This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life

I find it easy to engage and connect with people. It drains my energy to have challenging conversations with people who are not living up to our agreed (or my expected) standards.

I love working with committed, engaged people who bring their own internal drive and have developed their disciplines for excellence. I hate reminding people to do what they have agreed to do, or calling them out when they deliver mediocre effort.

An “Animus” leader is brilliant at strategy but struggles to bring other people along with them. An “Anima” leader is warm, connected, excellent at reading a room but struggles with necessary conflict.

Both leaders are suffering from a problem: an imbalance of inner energies that Carl Jung called the Anima and the Animus.

In Vistage we speak often of how we combine the two values of Caring and Challenge and call the integration of the two energies “Carefrontation” – the ability to care while also pushing the other to live up to their full potential.

The Anima and the Animus

Jung observed that every human being carries within them both masculine and feminine psychological qualities. He called the feminine dimension within a man the Anima, and the masculine dimension within a woman the Animus.

• The Anima is associated with Caring: receptivity, emotional intelligence, intuition, creativity, relationship, and the capacity to be moved.
• The Animus is associated with Challenge: direction, decisiveness, logic, structure, will, and the capacity to act.

Every human being has access to both. Most of us have developed one at the expense of the other.

The One-Sided Leader

The leader who has overdeveloped their Animus energy is good at cutting through, deciding, and driving. They are less good at listening, empathising, and sitting with ambiguity.

The leader who has overdeveloped their Anima energy is good at building trust, reading emotions, and creating connection. They are less good at setting hard limits, delivering uncomfortable truths, or making unpopular decisions.

Neither is a complete leader. The uncompleted work is integration.

Professional Environments Make This Harder

Most professional environments reward Animus qualities:

• Confidence,
• Decisiveness
• Aggression and
• displaying Certainty.

This has caused many leaders to bury their Anima. They don’t create space for their intuition. They struggle to be patient… actually listening carefully to others feels like a huge waste of time.

Today organisations promote people who are practiced in the Decision Making parts of leadership and underdeveloped in the parts that actually determine whether people follow you, trust you, and bring their complete self to their work.

Integrating Both Energies

Neither energy is “better”. The question is which one is weaker in you, and how you can develop it consciously.

If you live heavily in Animus energy — your default mode is drive, decide, and move on — the development work looks like this: practise listening without immediately problem-solving. Ask how people feel, not just what they think. Sit with uncertainty before resolving it. Allow yourself to be affected by something.

If you have lived heavily in Anima energy — if your default mode is empathy, harmony, and inclusion — the development work looks like this: practise stating your position clearly when it is unpopular. Make the decision you know is right even when it disappoints someone. Learn to tolerate the discomfort of people being unhappy with you.

The fully integrated leader can have empathy for a person’s feelings and make a hard call in the same conversation. They can drive forward with energy and stop completely to listen.

This is wholeness. Great leadership requires integrated, whole leaders with access to both caring and challenging parts of themselves.

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know.” — Carl Jung

Reflection question: Which energy is most natural for you: the capacity to act decisively, or the capacity to connect deeply? What would it look like to practice the neglected energies?

This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life

Conor’s Jung for Leaders Series of Blog Posts

Carl Jung spent his life exploring what it means to be human. Most leadership development focuses on skills, strategy, and behaviour. Jung explores something more fundamental: the person behind the leader. The single most-read post on this blog is about Jungian archetypes — which tells me that the readers here are not just looking for tactics, they are looking for self-understanding. This series is an attempt to go deeper into that territory.

