The Evolutionary Arc through Five Phases of Conscious Leadership
In my previous article, The Shift From Authentic Leadership To Integral Leadership - Embracing Our Shadows, I lay a framework for the integration of both the authentic leadership movement and shadow work as the foundational principles that create expressions of integral leadership.
Through the various cycles of transformation and leadership development, we naturally integrate and transcend to the next level of learning and growth – which means we are taking all we’ve learned with us.
Integral leadership is a model of inclusivity and expansion. It’s not a hierarchy or end-game.
We spiral through stages of development over and over again – collecting new parts and wisdom along the way.
As integral leaders, we include everything we learned in the authentic leadership movement -- and then we further raise our consciousness, and expand our heart’s compassion, through the integration of our shadows.
Let’s break this down even more by looking at where we’ve come from to arrive at integral leadership practices through the arc of the five phases of leadership development.
Five phases of leadership development
I think it’s helpful to look at leadership and the five phases of development as acquiring skills in various mindsets.
I’ll break it down by drawing from the system created by the organization, The Leadership Circle. They assert, through synthesizing countless leadership methodologies, that there are 5 stages of development.
These phases are the key contributors to how we become wired and the functionality of our internal operating system (IOS) – in other words, the way we perceive reality, ourselves and our nervous system’s particular threat responses. This includes the unique strategies that we employ to mitigate threats and re-establish safety.
Our personal IOS is how we create safety and minimize threat – which is not just about physical safety but also emotional and psychological safety.
An overview of the five phases of leadership
Egocentric:
This represents a stage from infant development into early adulthood. This is when we become identified with our ability to meet our needs. During this time we are less aware of noticing other people’s needs.
Robert Keagan and Lisa Lahey, two leadership experts from Harvard, call this stage, self-sovereign. Because, at this stage our needs are primary.
We relate to others primarily to get our needs met. We haven’t yet developed the skill to make others’ needs equally important to ours. Unless we were conditioned early to be hyper-aware of others needs to maintain safety and connection through care-taking others to ensure our place of belonging.
2. Reactive:
In this phase, we build our identity based on how well we live up to the expectations of others and our culture. In other words, we define ourselves from the outside-in rather than the inside-out.
Stephen Covey calls this stage of external orientation our, “dependent” phase. As a result, we define ourselves in one of three ways: through our relationships, our intellect or our ability to perform and achieve.
During this phase, we learn which strategies suit our conditions best when we feel threatened by the basic needs of feeling safe, connected, empowered, respected and accepted.
The three main categories of reactive leadership strategies are: Complying, Controlling and Protecting.
In the 360-degree leadership assessment tool that I use with leaders (from The Leadership Circle Group) these three reactive types are further broken down into specific behaviors that represent each one. You can check out their video overview, here.
3. Creative:
This phase is marked by two key Internal operating systems (IOS) changes. One, we become aware of our conditioned beliefs -- and the associated assumptions and behaviors we exhibit based on those beliefs.
And, the second is that we explore a more authentic version of ourselves. This is where the authentic leadership movement has been so successful and essential for leadership (and human) evolution.
In case you’re wondering, an example of how a common conditioned belief is formed is if you were praised for being independent (and scolded for being needy) as a child, then you may have learned to become self-reliant in order to maintain respect, belonging and connection – or to avoid the humiliation of being needy.
As a result of that conditioning, you see the world through the belief that: “it’s all up to me. I have to do it all. No one has my back. It’s not safe to ask for help. I have to appear to know how to do everything. Or, no one does it as well as I do”
I wrote a whole e-book on nine of the most common adaptive strategies that we draw upon in order to ensure we get our needs met.
Self-reliance, as I just described, is one of them. In fact, it’s one of the areas that I have spent a lot of time integrating and healing as a leader. To read more, you can download my e-book here.
4. Integral Leadership:
A key marker at this stage of development is learning to lead through chaos and complexity -- with less and less reactivity.
A key trait that emerges in this phase is the expansion into a more robust capacity as a systems thinker and protector of the whole system.
