Our brightest light

‘We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.’  Plato

Leadership Presence, core to my work in developing senior leaders, is the integration of integrity, passion and charisma. Integrity is at the heart of authentic leadership: it is the essence of who we are, our vision and values and this is how we create trust, respect and great loyalty in our followership.

If the essence of leadership is establishing loyalty, the key task of a leader is to bring hope, the promise of a better future leading us out of times of adversity and onto even greater success. This includes our strategic vision of course, but it is also our passion and positive energy, motivating and encouraging others to stretch to their highest potential.  And this is perhaps the greatest challenge for the individual and for the leader: we cannot inspire others authentically i.e., with integrity, if we are not feeling inspired and full of hope ourselves. Like so much in leadership, we cannot simply ‘do’: we have to ‘be’ as well. Which means, if we are not feeling full of hope and passion, it’s our responsibility to make the necessary and often challenging changes…including within ourselves… to feel these again.

So, we have passion and integrity but if we keep these qualities hidden and don’t show and communicate them successfully, they remain buried, and we are trapped in ineffective and wasted intentions.

This is where Charisma comes in, the origin of this word meaning a divine gift. In Greek mythology, when the Gods came down to Earth, they would assume human form, but they had a special sparkle/gold dust surrounding them that couldn’t be concealed.

Charisma is the attribute I took much longer to own in myself. I come from a culture and family that mistrusts charisma. It is perceived as ego driven and lacking in humility: at best superficial and lightweight, at worst the tool of the arrogant for personal gain via conscious manipulation. It’s why I always integrate charisma with integrity: without integrity, charisma becomes the ‘used car salesperson syndrome’: manipulative and transactional with no heart. When charisma has passion but no compassion, its potential is to do even greater harm. We all know people who fit into this: there is an overly extrovert, bullish and arrogant energy. It’s no wonder many people are resistant to access their own charisma and inner power when they have experienced being on the receiving end of such energy.

It’s the ‘reluctant leaders’ that I trust, the ones with gentle shy humility who do not want the role for the glory and recognition. They are the ones looking around urging someone else to take it on. But there’s a shadow aspect to this gentle humility: it can stem from an elusive core confidence manifested in a fear of failure, i.e. the ‘Imposter Syndrome.’ There is so much fear here: fearful of being pushed into the spotlight, fearful of others’ judgment…and crucially, fearful of one’s own inner power. Such apologetic hesitancy.

Is this our choice then: a bullish arrogance pushing aside others to grab the spotlight or a self-limiting humility going so far but no further, less we, Icarus-like, are melted by the bright heat of the midday sun?

As I began writing this article, my working title: ‘Into the Light’ was inspired by the Plato quote: ‘We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.’  As I do each time, I pause my writing to look for the right picture to bring me inspiration: I search intuitively not cognitively, knowing that the right image will guide me further into what I really want to communicate. I began with lighthouses, then different forms of light, then plants growing towards the sun. As I dived deeper, I intuitively knew I was playing it safe, still hooked into old self-limiting injunctions of so far but no further. I shook myself, took a deep breath and tapped into my unconscious, creative mind: the image that burst through was the full brilliance and power of the sun. This is what Plato meant: we are not afraid of soft light, where we can be good enough, visible but not too visible. We want to be seen…it’s a fundamental psychological need…but not too seen.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.”  Marianne Williamson

Why are we so afraid of stepping into the brightest incandescent light, into that which makes us ‘brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Why do so many show such visceral reactions to this concept, to the words themselves? Beyond cultural, familial reasons, it could be because we are shy and/or don’t want to be shot at if we stick our heads above the parapet. We might have learned as a young child that speaking our truth and being seen, brought envious attacks and punishment, so we learned early that being seen…really seen…is dangerous and we wisely chose to go so far but not too far. Conversely many high achievers were valued, i.e. conditionally loved, if they performed and shone. But they learned that this shining is often performative not authentic and is done to please others. It ultimately brings a sense of hollowness and unfulfillment, the Imposter Syndrome. They are pretending to be someone they are not or rather, they aren’t being the authentic person they truly are.

These are all valid reasons, yes, but they are another wall, reasons to self-limit and to keep ourselves small so that others won’t feel insecure and attack.

Ironically, to find the answer and also to uncover our brightest light, we need to go into the dark, what is psychologically called our ‘Shadow’. This is where we reject, deny or project onto others, aspects of our self we are ashamed of and aren’t willing to own, e.g. anger, sadness, envy, vulnerability. Reactive irritability is a key indicator that our shadow is activated...a nerve has been touched!

