SEE DIFFERENT
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We’re so busy building AI, but have we forgotten to ask people what they actually need?
The future of work isn’t about smarter technology. It’s about whether people will want to show up for it.
As long as we remain unconscious to the deeper reality of human experience, we will continue building futures that nobody wants to inhabit.
The current state of worker disengagement won’t be solved by technology or continued surface-level fixes.
People are disengaging because we’re not addressing their fundamental need for meaning, connection, and authentic purpose.
Most of today’s leaders are so identified with the promise of AI and their role as problem-solvers that they miss the deeper truth about human engagement and presence.
They think they ARE the thinking mind that needs to solve problems, rather than the awareness that can see the whole situation clearly.
We’re trying to optimize human “systems” while missing that humans aren’t systems at all, but consciousness itself.
The predominant current understanding of human consciousness and state of leadership development perpetuates this dysfunction.
What if our workplace challenges aren’t problems to solve, but mirrors revealing to us to see what we’ve been unconscious to?
On the inner leader journey, we learn to see with greater clarity. When we see reality as it truly is, we know exactly what to do.
When you’re no longer identified with being “the leader who must solve everything,” authentic response emerges from awareness itself.
True leadership unfolds through us naturally and effortlessly.
The inner path is the way forward in today’s whitewater world.

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Feeling valued isn’t a strategy.
We see the reminders often:
“People first.” “Culture matters.” “Value your team.”Of course, that resonates. It makes sense.
But if it were working, would Gallup’s numbers look the way they do?Here’s the truth:
Feeling truly valued goes beyond praise, perks, well-written policies, or good intentions.People feel valued when they’re seen.
Not as roles or resources but as whole human beings.That kind of seeing doesn’t come from training or trying to be somebody you’re not.
It comes from presence.From a leader who is quiet inside.
Free of ego.
Able to meet others without needing them to perform.It’s rare.
It takes inner work.
It’s the part we keep skipping.And it can’t be faked.

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Most of the leadership advice we find here on LinkedIn tells us to build a stronger professional identity.
More skills, more credentials, more followers, more influence. But what if our identity is the problem?
Leadership is about subtraction, not addition. It’s about stripping away everything that isn’t essential until you’re left with something pure. Something that resonates.
Stop asking “How do I become a better leader?”
Start asking “What is the voice in my head hiding that wants to emerge?”The most powerful leaders are empty vessels. They create space for something extraordinary to flow through them.
What flows through that space is far beyond any framework or methodology you could ever learn.
That’s the ultimate leadership.
But first you need to let go of the bundle of thoughts that you think you are.
“Leadership development is about growing your conditioned and egoic self. Conscious leadership is about dissolving your illusory self.”

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Have you ever asked yourself: Who am I performing for and why?
For most of my career, I bought into the idea that performance was the point. That it defined value. That it earned belonging. That it proved my worth.
I gave it my all and more. But did it count for anything when time got lean?
It’s the story most of us buy into without question. Perform well, and you matter. Fall short, and you don’t. But what if that idea isn’t truth? What if it’s just conditioning. An inherited unconscious idea that narrows who we think we are?
Here’s what I’ve come to see on my inner leader journey: When performance becomes a pursuit of approval, it’s no longer authentic. It becomes a mask.
When leaders are rewarded for performance above presence or conscioius awareness, we build cultures of control, not connection.
Real transformation begins when we stop performing for something, and start acting from something deeper.
Not to prove. Not to earn. But to express what’s true, alive, and whole within us.
Maybe the real work isn’t better performance. Maybe it’s waking up from the idea that performance defines us in the first place.
We don’t need to perform to become someone. We need to remember who we are beneath the performance.
That remembrance is the beginning of authenticity.
Of presence.
Of true leadership that unfolds through us.

