A Crucible Moment of Self Mastered Leadership
Most entrepreneurs will know exactly what I’m talking about. You see the familiar footsteps hurriedly approaching your office door, and then a knock follows. Or your phone rings at an abnormal time and you look down and you see the name of your controller or CFO. You look up with trepidation, as if hoping not to engage with the moment, and perhaps subconsciously looking for an escape route.
It’s not that you don’t like this person. In fact, they can be one of your most reliable right-hand team members. It’s just that, too often, they are the person that brings you the heavy news - the serious problem that upon arising, everyone looks at each other and says your name out loud. At the end of the day, as CEO, the major problems land on your doorstep and plop themselves right on your shoulders, and it happens within minutes.
Whether it is a lawsuit, an injured employee, a major customer walking away, a crucial employee resigning, or a cash shortfall for payroll, these moments (of varying degrees of intensity) are not uncommon for an entrepreneurial CEO. They certainly were not rare for me through the seven years of my main entrepreneurial CEO journey. What I came to realize over time, is that what I said at that moment did not matter. I had gotten good at biting my tongue and not passing on the stress to others, especially not to the messenger. How the news landed with me, before a single word escaped my lips, had already made an impact on my team. I had already passed on cues of either “We’re going to be just fine” or “Oh no, how will we ever overcome this.” My subtle body energy and my nervous system had already done their work in the first instances of our encounter.
In my early days as CEO, I was not calm in these moments and fear was born in the environment. Instead of steering our relaxed energy into problem solving, my team was distracted because they were also dealing with the ‘danger’ signals that I was unconsciously sending. “How bad is this?” “Will we survive?” “Will he get angry?” “Will someone be blamed?”
By the end of my journey, I was well underway to a significant transformation. My natural reaction shifted to relaxation in that moment and a smile, perhaps even a laugh. This created priceless space for us all to operate and find the best solution.
The path to transformation for me was a higher mastery of both my body and mind. Three critical practices for me were daily meditation, building my surrender muscle, and in-body awareness. My best guess as to how these worked is as follows: meditation created just a little more space between stimulus and response and slowed down time in those instances. Working on surrendering allowed me to replace a tendency to tighten and grip “upon impact” with the ability to stay open, stay relaxed, and not want to quicken to control the outcome or wish that it were any different than what was in front of me. In-body awareness allowed me to feel sensations before they became strong emotions and thereby dissipating their power. (Technically speaking, it likely activated my prefrontal cerebral cortex and allowed me better access and management of my amygdala).
Little did I know that mastering the inner self would have such an impact on my leadership. More surprising to me was that getting into my body and the more subtle realms of my mind would be critical to success.
Here at Manifestations, we continue to be excited to support entrepreneurs and businesses that bring mindfulness and other forms of inner self mastery into the workplace and to leaders. We want to support leadership that models inner mastery on a complete mind/body/spirit spectrum. Especially in environments that take and manage risk, we envision people thriving through compassionate, collaborative environments, with regulated calm nervous systems and meaningful connections. Do not hesitate to reach out if you’re working on these types of businesses.ed
We are currently working on our first fund closing - please contact us to be part of this founding group of partners. Charbel@manifestationscapital.com