Interior Life & Leadership

EPISODE 55 | INTERIOR LIFE & LEADERSHIP

What does it mean to be a spiritually connected, spiritually integrated and authentic leader?

[00:00:13] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me.

[00:00:45]
Hello again, dear listeners, and welcome to another season of the Becoming Me podcast. Now, this coming season arc for the podcast will be about a particular frame in which we apply what we've been talking about and learning about healing and interior integration and growing in authenticity and wholeness.

[00:01:10] LEADERSHIP
And that application is in leadership. When we look at the headlines and we see all the crisis that we are going through in this time, in this era – whether it's the climate crisis or economic and political crisis; both at the national level and also at the global scale – it's not difficult to see that good leadership, morally courageous leadership, is so critical and that lack of that has huge repercussions that can literally cost livelihoods and lives, and even the destruction of our planet.

[00:01:57]
But leadership isn't just something that is important or applicable at such, you know, huge levels. Leadership is also something that touches our lives at a very intimate level. I think it's safe to say – or to assume that all of us would have had some experience of what it is like to be led or what it's like when we are led poorly.

[00:02:27]
When we are led poorly by those who have authority and power over us, we know that we suffer, right? Whether the leader that we're thinking of is, you know, the leader of the country that we live in, or the leader of the religious organisation that we belong to, or the leader at work – it could just be a superior at work or our boss, or it could be our parents, right – or our spouse.

[00:02:59] OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH LEADERSHIP
Leadership impacts all of us. And even in the interior journey that we talk about in this podcast, there needs to be leadership because even if we're not referring to a relationship we have with anyone else, we also need to lead ourselves. Right, and if we experience poor leadership from ourselves – I know most of us, we don't even think of it that way – but if we have a broken relationship with our inner self, we actually fail at leading ourself towards fuller life, towards wholeness and towards authenticity.

[00:03:41]
Then we suffer from that too, right? So, before we can talk. Leading anyone else – and actually all of us at some time or another will have a chance to lead. And when we don't know how to lead ourselves, well, then we won't really know how to lead another person well. So, our relationship with leadership, I think, in real life – it's often very complicated. Because on one hand, there is often that frustration and anger when we experience poor leadership, right – poor leadership over us.

[00:04:16]
On the other hand, a lot of us have a bad relationship with being a leader as well. We could fear being in a leadership position because we doubt our abilities and we have all these assumptions about what a good leader needs to be like. And we don't think we're up to it. Or we could really hanker over leadership positions because we want to have that kind of authority and power over other people so that we can control the situation, so that we can feel safe.

[00:04:46]
And that's also a bad dynamic to have with leadership. Either way, we need to heal our relationship with leadership, okay? With not just the concept of leadership – we need to heal our ability to lead ourselves and our ability to know how to lead others from a place of integration. When we look at a lot of the examples of failures in leadership – just imagine a context which you have experienced, right, in your life.

[00:05:21]
Maybe it's at work, maybe it's in your family. Maybe it's in your religious community – in your church. You would know when you have experienced poor leadership – what does that feel like? And can you see how often decisions are made that do not promote the actual wellbeing and welfare of the people?

[00:05:44]
A lot of times decisions made by poor leaders are made from a standpoint of making them look good, or not wanting to lose face in front of others, or wanting to look better in – you know, in the eyes of their superiors. Now, it's always comparatively easy to be able to recognize poor leadership in someone else.

[00:06:07]
Right, especially when we suffer from that poor leadership. But here's the thing – and here's what has helped me, you know, in times when I really feel very angry or frustrated at leaders. What has helped me develop compassion for them is to turn the focus inwards and recognize the times where I have really struggled with being a leader myself.

[00:06:37]
And the reality is, for any one of us who have to exercise leadership – whether it's in our families or at work in our communities – there is a burden, right? And the burden of responsibility – it gets all the heavier when our core identity is not yet integrated.

[00:07:01]
You know, when so much of who we need to believe we are, or so much of our identity rests on being able to achieve or perform, or be relevant or, you know, be praised for other people to recognize – let's say – excellence in us; when we need all that to feel secure about who we are, the burden of being a leader is so much more amplified.

[00:07:28]
And then all the more, it is easy for us to make mistakes – the very mistakes that we are really afraid to make. Because when we are still insecure, we still really, really depend on the external forum to have a sense of ourself.

[00:07:44]
That is why I really am convinced that one of the most significant ways that we can help to make the world a better place is for ourselves – for each of us to be committed in this interior journey to grow in integration and authenticity. Because the more self-aware we are, the more healed we have become. All of us in whatever capacities we have to lead, you know, in any context – whether it's just with one other person, whether it's over a hundred or a thousand people – it would make us more mindful, more loving, more decisive.