1. The Shadow: The Part of You That Sabotages Your Leadership — projection, blind spots, why your strongest reactions point inward, the gift hidden in the Shadow
2. The Persona: Are You Leading as Yourself, or as a Mask? — inflation of the Persona, the cost of living inside the role, the journey back to self
3. Individuation: The Journey From Success to Significance — why midlife restlessness is a call not a crisis, what blocks the journey, why it is not selfishness
4. The Anima and Animus: The Hidden Energies Every Leader Needs — one-sided leadership, integrating strength and empathy, what your professional conditioning suppressed
5. The Hero’s Journey: Every Leader Must Answer a Call — departure, initiation, return; the call you’re refusing; why the ordeal is the point
6. The Wise Old Man: Finding and Becoming a Mentor — the archetype in myths, what mentors do that advisors don’t, the shift from receiving to giving
7. The Trickster Archetype: Why Every Great Team Needs a Disruptor — Loki, Coyote, the Fool; why organisations suppress this energy; how to channel it
8. Synchronicity: Paying Attention to What Life Is Telling You — meaningful coincidence, intuition as intelligence, the discipline of attention
9. The Collective Unconscious: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” — culture as organisational unconscious, how it gets formed, making the invisible visible
10. Jung’s Psychological Types: The Original Framework Before Myers-Briggs — introversion/extraversion, the four functions, the inferior function as your blind spot
11. Active Imagination: A Conversation With the Part of You That Knows More — the practice step by step, why it works, how to use it for decisions
12. Your Personal Myth: Living the Story Worth Living — the closing post; the unlived life; rewriting the myth; the test of a worthy story

The post The Anima and Animus: Integrating Caring and Challenge first appeared on Moving People to Action.

This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life

In 2007 I was owner and CEO of a fast growing private jet business called Taxijet. We had achieved every goal we had set for the business in 2005 and 2006… and in 2007 decided to aim at building a fleet of 30 aircraft under our management. I was excited and set to work to go from 16 aircraft under management to reach 30. I was seen as a successful entrepreneur by those around me.

At this time I had a lunch meeting with my friend Tony. Tony had recently been on a 1 year program to develop his executive coaching skills. Tony asked me “what is your goal?”. I proudly answered “We will have 30 aircraft by 2010.” He responded “that is great… Now imagine… you are there. You have just received your 30th aircraft. You have given a speech to celebrate… you are now coming down the steps from the stage… How do you feel?” Without a moment of thought, I quickly answered “successful!”

Over the following weeks I kept coming back to this question. I visualised myself in that moment of receiving the 30th aircraft and tried to really feel what I was going to feel. As I came back to that future moment again and again, I realised that I wasn’t feeling “successful”. I realised that the real future feeling was exactly the same as I was feeling right in this moment… a sense of “this is not really it…” I began to sense that reaching my goal would not give me the lasting sense of completion and meaning that I had hoped that it would.

I’m supposed to be happy

There comes a moment — usually somewhere between 35 and 55 years old — when the things that were supposed to make you happy do not seem to be enough. You have a good career. You’ve got the promotions. You’ve acquired some possessions… The house. You’ve got the respect (envy?) of your peers. And yet there is a slight uncomfortable feeling that something important is missing.

Jung called this the beginning of individuation.

What Individuation Means

Individuation is Jung’s word for the lifelong process of becoming who you truly are — not who your parents wanted you to be, not who your industry rewards, not who your social circle expects, but the full, authentic, integrated version of yourself.

Jung believed that the first half of life is necessarily about becoming someone that can function effectively in the world — acquiring skills, building relationships, establishing a place in society. This requires a degree of conformity. You adapt to the world’s expectations. You build a Persona.

The second half of life asks a different question. Not “how do I succeed?” but “what does it all mean?” Not “what do others need from me?” but “what do I need from myself?”

Stop Looking Outside

What gets labelled a midlife crisis is very often something more significant: an inner demand that you stop living someone else’s life and start living your own. The middle aged person who buys the flashy sports car is responding to a genuine inner call for change. The problem is that they continue to look outside themselves for the change.

3 things block individuation:

• Success The person who has been rewarded throughout their career for a particular set of behaviours finds it very hard to question those behaviours. If being decisive got you here, admitting uncertainty feels weak. If controlling everything kept things together, letting go feels scary.
• Judgement Individuation requires disappointing people. The people around you will not always welcome who you are becoming. They were comfortable with who you were.
• Fear of the messy insides… Individuation requires acceptance; it requires an openness to not force solutions. For people trained to solve problems with action and goals this is deeply uncomfortable. You must practice
  • 1) looking honestly at your Shadow,
  • 2) questioning the Persona,
  • 3) Sitting in uncertainty.

Individuation Is Not Selfishness

People assume that turning inward and prioritising inner development is selfish, or “just for hippies and lost souls”.

Jung would say the opposite. A person who has not done this work is more, not less, likely to impose their unexamined fears and needs on the people around them. The unindividuated leader who cannot tolerate challenge is more dangerous than the one who has made peace with their own complexity.