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New leadership models are emerging that challenge conventional leadership thinking in all the right ways.
This is a good thing.
They are inviting people to give control, question decisions, and create environments where thinking and ownership are shared.
But here’s the part that gets overlooked.
You can do all the right things structurally:
– Decentralize decision-making
– Encourage dissent
– Assume good intentAnd still recreate the same old dynamics.
Why?
Because the real shift doesn’t happen in the structure. It happens in the consciousness of the leader.
You can say “I’m not in control,” while still needing to be right.
You can empower your team, while still quietly needing their approval.
You can create new org charts, while still living from the same conditioned mind.
What’s missing isn’t knowledge. It’s conscious awareness.
Not new tools, but a new place to lead from.
Until we do the inner work to transcend the mind’s need for control, validation, or certainty, even the most progressive systems will echo the old paradigm.
Real transformation and leadership begin
in who we are being, not what we do.

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Most leaders are stuck in “push harder” mode.
More meetings. Longer hours. Bigger plans. More pressure. More leadership development.
But what if that’s exactly what’s keeping us from breakthrough results?
After 15 years living and experiencing the intersection of leadership and consciousness, I’ve noticed something:
The most effective leaders don’t push harder—they see clearer.
As Dee Hock said: “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.”
When we stop forcing predetermined outcomes and start being present to what’s actually happening, everything shifts:
→ Complex decisions become self-evident
→ Team dynamics move from effort to flow
→ The right action becomes obviousThis isn’t about slowing down. It’s about moving from scattered effort to focused clarity.
We create visual mirrors that help leaders see this difference—and make the shift.
The truth?
You don’t need more leadership development. You need to see more clearly from a clear mind without all its filters, judgments, and ego.

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What if the ‘inner work’ isn’t just personal development, but the most revolutionary thing you can do?
When you have the courage to follow your authentic vision instead of what your conditioned, illusory self thinks you should do, you don’t just find your path.
You create something that changes everything for everyone.
This isn’t servant leadership. This is leadership that serves without trying because authentic action always elevates others.
The signal was always there. The question is: are you brave enough to ignore the noise?

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Most LinkedIn content feels upside down to me. It’s about chasing noise instead of cultivating awareness.
Here’s a different perspective:
On the inner leader journey, we learn to SEE DIFFERENT. What we see is what we create.
Our perception isn’t reality. It’s reality filtered through our conditioning, past experiences, and beliefs. These distortions create the stories we layer over what’s actually happening.
The truth is simpler: things are just happening. But we must do the inner work to see past our own lenses of mis-perception.
Then we can connect with what’s actually true.

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Two types of leadership.
One scatters energy trying to control everything external. The other radiates influence from internal wisdom.
Who is the better leader? The authentic leader or those driven by ego?
The ego-driven leader is trapped in a conditioned mind—repeating patterns, holding onto judgments, always seeking the next achievement, the next validation.
A high-achiever who doesn’t let anything get in the way of results. But who and what gets left behind? Engagement, burnout, and psychological safety?
The authentic leader has discovered the power of a still mind. They lead from a deeper awareness beyond thought, where true intelligence and creativity are found.
When you are consciously aware, you become a portal through which leadership can flow into this world.
This is conscious leadership.
Yet most leadership development still focuses on mindset and external tactics rather than inner transformation.
The most sophisticated leadership framework in the world becomes just another ego tool if applied from a conditioned mind.
Time to see different.

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How often do we stop to question whether the version of leadership and success we’re chasing are even our own?
Most people climb mountains someone else built. They mistake exhaustion for progress, height for purpose.
But the real revolution happens when you step off the path entirely.
When you realize the summit was never the destination.

