When Leadership Becomes a Spiritual Act
I Was Rejected, Again and Again. This Is What It Taught Me About Leadership.
Administration time is reflection time. Submitting VAT returns reminds me every time of something deeper: how incredibly much confidence I have needed over the years in my own company, Making Waves - Golven Maken in Dutch, my native language.
As a novice (organizational) coach and facilitator, I reinvested all my income in training and knowledge for years. My learning style was to immediately apply what I learned, but in reality it was one big exercise in being present.
Along the way, I sought connections with wonderful collectives of organizational coaches and trainers who make organizations healthier — and time and again, the same pattern repeated itself: first, I was enthusiastically welcomed, only to be let go — rejected is a more accurate word — after a period of active contribution.
Every time this pattern occurred, I picked myself back up.
I repositioned myself, reformulated my message, sharpened my vision. I learned to trust the value I bring, the impact I can create, and the work that presents itself when I follow the flow instead of swimming against it.
Making Waves is my way of transforming tension into flow. To support awareness, connection, and leadership on an individual and collective level. To guide teams along the edges of discomfort and teach them to work together constructively, take ownership, and transform tensions into creative power.
Despite great achievements and appreciation from my clients, I notice that I am not very connected to the broad network of organizational coaches, all those fantastic colleagues who do such important work. I am not visible on stages about organizational development or well-being at work. I wonder what perceptions people have of me. I have discovered that others project all kinds of things onto me.
Judgments are always there when you stick your neck out, change direction regularly, or are different from others.
When I look back on the collaborations in which I was dismissed, I see how much resistance and judgment some parts of myself evoked. My intensity, my drive, my enthusiasm to speak and act from conviction... never intended to push others away, and yet it happened.
In the search for my own leadership, I repeatedly undermined the leadership of others. I was unaware of these blind spots, of the major impact my inner saboteurs had on others and on the result. My urge to do well completely blocked my antennae.
I understand that this was sometimes perceived as unsafe, and as a lack of empathy, respect, and equality. Which is probably what it was. Yet, the exclusion, the invitation to look at myself, and the feedback I received have brought me so much.
I had no choice but to turn inward and take the time to look at it all. This pattern, which seems to repeat itself endlessly, fills me with great gratitude. What beautiful lessons about leadership, taking up space, fear, judgment and projection these are to learn. Each time, it is a gift that I have directed myself.
I had to learn to follow my own waves.
To trust my course. To honor my ideas, desires, and my own unique voice. To express what I really want and let myself be carried by the flow of life. In surrender to what presents itself, I naturally drift to where I need to be.
It took time to accept who I am. Why I rise up when something is wrong and then stir things up. Why I am so radical in my choice for the truth. For radical honesty, above appearances. Why I feel the need to talk about love and wisdom in places where it is most absent. It took time to bring my shadow sides into the light and to see what space I am allowed to take up, what energy serves the greater whole.
But the hardest thing to accept is my role. To deliver these messages where they are most needed. To throw myself to the lions, in the most complex environments, and speak about my pain, my lessons, my grief. To use my heart as my most important instrument of leadership. To dare to see that my leadership is spiritual. I was more afraid of it than I thought. But this is what I always tell people that seek my advise:
Trust is the only thing you need.
The big invitation is to have the deepest possible trust in yourself. In your wisdom. It is the power beneath every wave — rising, carrying you forward, falling back, and climbing again after every silence and every fall.
As my logo implies, each wave goes higher and deeper. With each wave, you return with more impact, more depth, more love, more wisdom. As we surf these waves together, our collective wisdom becomes a wave that cannot be denied.