create that authentic leader in you, get in touch.