Becoming more fully yourself is not a retreat from the world. It is how you show up to the world with something genuinely worth giving.

Individuation in Practice

You cannot really begin individuation until you have made something of yourself in the world. If you haven’t got a career, build a career. Build skills, relationships and become valuable and useful to your community.

Once you have become of value to the world, you can begin individuation before the crisis. It is not a concern if you do not, the crisis will come.

The only way to know yourself is through other people’s eyes. You need experiences and to begin to see that you are different from other people. You have strengths that others do not. Everything feels “normal” to yourself… it is only in sharing deeply with others that you realise what is special and different in yourself.

Seek out others who are willing to have open, honest, challenging and explorational conversations. Explore what is important to them and why these things hold such importance for them.

In my own life being part of Entrepreneurs’ Organisation and Vistage has brought these deep, challenging, difficult and meaningful conversations into my life on a regular basis. It is in seeing my life though the eyes of others that I most discover what is unique and special to me.

“The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself” — Rita Mae Brown (author)

A question: Who engages you in deep, honest, meaningful conversation about why you do what you do, how you do what you do and what it all means to you?

This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action | Next post | Previous Post
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life

Conor’s Jung for Leaders Series of Blog Posts

Carl Jung spent his life exploring what it means to be human. Most leadership development focuses on skills, strategy, and behaviour. Jung explores something more fundamental: the person behind the leader. The single most-read post on this blog is about Jungian archetypes — which tells me that the readers here are not just looking for tactics, they are looking for self-understanding. This series is an attempt to go deeper into that territory.

1. The Shadow: The Part of You That Sabotages Your Leadership — projection, blind spots, why your strongest reactions point inward, the gift hidden in the Shadow
2. The Persona: Are You Leading as Yourself, or as a Mask? — inflation of the Persona, the cost of living inside the role, the journey back to self
3. Individuation: The Journey From Success to Significance — why midlife restlessness is a call not a crisis, what blocks the journey, why it is not selfishness
4. The Anima and Animus: The Hidden Energies Every Leader Needs — one-sided leadership, integrating strength and empathy, what your professional conditioning suppressed
5. The Hero’s Journey: Every Leader Must Answer a Call — departure, initiation, return; the call you’re refusing; why the ordeal is the point
6. The Wise Old Man: Finding and Becoming a Mentor — the archetype in myths, what mentors do that advisors don’t, the shift from receiving to giving
7. The Trickster Archetype: Why Every Great Team Needs a Disruptor — Loki, Coyote, the Fool; why organisations suppress this energy; how to channel it
8. Synchronicity: Paying Attention to What Life Is Telling You — meaningful coincidence, intuition as intelligence, the discipline of attention
9. The Collective Unconscious: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” — culture as organisational unconscious, how it gets formed, making the invisible visible
10. Jung’s Psychological Types: The Original Framework Before Myers-Briggs — introversion/extraversion, the four functions, the inferior function as your blind spot
11. Active Imagination: A Conversation With the Part of You That Knows More — the practice step by step, why it works, how to use it for decisions
12. Your Personal Myth: Living the Story Worth Living — the closing post; the unlived life; rewriting the myth; the test of a worthy story

The post Individuation: The Journey From Success to Significance first appeared on Moving People to Action.

This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
| Next post | Previous Post
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life

When I was first asked to become a teacher at IESE Business School, it was a big honour for me and I was very proud of the achievement. The question that constantly filled my mind was “What would a good IESE Professor do in this situation?” I never asked what Conor would do… I was determined to be “a good IESE professor”. I lost the flexibility to respond as me. In my hunger to “do a good job” I became an actor playing a role, not a person responding flexibly to the world. This is an example of “leading as a mask” in Jungian terms.

I was good at this “acting the part”.

In my 20s and into my 30s I was very good at keeping up the appearance of a successful business leader. I looked the part and showed up where good business leaders were supposed to show up. I followed the rules and did what I was supposed to do. As a consultant I learnt how to look like I was doing a great job. When you don’t know who you are, you follow the path of what others expect of you.

At the age of 33 I faced the bankruptcy of the business that I had spent years building, a business that was a full representation of me the “successful business leader”. The mask fell apart… I could no longer maintain the energy and effort required to keep acting.

Jung had a name for this performance of becoming what is expected of you. He called it the Persona.