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Most leadership frameworks beautifully illustrate the ego-mind’s approach to leadership:
Always doing, always strategizing, always trying to achieve some future state of better leadership.
What’s often missing is the foundation beneath all effective action: presence itself.
You can excel at all the right leadership behaviors:
– driving results,
– caring for your people,
– fostering innovation,
– creating safety,
– fixing systems,
– communicating clearly,
– empowering others,
– emulating the character and skills of great leaders
– adopting new practices,
– and last but not least, robustly engaging with leadership content instead of doing the inner work because it’s well… easier.But if you’re performing these actions from unconscious reactivity, then you’re still operating from the mind and ego, not presence.
Your team KNOWS the difference.
Record levels of disengagement, burnout, and talent hemorrhaging aren’t mysteries to solve.
They’re the predictable outcome when people sense their leaders are performing a role with no depth instead of showing up without a mask.
The real question is: Who is the one trying to lead?
Is it the thinking mind that has identified itself as the leader and now needs to prove its worth?
Is it the conditioned mind with all its stories, beliefs, and judgments that cloud your decisions and keep you stuck living in the past?
Or is it conscious presence responding intelligently to what the moment requires and allowing clarity and wisdom to emerge?
True leadership doesn’t emerge from doing the right things, but from being present enough to know what each situation actually calls for.
When you’re fully present, you don’t need to strategically create psychological safety. Safety emanates naturally from your being.
You don’t need tactics to drive engagement. Your clarity invites clarity in others.
The deepest leadership principle is this: Be present. Everything else will flow from there. Effortlessly. Naturally.
Otherwise, the ego will happily keep you in leadership development. Forever.

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The difference between managing and leading isn’t what you say. It’s who you are when you show up.
Most of us were taught that leadership means telling people how great they are, pointing out their potential, and cheerleading from the sidelines.
But what if the most powerful thing you could do is actually say nothing at all?
True leadership happens in the space between words. When you’re fully present—free from your own mental noise and agenda—something remarkable occurs.
People don’t just hear about their worth; they feel it. They don’t just learn about their potential; they experience it.
It’s not inspiration through effort. It’s recognition through awareness.
Stop telling people how great they are. Start being the kind of presence that makes their potential undeniable to them.
What does this shift look like in your leadership?

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Most leaders are trying to fix the wrong thing.
They’re frantically adjusting the dials.
Rearranging the org chart.
Implementing new processes.
Chasing the next framework.
But here’s what we discovered:
The environment doesn’t need fixing.
Your consciousness does.
Change happens from the inside out.
Not the outside in.
It’s not about doing more.
It’s about being more.
One shift in awareness creates more transformation than a thousand action plans.
This isn’t leadership theory.
This is leadership reality.
See different. Inside.

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Have we been solving the wrong problem?
The dreadfully low and persistent workplace engagement data suggests we are. We can’t spin it.
For years, we’ve believed people quit managers, not jobs.
We’ve built an entire industry around fixing managers and training leaders.
Surface-level fixes.
It doesn’t work.
You can’t manage someone out of their resistance.
Change the manager, the resistance transfers.
Change the process, they resist the new one.
Fix the culture, they find new things to resist.
Here’s what I discovered on the inner leader journey:
The weather is inside.
Same environment. Two people. One sees obstacles, the other sees opportunities.
The difference isn’t the manager or the culture or the process.
It’s perception.
True leadership changes perception.
When leaders do the inner work, something remarkable happens.
Teams notice. Everything shifts.
I call it “See Once, Lead Forever.”
SEE DIFFERENT.

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Sometimes a single statement can crystallize everything.
Recently, I shared reflections on corporate purpose and the disconnect between noble intentions and toxic realities.
A comment from a reader, Vijay Dahima, stopped me in my tracks.
He said:
“This is the invisible chasm that leaders need to cross over.”
We’ve become masters at building corporate architecture. Frameworks. Metrics. Purpose statements.
All the right walls, perfectly constructed.
But 27% global employee engagement tells a different story.
The invisible chasm isn’t about strategy or structure or better management.
It’s about the courage to pause. To listen beyond the voice in our heads. To lead from the inside out.
The houses we’ve built serve the grandest purposes, but nobody wants to live in them.
Thanks to Vijay for naming it.
What invisible chasms do you see in your organization?
And more importantly, what would it take to cross them?

