Article (6.05) Leading with an Open Heart

The inner critic has a gift. That’s not what you’d expect from a voice that’s been calling you a loser for much of your life, but Steve Ray, a groupwork facilitator, makes the case precisely: despite its questionable methods, the critic has high standards and is trying to stop you from failing. The problem isn’t its presence; it’s that most people suppress it rather than ask what it’s actually trying to say.

This surfaces clearly and poignantly in this episode of Leadership Decanted, and it’s one piece of a broader framework Steve calls the “community of selves”: a model that maps multiple interior voices most people either suppress or unconsciously obey. The model holds that there are no good selves or bad selves, only selves we understand and selves we haven’t yet translated. Confidence is widely pushed as an unambiguous virtue, but Steve points out that someone operating from uninterrupted confidence might stop seeking help, drift toward arrogance, and undermine the collaboration they’re supposedly leading. Every self has a flip side, and the work is locating the gift.

The “community of selves” is really scaffolding for a deeper claim: that most leadership thinking, and most organisational culture, operates almost entirely above the neck. Steve distinguishes between the analytical mind and what he calls heart consciousness: not sentiment, not emotional performance, but a non-analytical intelligence that realises rather than reasons. A realisation isn’t thought; it arrives. The shower analogy is as old as it sounds, but the point seems structural: this is what happens when the mind’s grip loosens enough for something else to emerge.

The practical consequence shows up in communication under pressure. Strong emotion triggers fight-or-flight in whoever receives it, meaning they often can’t process what’s being said. Speaking from the heart, in Steve’s framing, doesn’t mean speaking softly; it means speaking without the static of your own emotional charge. The message lands because nothing gets in the way, making it considerably more effective than most of what passes for communication training.

One consequence of this framework is that reconciliation gets relocated. Steve argues that harmony strategies frequently fail because they’re designed by people who haven’t done their internal integration work. You can’t reconcile outward what remains in conflict inward. The shadow (Jung’s term, used here in passing) doesn’t disappear when ignored; it tends to turn up in reactions to other people. Bring it in, and you stop projecting it outward.

Whether any of this is workable in corporate settings gets an honest answer: it looks impossible, though that’s not quite accurate. Steve describes a five-person executive team who, over a few months of deliberate group work, arrived at a depth of connection that usually takes years. The conditions matter: internal work has to be reinforced by the external environment, or people return from a workshop to a culture that immediately negates everything they practised.

The most quietly radical thing Steve says is that resistance, including the internal mocking during the brief meditation the three of them attempt mid-episode, is evidence the work is happening. The push and pull is the thing, not a sign you’re nowhere near it.

Notes:

• (Episode 6.03 with Marti Spiegelman (‘Leading through Consciousness: Seeing Things As They Are‘) makes a good companion listen for anyone who wants to follow this thread further.)
• And there’s also our article drawn from Episode 6.03. It’s a good companion read.