Reimagining Leadership: Beyond Doing, Into Being
"Love without power is ineffective. Power without love is brutality." ~ Paul Linden
I've just come out of an incredible week with Authentic Relating Training International (ART), and I can't stop thinking about what I learned about leadership, especially as I was in a non-teaching leadership role. It challenged me to be a role model in this work when I couldn't hide behind my knowledge and teaching. I really had to live the practice and walk the talk.
Leadership: A Dynamic, Relational Practice
Leadership has always been relational. Even as a young military officer, I was taught that effective leadership was about far more than commands, hierarchies, or purely tactical achievements. It turns out that barking orders at people when they're cold, wet and tired doesn't work that well.
But I'm coming to understand this on a whole new level as I've immersed myself in embodied connection practices over the past 7 years. Leadership, then, is a living, breathing practice of human connection – a dynamic dance of presence, vulnerability, and mutual awakening.
Relational leadership is less about doing and more about being. It's an approach that prioritises connection over content, presence over performance, and collective potential over individual achievement. It's less about managing and more about being – being present, being connected, being responsive.
Core Skills of Relational Leadership
Discernment: More than just decision-making, this is a refined capacity to sense subtle dynamics, to distinguish without becoming rigid. It's about developing an intuitive intelligence that goes beyond mere logic. It's having the courage to make difficult choices.
Capacity for Presence: The ability to stay fully connected and aware, even in challenging moments. This means being able to sit with discomfort, uncertainty, and complexity without rushing to resolve, fix or escape.
Integrity: Not just consistency, but a deep alignment of inner experience and outer action. It's about showing up authentically, with transparency and wholeness.
Embodied Awareness: Leadership is felt, not just thought. It's a bodily experience of being in relationship – with others, with time, with space, with the environment around us.
The Relational Leadership Approach
Connection Over Content
We prioritise relationship over transaction. Before diving into tasks or objectives, we create genuine human connection. This isn't soft or inefficient – it's the most direct path to meaningful collaboration. Conflict, after all, can be a great source of creativity so there's a lot to be gained by being with what's happening between us, in service of our shared goals.
Inherently Collaborative and Liberatory
Great leadership isn't about being the smartest person in the room (which is good because I very rarely am). It's about creating a room where everyone gets smarter together. My role as a leader is to be a guide, not a guru. It's "power with" rather than "power over" – supporting others to be more fully themselves in the world.
Leadership cannot be practised alone. It emerges through mutual interaction, through our collective intelligence.
Hang Out in Uncertainty
There's a radical invitation to live with a layer of "I don't know." Leadership becomes about:
Emergent discovery
Living into questions (you don't even have to be able to define your leadership, but rather ask "what does it mean for me today?")
Taking relational risks
Being willing to go first
I love this because, again, I don't have to have all the answers. Sure, there are moments when I might teach or offer a perspective but more and more I'm realising I can trust the intelligence in the group.
Navigating Polarities
Relational leadership requires a sophisticated ability to hold seemingly contradictory energies:
Form and flow
Power and love
Directing and sensing
Authority and warmth
Instead of seeing these as opposing forces, we learn to dance with them, finding creative potential in their intersection.
This is where having range is important. The more comfortable I am at the different ends of these spectrums, the more authentically I can show up drawing on the embodiment that is most supportive in that moment. I can be responsive without losing myself.
Leadership is a Verb
When we understand leadership as a verb, we shift from a fixed mindset to a dynamic, responsive practice. It's not about being a perfect leader, but about continuously showing up, connecting, sensing, and responding.
When I say leadership is a verb, I mean it's something you do, not something you are. It's about being present, sensing what's needed, and responding in real-time. No fancy manual required, no perfect script to follow.
And the best part? You don't have to kill yourself trying. In fact, the magic happens when you stop trying so hard. When you can lean back, receive what's happening around you, and then take action from that place of deep listening. That's when leadership becomes easeful.
Profound gratitude to Dayna Seraye, Rick Smith, and the Authentic Relating Training International (ART) community for the teachings that continue to reshape my understanding of leadership.
An Invitation to Explore
🌟 Relational Facilitation Mastery Mentorship 3 Spaces Remaining | Starting January 2024 🌟
If these ideas spark something in you – a recognition, a longing, a possibility – I invite you to join a small, intimate group where we'll explore leadership and facilitation as a living, relational practice.