Welcome to Visionary’s Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.
Hi, and welcome back. This is episode 90 of "The Visionary's Pursuit" podcast. Some years ago, I hired a mentor to help me improve my coaching skills, and this woman, before we even started working together, sent me this article
and this article has stayed with me for the last 12 years. And today our conversation is about selfless leadership, but I wanna start with reading you an excerpt of this article. this article is called Helping, Fixing, or Serving, and it's written by Rachel Naomi Remen, who is a clinical professor at the School of Medicine in the University of California, San Francisco. and this is what Dr. Remen writes: "Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.
Service rests on the premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. From the perspective of service, we are all connected. All suffering is like my suffering, and all joy is like my joy.
The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably this way of seeing. serving is different from helping. Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than they are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequality.
The danger in helping is that we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them. We may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity, or even wholeness.
When we help, we become aware of our own strength. But when we serve, we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves, and we draw from all of our experiences.
Our limitations serve. Our wounds serve. Even our darkness can serve. My pain is the source of my compassion. My woundedness is the key to my empathy.
Our service strengthens us as well as others. Fixing and helping are draining, and over time we may burn out, but service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will renew us. In helping, we may find a sense of satisfaction.
In service, we find a sense of gratitude:"
And why I wanted to start with this article today is because I believe selfless leadership is based on service. Is it comes from that premise that she talks about in the article that we are all connected to each other, that nobody here is above anyone else, and that with our own gifts, we get to serve that bigger purpose of the human existence, of being in this planet, of creating, of going through life.
One of the tools I use with my clients in coaching is called the Leadership Circle Profile. And this is a 360 evaluation that tells a person how effective their leadership is. And it has many different creative competencies that are positively correlated to effectiveness in leadership, and it also has some reactive tendencies that are negatively correlated to leadership.
One of the creative competencies is selfless leader, and here's what it's evaluated by. It says that, "A selfless leader can get the job done with no need to attract attention to themselves. That they can lead in ways that others say, 'We did it ourselves.'
That they are relatively uninterested in personal credit, that they act with humility, that they take forthright action without needing recognition."
I think most people I talk to who are leaders believe in this and want to live up to this premise or this idea of being selfless in their leadership, and yet it is so hard to do.
Tony Robbins talks about six human needs, which are the reason why we do the things that we do. One of those needs is called significance, and it's the need that we have as human beings to feel unique, important, special, and needed. And the beautiful thing about the six human needs is that they're universal.
We all need to feel significant at times. We all need to feel like we matter, that we're special. And sometimes that desire, that need to feel significant is what goes against being able to be selfless. Tony says ... that in our world today, when he has done his surveys and he gets to talk to thousands of people each year, significance is one of the biggest drivers for all of us.
I wanna feel important. I wanna feel seen. I wanna know that I matter. But when we're driven only by that need, We cannot practice selfless leadership. That is a real tension we have as, leaders. We want to serve, we wanna be great leaders, be effective in leading others, but at the same time, we wanna be seen.
And that's why I think leadership is so hard, because in some ways it's going against our very primal human needs. I think most of us want to be selfless leaders until no one notices what we have sacrificed, until no one thanks us for what we have fixed, until someone else is getting the credit for the outcome we've created.
It is so human to be asking ourselves: Are they seeing what I did? Did they know how hard I worked for this? Will I be appreciated? Will I be forgotten? So The work I do with my clients who are leaders is to answer the question of: How do we mature from needing to be seen into being so secure in ourselves that we have the ability to serve? So first let's talk about what selfless leadership is not. It is not invisibility It is not self-denial
It is not believing that I don't matter, that I should be invisible, that my work shouldn't be seen. it means that I know I matter, but I don't need to be the center. I know I'm making a difference. I know I'm making a contribution. I am proud of the work I'm doing, but I don't need people to say it to me.
I don't need people to applaud me for everything I do. It also means that I get joy from the work itself, from seeing it out in the world, regardless of who's taking the credit
And this is important because when we are pretending to be selfless leaders, we are pretending that we don't need appreciation, we are pretending that we don't care, that we don't matter, what ends up happening is that we become resentful or we become avoidant or passive, and we're secretly hungry for that appreciation, but we're not getting it from anywhere, not even from ourselves.
So to be a selfless leader is not just to pretend that I don't care for appreciation. It's to do the deeper identity work to know that I don't need to prove my value, that I know how to give that value to myself
So again, selfless leadership is not about pretending to be humble, pretending to not care, but secretly starving for reassurance, for being seen. It is the opposite. It is It is to become so secure in ourselves that we don't need anyone else saying that that success is because of us. I actually did another episode, you can look for it, around self-validation, and self-validation is the practice through which we build that own security within ourselves.
