Where most leadership models miss the mark

I want to talk about relationships - and not because it’s February. A few weeks ago I did an informal audit of my notes and musings scattered across different apps. The most common themes were business, spirituality, and interpersonal relationships. 

It struck me that relationships are at the core of every human thing. This feels like stating the obvious, but so many of the leadership models and training out there have a weird way of addressing this. 

There’s often a survivalist undertone that undermines authenticity. The implication is, we need people to keep our livelihoods, so how can we win influence with people so that they don’t abandon us. Because to be abandoned is to be left alone in the wild where our chances of survival decrease significantly. 

My issue is not that this philosophy is wrong, per se. It’s that this approach to leadership is not motivated by a genuine desire for connection and collaboration. It is rooted in a self-serving need to pacify abandonment fears.

Abandonment is a very natural human fear. Fear is also a necessary experience for survival. The issue is that operating from fear - however subconscious - is a harmful strategy when applied long-term.

It confuses our perception of risk and threat. If we operate as though the risk of abandonment is ever-present then how can we ever learn to recognize what is safe? If we can’t recognize safety, how will we ever replenish the energy and strength we need to respond to imminent threats?

We have been socially conditioned to mistrust others and this bleeds into the way we manage people, invest in friendships, and engage with partners. 

This is also why vulnerability experts talk about courage. Because choosing connection and trust - choosing to show up as you are instead of trying to belong - is an incredibly vulnerable act. It activates that fear of rejection and abandonment. The proverbial death sentence of exile. 

The prevalence of social disconnection, hyperindividualism, and co-dependency are a few manifestations of this generational trauma of abandonment, genocide, and exile. More and more emerging data illustrates the implications of this on our nervous system, health, workplaces, interpersonal relationships, and beyond. That’s a post for another week - so stay tuned - but know that this is a systemic issue that requires a multi-layered approach to address. 

Embodiment is one piece of that multi-layered approach. When we learn to recognize what safety feels like internally and when we increase our fluency in the ways our mind-body-spirit communicate, we can more securely navigate interpersonal and societal dynamics. 

It helps us maintain perspective on the risks and threats that are real versus which ones are imagined. It helps approach leadership and management from a place of authentic collaboration and connection. 

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