An integral leader focuses on the vision for the system they operate in (family, business, relationship, community) but they also expand the vision to include the well-being of the systems that hold them – in other words, the systems their sub-system operates in.
For example the impact of one’s actions on the environment or other systems that influence young minds (well, to be more accurate untrained minds) that are unaware when they are being manipulated by fear. Such as the influencing agendas of political parties or advertising campaigns that seek to influence our consumerism behaviors and even our self-worth.
At this stage, servant leadership emerges – the leader becomes a servant of the whole.
For example, one of the ways I’ve done this in my life is that I have chosen not to invest my IRA funds in any stock that has negative impact on the environment. I often will yield less monetary gain than others investing in the oil industry, but it honors my love for the natural world and all the creatures that need clean water, soil and air to survive.
5. Unitive leadership:
This mindset points to the human evolutionary progression through high states of awareness. This represents the sacred mind-body-spirit union of “all is well” or “all is one”. “I am you and you are me”.
In the book, Mastering Leadership, by Bob Anderson and Bill Adams, they put it this way:
“Research and experience strongly suggest that spiritual practices, such as mindfulness, meditation, and contemplative prayer have the power to accelerate our development through these 5 phases of leadership. In fact, Unitive Mind, seldom, if ever, develops without a long-term spiritual practice.”
At this phase, we orient to our sense of self through integrating mind-body and spirit as One. We realize we are not just the body or the mind, we are spirit and divine nature in action. Oneness is no longer a conceptual ideation –it’s a lived experience. We are One.
Exploring the middle path
In the rest of this article, I want to focus on the three of these stages of leadership development
1. Reactive (victim)
2. Creative (co-creator with life)
3. Integral (oneness consciousness)
Let's break them down.
The shift from Reactive to Creative leadership
During the transformative process of shifting from reactive to creative leadership, we learn to shift from a hyper-focus on fixing problems to one of curiosity and welcoming.
In this phase, we are learning to pivot our focus from the outer-game towards the inner-game. I have an e-book on this topic and shift if you are interested, email me for more information.
In the creative phase, we turn our attention towards ourselves as a sacred system. We apprentice to studying our own reactivity and conditioned behaviors. This is how we initiate the process of integration and welcoming -- rather than reactive tendencies of sweeping under the rug, denial, defending against and building stone walls to protect ourselves -- or spilling ourselves all over others to please them and comply to maintain safety.
We become empowered by suspending our reactive and habituated tendencies to blame, withdraw, people-please, criticize, exile and punish when we feel powerless or helpless.
Suspending habit allows us the freedom to behave with authenticity and inspiring leadership -- rather than domination, power-over and fear-based leadership.
As creative leaders, we learn to:
allow: we accept that we are wired to protect and connect, which means we will be reactive –it’s part of our survival wiring
befriend: we befriend & meet the exiled and protective parts of ourselves that fear being "wrong, unworthy or falling short".
seek feedback: we learn to embrace feedback about our impact on others.
It takes a warrior's heart to receive feedback when it touches our core wounds. But, we do it.
And, we pin each data point on our personal transformation map to further investigate the unique strategies that we employ to protect ourselves from the loss of control, connection, power, respect, status, and feelings of inadequacy.
In summary, when we move from reactive leadership to creative, we are not by-passing our reactivity – instead we are learning how to own and manage the states of fear and anxiety that drive us to operate in reactive and outdated ways.
Here’s where the leap from authentic (also known as creative) leadership shifts to integral.
The shift from Creative to Integral leadership
During this next development phase, the creative paradigm expands and transforms into an integral one.
The agency and authenticity gained through the creative stage of leadership is rooting into new ways of being.
At some point, a leader begins to bust at the seams when they are ready for the next rung of development. They are firing on all cylinders but they know there is more and they don’t want to be complacent. They are hungry.
The key to the integral mindset is that by awakening our authentic visionary self in the creative phase, now, in the integral phase, we discover that we are also the opposite. In the book, Mastering Leadership, by Bob Anderson and Bill Adams, they put it this way:
Another quote from Mastering Leadership about this juncture is: “Here the inner self-definition shifts from “I am a whole and complete self that coordinates with other whole and complete selves”-- to the realization that, “ I am not whole and complete, rather I am many selves: I am an ecology of selves that are often in discord.”
