What is embodied leadership?

Imagine a hanging mobile and you, as a leader, are one of the objects dangling from a string. Now, imagine more objects on the same mobile – each suspended from their individual strings. These represent the people you lead at work and in your personal life.

As leaders (and as human beings), our default way of attempting to produce results in ourselves and others is often through contrived measures, such as: controlling, efforting, working harder, figuring things out, going into over-drive, forcing, manipulating, fawning (people-pleasing) and feigning (attempting to blend in and fit in). All of these default behaviors result in us feeling overwhelmed and like a victim in our own game.

In the mobile analogy, the leader (the center piece) attempts to physically force all of the other objects to stay in one place. But these objects remain just out of reach, swirling around chaotically with no steady orbit or connection to the center piece (you, the leader).

What if there were an easier, more effective and more efficient way to lead and impact performance and results in
ourselves AND in the people we lead?