Alexis Gupta - Walking the Talk

Walking the Talk: Embodying 21st Leadership Values
by Alexis Gupta, Conscious Leadership Coach at Rewilding Leadership

Alexis GuptaAlexis Gupta is a conscious leadership coach who works with tech leaders that care about people and the planet alongside profit. She blends her 15 years of first-hand experience as a software engineering leader with her extensive study of transformative leadership to create leadership development programs that are meaningful and impactful. She helps leaders step into their authentic power, build generative relationships with their teams, and shift organizational processes to bring their visions to the world. Alexis is a certified Mindfulness teacher (MBSR) with a M.A. in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.



We live in an age where values are changing and with this change, progressive leaders are paving the way for a new form of leadership, a conscious, embodied leadership. Conscious, embodied leaders are working to shift the traditional leadership models of individualism, control, and competition to include 21st century leadership values of intuition, interdependence, presence, community, diversity, adaptivity, and acceptance. As teams find ways to integrate these values, they cite beneficial outcomes including increased productivity, resilience, and retention (Chui et al., 2012; Goldman-Schuyler, 2010; Lockwood, 2007).

The positive results have led to a wave of leaders speaking the vernacular of 21st century leadership. It is now common to hear words like reframing, emerging, and creative tension in the hallway chatter. Articles with titles like, “Five Traits of Transformational Leaders,” are littered throughout leadership magazines, implying that once leaders develop a new leadership philosophy, they can simply start enacting it. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy. Drawing from personal experience as a software engineering manager, I found that leading with my new set of values was filled with paradox. For example, our leadership team could sense the interdependencies between departments, yet we couldn’t create meeting structures to support these collaborations. We also knew the term creative tension, but our tensions often resulted in power struggles. Further, while I never felt marginalized being one of the few women on an engineering team, I couldn't quite explain why things would be different if there were more women present. Paradoxes like these are prevalent because new leadership values are difficult to embody and, in many cases, leaders do not have lived examples or mentors to show the way.

How then can leaders learn to consistently act in alignment with collaborative, adaptive, and interdependent 21st century values?

Aligning practices with principles begins with cultivating self-awareness, most commonly taught in leadership development programs using the practice of mindfulness meditation, a secular implementation of the Buddhist wisdom tradition. Mindfulness is the practice of being present in each moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1991). This practice widens the senses, accessing our other intelligences. It connects the mind with body knowing, heart wisdom, and energetic intuition. Practicing mindfulness helps leaders explore their unconscious patterns and self-limiting beliefs. Mindfulness is one of a variety of embodied wisdom tradition practices. Imaginal journeying, mythic storytelling, integrative dance, somatics, and ritual are other insight practices that are mostly unfamiliar in today’s leadership circles. These practices also engage beyond the rational mind, into the unconscious realm, opening possibilities and detecting blind-spots. Leadership development programs could teach a wider variety of insight practices to reach diverse audiences, increase engagement, and improve outcome. When leaders learn to connect with all of their faculties — body sensations, emotions, and intuitive, imaginal wisdom — intrinsic power is invoked from within, creating true presence.

Self-awareness is a foundational skill for today’s leaders, yet self-awareness alone does not inherently lead to teams that align practices with principles. Teams must develop their own awareness, an intimate and shared understanding of their current dynamics. One method to help teams move into this heart-space is to lead a team in the aforementioned embodied wisdom tradition practices, then facilitate a share about what is arising amongst the team members. These discussions often promote deep and transformative dialogue. When facilitated skillfully, these dialogues create opportunities to explore essential relational skills, such as how to hold generative conversations, transform conflict, and expand perspectives.

Conscious, embodied leaders understand that they are working to shift organizational culture. This shift is not straightforward, rather it is a multi-layered ongoing process that is non-linear in results but transformative in time. To embody transformative change in an organization, leaders learn to consider how the structure of meetings and processes supports or undermines their espoused values. Facilitators can look to large group change methodologies to find meeting models that inspire shared authority and inclusivity (Holman, Devane, & Cady, 2007). When organizations co-create a participatory learning atmosphere, a collective energy is formed that drives commitment and innovation.

Growing as an embodied, conscious leader is an ongoing process of developing new insights and weaving these learnings into both personal and professional life. To delve deeper into these ideas, connect with us at Rewilding Leadership, where we hold transformational workshops that foster deep insights applied to relevant work contexts.

Contact us at: http://www.rewildingleadership.com or email: alexis@rewildingleadership.com.

References

Chui, M., Manyika, J.,Bughin J.,Dobbs R., Roxburgh C., Sarrazin H., Sands G., & Westergren M. (2012). The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies, McKinsey Global Institute, July. Retrieved from "https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-social-economyx

Goldman-Schuyler, K. (2010). Increasing Leadership Integrity Through Mind Training and Embodied Learning. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 62, 21-38.

Kabat-Zinn, J., & University of Massachusetts Medical Center/Worcester. (1991). Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. New York, N.Y: Pub. by Dell Pub., a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Pub. Group.