What does it mean to commit to your own growth and healing?
A number of years ago, I had a touching conversation with Raj Sisodia, the founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement and author of a number of books on the transformation of business and workplace culture.
He admitted that while he’d been on his own personal development journey for decades, and was an established thought leader in the field of leadership, that writing a business book with the word “healing” in the title still felt edgy.
What would people think of him for being totally honest about the internal struggles he went through? The family and childhood history he experienced and actually had to face, in order to lead from a truly centered place? Or the vulnerability of coming unraveled when everyone is looking to you to have the answers that help set the direction of a company and impact hundreds of lives?
It turns out that people respond well. But that doesn't necessarily make it less scary.
As human beings we are hard wired to connect. To seek authentic relationships that lead to greater wholeness. And to share the ups-and-downs of our experience with others, as a way of integrating our own growth, and upleveling those around us.
Yet most of our organizations are still built to separate us, pitting us against each other in competition while subtly (or not so subtly) punishing positively disruptive authenticity and rewarding the status quo.
Meanwhile, our bodies are busy doing what they do best – truing toward wholeness. Health. Wellbeing. Self-healing.
Can you feel the tension here?
Most of the time, our company cultures are literally working against our unconscious longing – and in-built compass – that leads us toward wake up.
(And it doesn’t matter if you’re working at an old-school, conservative company or a progressive, ‘conscious’ company – if you can feel the tension… it’s probably there).
Unfortunately, at some stage in our careers the tension gets too high. “I can’t live like this anymore.” And when this happens, something has to break.
What happens next varies. When we fear loss of power and cling too tightly to the status quo, it’s usually our relationships that break down. Or we act out against the status quo, rushing to the next solution and throw out years of valuable training, service, and experience in our domains of expertise to become a health coach, or open a wellness clinic.
(not that this is a bad move… IF it’s really what you’re built for… but I see a lot of women taking this step by default, as a reaction to unintegrated workplace trauma vs. a fully integrated choice… and leaving gigantic, meaningful parts of themselves behind).
So, either I stay or I go.
But am I actually facing my own healing?
I believe there is a third way. I believe that being willing to face our own healing as leaders is a lengthy process that happens in parallel to great leadership. I believe that slowing down enough to seek the ‘third option’ can unlock doors in both ourselves and our organizations to greater power, with fewer costs, and a kind of courageous creativity that leads to true innovation (read: inventing new-paradigm stuff).
But we have to face the hard stuff. And we have to learn how to navigate our own human operating systems in the deep waters of authentic, non-performative personal growth.
One of the great costs of the growing access and privilege that many of us who lead inside of organizations have today is that we believe that we can “afford” to handle the hard stuff on our own. We buy the answers to our problems (or we numb ourselves and cover them up, as Brené Brown says, “with a beer and a banana nut muffin”). And we keep getting by.
The truth is… that makes it take longer.
When people ask me “what do you do in the Guts & Grace embodied leadership coaching program,” I sometimes say, “It’s hard to explain…”
Because what they want to hear is “we build great leaders.”
And we do.
But actually, we hold space and offer a roadmap so that great leaders can birth the next iteration of themselves.
In our year-long Guts & Grace group coaching and mastermind process, we help women leaders like you release, heal and resolve these tensions between your progress and your healing, so that you can get real, authentic traction and make a bigger impact in your work, relationships and life. And in the process, we offer you nourishing connection with like-minded women who believe in the possibility of your highest good.
But it isn’t a quick fix. And it doesn’t look the same for every person. Sometimes it looks like an immediate and radical increase in confidence and personal power. Sometimes it looks like committing to heal trauma that’s been ignored for too long. Sometimes it includes advocating for the next promotion. Sometimes re-designing or collaborating to build an entirely new organization that is truly values aligned.
Always, it looks like receiving real authentic support in a growth-oriented community whose culture is designed to work for and with – rather than against your body – heart and mind’s natural, in-built longing to wake up.
So that when the change happens… rather than feel like an impostor in a costume trying to perform your next level of leadership…
you actually own it.
If you’re feeling intrigued… but what I’m sharing doesn’t quite fully make sense (or you’re not sure), then I invite you to stick around and keep listening, keep feeling, to see if there may be something here for you…
- Check out my blogs
- Watch some of my videos or livestreams online
- Download the preface of Guts & Grace (the book)
However, if this email makes sense to you – if you can FEEL this tension I’m describing and you’ve have been looking for a place, a teacher or path to help you resolve it –
then we might be a good fit to work together.
I work with women at all levels of leadership, from CEOs, board chairs and investors to innovative emerging leaders ‘rising stars’. The common theme in our community is authentic personal activation, for the sake of stewarding better organizations and a better world. And through the work, we learn how to learn from each other, at every level.
If you’d like to get a taste of what this work, our community, and my coaching could do for you in 2024, then I invite you to book a discovery call.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call here.
Why do I still offer these valuable sessions for free?
Because I believe that every conversation – whether or not we choose to work together this year – has a myriad of ripple effects that I will never fully know.
And I delight in making waves.
Sincerely,
LeeAnn
