Leadership Presence Series – Post 11 of 16: Quality #7 – Inner Peace, Flow & Joy

As a leader, do you always feel you’re swimming against the tide? That everything is such a struggle? What if you could flow with equanimity and ease instead? What if you could consistently experience inner peace, flow and joy? That’s what we’ll explore in this post…

Introduction

If presence is a key to leading successfully – and it is – we need to understand it. So what is it? What’s so great about it? How does it show itself? What’s the source of presence? How do you develop it? That’s what we’re covering in this 16-part series.

Welcome to part 11: Quality #7 – Inner Peace, Flow & Joy.

What Is Inner Peace, Flow & Joy?

The seventh quality of presence shows as freedom from doubt and fear, bringing the sense of joy and natural spontaneous flow that comes from feeling you’re living a fulfilling life.

NOTE: this is feeling you’re living a fulfilling life, not the urge to be fulfilled. That’s part of quality #3, Drive to Be More.

How This Quality Benefits Leaders

• They feel free from persistent worry or anxiety.
• They feel life is an enjoyable flow – almost as if it’s easy. Like a sports athlete always feeling “on form”.
• They express themselves naturally, authentically and spontaneously, yet wisely. In the background is an intelligent, steady optimism – a feeling that life will work out well.

What does that bring? Greater energy, calmness and resilience, even in tough times, which transmits itself to others.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & “Flow”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a distinguished psychologist, studied one part of this quality: “flow”.

He described it as a state where someone performing a task experiences intense focus and full involvement to the point of immersion (they often lose the normal sense of time), effortlessness, enjoyment and satisfaction.

I mention this because when I use the word “flow” I’m applying a different meaning.

I mean a blend of ease, self-assurance and poise in action whether you feel immersed in a demanding, short-term, worthwhile task or not.

You see, in this seventh quality, “flow” doesn’t centre on single-task performance. Instead, it’s a sense of flow in the greater challenge of living and working.

Also, “flow” as I mean it here wouldn’t always demand great task skill (a precondition for Csikszentmihalyi) because the leader would display poise and self-assurance whether he had great task expertise or not. If they didn’t, they’d have the self-awareness and confidence to admit it and delegate to someone else.

Questions For Reflection

• How often do I experience fear of: rejection, being ignored, failure, powerlessness?
• Do I see life as a struggle… or as a joy?
• How spontaneous and expressive am I?
• How peaceful do I feel inside, even under pressure?

Next post in the series: Presence Is Spherical

[This post uses content from my 2016 book, The Three Levels of Leadership.]

Are you a visual or audio-orientated person? If so, you might prefer to see and hear me talking about leadership presence in my eleven-episode video series on YouTube at my YT channel, The Leadership Mastery Suite. When you arrive at the channel page, scroll down until you come to Created Playlists and there you’ll find the series, “On Leadership Presence”.