The Persona

The word “persona” comes from the Latin word for the masks worn by actors in ancient theatre. Jung borrowed it deliberately. The Persona is the mask we present to the world — the professional face, the social role, the curated identity we offer others.

The Persona is not a problem. It is a fact. We should not reveal everything to everyone all the time. Some degree of social performance is necessary for a life in society. A doctor needs to project calm. A leader needs to project confidence. A teacher needs to project optimism even on the days they feel none.

The problem comes when you forget it is a mask.

When you become so identified with your role — CEO, founder, expert, parent, teacher — that you lose access to the person underneath, something important breaks down. In 2008 when I was 33 I was fully identified as the successful entrepreneur leading the Taxijet business. When it failed, I failed.

Signs You Have Over-Identified With Your Persona

Jung described this as “inflation of the Persona.” Some signals to watch for:

• Imposter syndrome – You are secretly terrified that people will discover you are not really who you present yourself to be.
• You are threatened when your title, status, or reputation is questioned.
• You cannot turn off work mode. At dinner with your family, you are still performing. With old friends, you are still networking.
• Spontaneity has disappeared – Everything you say in meetings is what someone in your position would say.

The Persona Trap in Organisations

Schools, businesses and government organisations often reward “performative competence”, looking the part – Persona over Self. The articulate presenter gets promoted over the quiet but effective worker.

Many business cultures incentivise performative competence rather than practising competence. It is more important to look good than deliver measurable results. The startup incubator Y-Combinator call this “playing house”. (Read Paul Graham’s essay… check out the section on “Game”).

The CEO who is over-identified with their Persona creates teams that are trapped in theirs. And a team full of Personas is a team that cannot learn, cannot adapt, and cannot be honest with itself.

The Work: Moving From Persona to Self

The move is not to abandon the Persona. The work is to be fully aware of the difference between Persona and Self. To be able to put the mask on and take it off consciously. There are several tools that I use in my programs to gain access to self values rather than injected values:

• Drawing images that represent fulfilment for you (not writing, but drawing)
• Journaling – as a habit, not as a one off event. A daily habit of journaling opens up a channel to the Self.
• Noticing when art “catches” you – a poem, a song, an image, a story, a film… there is a message in this being “caught” by a representation or a symbol.
• Getting people to keep repeating the question “who are you?” while maintaining eye contact… the 5th or 6th time you answer the question you start to really explore who you are underneath all of the expectations that society has for you.

Jung believed that maintaining conscious awareness of the presence of both Persona and Self is one of the great ongoing tasks of adult life. Every time you stop the practice of awareness, society is very good at getting you back into Persona mode.

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” Carl Jung

A question to sit with: If you stripped away your title, your achievements, and your professional reputation — what would remain? Who is the person underneath the role you play?

This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action | Next post | Previous Post
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life

Conor’s Jung for Leaders Series of Blog Posts

Carl Jung spent his life exploring what it means to be human. Most leadership development focuses on skills, strategy, and behaviour. Jung explores something more fundamental: the person behind the leader. The single most-read post on this blog is about Jungian archetypes — which tells me that the readers here are not just looking for tactics, they are looking for self-understanding. This series is an attempt to go deeper into that territory.

1. The Shadow: The Part of You That Sabotages Your Leadership — projection, blind spots, why your strongest reactions point inward, the gift hidden in the Shadow
2. The Persona: Are You Leading as Yourself, or as a Mask? — inflation of the Persona, the cost of living inside the role, the journey back to self
3. Individuation: The Journey From Success to Significance — why midlife restlessness is a call not a crisis, what blocks the journey, why it is not selfishness
4. The Anima and Animus: The Hidden Energies Every Leader Needs — one-sided leadership, integrating strength and empathy, what your professional conditioning suppressed
5. The Hero’s Journey: Every Leader Must Answer a Call — departure, initiation, return; the call you’re refusing; why the ordeal is the point
6. The Wise Old Man: Finding and Becoming a Mentor — the archetype in myths, what mentors do that advisors don’t, the shift from receiving to giving
7. The Trickster Archetype: Why Every Great Team Needs a Disruptor — Loki, Coyote, the Fool; why organisations suppress this energy; how to channel it
8. Synchronicity: Paying Attention to What Life Is Telling You — meaningful coincidence, intuition as intelligence, the discipline of attention
9. The Collective Unconscious: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” — culture as organisational unconscious, how it gets formed, making the invisible visible
10. Jung’s Psychological Types: The Original Framework Before Myers-Briggs — introversion/extraversion, the four functions, the inferior function as your blind spot
11. Active Imagination: A Conversation With the Part of You That Knows More — the practice step by step, why it works, how to use it for decisions
12. Your Personal Myth: Living the Story Worth Living — the closing post; the unlived life; rewriting the myth; the test of a worthy story

The post The Persona: Are You Leading as Yourself, or as a Mask? first appeared on Moving People to Action.