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Recently I shared how AI research accidentally proves we’re just like ChatGPT.
Our minds are constantly predicting the next word in an endless mental loop.
However, the real breakthrough isn’t recognizing that we’re running patterns.
It’s discovering what’s watching those patterns.
The moment we see that our thinking is just conditioned from past experiences, we begin to notice something deeper: a still awareness beneath it all.
That’s where real leadership lives. It’s not in learning more, but in the awareness that observes the mind.
This isn’t about perfecting your leadership. It’s about accessing the intelligence that exists before your thinking.
Your team doesn’t just respond to your words and actions.
They respond to the quality of awareness you bring to every interaction.

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As is often the case, this image was inspired by the first article that appeared in my LinkedIn feed this morning about how to increase your influence at work.
Much of the advice was familiar. Strategic networking, speaking up in meetings, building your personal brand.
As usual, it struck me how upside down it feels from what I’ve learned through doing the inner work of leadership.
When we discover we are not the voice in our head and that we’ve been running on autopilot, we begin to see a deeper truth.
We discover that we’ve been conditioned to filter everything through our mind-made identity, judgments, and past experiences.
The deeper truth to consider here is this: The more we try to *get* influence, the more we operate from fear and ego.
But when we give our full awareness, attention, and truth without needing anything in return, something shifts.
People feel it. They lean in rather than pull away.
And that’s where real influence begins. It’s something we embody.
What if most of the business and leadership advice you’re consuming is actually feeding the very ego that blocks real influence?
This is the stunning clarity that will emerge on the inner leader journey.
You’ll gain an immense understanding of why so many of the challenges we face are going unresolved.

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When you walk into a room, do people feel seen or stressed?
Few leaders have done the inner work required to show up with a quiet mind and an open heart.
But it’s only in that space—free from agenda and judgment—that true connection and leadership becomes possible.
The best leaders aren’t the ones with the sharpest problem-solving skills. They’re the ones who create space for others to be seen and heard.
When we shift from discovering problems to rediscovering people, everything changes.
Leadership isn’t something you do to people. It’s something you become for them.
Most of what we call “leadership development” is actually ego development disguised as skill-building.
We’re teaching people to become better managers of others rather than better stewards of their own consciousness.
When leaders stop trying to fix, control, or extract value from people and instead create space for others to access their own wisdom, they discover that the problems they were desperately trying to solve often dissolve on their own.
The moment you stop needing to be seen as the leader is the moment you become one.
Organizations don’t transform because of better systems, processes, or strategies.
They transform because the quality of human connection within them shifts. And that shift is entirely dependent on the inner state of the people who hold influence.
Every interaction is either an invitation for someone to become more of who they really are, or a subtle request for them to become smaller to make us more comfortable.
This visual isn’t just showing a leadership technique. It’s revealing the difference between unconscious and conscious connection and leadership.
The transformation we seek in our organizations starts with the transformation within ourselves.
This is the transformation that Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of Visa, said we’d ALL need to make in the 21st century.

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Left side: That’s you on Monday morning.
Sending 17 emails and Slack messages, scheduling meetings about meetings, creating processes for processes, trying to control every outcome.
Right side: That’s you walking into a room and everyone naturally looks to you for direction. Not because of your title. Because of your simple presence.
Here’s what this looks like on Tuesday at 2pm:
Instead of: “We need to discuss the framework for optimizing our strategic approach…”
Try: “What’s true right now?”
Instead of: “Let me circle back with a comprehensive action plan…”
Try: “What wants to happen?”
Your next difficult conversation is your classroom. Your next crisis is your teacher.
Can you simply be present with what is?
Leadership isn’t another checklist you just downloaded.
It’s what happens when you stop trying so hard.

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Water doesn’t “try” to flow. It just flows naturally.
Obstacles create turbulence, but water finds its way around effortlessly.
Remove the rocks, and the flow becomes smooth and powerful.
Next time you’re in a difficult meeting trying to force an outcome, remember the water flowing around rocks and ask: “How do I get out of the way here?”
Late Friday afternoon crisis? “How do I get out of the way here?”
Difficult conversation? “How do I get out of the way here?”
Team conflict? “How do I get out of the way here?”