You probably have noticed this in yourself. You have two parts with contradictory and different needs – simultaneously. Crazy making, right?
For example, one part of you longs to leave something old and stagnant in order to leap into something new without knowing how it will go -- and another part of you holds back for fear of failure, judgment or rejection.
Or, maybe you recognize a need to assert your need for a raise, but you don’t ask for fear of being too much or feeling unappreciated or undervalued if you’re told no.
Or maybe you steamroll your needs for fear of not getting what you want – inadvertently leaving a wake of conflict and confusion behind you.
Different needs and parts – one conflicted behavior.
This happens all the time. Our ability to identify and meet these internal double-binds has the power to shift the perceptions and beliefs such as: “I need to pick one thing, what’s wrong with me – why do I keep changing my mind?”
And, instead provide us with a compassionate frame of, “oh, I have two conflicting needs, no wonder I’m confused, scared, overwhelmed, and procrastinating!”
This type of self-honoring shifts us into a mindset of integral leadership.
Welcoming everything
Similar to the shift from reactive to creative mindset, the evolutionary spiral from creative to integral is not a hierarchical process where we exile or banish parts of ourselves as we grow.
Rather the opposite occurs. With each expanding mindset, we leave nothing behind - we include and integrate those messy parts of ourselves into our wholeness. We own our biases and judgments. And, we investigate and dig into the needs or fears living behind or within them.
For example, if part of us has learned to micromanage others to maintain a sense of control (a way we ensure safety and avoid helplessness). During the integral phase, we learn to own this part and work with it directly so it no longer lives as a source of inner and outer conflict like it once did in the reactive and creative phases.
Or, the people-pleaser in us who says "yes" externally to others, when internally we are actually a "no". We integrate these parts each time we bravely assert our needs, and stay with our fears and nervousness, that our assertion will result in conflict, criticism or withdrawal from others.
Nothing is left behind, judged or shamed into a corner. In fact, everything is revealed, welcomed and brought into our compassionate hearts.
As integral leaders, we cultivate the ability to focus on what serves the whole, rather than our dazzling skills, impressive achievements and ability to maintain control by covertly getting what we want through charm, steamrolling or guilt trips.
In other words, integral leadership is the shift from protecting and denying our ego-centric fragility and learning to compassionately embrace and befriend all the ways our separate self has learned to behave to cover up for feeling too much, not enough, inadequate, fraudulent, critical, judgmental, right, superior, inferior.
What is shadow work?
Shadows are parts of ourselves that we can't see -- they are our blindspots.
They are the aspects that we loathe and reject in others that remain unintegrated within ourselves. This view of shadow can feel like a loaded exploration -- because how do we relate to those who express dominance, greed, violence and abuse towards the natural world, children, and one another?
I want to build on this key gateway of transforming into an integral leader through embracing our shadows. Remember earlier when I spoke about double binds and competing needs?
The realization that we are made up of different parts with conflicting needs is not an indicator of our brokenness. In fact, quite the contrary – it’s simply the truth of our human design.
This is where the next trademark of embracing integral leadership comes in – it’s called shadow work. This is the intentional focus on the parts of ourselves that we have ignored and not developed.
Shadow doesn’t mean dark – as in bad – but neglected, ignored and exiled parts of self that need to be welcomed back home into a compassionate heart.
What I’ve noticed is that through developing self-compassion towards my messiness and incompleteness I naturally engage others, and the larger systems, with increasing empathy and acceptance.
And, for the situations that I have been able to accept, I can at least see the perspective of others.
For example, I can see why corporations continue to harvest palm oil forests for capital gain while causing death and destruction to the orangutans and other creatures whose home they are destroying. The leaders are operating from reactive leadership. They don’t realize the impact on the whole. They are still operating from the adolescent state of mind “how do I get my needs met”
Or why politicians blame and defile one another in order to prove superiority and maintain a competitive edge. It’s an expression of the reactive mind – “my needs are the most important thing – even if it costs your life, reputation and well-being”.
