Leaders in Crisis

Imagine for a moment that you are the leader of one of the North African nations currently under siege by “your people” seeking to dethrone you. The masses are swirling around the base of your power, rampaging through the streets, destroying buildings, and demanding your immediate and unconditional resignation.

What would you do?

Would you flee the country without a fight like Tunisian president Ben Ali? Would you be like Egypt’s Mubarak and try to negotiate the handover of power on your terms? Would you simply resign? Or would you fight with every last ounce of your strength, as Libya’s Gaddhafi is vowing to do?

Think about it, you have held power for 25, 30, 40 years. It’s almost all you have ever known, absolute power, wealth, glorification, deification. The rich and powerful from all around the world have come to your doorstep seeking audience, favors, concessions. To say it’s heady stuff is an understatement. And now, in the blink of an eye, you are being asked to give it all up. All that you are and have ever known is being swept away by the tide of the times.

Really, what would you do?

The other week I heard Bron Bowery-Ireland, CEO of the International Coach Academy, give an inspiring talk in which she shared a recent personal revelation. She spoke of personal identity markers—those internal images groomed from childhood that we hold of ourselves—and how our fixation with upholding those identity markers narrows our point of view, insists that our worldview prevails over other’s, and places our self at the center of the world.

What are your personal identity markers—in your mind, how do you see yourself? As a man or woman, a leader, a businessperson, a family member, a community member, activist…?

Bron told the story of a person who once told the Dalai Lama on a visit to Mexico that if you look at how the continents are arranged you will see that Mexico is the centre of the world. The Dalai Lama answered, “If you follow that line of reasoning you will find that Mexico city is the centre of Mexico, my house is at the centre of the city, my family is at the centre of my house, and within my family I am the centre of the world.”

The challenge is that those images we hold of ourselves become the way in which we define ourselves, and any threat to those images can be seen as a threat to our security and survival, if not our very existence.

Case in point, our friends in North Africa. What do you become when all the personal identity images you have ever held of yourself are taken from you and you are vanquished? Can you imagine the fear that that engenders in the very hearts of those to whom this is happening?

So what! You might say. They are egomaniacal despots who have ruled for too long with feigned care for the wellbeing of their people. I am not that kind of person!

But the truth is that we are all human, and it is our default modus operandi. We will act and live through our personal identity markers until we do the inner work necessary to bring them to light, let them go, and ground our sense of self in something far more real.

As Bron said so eloquently, “Here is the lesson I learnt.  When I am pursuing my personal identity I am attached to every outcome. My personal identity is driven by ego. It is limiting my potential. It creates limitations…to achieve this [a purpose greater than oneself] everyone must let go of their personal identities and strive for something greater than self.”

And this is the essential lesson: leaders who have a sense of greater purpose, a noble vision for an exalted tomorrow, must themselves step out of the way. Not by physically removing themselves (though at times this can be helpful!), but by removing the limitations of their personal identity markers which put themselves at the center of the world.

We must all strive to become the vessel through which great things flow, as unimpeded as possible by the survival, security, greatness needs of our egos.

Our true greatness arises when we recognize it as not something that we need to create, but something we can allow to emerge as we clear the space in which it flourishes.

 

–With light to all those who today stand for what their hearts yearn –

 

For your reading pleasure, a related article The Struggle Within