Hello, Whole Life Leader

My son’s graduation turned out to be far more memorable than I expected. After a rain delay, plus a lightning delay, they went forward with graduation in the football stadium – the kind with aluminum seats and bleachers – while the lightning-infused storm moved off into the distance. After such a long delay, we were all surprisingly insistent on downplaying the lightning, even joking about it, and convincing ourselves there was no threat.

The ceremony started nearly two hours late so we were there until close to midnight. Kind of late for both sets of grandparents! And late for our good family fiends who nevertheless braved the rain, braved the lightning delay, and stayed with us until the end of the ceremony.

College orientation so soon after high school graduation?
My son and I head out this week on a road trip to Texas Tech University for orientation. They have a schedule of events for parents as well as the incoming students, probably to help us get more comfortable with paying the bills!

With our younger son preparing for college, I’ve been looking ahead at what I hope this experience will include for him. I want him educated to proficiency in a career field, of course, but I’m much more interested in how he broadens his understanding and gains maturity, and hopefully a little wisdom, by facing challenges and taking on new experiences.

A Whole Life Leadership view of young adulthood
I’m also thinking about the broader concept of education and how it has fit historically into the path of personal development. Although in our world we focus on technical skills and specialized knowledge, education throughout human history and across cultures has mainly been about preparing a person to be a good citizen, or a fully contributing member of the tribe or clan. It’s been about imparting knowledge and skills for work, but also about imparting the guiding lessons of the culture to promote the development of virtue.

The word Virtue may have become tainted a bit by the rapid cultural upheaval in the industrialized west. Not as much as the word Morality, but for the same reasons. The “hammer” of government is often used by those with power to turn their morality into law. Since for many people morality flows from cultural belief systems that include religious dogma, different groups have different notions of morality in a multicultural, diverse society. Talking about morality can easily be seen as one person or group trying to impose their beliefs on another, or “moralizing.”

Virtue is a related concept, but it’s different in scope. Virtue is more universal than some moral concepts. Virtue refers to the values that elevate society, that promote cooperation and advancement of all. But virtues can be used for moral judgment, to determine how “good” a person is. In an age when discussions of morality prompt the challenge, “Whose morals?” the concept of virtue, in a sad twist of irony, seem less virtuous to some.

I’m taking a stand
I’m taking a stand for virtue. I’m putting a stake in the ground that the philosophy underlying my work respects, values, and promotes virtue – the betterment of the individual in alignment with the betterment of society.

But that’s not all! I have a more controversial position to assert. This is a concept that is foundational to my way of thinking, even my way of perceiving and interacting with the world. It frames my work so it infuses my business.

I’m taking an even bigger stand
I’m putting a bigger stake in the ground. I’m taking a stand for spirituality. At my core I am a spiritual person. My work is guided by spiritual beliefs. And my business serves a spiritual purpose.

Leadership Is Spiritual

I help my clients become better Whole Life Leaders across the domains of their lives, in all their various roles and responsibilities. I support them to develop and express the best of who they are and bring out the best in those around them. This promotes success and wellbeing for themselves and everyone they lead or influence.

It’s in my tagline:

Bring Out The Best In Yourself And Others

Spiritual: religious for some, not for others
I believe that committing to developing the best of who you are and calling out the best in others, in service of everyone’s mutual benefit, is a spiritual practice. For some people, spiritual means religious. I respect that for many people spiritual experiences occur within the context of religious practices and ceremonies. But people who are not very religious, or even not religious at all, can still have very powerful spiritual experiences.

Transcendent: that hard-to-explain deep connection
As I experience it and understand it, the word spiritual refers to feeling a transcendent connection. Transcendent means the connection goes beyond the perceived limits of physical or psychological time and distance. It’s a connection felt very strongly, in the deepest part of your being. This is the part where you are most fully, truly yourself; the part that feels consistent across time, even as you learn and grow.

A transcendent connection can’t be explained by learning or personal experience. It seems to be “built in,” as if this part of you was made already connected with other people and with certain qualities and values. Some of these qualities and values we experience as transcendent are shared by people across history and cultures. Some are perceived as eternal or timeless. That “built in” part is what many consider to be spirit.

Virtue: transcendent values
Virtue is an important part of this conversation because these shared, enduring qualities and values are virtues. Virtues are transcendent, so they can create a felt connection between people who don’t know each other. A transcendent connection is often grounded in a virtue.

Examples of transcendent experiences grounded in virtue
Many people describe an awareness of a sense of oneness or unity with others, especially strangers, as a spiritual experience. They feel connected to people they have never met. Compassion, the ability to see the “other” in ourselves and ourselves in the other, facilitates this transcendent connection. Compassion is a virtue.

A person can feel a spiritual connection to someone they will never meet or could never have met. For example, an activist for justice, looking back, can feel a connection to people long gone who wrote, spoke, or marched on behalf of justice for the marginalized, yet never saw an end to the injustice they protested. The witness can benefit from their impact and feel gratitude to those earlier activists. And looking at the current situation, at the injustice they are protesting, that modern day activist can realize they may never see the fullness of justice in their lifetime, but feel connected to people not yet born who will live in a world made more just through their activism. They see themselves in the activists who came before and in the beneficiaries who are to come. Justice is a virtue.

You may feel a connection to a relative in your family’s distant past when you hear about the person sacrificing for the survival of the family. You recognize courage, honor, and self-sacrifice in the person’s story and feel connected, maybe even seeing hints of those traits in relatives you know. This connection to a relative you’ve never known is a spiritual experience. Courage, honor, and self-sacrifice are virtues. And family is a spiritual concept.