We can also bury other aspects in our Shadow, qualities that are usually seen as positive: in particular our personal power. Robert A Johnson, the Jungian Psychoanalyst, explains why integrating our own shadow enables us to accept and love our real self and, as a consequence, release our full creativity and healthy power: ‘To honor and accept one’s own shadow…is whole-making and the most important experience of a lifetime…

It is astonishing to find that some very good characteristics turn up in the shadow. Generally, the ordinary, mundane characteristics are the norm. Anything less than this goes into the shadow. But anything better also goes into the shadow! Some of the pure gold of our personality is relegated to the shadow because it can find no place in that great levelling process that is culture.

Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides. To draw the skeletons out of the closet is relatively easy, but to own the gold in the shadow is terrifying. It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character than to find out you are a bum. Of course you are both; but one does not discover these two elements at the same time. The gold is related to our higher calling, and this can be hard to accept at certain stages of life. Ignoring the gold can be as damaging as ignoring the dark side of the psyche, and some people may suffer a severe shock or illness before they learn how to let the gold out.’ Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche

In essence, we cannot fully embrace our brightest light unless we know and embrace our own dark, our Shadow. Embracing does not mean simple collusion. There is rich, fecund darkness and there is bad darkness which has a very different energy. It is tight and rigid, it strangleholds growth and it is always the container for the abuse of power: the abusers holding sway through control and secrets. Everything in the dark behind closed doors. They do not want their shadow to be brought into the light!

Our psychological task to become healthy empowered human beings is to bring our shadow into the light, an alchemical transformation into gold. It’s a life-long, on-going process. Challenging, yes, but infinitely rewarding,

An aspect of my own shadow work was my relationship with anger. I instinctively love harmony but beyond a natural predisposition for beauty and equanimity, I’ve also been conditioned from a very early age to be a peacemaker, soothing and diffusing jarring dynamics, not adding to them. I come from a family that has very high IQ but underdeveloped EQ, i.e. the incapacity to understand and manage emotions, so uncontrolled/unprocessed anger was always erupting. Of course, I was born with the capacity to feel anger but I learned to swallow my own and manage others’ anger brilliantly. It’s not surprising I became a therapist.

Swallowing anger is dangerous. Anger turned inwards becomes depression and makes us ill. It also makes us passive aggressive, i.e. not owning our anger cleanly but channelling it indirectly. This is at the core of the victim mindset, a refusal to take personal responsibility for our actions, and it can also manifest in behaviour such as backstabbing, trolling, forming excluding cliques etc.

Most of us are quite rightly wary of anger. We have all been on the receiving end of destructive unhealthy anger at some point and we learned as very little children to either emulate it and/or find strategies to deflect and avoid it, all of which are equally harmful to others and to ourselves.

I didn’t witness or learn that anger can be a healthy and enabling energy until I was in my thirties doing deep therapeutic work on my shadow. I had recently been promoted into a leadership position, and I had to stop being a good girl and grow up, i.e. I had to find my inner authority and power.

What does healthy anger look like? Think of the Statue of Liberty in New York. Given to the USA in 1885 by the French in honour of the friendship between the two countries, the statue is based on Libertas, the Roman Goddess of liberty and personal freedom, specifically enslavement. Her strong and authoritative stance, her calm and commanding face and her arm held high in fierce pride: this woman means business! She knows her boundaries and has deep self-respect. She very rarely roars…she doesn’t need to and often a simple raised eyebrow or tone of voice is enough…but, like a lioness protecting her cubs, she would kill in self-defence. She also knows anger is sometimes a necessary motivational energy to change what needs to be changed.

I’m still not easy with anger but I have learned not to swallow it and to transform it into a more connecting, healthy and productive energy.

I began this article talking about Leadership Presence and Charisma. Charisma means a divine gift, but it also means personal magnetism, the power to attract and influence, and we are rightly wary of this. All power, as with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, has the propensity to abuse. But power is not good or bad: it is an energy in itself. It is how we work with it that determines if this energy is for good or ill.

Charisma is ultimately about touching people’s hearts and minds. It’s about putting people at their ease and having a great and positive impact: lulling lions and wild beasts so they melt and are with you! It’s easy to do this inauthentically, the ‘used car salesperson syndrome’. It’s much more complex but with infinitely greater and far-reaching impact to do this when charisma is embedded in integrity and passion. This is the life enhancing gift of the sun and how we truly win hearts and minds.

 Hannah Elizabeth Greenwood