This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life

The Importance of Awareness

We only have the capacity to take decisions and make choices when we are aware. Awareness creates choice, the choice to act or not act. Without awareness we have no choice and we are not in control of our decisions. As a leader, awareness of your biases, of your limiting beliefs is important in giving you greater flexibility to respond to the environment.

This is the beginning of a blog post series exploring the ideas of Carl Jung and their application for leaders.

Carl Jung believed that the greatest threat to your leadership is not your competitors, your market, or your team. It is yourself… it is the part of yourself you refuse to see.

Jung called it the Shadow.

The Shadow is not evil. It is simply everything in you that you have decided is not you. The traits you were told were unacceptable as a child. The emotions that were dangerous to express. The desires that don’t fit your self-image. You don’t destroy these parts of yourself — you hide them. And what gets hidden doesn’t disappear.

What you resist, persists.

The Shadow

Jung described the Shadow as the “dark side” of the personality — not because it is “bad”, but because it lives in the dark. It is the collection of everything we have repressed, denied, or refused to acknowledge about ourselves.

We all have a Shadow. The question is whether it controls us from below, or whether we engage with it consciously. The most common signal that your Shadow is running the show? Strong, disproportionate reactions to other people.

When someone’s behaviour makes you furious, pay attention. What you most hate in others is very often what you most refuse to see in yourself.

Jung’s mentor Freud called this “projection.” We cast our rejected qualities onto others like a film projector casts images onto a wall. The wall doesn’t create the image. Neither does the person who triggers you.

The Shadow in Leadership

The Shadow doesn’t disappear because you get promoted. It comes with you.

I have met leaders who pride themselves on their humility, yet undermine anyone who outshines them. I have met leaders who say they value honesty, yet dislike anyone who tells them a difficult truth. This is the Shadow at work.

The leader who was never allowed to be angry as a child becomes the leader who creates an atmosphere of suppressed rage that everyone walks on eggshells around.

The leader who learned early that showing weakness was dangerous becomes the leader who cannot admit uncertainty, cannot ask for help, and loses touch with reality because no one dares give them honest feedback.

Integrating the Shadow

The Shadow cannot be eliminated. The goal is awareness: bringing what was unconscious into consciousness, so it no longer drives you without your knowledge.

Three starting points:

1. Notice your strongest reactions. When someone triggers a disproportionate response in you — jealousy, contempt, rage, dismissal — ask: what is this showing me about myself? Not about them. About you.
2. Listen to what you most frequently criticise. The traits you find inexcusable in others often point directly at what you’ve suppressed in yourself. A useful, uncomfortable exercise: write down the three qualities you most dislike in other people. Then ask honestly — is there any version of those qualities living in me?
3. Ask the people closest to you. Ask your partner. Ask a trusted colleague. Ask your children if they’re old enough. “What do you see in me that I don’t seem to see in myself?” You may not like the answers. They will be among the most useful conversations you ever have.

The Gift Inside the Shadow

The Shadow contains not just what we’ve rejected as “bad”, but also what we’ve rejected as too “good”. Hidden in your Shadow may be the artist you decided was impractical… or the ambitious version of yourself you were told was arrogant… or the playful, joyful self that got buried under responsibility.

Integrating the Shadow is about becoming more whole. Integrating the shadow is about accepting yourself as human.

The leader who brings the Shadow into awareness becomes someone people trust in a different way.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung

Note: While trying to find a source for this quote (it appears to be from a verbal exchange between Carl Jung and an interviewer) I was unable to find a direct source. I keep the above as it is easier to understand. The closest direct source is this:

“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.” Carl Jung, Aion, Christ: A Symbol of the Self, Pages 70-71, Para 126.