Shadows represent behaviors or limiting beliefs that cast a blindness upon our ability to embrace the refined skills I shared earlier.
Key hallmarks of an integral and evolutionary leader
The hallmarks of embracing complexity are reflected through our ability to hold contradictions, conflict and polarizing perspectives without unilateral decision making, denial, over-simplifying them or resorting to quick fixes.
The integral mindset looks for merits in all perspectives and works towards harmony and synthesis amidst contradictions and uncertainty.
Key hallmarks of an integral and evolutionary leader:
managing reactivity: taking personal ownership for one's defensive strategies and reactivity
embracing polarities: embracing polarities and extreme differences with curiosity and patience – sometimes this means remaining in not-knowing until more information is revealed
a capacity to navigate complexity: an integral mind is built for complexity and holding complex differences and polarities simultaneously
owning your stories: investigating repeating relational conflict and tensions by looking at your role, beliefs and contribution to these dynamics
exposing your personal double-binds: exposing internal double-binds (two or more needs that contradict and conflict with one another causing us to behave and communicate in contradictory ways)
allowing ambiguity: allowing ambiguity and uncertainty without reacting, prematurely forcing change or collapsing into passivity by sweeping things under the rug
embracing your shadows: an on-going self-reflective practice of exposing how you protect or project disowned parts of yourself
What needs to happen for us to live into those attributes?
We do it through studying and embracing our shadows and the traps of the conditioned mind we have become identified with.
Having shadows is inherently part of the human experience - it reinforces our sense of separation from the whole. Each time we reject, judge and crucify others it's often because we have not accepted how their behavior appears within ourselves.
Or, at a minimum, we haven't found a way to see how their pain and suffering causes them to believe their behavior is the only option they have.
This is the transformative and rich terrain of shadow work. It's messy, confronting and scary. It will call forth all the ways that we defend, protect and control how we see ourselves, each other and the world.
It is for the bravest hearts of our human tribe -- and powerful beyond measure.
The ripple effect of change created through embracing our shadows
Many of the leaders and change agents that I've worked with for the last few decades have immersed themselves into the art of leading with authenticity, vulnerability and the principles of power-with rather than power-over.
It has drastically transformed their corporate cultures, their orientation towards themselves and the inevitable crunchy relationship dynamics that appear within the systems they serve and lead.
Until we befriend our shadows, we remain operating from outdated patterns of fear, protection and polarizing judgments towards ourselves and others.
I believe that the leaders who are most influential in supporting the planetary changes needed at this time are the brave ones who are willing to dig deep and get messy.
To re-create balance in the world, we need leaders who accept they have blind spots and have devoted themselves to the art of befriending each exiled part as means to become an integrated and whole leader.
And, if this is you, I want to support you to become the most powerful and present leader you can be. I'm devoted to walking side-by-side with brave and inspiring leaders who know they are here to make a difference beyond the bottom line.
Two podcast episodes on shadow work:
If you want to learn more about integral leadership the two episodes that proceed this one are focused on that with leadership consultant guests, Rixt Kuiper and Rob Sinclair.
In the first of this two-part series, we focused on shadow work. And, in the second, Rob and I interviewed Rixt to learn more about the process she went through designing and delivering a shadow work program with an executive client seeking to shift from creative to integral leadership.
You can find both episodes here:
Integral Leadership Immersions with Anne-Marie
I serve leaders who feel stuck or simply don’t know how to reveal the shadows that are holding them back from up-leveling their leadership influence and the cultures, businesses and relationships that they devote themselves too.
The integral leadership immersions I offer are focused on taking leaders through this arc of development and breaking through the ceiling of any current limitation.
My approach is somatic-based, which means, I help you to access the wisdom that lies within you, your body, your emotions, your heart, your fear, your shadows – I help you draw upon all the intelligences you hold.
If you’re ready to go to the next level, schedule a discovery session to learn more about my integral leadership immersions, here.