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Center for Enlightened Leadership
 
THE LENS E-NEWSLETTER/JOURNAL

Staying True to One's Higher Self in Daily Life
By TOM VONA

  Tom Vona
  Tom Vona
Senior Associate and Mentor

I believe the concept of a higher self, an inner voice guiding us, is essential to the way we live both our private and our professional lives. It plays a fundamental role in what we do on a daily basis. It sets our moral compass. Without it, one cannot truly understand right from wrong, good from evil, genuineness from deceitfulness. When you listen to your higher self you not only try to make the right decisions, but to do so for the right reasons. Let me emphasize that this is more than just a useful concept for leaders. A concept can be defined as a theory, a model, or a principle that one follows; our higher self, however, is more than a theory—it is part and parcel of who we are as individuals. A leader without a moral compass will be destructive to an organization. Examples of this are all around us in business, government, and, sadly, in education.

Staying true to one’s higher self in both private and professional life is a constant effort. Knowing that I look upon my life’s work as a calling, and realizing that through my work I am serving others, has made it somewhat easier to stay true to my higher self in my professional life, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. As I have grown older it seems that my moral compass has grown somewhat stronger and it has become less difficult for me to stay true to myself. This is important to me as an individual and, I believe, to the people around me. It certainly contributed to whatever success I had when I served as an educational leader.

Before I entered the field of educational administration I wasn’t sure what type of leader I was going to be. I knew what my life had been up to that point, of course: I knew how I operated in the classroom, in my personal life, throughout my graduate studies, etc. But was being in charge going to change me? I was genuinely concerned about this. I had seen the effects of power on many people, and I didn’t always like what I saw. Was it going to be possible for me to remain the type of individual I was, to be authentic, to listen to my inner self, and to still be an effective leader? Would this leadership role go to my head—was I going to enjoy being “in charge” too much, to the detriment of me personally and the organization in general?

What I found gave me cause for thanks: that it was essential to my success that I remain true to myself. If I was not authentic, people would be able to see right through what I was trying to be and would not take me seriously. If I tried to put on a different persona—say, that of a more firm or more controlling individual—it simply did not work for me. I learned that I could deal with difficult issues when they came along, but I could do it my way, without needing to use a heavy hand, and still achieve the desired goal. If I had to admonish a subordinate, I did it in a calm, rational way that conveyed my message without being demeaning or insulting. When I was involved in a disciplinary issue with a student, I tried to turn it into a learning situation and not deal merely with the corrective issue at hand.                                            

Sometimes my inner self guided me in ways that were not the most expedient ones. For example, when making important decisions, rather than imposing my own ideas on teachers, department chairs, and other administrators when they were not seeing things my way, I continued to work to bring more information to the table, maybe even to do additional research on the topic at hand, in an attempt to bring others around to my way of thinking. It may have taken longer, but in the end, if it was something important that would truly benefit students, I would strive to gain group consensus. I certainly didn’t always get the exact decision I wanted, but I worked very hard to gain agreement. This wasn’t the case with all decisions that were made, but it was true in very important ones where I believed group consensus was imperative. I never believed in the adage “My way or the highway” or in top-down leadership. My inner voice wouldn’t let me operate that way. It’s not who I am.

Higher self is definitely related to authenticity. If one isn’t being true to his higher self, one is not being authentic, and a leader can only get so far when he is not being genuine. If you tell people only what they want to hear, or if you tell one person one thing and another one something else, it will have detrimental effects. When we were making a very significant decision in the high school where I was principal, we didn’t try to hide the problems that might result. We presented the benefits as well as the challenges, the hard work that would be necessary. We didn’t try to sugar-coat anything to gain staff support. We sent teams out to visit schools that had experienced what we were proposing and brought in teachers who could answer their questions. We were authentic in our investigation of and preparation for this major initiative, and because of that the staff was ready for the change when it took place.

I strongly believe that being true to one’s higher self is of paramount importance to be successful in life—whether it be your private life or your professional life. A leader without a moral compass will eventually fail and will harm not only him- or herself but also the entire organization.


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