Leadership, Vision & The Inner Voice, Pt. 3

HOW:
Listening to the Inner Voice Allows One To Become A Whole Brained Person.

Ironically, the sub-title above is a perfect description of what I wasn’t during many phases of my life; one in particular involved the process of how I decided to marry my wife. I thank God I finally listened.

I’ve been the most successful, when I’ve listened to the inner voice. I had broken things off with Helen shortly after I had arrived home from a two year religious sabbatical in Santiago, Chile. After coming home from such an empowering, life changing experience, I suddenly didn’t know where I fit in. I had changed but a lot at home hadn’t and I had a hard time making the adjustment. Shortly thereafter, I moved to Huntington Beach, CA to find my self. Looking back, I had digressed to a state of shock learning where I had no real plan but was throwing myself into situations to sort of test myself to see how I’d do. Next I decided to move to Utah to stay with family and maybe date a little. There I drifted further back into maintenance learning where I was operating with a fixed outlook of how to deal with issues that seemed to be reoccurring in my life. All this time, I was trying to engage and move forward in life but I had stopped listening to the inner voice. When you don’t listen, the voice eventually goes quiet and the vision goes dark. Finally I decided to come back to Arizona and start to establish myself again. In moving back, I started a plan of self-development again where I began a process of Innovative learning. I developed a hunger for knowledge and understanding in order to expand my capacity. I began to read business trend, leadership, and self-development books like crazy and started to focus on a networking project I had started before I left for Chile. I could finally feel my true self start to emerge and so I dug in and studied harder to learn the concepts. Soon I was back in Utah at my sister and Brother in laws on a business trip. I had been up late doing some training when I started to get down on myself because I still wasn’t achieving the results I that I wanted and so, I picked up a book. Right then, my phone rang; it was Helen driving home from a trip. She was getting sleepy and had the sudden impulse to call me. We started to talk and she could tell right away that I was feeling really down. For the next few minutes she proceeded to encourage, edify and uplift me, knowing just what to say. It felt so good to have someone I felt who really knew me and knew my potential and who I could be. After the call but on that same trip, I called Helen to use some visuals for a presentation I was doing. I went to pick it up and while in her bedroom I saw some goals written up on a white board. My eyes immediately went to one goal that read, “Be Rusty’s best friend.” I didn’t quite know how to take that because we hadn’t even been talking except for the call from a couple nights before. She saw the look in my eyes and looked at the board, not realizing she’d left it up there. I could tell she was nervous, not knowing if it would scare me off or not. I didn’t say anything then but when the trip was over and I was at Rob and Kenyon, my brother and sister-in-law’s house. I told Kenyon what had happened. I told her I liked how Helen made me feel on the phone the other night, but that I didn’t know if I liked that she was still perusing a relationship because we were supposed to be dating other people. Ironically, though, every girl I had dated during that phase was, in my mind anyways, compared to Helen. I would say things like, “so and so is nice and all, but why can’t she be more like Helen?” When I told Kenyon that Helen had written “Be Rusty’s best friend,” on the white board, she cut through the confusion saying, “Helen is so awesome, I knew she was the right one for you.” That wasn’t what I had expected to hear, but it gave me an outside perspective, at the perfect time, from someone whom I trusted and knew was very in tuned to the inner voice as well. This is an important point because part of the initial process is identifying the voice and getting your hunches voiced to others who share this desire to learn. I next took these experiences to my mom. She listened very lovingly as I drew myself out and as I talked and she listened I broke down crying with a realization that Helen was the one. She was always the one and the voice inside knew it. This was just the first time that I was really listening. I was finally becoming a whole brained person, pun intended, and I knew the course of action I had to take. The next day I called Helen to ask if she was willing to give the relationship another chance. She of course knew all along that we were going to end up together but was gracious and patient enough to allow me to come to that conclusion on my own. Soon after we started dating again I asked her to marry me and she happily said yes.


[Successful people] rely as much on their intuitive and conceptual skills as on their logical and analytical talents. These are whole-brained people, capable of using both sides of their brain.” Warren Bennis

The “How” then, of listening and being led by the inner voice, is to learn to use your whole brain.