[00:08:26]
It would make us more courageous when we need to speak truth to power or make unpopular decisions for the greater good. Bottom line; when we are able to act from our true selves, from a place of integration, we always will experience greater confidence – you know, less self-doubt, and there's less fear. Because even if we make a mistake, we are not afraid to own up because our sense of worth and value does not lie in performance, in how other people regard us.

[00:09:05]
But it comes from a deep sense of who we are. So, to kick off this new thematic arc on leadership, I would like to share with you a reflection. I made a sharing that I did about my own experiences and struggle with leadership.

[00:09:27] MY OWN EXPERIENCE WITH LEADERSHIP
What does it mean to be a spiritually connected, spiritually integrated and authentic leader?

For as long as I can remember, in my own life, it's always been drummed into me the importance of leadership. I happen to be the eldest child in the family, the eldest grandchild on my mom's side of the family of 16 grandchildren. In school, I found myself in student leadership positions, right. I was head prefect in primary school as well as in secondary school.

[00:10:02]
And even in my involvement in church – I often got this message, you know, that it's important to be a leader – and to be a good leader. What does it mean to be a good leader? To be considered responsible, have initiative, you know, have leadership abilities to lead others. I think the concept of leadership come from many different places – from cultural values of my family, from the cultural values from where I live.

[00:10:31]
But also, from things that I pick up – scriptural values, right – in church. We're told to lead like Jesus. And as I grew older and my responsibilities grew heavier, and I entered into full-time ministry, especially – I really wrestled with what it meant to live that out in practical ways.

[00:10:58]
It is one thing to read books about leadership and about the importance of, let's say, listening as a leader, of compassion or, you know, of being able to relate to people, about managing people. We all know – I think I'm pretty confident saying that – we all know that, that doesn't necessarily help us feel like we are doing better as leaders.

[00:11:20]
And sometimes we don't even know what it is exactly that we struggle with, or why is it that we struggle so hard with certain personalities or certain situations. We maybe don't really have an awareness of who we are, what our skills are, what maybe our shortcomings are, where our gifts are – and how to be more effective where we are placed with the limitations that we have.

[00:11:49]
And then on top of all that, add on what does it mean to be a good Christian leader – to be a disciple? Does it mean that we always have to, you know, be so even tempered that we never lose our cool? That we never have a sharp word? We never give a sharp word to anyone?

[00:12:12]
Does it mean that we will always forgive when people, let's say, disrespect us, or maybe – do we stand up when there's injustice for the people that are under our care? Or do we also just take it because you know that – because we take discipleship of being like Christ to mean being meek. I mean, these are not – these are not questions that are abstract.

[00:12:38]
They are questions that everyone who has been in a leadership position have had to face, right. And maybe have experienced failing at because you choose one thing, and then you feel that you fail in another area. One of the lowest points in my life, when it comes to wrestling with leadership, was at a point when I headed an office – and it was not even a big office, I just had a few people under my care.

[00:13:07]
And I realized I couldn't cope. I was – every night I was praying and crying because I was so frustrated with wanting to form the people that I was leading, you know? To mentor them, to help them to grow as young adults, into integrated maturity. And – but at the same time wanting to be able to be professional and hold them to professional standards because I also sincerely believed – genuinely believed that that was good training for them.

[00:13:37]
And to meet certain deliverables – professional deliverables – that are expected of me as the head of this office, you know, in the church. And I found myself always bumping up against being misunderstood – my words being misunderstood or misconstrued. I wanted the people that I was leading to feel that I – to know that I cared for them because that was the truth.

[00:14:04]
I really, you know, tried my best to do what was best for them while keeping all these – the attentions, under consideration. But it was never – it never seemed to be enough. It never seemed to be enough for them. It never seemed to be able go anywhere actually. And I have to say at one point, I felt I failed spectacularly.

[00:14:24]
And it was really bad. And then one day, in prayer, you know, when my usual "Lord help me! Help me to be a good leader, help me to be a good boss" – and I heard this come back, you know, in prayer. I felt the Lord was saying to me, "Ann, stop trying so hard to be a good leader. You don't know how to be a good leader".

[00:14:45]
You know, it was one of those moments where it just felt like, wow, okay. Ouch. What do you mean? I mean, I've been so invested my whole life in learning what it meant to be a good leader, right? And I assumed that that would apply to being a head of an office – being a leader, being, you know, a boss, so to speak. But I really didn't know how to, and I had to acknowledge the truth in that response I felt God was giving to me.

[00:15:14]
Stop trying so hard to be a good leader, good boss – you don't know how to be one. And then the next thing was even more surprising. Then the next thing I felt like I heard in prayer was "I'm not expecting you to be a good boss, Ann" – and that made me pause. Then what are you asking of me, Lord?