A question to sit with: Who is the person who most reliably triggers a strong reaction in you right now? What might they be reflecting back about a part of yourself you’d rather not see?

This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action | Next post | Previous Post
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life

Conor’s Jung for Leaders Series of Blog Posts

Carl Jung spent his life exploring what it means to be human. Most leadership development focuses on skills, strategy, and behaviour. Jung explores something more fundamental: the person behind the leader. The single most-read post on this blog is about Jungian archetypes — which tells me that the readers here are not just looking for tactics, they are looking for self-understanding. This series is an attempt to go deeper into that territory.

1. The Shadow: The Part of You That Sabotages Your Leadership — projection, blind spots, why your strongest reactions point inward, the gift hidden in the Shadow
2. The Persona: Are You Leading as Yourself, or as a Mask? — inflation of the Persona, the cost of living inside the role, the journey back to self
3. Individuation: The Journey From Success to Significance — why midlife restlessness is a call not a crisis, what blocks the journey, why it is not selfishness
4. The Anima and Animus: The Hidden Energies Every Leader Needs — one-sided leadership, integrating strength and empathy, what your professional conditioning suppressed
5. The Hero’s Journey: Every Leader Must Answer a Call — departure, initiation, return; the call you’re refusing; why the ordeal is the point
6. The Wise Old Man: Finding and Becoming a Mentor — the archetype in myths, what mentors do that advisors don’t, the shift from receiving to giving
7. The Trickster Archetype: Why Every Great Team Needs a Disruptor — Loki, Coyote, the Fool; why organisations suppress this energy; how to channel it
8. Synchronicity: Paying Attention to What Life Is Telling You — meaningful coincidence, intuition as intelligence, the discipline of attention
9. The Collective Unconscious: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” — culture as organisational unconscious, how it gets formed, making the invisible visible
10. Jung’s Psychological Types: The Original Framework Before Myers-Briggs — introversion/extraversion, the four functions, the inferior function as your blind spot
11. Active Imagination: A Conversation With the Part of You That Knows More — the practice step by step, why it works, how to use it for decisions
12. Your Personal Myth: Living the Story Worth Living — the closing post; the unlived life; rewriting the myth; the test of a worthy story

The post The Shadow: The Part of You That Sabotages Your Leadership first appeared on Moving People to Action.

1. Awareness – notice shifts early, like a canary in a coal mine.
2. Tools – have many, not one trick.
3. Feedback – write expectations, check results.

Awareness

In the old times of coal mining, miners took a canary bird with them down into the mines. This was not for the singing of the canary, it was to ensure they were aware early of any change in the oxygen levels in the mines. If the canary fell over, it was early indication that they should get out of the mine.

What are the canaries in your business and life? In health – an anual medical with blood test can identify symptoms early enough so that medicine can successfully help you. In business – noticing weakness in your future sales funnel can be an early warning that competition is changing, product is no longer meeting needs… this can allow you to make adjustments while you still have healthy cash flow and motivated people… not wait til you are confronting an urgent cash crunch.

Tools

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail,” Abraham Maslow.

A good workman brings a variety of tools to their jobs. A good leader has flexibility in their response once they are aware of change. A corporate leader has 4 categories of tool – communications, incentives, budget, hiring and firing. If you only use hiring and firing, you are limited in your response to change.

Feedback

Once a great leader chooses a course of action, they define what success should look like in a measurable way. They then keep track of data – both quantitative and qualitative – and are aware of their personal bias to find data that proves that they were right. Our intuition hates discovering that we were “wrong” – and will find any way of deluding ourselves and deflecting responsibility out to others. A good leader is aware of the dangers of their intuition and how to balance it with clear data.

How to cope with AI change?

AI change is just another flavour of change in general. It is affecting all industries and all levels. It is changing the expectations of customers, it is changing the nature of work.

There is an idea that I have learnt over my 52 years of life. Pay less attention to what people say they do, and pay great attention to what they actually do.

Don’t ask people how they use AI. Watch others use AI.

if you liked this post, you will also like Progress Requires Change and Checklist: Leading Change in Organisations.

The post How to cope with Change (including AI) first appeared on Moving People to Action.

“It’s hard to engage with a character who isn’t trying.” — Nathan Bransford

Nathan is a book editor talking about fictional characters, but his insight holds equally true in real life.