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You can’t help people see their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves when you are identified with the voice in your head.
A voice that is constantly judging, comparing, and trying to become something other than what you are.
True leadership begins when you do the inner work to stop leading from your head.

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When you free yourself of the mind’s noise and when the ego no longer interferes, you open up a channel to the natural intelligence of your own being.
You’re no longer reacting from conditioning, you’re responding from conscious awareness itself.
In that space of pure awareness, leadership and right action emerge effortlessly.
Fundamentally, leadership isn’t something to do, but something to be.

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We keep moving the deck chairs expecting real change to occur.
The real work is always the inner work which then naturally transforms everything else.
The organization doesn’t need fixing.
The environment doesn’t need fixing.
The system doesn’t need fixing.People don’t need fixing either. But they do need awareness that helps them recognize they are not the voice in their head. That what they believe themselves to be is a conditioned mental construct that limits them.
What’s needed is leadership that does the inner work to transform their perception.
When leaders shift from trying to change the world to changing how they see the world, everything else reorganizes automatically around that new perception.
The Ultimate Truth:
Organizations don’t need better leaders.
They need leaders who are willing to see differently.

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In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus offers Neo two pills.
The blue pill returns him to comfortable illusion. The red pill reveals reality.
Most of humanity is living in the blue pill world. We see reality through the mind’s conditioned filters:
– Success means climbing the corporate ladder
– If it’s invisible or not proven by science, it’s not valuable
– Busy equals being productive
– I introduce myself by my role, title or position
– My toxic boss, my company, my circumstances are the problemHow many do you identify with?
We mistake the voice in our head for truth.
But conscious leaders take the red pill.
We see that “We’re not seeing through our own eyes.”
We discover we are not the voice in our head. Not the reactive patterns and judgments. Not the autopilot responses.
We are the awareness that observes all of this.
When we stop identifying with our thoughts, everything reorganizes automatically.
Complex decisions become self-evident. Teams feel the shift and respond differently.
This isn’t about learning new techniques. It’s about awakening from the false self that most of humanity mistakes for who they are.
Turn off the autopilot. Start seeing.
What pill will you choose?
This is the most important discovery and choice you will ever make.
Step out of the illusion.
We are all leaders when we SEE DIFFERENT.

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I learned the difference between conscious and unconscious presence hundreds of feet underwater in a nuclear submarine.
Unlike the typical corporate environment, it’s one that demands a deeper level of awareness, 24/7.
There’s no hiding behind meetings, politics, or process when lives are at stake. You can’t sleepwalk throughout the day.
Most people have not experienced this or realize there is a difference.
Imagine how powerful your leadership becomes in environments where the stakes are “merely” business outcomes rather than life and death.
That’s what happens when you do the inner work to transcend mind and ego—leadership becomes an expression of awareness itself.
This is leadership no model, framework or skill set can touch.
Conscious awareness based leadership is no longer optional in the 21st century.

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Most people don’t have a time problem.
They have a presence problem.We think we need more productivity hacks, when what we really need is to wake up from the unconscious thinking that scatters our attention.
This simple shift—from identifying with the voice in our heads to observing it—changes everything. Focus becomes effortless. Clarity returns.
It’s not about controlling your mind.
It’s about becoming free from it.

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Will this be one of the greatest blind spots in human history?
We train leaders in strategy, communication, decision-making, and self-awareness.
But we skip the most crucial skill: awareness itself.
Self-awareness implies identification with the self/ego. You’re aware of yourself as an object.
True transformation comes from awareness. The spacious consciousness that observes both the self and its patterns without identification.
Leaders who haven’t done the inner work are performing leadership instead of being leaders.
You can’t authentically participate in something you’re only pretending to do.
The inner leader path is the way forward in the 21st century.
Something Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus of Visa, said we’d all need to do 40 years ago.

