Written by: Prasantha Devulapalli, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We live in a world today that is changing rapidly. After more than 20 years of working as a leader in various fields, most of the success stories that I have heard from leaders have come, not from following their head alone, but from a combination of head, heart, and gut. For me too, this is the pattern that I have observed when my staff, or those whom I serve as a leader point out where they have experienced being their most efficient and productive selves. In fact, sometimes, I use my heart and gut more than my head. That is what Balanced and Conscious leadership is all about.
However, let’s take this concept one step further - when your head, heart and gut are in alignment and you are aware of this alignment AND then you take action with self-awareness, you are a truly balanced and conscious leader. You will be a confident, self-aware and dare I say, an extraordinary leader.
For anyone, including myself, to reach this state of being this extraordinary leader means that I would need to develop inherent skills or hone in on the capabilities that I already have and sometimes even acquire new skills and qualities. And we can start this process with a few basic steps, which I will attempt to write down here, trying to cover this extremely complex topic. However, before we start diving into how-to-be, we need to understand the roles of our head, heart, and gut in our B&C leadership journey.
One of the first things to remember is that we all have masculine and feminine energies. Once we can accept this fundamental fact and learn to embrace it, we can begin our transformation. We can begin to explore more about what it means for our leadership abilities and how can we use these qualities to become even better leaders. Just remember - balanced doesn’t mean equal. It means to be able to use the right energy at the appropriate time while being aware that those other qualities are also co-existing within our minds.
The second fact to remember is that following our guts or heart is perhaps the first language we have, even before we have learned to communicate with words or with our minds/heads. Just think about a baby. They go with their guts - I like this person, I don’t trust this person, and with their hearts; this is my mom who loves me or some stranger I don’t know. So, if we have been encouraged from a very early stage of our lives to follow our hearts, we will rather quickly learn to trust our gut feeling. We are trained from the moment we start school to think with our heads as if we are all only logical beings. Well, I am claiming that to be an extraordinary leader, to a B&C leader, you will have to start recognizing the language of your heart and gut. We may even have to unlearn some old school lessons and retrain ourselves.
The third fact that I want to bring to your attention is that we will, most often than not, fall back on our core values when we are under pressure or high levels of stress. So, when the pandemic hit us a second time, some company leaders valued money/profits more than anything else and tried their level best to maintain their high-profit margins even at the expense of their staff. While other leaders, whose highest value is human lives, did whatever they can to make sure that their employees are alright and provided tools to work better, assured that they would not wake up in the morning without a job. Recognize your values, and then you will also see which values serve you best during times of difficulty and pressure.
So, what can we do to become B&C leaders?
Tap into the right energy. I believe we are all capable of showing the best versions of ourselves even when placed under huge amounts of pressure. Just accepting that we have both masculine and feminine energies will help us understand ourselves better. Just as we are unique and different as humans, so are these qualities, and the combination we have also vary from person to person. That means we need to spend some time recognizing our masculine and feminine qualities and learning how to tap into the right energy for the situation. In conscious Leadership, one aspect of it is our ability to distinguish between our reactions and our mindful actions. Look deeper into your mind and heart and how you respond.
Be open. Most business schools still follow the traditional masculine methods, such as the bottom line, hard sales, facts, figures, and aggressiveness (translated in a man’s world as ‘confidence’) amongst other characteristics. A B&C leader, however, will use the facts and data to analyze beyond what is written in black and white and read between the lines. He/she listens to what the heart says and draws a conclusion in confidence by following his/her gut feelings.
When you are open to receiving and giving, people around you will walk the talk with you. They will know that they are valued, respected, and their suggestions are considered seriously. I had heard amazing stories that when management opened up the floor to keep that company going during difficult times, the staff came up with totally unexpected ideas, like taking a pay cut instead of losing their jobs or changing the shift timings, and so on. When you are open, you are also saying that you trust others and you trust yourself.
Be humble. When you are humble, you will be able to recognize your own ‘pitfalls.’ You will open to learning from others' experiences as well, and you will be in a position to take calculated risks. Humility is not false modesty. Humility is when you can recognize that our own experiences limit us, and so we might not get all aspects of the situation. Humility is not a lack of confidence or weakness or an inability to make decisions. Humility allows us the thinking time to act using all three basic qualities of B&C leadership. It allows us to make informed decisions that will allow our minds to process the information and do what is right and align with our values and priorities.
Einstein once said, ‘we cannot find solutions with a mindset that created the problems in the first place.’ That is exactly what conscious leadership is about. Getting conscious about what kind of a leader you want to mean by aligning your intent with your action and being aware of your motivation. It is about considering both the masculine and feminine leadership qualities that will place you at the head of the game as a leader - for the benefit of our planet and our humanity. You will be a trailblazer.
We at Coral Swans want more leaders to be balanced and conscious. We strongly believe that such leadership is what the world needs today and look into the future. Our employees are our assets. They are human beings with lives and all that it brings, especially in today’s world. I could write a lot more on B&C leadership, but I will conclude that organizations and businesses, small or large, have everything to gain by embracing B&C leadership principles.
If you want to know more, feel free to contact me and follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin. You can also visit my website.
Prasantha Devulapalli, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Prasantha Devulapalli is founder of Coral Swans which runs an 8-week intensive tailored Balanced and Conscious leadership program for companies and individuals internationally. She is an highly accomplished and recognized leader amongst her peers with over 20 years of leadership experience in various fields. She has also been a mentor for social entrepreneurs and start-ups since 1997. She is an author of the book Blaze the Trail - Essential skills for Future leaders. Her company also helps entrepreneurs with consulting, designing websites, logos (branding), social media management and the other technological needs. She is passionate about diversity, inclusion and equity and is a motivational international speaker on various leadership topics. Raising a disabled and chronically ill child, she hosts YouTube channels, one on Leadership and one with her daughter Different Shades of the Norm.
