Leadership and Growth

It’s a curious thing about Human Beings that we fall easily and unconsciously into the misconception that we are the centre of the universe. What is perhaps most surprising about it is that the evidence that this is not true is all around us and for many reasons we fail to notice or we fail to recognise the importance. An essential part of a Leader’s role is to draw people out of this egocentric “stupor” and enable them to be everything that they are capable of being. When left with the limited and limiting perception of the small “me” (what is often called the “false self”) humans live a life that often unhappy and gnawingly unsatisfactory rather than evolving into bigger, more expansive ways of being and doing. 

A leader who fails to see this as a central part of his or her role is almost certainly working much harder that he or she needs to, compensating  for the “shortcomings” in the team driven by a lack of motivation, ownership and creativity. It is almost certainly true that such a leader sees the world and all its potential from the limited and limiting false self and so creates the reality in the team which functions like a “false us”. The team feels like a two-dimensional, colourless representation of what it can and should be. It is possible (and I would say probable) that the “false team” is being created by the leader’s limited perspective.

Any solution to this confusion which afflicts most of humankind, particularly in the West, must begin by seeing reality differently. Maybe, as a leader, you should consider a wider perspective. As far as science can ascertain, the universe began some 14 billion years ago. The same science that manufactures ventilators for people suffering from Corona Virus, that created the internet in all its complexity and sends spacecraft to Mars and beyond has concluded that this all started with a Big Bang in which the universe and everything it now contains was created from nothing. Strange. Sounds like a fairy story – but it is the best that the finest minds in modern science can come up with.

And if that sounds strange, reflect for a moment on the universe that exploded out of nothing some 14 billion years ago. If you boarded a modern jet in London and flew non-stop to New Zealand, you would get there in just under one day. In the same jet (if you could!), it would take over 20 years to reach the sun and more than 20,000 years to reach the inner “edge” of our Solar System, the “Oort Cloud”. That gives some sense of the size of our Solar System. There may be as many as 100 billion solar systems in our Galaxy, the Milky Way. There may be as many as 200 billion galaxies.

Leadership starts with perspective. The bigger your perspective, the more inspiring your vision and more inspired your team will be.