Leadership and virtue
How does this translate into spirituality being a key component of leadership? It’s because leadership is gauged by its long-term impact on those led and, further, by what it contributes to society. It is gauged based on virtue. Virtues are universal, part of the deep stories or archetypes of the human psyche, so we resonate with them and feel connected when we recognize them in action. We feel connected with the importance of the virtue, connected with others because they also resonate with the virtue, and connected to the person expressing the virtue. The story archetype of a hero or champion is someone who takes a stand for one or more community virtues.

A person in a leadership role judged “by the numbers” may improve a corporation’s profits, or an agency’s revenue through grants and donations, or a small business’s market by opening new locations. But if corporate profits, agency revenue, or small business expansion come at the cost of employee engagement and satisfaction, or if the growth creates economic or environmental stress, it’s not sustainable. It sacrifices wellbeing of employees, or of a community, for short-term gains. That’s not true leadership because it lacks a guiding vision. It may be management or administration, but not leadership.

Vision and virtue
A leader’s vision sees the impact of change on the people doing the work, on those they serve through their work, and on the community at large, both near-term and long-term. A leader’s vision designs change that is sustainable and beneficial for all.

Vision is an essential component of leadership. Leadership starts with vision. Leadership is the ability to use imagination to envision the world made better through the expression of individual or organizational values, principles, and strengths; and then to organize and coordinate the resources, people, and effort needed to realize that vision and create a better world.

Leadership vision is spiritual
Great leadership has the ability to hold an expansive vision that sees widespread and long-term potential consequences of actions and compares them to the values and principles that create the vision. Great leadership plans for the overall impact to be aligned with those guiding values and principles for widespread and long-term benefit.

Great leadership considers the impact of the work on the people doing the work. It sees them as fellow human beings whose hearts matter, whose needs matter, and whose relationships matter. It values their drive to grow and develop their inner resources, their own strengths and talents, and express them in the world. Valuing people for who they are, not merely for what they can do to you or for you in a transactional way, is spiritual.

Great leadership also considers the impact of the changed world on those who will live in it, near-term and long-term, through a lens of virtue. The leaders’s goal is a plan that is good for everyone, not good for some at the expense of others. In situations where some people may be overlooked or left behind by a vision that improves things for most, a great leader looks to virtues to guide difficult choices that will serve the greater good.

Key Definitions

Transcendent: Connected beyond the perceived limits of physical or psychological time and distance, and sometimes experienced as eternal or timeless; Connected through archetypal story themes and elements, which can create a connection between people, between a person and a cause or a movement or an ideology, and within an individual to the deeper core self

Spiritual: An experience of deep transcendent connection with others or with one’s own core self; An experience of deep transcendent connection with timelessness, eternality, universal oneness, or the divine; An experience of deep transcendent connection marked by resonance with archetypal story themes and elements

Virtue: A universally recognized value that elevates society and promotes cooperation and advancement of all; An archetypal story theme or element about the higher qualities of humanity that contribute to wellbeing for all

Character: Self-management in service of virtue

Leadership: The ability to use imagination to envision the world made better through the expression of individual or organizational values, principles, and strengths; and then to organize and coordinate the resources, people, and effort needed to realize that vision and create a better world.

Did you catch that?
I threw in another concept in the list of definitions: Character. Character is essential in leadership. Character is not how well someone adheres to another person’s moral code. It’s how someone chooses and acts in alignment with virtues. It’s how they consider the impact of their actions on others, near-term and long-term, whether closely or distantly connected to the actions. Character is the thread that brings the leadership tapestry together.

Lead it forward: Take these ideas and wrestle with them. Consider what the word spiritual means to you. Reflect on experiences you’ve had that felt deeply spiritual and notice what about them seems most clearly spiritual. Consider what defines leadership for you, what separates it from directing or administering or managing or coordinating. Reflect on how you think leaders should treat people. Notice what qualities of leadership are important to you and choose ways to express those qualities in your own life.

Great leaders are people of character
Great leaders are people of character, guided by virtues, the enduring elevating values of most cultures throughout most of history. They experience a transcendent connection to the people they lead and to the people whose lives are impacted, near-term and long-term, closely and distantly, by their decisions. They see themselves in others and value others innately, committed to encouraging the best in others just as they develop the best in themselves. Transcendence is evident in their vision, in the way they treat others, and in the culture they create wherever they lead.

This is a framework. I haven’t filled in all the pieces or tested the edges of all the ideas. There’s plenty of room for exploration to expand my understanding and find new threads of connection for the tapestry. But I’m certain about this one point.

Leadership is spiritual.

May you be well, may you do well, and may you Thrive!

Take Care,

Stephen Coxsey, MA, LPC, PCC
Whole Life Leadership Coach

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About Steve Coxsey

Steve collaborates with people to design and implement a customized Whole Life Leadership plan that promotes success, fulfillment, and well-being for themselves and the people they lead and influence. They thrive on a personally meaningful path and promote a culture of thriving wherever they are in charge, from families to professions, from small businesses to organizations.

Steve is a supportive ally. His typical clients have to juggle competing responsibilities in a variety of roles. They have a compelling vision of what they would like to create or accomplish as leaders in their families, careers, or businesses and are committed to turning their vision into reality. To make that happen, they develop the Leadership Agilities that will enable them to empower and direct themselves, design and guide meaningful work, and inspire others.

Would you like that to be you?

Are you ready for a creative, dynamic, collaborative partnership focused on turning your vision into results?

Get started with a no-risk 30-minute consultation. It’s complimentary, so all it will cost you is a little bit of time. You can schedule the complimentary call using this online tool. You can also call 817-416-8971 or e-mail Steve@SteveCoxsey.com to set up the call.

Click here for more information than you could possibly ever want to know about Steve.

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