We instinctively favour people who are actually doing something — people taking a risk and putting effort into creating a result.

The sense of Meaning of your life grows with the degree you take personal responsibility for results. The more you take full responsibility for outcomes — for what actually happens, not what you hoped would happen — the more meaningful your days become.

Be someone who makes progress before asking for resources

People respond differently when you arrive with evidence of effort. You’re no longer asking them to start something. You’re inviting them to be part of something that is already in motion.

Most doors open only after you’ve pushed on them first.

if you like this post you will also like Powerful Coaching Questions: 6 Types of Questions that Great Coaches use and Resourcefulness. Shifting to a Growth Mindset.

The post It’s hard to engage with a character who isn’t trying first appeared on Moving People to Action.

Here is 6 time author Dan Pink with another great video on Productivity. Again he provides 12 minutes of gold. I’m sharing his video here. I recently shared his great video How to make 2026 the best year of your life.

1. Do Less
   • Only 5 tasks/day
   • Pick and start with most important task (MIT)
   • Keep a visible “To-Don’t” list
   • No as default answer to new requests
2. Protect most Productive Hours
   • Time box and remove distractions
   • Do hardest work first (eat the frog)
3. Systemize the Small Stuff
   • 2-min rule (do small tasks immediately)
   • Batch tasks, no context switching or multitasking
   • Limit options -> spend less time on decisions
4. Track Progress
   • Write 3 daily wins
   • Weekly focus and end of week review
5. Breaks = Fuel
   • Use strategic breaks to stay sharp
   • Take a walk outsid, Call a friend
6. Build Habits
   • Consistency > Intensity
   • Focus on routines, not heroics

if you liked this post on productivity you will also like my 12-part series on Jedi Productivity from over a decade ago!

The post 30 Years of Productivity Advice from Dan Pink first appeared on Moving People to Action.

School problems? Think your way out. Life challenges? Commit your way through.

Commitment intelligence has 3 ingredientes:

1. Time horizon – amateurs tend to have an unrealistically short expectation of the time that it will take to see visible evidence of results.
2. Responsibility – a growth mindset, a removal of all ways of feeling a victim. As long as you blame anything outside yourself for your lack of progress, you will be limiting your capacity to learn and grow. It may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility if mastery is your goal.
3. Staying on the plateau – there are periods in the journey towards mastery where you are not seeing external evidence of changes as you continue to do the work. George Leonard, author of the book Mastery, said that staying the course through these plateau moments is necessary for true mastery.

The post Commitment Intelligence (has 3 ingredients) first appeared on Moving People to Action.

A success model for a new year

This is an extremely practical and complete guide to really making positive progress in 2026. I was all set for making a video of my own, but Dan Pink nailed it with this one – so I’d rather share his, than a lesser version by myself.

You can download Dan’s workbook for this process here: http://danpink.com/workbook/

Quick Summary of Dan Pink’s 2026 Success Model

1. Regret Review: 1. What is your biggest regret for 2025
   • 2. Write it down
   • 3. Lesson you learned from it
   • 4. How you are not going to repeat it
   • 5. Throw out the regret, keep the lessons
2. B. Premortem
   • 1. You are at the end of 2026, and what you said you’d do never happened… Why? Write down what might have caused the failure
   • 2. Design 2026 to block those failures
3. C. One word theme
   • 1. Choose a single word to guide 2026
4. D. 90 day seasons
   • 1. Treat the year as 4 chapters (long enough to see progress, short enough to see the end line)
5. E. Protect your first hour
   • 1. Don’t hand over your first hour to your phone!
   • 2. Use it for deep work, moves your priorities forward
6. F. 2 minute rule
   • 1. If a task takes 2 mins or less, do it right away (put those dirty dishes away)
7. G. Create a weekly shut down ritual
   • 1. Take 5 mins to plan Monday, the tasks that still need to be finished up
8. H. Weekly reset
   • 1. 15 mins with your calendar and to do list
9. I. Mise en place
   • 1. Implantation intention – layout your environment to ensure your first hour is strategically setup
10. J. 15 min walk break
11. K. 85% Rule 1. Pick one goal and make it hard enough to not suceed all the time, but not too hard so you succeed 85%
12. L. Refine discomfort as learning
    • 1. This isn’t failure. This is what learning feels like.
13. M. Design friction wisely
    • 1. Delete 1 app, set up auto pay
    • 2. Pick 1 behavior you want to make harder (add friction – charge phone outside of room)
    • 3. Pick 1 behavior you want to make easier (remove friction)
14. N. Public promises
    • 1. Pick 1 goal, share it to someone
    • 2. Have them ask weekly: did you do what you promised?
15. O. Track small wins daily
    • 1. Create a progress ritual
16. P. Challenge network
    • 1. Feedback Fridays
    • 2. What’s one thing you’d change to make it better?
17. Q. Curate your circle
    • 1. Get a cheerleader
    • 2. Get a coach
    • 3. Get a challenger
18. R. To Don’t List
    • 1. Subtract – what’s not worth my time?
19. S. Micro sabbath
    • 1. Short pause, no stimulation, 15 mins of nothingness
20. T. 26 thank you notes
    • 1. Send out thank you notes