Learning to tap into the full potential of this God given machine has yet to be accomplished, but the closer you can get, the more in-tuned you will be to your true self which has the effect of liberating all faculties. As quoted before, it is in these moments that we feel “most deeply and intensively active and alive.” Tapping into all of our God-given faculties is the way to true, self-realization. Our brain then can receive messages in different ways and we must LEARN to IDENTIFY these messages, act quickly on them and in doing so we’ll get better and quicker at moving through, and learning from the choices in our lives.

Bennis also says, "A part of whole-brain thinking includes learning to trust what Emerson called the 'blessed impulse,' the hunch, the vision that shows you in a flash the absolutely right thing to do. Everyone has these visions; leaders learn to trust them." “Listening to the impulse voices means letting the self emerge. Letting the self emerge is the essential task for leaders. It is how one takes the step from being to doing in the spirit of expressing rather than proving.” Bennis

There is a system for effectively living by this spirit of truth. But first we must start with the correct world view. We can live within the context of DESIRE, the essence of which is done with the goal of achieving full self-expression, or in the context of DRIVE, done usually trying to out do others. Drive is motivated by a comparison to other people and only focuses on trying to prove ourselves. This is really just an attempt to prove to ourselves that we have worth, which, by definition, is denying the fact that we already have inherent worth and a God-given destiny to fulfill. A good example of this is when I moved to California, I did it with the intent to prove to myself and others that I could venture out on my own and “make it” all by myself. Like my 2 year old niece Saylor says, “I do it.” It took me some time to be able to let go of the reins and allow myself to be led by my inner guiding system. All that I really had to do was to listen to the inner voice, so that it could reveal to me my true destiny. This is where desire finally entered the scene. I finally desired to come home, which in essence, was me coming to terms with my true self. I knew that coming back to Arizona was the right thing to do for me at that point in my life because I would be near the things I valued most but had been running away from; my family. “The Leadership process encourages us to discover our inner voice, listen to what it is saying, and create a new voice based on values rather than circumstances, on principles rather than immediate judgments.”

Having a strong desire can also be described as having enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm comes from the root of “en-theos” which means in God, or God with-in. This excitement, this desire comes from really knowing who we are in His eyes. It also comes from truly expressing who we are by succumbing to our God-ordained destiny.

Leaders must reflect as a habit in all that they do. They must also strive to develop, learn and grow in order to understand themselves, the world and others. This habit of reflection married to action enables the leader to keep his eyes wide open for new opportunities that can appear to get them where they desire to go. Developing these characteristics enables one to achieve full self-expression. In fact, the steps to achieve full self-expression are actually the steps to leadership:

1. Reflection leading to resolution – by reflecting on what I truly wanted based on my values; I resolved to move back to Arizona.
2. Resolution leading to perspective – after moving back, I was able to gain perspective as the darkness started to lift.
3. Perspective leading to point of view – I defined my point-of-view from the books I began to read.
4. Point of view leading to tests and measures – I tested the new information and new confidence I was developing through searching out Helen clones in the relationships I began to develop.
5. Tests and measures leading to desire – I decided to stop fooling myself and admit there was only one Helen, and I desired to have her back in my life.
6. Desire leading to mastery – the root of mastery is discipline. I began to live a more disciplined life as I prepared to marry the women of my dreams.
7. Mastery leading to strategic thinking – a more disciplined life led to a joint strategy for the future.
8. Strategic thinking leading to full self-expression – when Helen and I strategize for the future, I truly feel as if we are moving forward together, leading our family as we become our best future selves.
9. Finally, the combined synthesis of these steps leading to full self-expression = leadership.

BUT, we must first learn to LISTEN:

1. Identify: “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within…” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
-write it down (visualize)
-look for connections (synthesis)
-discuss it with others (who will be encouraging to you and who also live by the spirit of truth)
-test against your purpose and values (is it in line with them)
-are your intentions pure? (Desire vs. Drive)
-take steps in that direction (you may have all doors closed and yet turn around to an open window).

