You have done everything right. And still, something essential is missing. This newsletter is for leaders who sense that the gap between who they are on the outside and who they know themselves to be on the inside is the most important territory they have not yet explored. Each letter is a dispatch from that territory - honest, direct, and grounded in 25+ years of work across four continents. Website: https://designyourlifefoundation.com
๐ฌ Auditioning Versus Inhabiting - The Internal Shift That Changes Everything
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Dear Reader, Most leadership presence training focuses on the external. That is, the Voice, Posture, Eye contact. Executive presence is taken to be a set of behaviors to be acquired and performed. I get that, and it works. But it is not sustainable. It takes effort and energy, especially if you are following a set of rules and regulations that you were taught or told. This is where my coaching, teaching and guiding is different. The leaders who I work with, the ones who want to and who are now genuinely commanding rooms, change the quality of a conversation simply by entering it. They are not performing presence. They are inhabiting it. The difference is Internal. And it is visible to everyone in the room, whether or not they can articulate what they are responding to. Auditioning says: let me show you what I can do and you decide if I am enough. Inhabiting says: I am already here. I am assessing whether this space is worthy of what I bring. See the difference even in the image below. This is not arrogance. It is a fundamentally different orientation to authority, one that does not locate its validity in others' approval, but in the leader's own grounded knowledge of what they carry and what they can offer. The work we will do together is in grounding into your truth, so that it presence in the way your body holds you, as opposed to you trying to be and do something that does not feel genuine within you. The auditioning leader is the one who over-explainsThis auditioning leader qualifies their positions before they have been challenged. They read every silence as potential disapproval and adjusts accordingly. They have a hundred reasons why they are worth listening to, which paradoxically makes them harder to listen to, because the need for validation is palpable underneath the credentials. The inhabiting leader enters a room as themselvesThey do not lead with their qualifications. They lead with their presence, with the quality of their attention, the precision of their observation, the willingness to name what others are sensing but not saying. Their authority is felt before it is explained. What produces this shift is not training in executive presence It is inner work. Specifically, it is the work of identifying and dismantling the internal narrative that says: I must earn my right to be here. I must prove that I am worth listening to. I must make myself acceptable to this audience before I can speak with full authority. That narrative is extraordinarily common in highly capable leaders, particularly those who have come from backgrounds where their authority was consistently questioned, minimized, or denied, either through traumatic incidences, neglect, lack of good leaders around them, wrong information, abuse, and many other life circumstances that silently affect our nervous system. I have been there. As a way to protect ourselves from this past harm, we continue protecting ourselves in the present and future. The protection might have had a place in the past, but now hinders one from reaching and playing full out in service to their dreams and goals. It is a learned posture, not an innate one. Which means it can be unlearned. The inner work we embark on together, is to see what is subconsciously blocking your progress, and to address it in ways that feel safe for your nervous system. This level of inner to outer work is remarkable. You stop auditioning, because you are centered within yourself, and you inhabit your true authentic self. When a leader stops auditioning and begins inhabiting, the change is immediate and unmistakable. The room responds differently. The conversations go to different depths. The decisions that get made are different in quality. Not because the leader has acquired new skills. Because they have reclaimed the inner authority that was always theirs to carry, but had been fragmented being raised, living and exposed to all things that were opposite to their true inner self. QuestionDo you feel like you are auditioning to be accepted by people around you? Yourself, your staff, your board members, your partner, your culture and society? If yes, thatโs tiring work. Not sustainable in the long run, and in the meantime, eroding all the work you are putting in. If so, the work we do together helps you re-gravitate back to center where you are not searching for anything, trying to be something, but are remembering your inner strength, and from that perspective inhabiting all of who you are, without the need for apology or fear of reprimand. This is a strong inner core to build your outer world from. This is the depth of the work we do together, over and above the breadth of it all. The result = This path will see you reclaiming your personal power, cultivating authentic leadership, and stepping into a journey of self-mastery where everything you do, say, and think is aligned to your deepest values, highest potential, and most purposeful vision. If your decisions shape lives, culture, and systems, you already know that tools, frameworks, and motivation are not enough. The real leverage lies within you, i.e. your inner architecture. The degree to which you are regulated, clear, and ethically grounded within, dictates how you navigate and are grounded in presence, within the environments you live, lead and run your businesses in. This is where I come in โ helping you stabilise from the inside out.
A quick past client reflection: โYou know when you have ideas about who you are, and you start writing them down [as part of the coaching program], and you start doing surveys on yourself, and [you realize to yourself that you are] โnot as aware as I thoughtโ. It just makes sense. It [made] me aware of why I wasnโt accomplishing the goals that I wanted.โ
It's your turn, โExplore how we can work together hereโ With loving kindness,
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Living, Leading & Operating Your Business from Within ~ Letters from Dr. Barbara Mutedzi
You have done everything right. And still, something essential is missing. This newsletter is for leaders who sense that the gap between who they are on the outside and who they know themselves to be on the inside is the most important territory they have not yet explored. Each letter is a dispatch from that territory - honest, direct, and grounded in 25+ years of work across four continents. Website: https://designyourlifefoundation.com
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