The post If you want 2026 to be the best year of your life, please watch this video… first appeared on Moving People to Action.

I teach leaders to be intentional:

• to get crystal clear on who they are,
• where they are going,
• with whom
• and why.

In communications I teach leaders to clarify their “Point X” – a visibly clear outcome from each interaction.

How can you become Intentional? Write some goals down, and review them on some consistent regular timescale. It could be weekly, it could be daily… but the important part of goals is keeping reminders of them in front of you on a regular basis. The new year is a moment where many people feel that it is a time to set some goals. I’m sharing mine (and a little about my process) here…

My 3-Word Intention for 2026

Each year, I choose three words to guide my actions and decisions. This habit was first initiated by an idea in a Chris Brogan blog post over a decade ago (his blog, sadly, seems to have disappeared but here is a video of Chris sharing his 3 words for 2025).

This year, my words are Gratitude, Celebration, Book. They reflect my overall intention for the year:

• Gratitude – in Vistage one of the lessons we teach is “we have never found a truly joyful person that doesn’t have an active gratitude process”. I will return to maintain a daily gratitude journaling habit.
• Celebration – take the time to celebrate little and large successes. I’m from a culture that as soon as I achieve something, I’m immediately moving on to the next project. I want to take time to savour life.
• Book – Love the Problem. I’ve been writing blog posts, articles, notes for years. I have written 5 book-length texts, but I’ve never fully committed to actually publishing one. I don’t want to write a “dummies guide to leadership” or “dummies guide to communications”. I’ve been using all sorts of “valid” excuses to avoid the hard work of actually completing and publishing a book.

Have you set your intention for the year?

If not, why not try this simple exercise? Express your intention for the coming year in no more than 3 words. I’m a big fan of simplicity and being concise. I often use the tool of getting people to express their ideas first in a single word, and then expand on that word. The effort to clarify and identify which single word captures a whole idea is important effort. I believe that most of us do not lack motivation, but we lack clarity. We lack clarity about what is most important. We lack clarity about who we wish to become. We lack clarity about who is important to us. I’d welcome you to share your 3 words in the comments, but the important thing is to have them clear and visible for yourself.

A history of my 3 word intentions…

• 2026 – Gratitude, Celebration, Book
• 2025 – Results, Data!, Nike
• 2024 – Duck, Systems, Clarity (“be a duck” is a coaching metaphor… for not taking things too personally and let things go as soon as you finish the conversation)
• 2023 – Revenue Generating Activity
• 2022 – 10, 100, 1000 (run 10 retreats, grow to 100 Vistage members, 1000kms run)
• 2021 – Focus, Finance, Family & Friends
• 2020 – Generous, Present, Important
• 2019 – Vistage, Fit & Healthy
• 2018 – Grow Vistage
• 2017 – Unconditional Peace of Mind
• 2016 – Connect, Create, Complete
• 2015 – Connect to Kings
• 2014 – Teach International

Reviewing the past

A 3 page pdf tool for reflecting on 2025 and preparing for 2026 is available here on my blog: https://conorneill.com/2021/01/01/reflect-on-the-past-clarify-the-future/

if you liked this post you will also like Setting Goals for 2017 and Set Goals of Character and Ability, not of Achievement and Status.

The post Set Clear Intentions for 2026: My own Process… and my Intention first appeared on Moving People to Action.