It’s Not About You It’s About Those You Serve — Intrapersonal Leadership Explained

Rowan Blair Colver
3 min readJul 18, 2022

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Lucid Leadership by Rowan B. Colver

The Social Dynamic Of Leadership

When you’re in charge of something, a manager, an authority, or some other form of societal superior, it can be difficult to relate to others. Those who are around you are not like you most of the time. To be in your position, you have had to use talents and skills that enabled you to make the most of where you were in order to be where you are now. You had some good fortune, you worked hard with the opportunity to do so, and people around you believed in your ability and had confidence in you. For a lot of people, this looks a lot like privilege.

Check Your Privilege

If we forget that we might appear lucky or as some kind of lottery winner to be where we are, others can feel resentment and non-interest according to their mood. This comes out in lots of ways. People are often indoctrinated to fear authority from a very young age. It can be a lot easier for people to pretend to themselves that you have none than accept the facts, especially if they know you personally. We must remember that as leaders we need to make the interaction as painless as possible. If we understand that people might automatically fear us or resent our position for their own reasons, we can reduce the triggers that point in this direction. This means we have to make everything about the other person.

You Are In Service

You matter, sure you do, but you’ve got your biscuit. They want theirs. It can be hard to see things in this way if those around you have a lot of things that you don’t have and are working to obtain. Sometimes, they have plenty of biscuits already. Reality check, you’re in the service profession and if they want another biscuit then they can have one. When we forget to adjust our energy to cater for the emotional and psychological dynamics of the leadership position, we can end up creating disengagement and dropping out. The likeability factor matters a lot because people don’t generally do things for or support people that they do not like.

Inclusion Of The Whole

This is not just your little story, everyone who comes through the door is a part of it too. Your job then is to include the whole with the journey. Gratitude and celebration of everything that you aim for that involve personally tethered and holistically rewarding exchanges of words and bonuses, service options and extras, will ensure those around you feel valued. The planning and steps to success that you aim to take are best when they take into account the needs of the many. Involving others in this personal journey will assist them in their own. Together we are stronger. The story needs to be clear, the virtues and passion behind your extraordinary efforts must be visible and accessible to those you include and work for. Highlighting the benefit of inclusion will result in better cohesion.

Make it easy for them with facilitation leadership: Leadership, the 10 faces of the leader — Facilitator Role

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Rowan Blair Colver

Music writer and humanities educator from Sheffield in England. Democracy of philosophy, comments are welcome. ko-fi.com/rowanblaircolver