2. Engage: The inner voice allows us to act and not be acted upon, as what happened with me in my opening story.
-Maintenance learning – The acquisition of fixed outlooks, methods and rules for dealing with known and recurring situations...A good example of this in my opening story, was when I moved to Utah. Here I tried to create progress in my life by using the same dark perspective I had developed in California. I was doing a lot of the same things while expecting different results. This can also be someone that’s been at the same job/career for 25 years and tries to hold it over others. This type of existence is blind to the fact that it’s not 25 years experience; it’s 1 year of experience 25 times.
-Shock learning – I encountered this type of learning in California. I was serving tables in New Port Beach, living in a relatively loose environment and trying to live the principles I had learned during my missionary service in South America. I threw myself to the wolves, you could say.

Maintenance learning and Shock learning forget altogether that there is a self, or an inner voice, that must be listened to for proper guidance.

-Innovative learning – Must replace maintenance/shock learning. Leaders differ from others in their constant appetite for knowledge and experience and as their worlds widen and become more complex, so too do their means of understanding. This happened as I began to develop confidence through reading. I literally began transforming myself through my reading.
A. Anticipation: Being active and imaginative rather than passive and habitual.
B. Learning by listening to others.
C. Participation: The proactive approach to learning and training others. “Obviously, then innovative learning requires that you trust yourself, that you be self-directed rather than other-directed in both your life and your work. If you learn to anticipate the future and shape events rather than being shaped by them you will benefit in significant ways. In making the shift from unconscious adaptation to conscience participation, we make or recognize new connections, generating useful synthesis, and our understanding deepens.” Part of a leader’s job here in being proactive is making judgment calls in domains such as People, Strategy & Crisis as defined by Bennis and Noel Tichy in their book “Judgment.” In order to achieve great success, a leader must teach others this process of learning through making judgments within these same domains. “Great leaders not only make more important good judgment calls; they also take on the responsibility to develop the next generation of leaders with the capacity to make good judgment calls. They win today while very consciously building the team for tomorrow.”


3. Reflect: Action with no reflection can not create knowledge,” Warren Bennis. Reflection enables one to self-correct and compound learning by combining the lessons from past victories and past failures. By reflecting as you go from peak to peak, each being connected by a valley, you gain perspective. “Reflection gets to the heart of the matter, the truth of things. After appropriate reflection, the meaning of the past is known, and the resolution of the experience – the course of action you must take as a result – becomes clear…this type of thinking presumes that reality is dynamic rather than static, and therefore seeks relationships between ideas, to aim at synthesis. Bennis explains synthesis as the connection between the two horns of reflection and perspective.

I’ve encountered a powerful synthesis of ideas and experiences as I’ve begun to share these experiences and tied them to books that I’m currently reading. This reflection has enabled me to compound my learning through forcing myself to remember the events, identify the lessons and search for the practical application. The principles have become crystallized in my conscience and sub-conscience mind for future use, as I hope they have for the reader.

I’ve been the most successful, when I’ve listened to the inner voice. The inner voice reveals the vision; the vision creates the desire; the desire creates the discipline; and the discipline swings open the door, revealing our true selves. Our whole self that only stays dormant until we can learn to let go.

Letting Go has been the primary message in my life. While difficult to learn, it is the only way to truly be led to a better, more fulfilling future. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Matt. 16:25

I challenge You, the reader, to put into practice the Identify, Engage, & Reflect process as you stretch and strive along your leadership journey. I promise you a new, more enlightened point-of-view and a new way of seeing things. This new way of seeing things can then lead to improved actions and a future worthy of your divine potential.

“I have only to let myself go! So I have said to myself all my life – so I said to myself in the far-off days of my fermenting and passionate youth. Yet I have never fully done it. The sense of it – of the need of it – rolls over me at times with commanding force: it seems the formula of my salvation, of what remains to me of a future. I am in full possession of accumulated resources – I have only to use them, to insist, to persist, to do something more – to do much more than I have done. The way to do it – to affirm one’s self [sur la fin] – is to strike as many notes, deep, full and rapid, as one can. All life is – at my age, with all one’s artistic soul the record of it – in one’s pocket, as it were. Go on, my boy, and strike hard…Try everything, do everything, render everything – be an artist, be distinguished to the last.” Henry James

Keep Moving Forward

Rusty Robson