Life is a tightrope you walk day after day. Whether you are aware or not, you carefully take each step knowing even the slightest misstep can mean trouble. This is especially true when you lead a pack – personal or professional – because those you lead depend on the harmony and accuracy of your cadence to keep them stable. But, to ensure their stability requires your inner core to be strong, sound, and steadfast. Even the slightest wavering from core principles, values and ethics can break the stride of a chorus once in lockstep.
Given there are a plethora of environmental factors that can sway your walk across life’s thread, maintaining a healthy core is key. A constant and committed regimen that is balanced and integrated will be crucial to actualizing your leadership philosophy.
So, what can you do to spark balance into your transformational leadership? Here are 3 areas to consider incorporating into your plan:
1. Personal View Versus Collective Vision
What makes transformational leadership transformative? Purpose. Mainly, a Purpose beyond the self. Great leaders prioritize collective gain over their own because their proudest moments come with community advancements (internal team success and external partnership growth). For this to reign true, the vision they establish is purposefully set out to succeed in a balanced manner with all aspects of the stakeholder group considered. Here, balance involves continually identifying the most critical areas, as well as swiftly addressing them with a channeled focus. Such an aligned vision reflects clear core values built on an attainable, sustainable and generational outlook. Simply put, legacy is what they are after – an authentic, progressive mechanism that can flow and grow well after their time at the helm.
Considered to be one of the most innovative and ground-breaking leaders of our time, Steve Jobs built Apple on such a principle. Among the many lessons to learn from his leadership style, his ‘put products before profits’ and ‘combine the humanities with the sciences’ mantras speak volumes about his balanced approach. When designing the original Mac in the early 80’s, he famously went against the grain by focusing on creating an “insanely great” product before profit maximization. This pursuit eventually proved to be his crowning achievement because in the long run he got the balance right by as he said, “focus on making the product great and the profits will follow”. They still follow today! And by connecting the humanities with the sciences, Jobs was able to connect ‘creativity to technology’ and ‘arts to engineering’. He challenged his teams to make innovation the key business strategy so all of society can have a creative edge in the future. A clear example of a Purpose that prioritizes collective gain over one’s own!
Practical Transformation Tip: Prioritize your Purpose by considering what your people are thinking and what they want to do, as well as the internal team and external customer needs, feelings and reactions, but also staying true to the organization’s fundamentals.2. Ego Power Versus Humble Empowerment
One of the most consistent capacity calculations the ego makes on a daily basis is to measure the following – how to have others do what you want versus how to have others do what they want. For different reasons and intentions, this measurement occurs in both the conscious and subconscious mind. The outcome of this measurement usually depends on how balanced your own desires and motives for authority and influence are.
As the acclaimed philosopher, Nietzsche, posited, all humans are motivated by an innate appetite for power. How you obtain and use this power is key to how you will retain and be respected for the power you hold. However, try to avoid the mistake of viewing power as your ticket to security and control over your own life because it often comes at the cost of stripping freedoms from others. On the other hand, value empowerment to begin your ascendancy. Empower yourself with a belief from within that you are capable of finding success by way of physical, emotional, and aspirational equity. As I recommend in Part 1 of my latest book, SPARK: Journey from Success to Significance, the first tool for empowering yourself and others is through Service. When your first instinct is to be in service of others, your actions and results are bound to create sustainable, multi-generational change. The kind of change that helps people acquire independence, build confidence, tap into their potential, preserve dignity and become masters of their own destiny.
A company putting this power v. empowerment balance to work is Microsoft. They conduct employee engagement surveys to allow employees to share opinions on important aspects like employee development programs, career advancement opportunities, and how the company should handle employee layoffs. These surveys are used to empower and accommodate employee development programs, advance new career paths, and rethink job satisfaction. Microsoft makes results available to all employees through an open forum. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO has said that he wants every employee at the company to have a clear sense of purpose and to know “why they come to work every day”. A great example of a company shifting to a balance of power through empowerment by serving their most important assets – their people!
Practical Transformation Tip: Give your people a clear mandate to aim for world class service (internally and externally); set out clear expectations and acknowledge their contributions, and provide the tools, autonomy and transparency to make decisions.3. Fixed Versus Fluid Leadership
True transformation calls for transcendence. A virtue for visionary thinking that has the capability to maneuver complexity and adversity. In order to be visionary, however, an organization cannot be caught up for too long in current positioning, performance or processes. It is imperative for leadership to be fluid enough to overcome any paralysis points and to make tough decisions regarding its own and its stakeholders’ success. In all scenarios, transformational leaders must be deep thinkers but also be able to handle their emotions in the most arduous moments. All the while seeing results over the line. This balancing act between the human and business side requires a certain Resilience and Knowing to elevate above the superego and take in all internal information then detach from it to see the outside, wider perspective. To be driven by significance, not purely success requires deep conviction, candor and courage. Most importantly, leaders in such a Flow State practice mindfulness when making balanced decisions that even the most accomplished directors find difficult to make.
Did you know that some of the biggest brands in the world, like Nike, Google and General Mills have developed and instituted mindfulness programs? One of the first to do it, Google, makes it one of its top priorities to hire leading gurus in this field to design unique programs that teach corporate leadership mindfulness essentials built on emotional intelligence, meditation and conscientiousness in the workplace. As a result, these businesses have seen dramatic benefits, in some cases 80% of executives reported improved decision making processes by reducing errors in judgment because of heightened listening skills, interactions and relationships. This proves how being intentional with optimizing leadership fluidity can not only impact wellbeing, but overall productivity!
Practical Transformation Tip: Practice mindfulness by letting your mind be your guide; by being aware of what you’re thinking, feeling and sensing, and being attentive to where your attention is focused.Final Thoughts
Transformational leadership calls for redefining the normal management approach by placing balance at the core of any achievement initiative. There is no perfect balance, there never is, but finding harmony and flow amidst the corporate chaos is critical. Start by defining what balance means to you. Focus on the collective conscience, equitable empowerment, and being fluid in your approaches. Balance is not a destination to be reached but an experience to be lived—one day at a time.
If you are a leader who is in search of that one final piece to help you move from being transactional to transformational, I invite you to join my 5-step Masterclass beginning October 12, 2024. This program will cover how to incorporate the five spark elements into your daily life to optimize results by seeking significance and creating impact. To learn more and to register go to corporatesufi.com/spark-masterclass.