Is the way we develop that inner voice that is giving us the appreciation, that is telling us our work is valuable, that is celebrating what we're doing
The other way that we can strengthen that, you know, identity of security, that, that capacity to be able to be selfless in our leadership, is by committing to a cause that is bigger than ourselves. When we're doing work just to be seen, just for our own success, it is really hard to be selfless.
But when we are committed to a higher purpose, when the meaning we give to our work is bigger than ourselves, then it's not as important that we are seen or admired or applauded, because the joy, the satisfaction that comes from the contribution we're making is enough. And by this, I don't think you have to be doing non-for-profit work, although that's one way, or that you have to be doing something which you don't get paid and it is all for free.
That's not what I'm talking about. For me, many times doing my work, the joy I get is knowing that I am growing, is knowing that I put myself out there, that I was brave, that I was courageous, that I did something that didn't feel comfortable. Sometimes that, for me, is enough
My own growth sometimes makes it enough. You know, my work is quite lonely. I'm all day with clients, and I don't have a boss supervising me. There is not a promotion. There isn't, you know, there is not the structures that maybe corporate America have, and I think that's true for all of my clients who are business founders and leaders.
But yet, when we love our work so much and we have a high standard for ourselves, but we feel like we're delivering to that level, that we're growing, that we're serving our clients purposely, that we're seeing the impact we're making, that feels bigger than any applause or recognition anyone can give us But the problem I think is that many leaders are not really leading from purpose.
They're leading from old wounds they haven't solved, that they haven't healed. They're leading from hidden questions such as, "Am I important? Am I impressive? Do they value me?" Would this work without me? Do people see how much I carry? And again, I don't want to create shame around those questions.
They're human questions. They're human nature. But if we wanna evolve as leaders, if we wanna be leaders that can say, "Hey, I take responsibility when things go wrong, but I give credit when things go really well," we need to do the deeper identity work in which we learn how to self-validate, and we connect to a purpose that is higher than ourselves, that is meaningful to us.
We need to create a story about why our work matters even when no one is telling us. And by this, I also don't wanna mean that, selfless leaders are anti-recognition. We all love recognition. I love when a client takes a moment to send me a note and tell me how impactful our coaching session work or the impact I've had in their lives.
It means the world to me, and it makes me feel so happy. So I like recognition. I receive it. In fact, I think one of the keys in order to be selfless is to learn how to receive that recognition. Because many of us are also, , seeking that recognition, but then being unable to really receive it, unable to be really believe in it
So part of becoming selfless is actually learning to receive love, affirmation, belonging, and to feel worthy of it
Here's something I've noticed or I've learned throughout the years. Many of us are looking outside for people to tell us we're good leaders, we're good at whatever is it that we're doing. But what I know is that the entire world could line up and each person tell us, "You are a great leader. You are a great entrepreneur. You are fantastic at what you do." And if we don't believe that ourselves, we will be unable to receive their compliments So no matter how much people compliment us or not compliment us, the real work is the voice we have within ourselves. It's building the identity and believing that we are great leaders, that we are really good at what we do, that we care even when we do it imperfectly, even when we make mistakes, even if many times we don't meet the mark we have set up for ourselves.
And it seems almost like contrary, but that work, that building our self-esteem, that belief in ourselves, that trust in ourselves, is what actually allows us to be selfless leaders.
And the last thing I wanna say about being able to be selfless is that we need to develop the ability to feel joy through other people's joy. To feel joy when we're recognizing our team, when we're celebrating an employee for doing something great, when we're giving the credit to everyone else except to ourselves.
Learning to feel pride when other people feel proud, learning to feel joy when other people are happy, that is a recipe that helps us experience first and foremost allows us to experience even more joy because we get happy for everyone, but also makes us less needy of that approval from others
when I talk about leadership, to me it feels so much like parenting. Parenting is giving all of our love, resources, energy to these children and not expecting anything back. In fact, we know we did a better job with our kids the less they need us, the more they go and live their lives and explore their world and, and depend less on us.
And that is so hard. But it's the same thing with selfless leaders. When we're able to build teams that are independent from us, that they don't need us, that they can thrive without us, that's when we know we've done a fantastic job.
So my invitation is for all of us to continue being leaders that are coming from a place of service, of serving our team from all of our experiences, while at the same time we're taking such great care of us that we don't need anyone else's appreciation or celebration because we have learned to do that for ourselves
All right, my friends, that's all. I would love to hear what you think about this episode, so feel free to email me back at info (at) carolinazuleta (dot) com. with your thoughts and your comments and any question that might arise. And until then, I'll see you in our next episode.
Bye.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions. as well as your team and your money so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta.com slash consult that is c a r o z u l e t a dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
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