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Most leadership development focuses on more learning, better strategies and improved thinking.
We are essentially trying to upgrade the thinker.
But on the inner leader journey, we discover that this thinker we’re trying to improve is itself an illusion!
Authentic leadership emerges not from a better ego, but from the dissolution of the ego’s grip entirely.
When there’s no separate self trying to control outcomes or defend positions, leadership becomes a natural expression of awareness. It responds to what’s needed in the moment.
The moment you stop trying to be a better leader (better thinker), you become available for true leadership to express itself through you.
It’s leadership without the leader. Just a pure, appropriate response to whatever the situation calls for.
Making this shift isn’t just about leadership development,
It’s about any area where we’re trying to improve ourselves by strengthening the very sense of separate self that’s creating the problem in the first place.

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In organizations worldwide, despite countless leadership programs and culture initiatives, we still see persistent issues:
• Low engagement
• Broken trust
• Lack of psychological safetyThe root cause isn’t a lack of techniques.
It’s leaders who haven’t done the inner work to transcend ego-identification.

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This morning, the first post in my feed sparked something.
Olaf Boettger shared a story about a moment when “something made me ask” the right question (Link in comments.)
But as I read it, what struck me wasn’t the question itself. It was who he was being in that moment.
He was present. Connected. Listening deeply.
That’s when the best questions don’t need to be crafted. They emerge naturally through us.
This visual came from that realization. Most of what we see about leadership focuses on external techniques, frameworks, strategies, and skills to mimic we see in great leaders.
But the real shift happens when we stop identifying with the mind and our illusory identity. We become a space for authentic insight to emerge.
We are often not where we are experiencing what we are experiencing!
This is the absurdity of how we are mentally absent ourselves from our own lives.
What we typically call “thinking” is actually a form of self-deception that prevents us from receiving our own inner wisdom on what we are experiencing.
Forty years ago, Dee Hock said “the inner path is the journey we all need to take in the 21st century.” He understood that our greatest challenges require a fundamental shift in consciousness.
When we’re no longer trapped by the voice in our head, we become the space through which real listening, insight, and right action can emerge.
When we stop avoiding our actual experience through mental distraction, life itself becomes our teacher.
Every moment contains exactly the guidance you need, but only if you’re actually present to receive it.
This is the inner path of leadership.

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The more we lead by chasing control, achievement, or recognition, the more we reinforce the very problems we’re trying to fix. True leadership begins when we surrender the ego’s agenda and attune to the deeper intelligence that connects us all.
Every small plane I ever piloted had a kill switch for the autopilot. Right on the yoke. Within fingertip range.
And for good reason.
When the autopilot fails, as it once did for me, the impact can be immediate and dramatic. It’s a heart-stopping moment.
Now, from the perspective of my inner leader journey, I’ve come to see that most of Western humanity is also flying on autopilot.
But here’s the problem:
We don’t know it. We don’t know we have a kill switch. And we don’t know it’s the source of our challenges.
The autopilot isn’t just reacting to external conditions. It’s trying to remake reality to match its internal programming. It judges everything as “wrong” and tries to force-fit the world into its limited perspective.
This leaves us stuck in dysfunctional patterns:
Leaders who react instead of respond
People who listen to the voice in their head instead of you
Teams led by masks, ego, and conditioning
Organizational change focused on surface tweaks that ignore the deeper source
Here’s what I’ve learned from my inner leader journey:
Most leaders are trying to fix the “baked cake” (organizational problems, team dysfunction, poor results) instead of changing the ingredients (consciousness, awareness, presence).
You can’t argue with what’s already manifested. You can’t take the salt out of a cake that’s already baked. You can’t fix an environment by changing the outside.
But you CAN catch yourself in the act of arguing with what IS, and instead ask:
“What conscious ingredients am I adding to this moment?”
What if the problems you’re trying to solve are just showing you which loving ingredients were missing from past decisions? What if your current challenges are perfectly designed to wake you up from autopilot?
The kill switch for the judgment autopilot is acceptance.
When you fully accept what is—without making it wrong—you automatically disengage from unconscious reaction and engage conscious response.
Inner awareness is leadership. Everything else is ego flying the plane.