[00:15:34]
And He said, "well, I'm asking you to be yourself. And to follow me." Now, was God saying to me that it was not important to learn to be a good leader? I don't think so. But that exchange – pondering on that exchange and subsequently continuing to wrestle with the reality of being a leader – made me realize I had kept my gaze fixed on some kind of ideal about what it means to be a good leader.

[00:16:08]
I wanted to succeed both in terms of impressing my boss – which was my parish priest – and in the people in the parish, you know, with my accomplishments in the office. And at the same time, I wanted to be able to grow the young persons that were under my care. I wanted to make disciples of them, and I wanted them to like me.

[00:16:28]
So, it was not even fully conscious – but this was the operating assumption, right, that was driving me. And I realized that the Lord was telling me – God was telling me – no, your gaze is fixed on the wrong place. I'm asking you to be true to the person that I created you to be, to acknowledge where you are – not try to be somebody that you are not.

[00:16:53]
And to follow me as best you can; to deepen that relationship with God as best I can. And then the rest – the outcomes; how successful or unsuccessful I may look at this point – whether people are happy or unhappy with me at this point, for me being true to who I am, who He created me to be – that's not in my control and I should not be trying to grasp those things.

[00:17:21]
And I realized that that was really difficult for me to do, right. Just following Christ, trying to be true to who He created me to be was really hard because the bottom line was, I didn't really know who I was. My sense of self-worth was still very dependent on what people thought of me – whether people liked me.

[00:17:47]
I couldn't help it even though I knew, and I really believed intellectually, cognitively, right – that my identity rested in Christ, in God, and who He said I was. And He loves me for me being me – not for anything I can accomplish. Doesn't matter how many times I've heard that, read that, even prayed to remember that.

[00:18:10] GROWING INTO LEADERS WE ARE CALLED TO BE
There was a – there's a distance between what I knew and what – in my body, like what I was capable of living. And that gap – in that gap was such great tension. And I often ended up just spinning my wheels because I didn't know how to live what I believe to be true. And closing that gap, I learned over time, over years, is what living that interior life is about, ultimately.

[00:18:46]
You know, it's what that journey into integrated authenticity and integration and wholeness is about. It's learning the tools to meet ourselves where we are at, to know how to encounter God – let God encounter us where we are at and not try to impress Him with, you know, how holy we are, when we are not really there.

[00:19:09]
How to then grow into the leaders that we are called to be? Not maybe the leaders that we want to be, or we aspire to be, or the leaders that we admire – but to discover and grow into the leaders that Christ calls us to be, and God created us to be. And that's a long journey, right? There's no shortcut to that journey.

[00:19:36]
And the thing is; for as long as we don't realize that there's this interior journey to be made – that there's this need for integration – we won't be able to actually live out, so-called, Christlike leadership because there will always be something that we put on – it would be a persona that we try to perform.

[00:19:59]
And I think if we're very honest, we will know when it falls short – when we fall short and we know that we haven't become more spiritually fruitful. You know, spiritual fruitfulness is something that doesn't just happen in the short. I think real spiritual fruitfulness shows itself over the course of years.

[00:20:20]
And you see that the people that you have been in contact with, that you have led, whether they're your children, whether they're young people that you have been discipling, whether they're colleagues at work, you know, in all kind of contexts – or in your cell group or people that you've had to look after and lead in ministry – if there's genuine, real spiritual fruitfulness, you'll see that that impact goes on in those people's lives long after you've maybe not been in contact with them even, right.

[00:20:51]
And however long or short the contact time you have with these people that you lead – if there really is Christ, if you're really listening to how Christ is calling you, you can trust that something will grow. And there is an ease and a freedom with which we lead, that we otherwise would not have if we felt that we had to control everything and we needed to succeed in specific ways and have everyone like us, for example – or have power over everyone.

[00:21:27] A LEADER'S SPIRITUALITY
Now, these are the kinds of questions and issues that we explore in the course that I'm about to teach, again, this coming year in September into October and it's called A Leader's Spirituality. And it's precisely looking at what does it mean to have these dimensions of eternity – of living this relationship with God that is eternal.

[00:21:54]
Right, and knowing that when He calls us to lead, there's also an eternal dimension to that leadership because it's in His kingdom. At the same time, it’s very temporal. It's very – it's here, right now. And you know, there are all these limitations that we face in ourselves and in the situations that we are. What does it mean to lead with those two dimensions in mind?

[00:22:15]
What does it mean to lead? Being in touch with who we are right now – becoming more aware with what we struggle with emotionally, you know, where our insecurities are. How can we become more aware when the actions that we take as leaders are more determined by our fears and our insecurities than our anchoredness and rootedness in our identity in Christ?

