Leading from love
Leading from “awakened consciousness” sounds like fluff.
Here’s what it really means:
Leading from Love, in every situation.
As leaders, our highest contribution is to respond to every person and everything, from a stance of loving, objective neutrality.
From this heightened awareness, we can then make powerful, intentional choices to shift systems at a fundamental level. Creating truly lasting, positive, transformative change.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King understood this.
Through the strategy of Love, he actively shifted systems of injustice and oppression.
There’s a famous photo that illustrates this powerfully.
MLK was in Chicago, leading a housing march when hecklers threw a rock, striking him in the head. The photo captures King, down on one knee - dazed, disoriented, struggling to regain balance.
This photo illustrates a powerful choice we all face - the choice to react from old patterns of anger and self-protection or to respond from a heightened consciousness of Love.
The majority of people get swept up in the moment, unaware that choice is even possible.
But for the awakened and curious, we can choose to respond from loving, objective neutrality.
Here’s what we can learn from MLK:
Choose to respond, not to react: To respond is to move with conscious intentionality, to be aware of our emotions but not overcome by the swirl. This is different from reacting, making knee-jerk, unconscious choices “without thinking”. After MLK was struck, he took a moment to gather himself and reset.
Love: It’s easy to stand for “love and light” when life is good. The real test is when we’re faced with high-stakes situations, or when our survival is threatened. Love empowers us to separate the action from the person, we choose to love the person while condemning the act.
Objective neutrality: In challenging circumstances, it’s easy to get swept up in emotion. As awakened leaders, it’s our responsibility to ground and come back to center. In doing so, we have the perspective to truly see the situation with nuance and clarity. We can feel the emotion of the moment, and not be subject to it.
Not everyone will face such extreme circumstances. But each of us encounters situations every day, that test our patience and knock us off balance.
When we have such encounters, it’s important to respond from a place of groundedness and love.
