Awakened Leadership Starts with Welcoming Everything
In a moment where uncertainty has become the new standard of existing, leaders have a massive opportunity to fully embrace the words “I don’t know,” while still holding inner authority. How might we welcome everything to embody awakened leadership?
Rick Smith, Authentic Relating Expert
On episode 22, we drop into the body and rediscover authenticity with Rick Smith, an Authentic Relating Expert with a background in classroom teaching and education consulting. Over the past twenty years, he’s spoken to over 100,000 people in fifteen countries on five continents. His best-selling book Conscious Classroom Management has now sold over a quarter million copies, and continues to touch the lives of teachers and their students.
This conversation is an experiential taste of authenticity (and how to integrate this into modern day leadership), much like a mindful yoga flow for communication. While The Atlantic wrote a piece about Authentic Relating called “The Club Where You Bare Your Soul To Strangers,” Rick helps us move beyond this story into the power of authenticity in leadership, what he coins Awakened Leadership. Quite simply, it all begins with learning how to lead yourself. We explore the power of listening, presencing and adopting the mantra “I don’t know” to cultivate this potential. Not to mention, so much of where we begin starts by fundamentally relaxing the nervous system in a new way. From here, everything else becomes possible.
“Whatever is arising can be welcome. That’s the kind of listening that’s required for awakened leadership.”
While Authenting Relating began as a movement in San Francisco in the late 90s, it has grown worldwide to 14 different countries and is catching fire not just in New Age-y communities, but in spaces we’d probably expect least -- businesses, the corporate sector and conflict transformation. According to Rick, this has everything to do with “people discovering themselves and creating tools to carry it forward.”
Key topics we cover include:
How leaders can balance vulnerability and authentic power at the same time, especially when imposter syndrome kicks in
The key qualities of stepping into awakened leadership, including “shifting from performance into presence” and “inner apology to inner authority”
The importance of presencing and calming the nervous system to tap into power (and practices to support this)
