Reframing Leadership: How a Shift in View Changes Everything

How to Conquer Any Leadership Challenge

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” – Eckhart Tolle

I can choose to look at every leadership challenge that I’m being confronted with at work and in life as a personal growth leadership opportunity. Recently my husband and I went through an incredibly challenging health crisis with our 15-year- old son. On a daily basis, for four months he was experiencing high levels of pain due to debilitating migraines. There were endless actions and possibilities for us to explore to support him in feeling better. Needless to say, it was a highly disruptive time in every aspect of our daily lives and routines. And it was the last thing I EVER wanted to experience as a mom - the utter powerlessness of having my child physically struggling with such intense chronic pain.

I realized, while every fiber of my being didn’t want my son to be suffering, I could consider the possibility that perhaps the experience was exactly what I needed to be having in order to grow and evolve as a leader (and a person and mother). Why? Because it was the experience I was having at that moment.

When I shifted my perspective, I immediately gained a deeper sense of peace and freedom in the midst of it all. In the months that followed a clear pathway and direction was revealed and we were led to the right health care providers that eventually brought our son physical healing.

I want to invite you to bring to mind a leadership challenge that you’re currently experiencing in your life around people, places or things…  Are you struggling with a situation or an individual? Is that person a co-owner, a colleague, or team member?

Or is it your spouse, loved one or child? If it’s a situation, does it involve completing actions and projects by a deadline, expanding your business, or meeting specific metrics and income? Ask yourself, “What is the leadership situation that I am resisting and resenting THE MOST right now in my life?”

Consider for a moment, that perhaps this very situation that brings up so much frustration is not actually about changing the externals, or getting another person to respond and behave in the way you think they should. But rather, perhaps it is the exact situation you need (or “get” to be having) to evolve as a leader.

How is life asking you to evolve as a leader right now in regards to this challenge? If life is happening for you and not to you, how would you describe the personal growth opportunity that’s being handed to you?

When we stop trying to change people, places and things, and instead look at the personal perspective shift and growth lesson that’s required and needed in ourselves, we often find that the externals in our life began to shift naturally and effortlessly.  This happens not because we’re forcing, controlling and or doing our best to figure things out, but rather because we begin focusing on the only thing we really have power over - ourselves.