[00:22:43]
And how can we grow into identity that we have in God? What does it mean to do that? And how do we begin to do that? – To make it real and not just conceptually understand what that is. So, in A Leader's Spirituality, I give some input on all these things and there are exercises and facilitations to help you try and internalize all these concepts in the real practical issues that you are facing in your life right now – in your leadership context, right.

[00:23:18]
And I just want to say, if you have been following my podcast, Becoming Me podcast – if you're interested in this whole journey about becoming more integrated and authentic as a disciple in Christ, then really, please consider checking out this course. It is offered through the Catholic Leadership Centre in Singapore.

[00:23:39]
And if you're living in Singapore and especially if you're a Catholic in Singapore, you can just register directly with the Catholic Leadership Centre. If you're not residing in Singapore and you don't have a local bank account, for example, then there's an option for you to register through my website.

[00:23:57]
And you can find more information about A Leader's Spirituality on the website about how it's run, how you can continue to have access, or you can access the sessions, the recordings, even if you can't attend it live. So, this is an online course – there'll be live sessions, but if you're not able to attend them, you can watch the recording.

[00:24:17]
You can also ask me questions offline – as in outside of those life sessions, which I will respond to and it'll be recorded and you can follow up and join, you know, the discussion through the recordings afterwards. So, I hope you check out A Leader's Spirituality. It is the only course currently, that I am offering.

[00:24:40]
And it has also, proven to be a very systematic way to introduce some fundamental concepts about beginning to integrate our life. I know that a lot of people have enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed this course and the questions that people bring. I love – I love, hearing the nitty gritty issues that we are facing and exploring and sharing with people how to look at these things and begin to respond to these; our struggles – not just as a quick fix, but from the context of this ongoing integration journey; becoming a more mature disciple in Christ.

[00:25:23] PRAXIS: LISTEN. PONDER. ACT.
Here are the practice prompts for this episode. One: Listen – so, as you listened to my sharing about my struggles with leadership, what hit you? Was there anything that resonated with you?

[00:25:44]
Two: Ponder – now, the reality of being a leader – whether it is, you know, on a small scale, on a grand scale – can be that, it can feel very lonely. When have you felt that loneliness of being a leader?

[00:26:09]
Three: Act – okay, I don't have, you know, a small praxis for this particular episode because really, the praxis that's needed to get integrated as a leader includes everything that has been talked about in the Becoming Me podcast up to this point and many more things besides. But I do want to encourage you to look out for resources, right – that talk about how to become more integrated as a leader.

[00:26:44]
Now, personally, my context and my experience and, you know, the places where I have gained wisdom from all this trial and error and growth – is in the context of becoming more integrated as a leader while being a disciple of Christ.

[00:26:59]
Right, so, specifically as a Catholic Christian – what has it meant for me to not just, you know, apply concepts and principles that I learn about leadership in my faith or, you know, in a secular context. But how does it become part of me as I become more authentic and whole. As I mentioned in the recording that you heard earlier, I really have enjoyed the process of being able to share what I have learned in this context with people in A Leader's spirituality.

[00:27:33]
And if you are also a disciple of Christ, and especially if you're a Catholic and you're living in Singapore, or even if you're not really – I want to make this course available to as many people as possible, right. And that's actually a big reason why I chose to have it online.

[00:27:53]
I'm teaching this for the Catholic Leadership Centre of Singapore, right. But I chose to make it an online course because I wanted to have that option that people who are not living in Singapore and maybe who don't have this kind of resource may have an opportunity to also join us. And there is also a limited number of partial scholarships that I'm trying to make available to those who are in full-time ministry.

[00:28:24]
Okay, so, if you're in full-time pastoral ministry – let's say you're working in the church, or one of the church organizations – Catholic organization in Singapore, please, you can email at ann@parrhesia.sg.

[00:28:40]
All right, so, I will park my contact. It's always in the show notes – contact me if you'd like to inquire about partial scholarship; there's a limited number available and priority will be given to those with lesser means. There is only one run of this online course and registration is open for it right now.

[00:29:02]
It is open until August 31st. Okay, so, please consider this if you feel that what I shared earlier resonates with you, or you've already been listening to Becoming Me podcast, and you want to have an opportunity to have a more extended praxis together with me, guided by me, and have me answer the questions that you may have that you are facing in leadership, in your life right now.

[00:29:31]
So, don't forget to check out the link to A Leader's Spirituality that I will park in the show notes. And I really hope to see you in A Leader's Spirituality.

[00:29:46] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me, where new episodes drop every first and third Wednesdays of the month. Remember, the most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, and no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. 

The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive. Don't forget to visit my website at becomingmepodcast.com and to subscribe to my newsletter as well as to this podcast. Until the next episode, Happy becoming!