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Kamini Wood works with high achievers on letting go of stress, overwhelm and anxiety that comes with trying to do everything, and trying to do it all perfectly
Kamini Wood: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise. Up live joy your way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Thank you for taking some time to hang out here with me. And today I wanna talk about, uh, a different kind of leadership. It's the leadership that doesn't start in the boardroom or even in your role as a parent or a coach or a friend.
It actually starts within yourself. We're talking about conscious leadership. So I get it. It's not as a trendy phrase or a professional [00:01:00] framework, but it's a way of living, relating and showing up to your, your own life as well as to others in your life. Because here's the truth, you can't lead anyone, not a team, not your family, not your clients, until you learn how to lead yourself.
And that's what conscious leadership is really about. It's about. It's not about having all the answers. It's about awareness before action. It's about presence before performance, and it's about integrity, not just image. So today I wanna unpack what it really means to lead from the inside out and why that shift, um, is so important and how it can really affect you in your work, your relationships, whether you know it's familial or friendships.
Now, when you hear the word leader, what comes to mind? Maybe what comes to mind is a Cee o in a corner office or a coach giving a halftime speech, or even a parent making every, every decision. But most of us, um, uh. We're taught that leadership also means control. Uh, it's about managing people, [00:02:00] fixing problems, keeping everything together.
But leadership isn't always just about control. It's about mindfulness, and it's about consciousness. Control says I need to manage and control the outcome, whereas consciousness says, I need to understand what's happening within me. As I move through this, control is this external thing, versus consciousness is internal.
So when we lead from control, we're really staying in a very reactive state. But when we lead from consciousness, we're actually in a responsive generative state. And that difference determines not just how effective you are, but also how calm and less anxiety that you, you feel. Now conscious leadership, in my opinion, begins with awareness.
Really what it is, is it means that when you're aware of what's driving you, whether it's thoughts, beliefs, emotions, fears, your own triggers, because when you are aware of those things, you can actually choose how you wanna respond. When we're not aware of. Them. They actually just run the show and we start leading [00:03:00] from ego and not our own real being.
Now, you might overwork because you're afraid of being irrelevant. You might avoid conflict because you're scared of disapproval. You might micromanage because control feels safer than actually delegating or trusting somebody. But when you lead with consciousness, right? When you lead consciously, you pause and ask what's actually happening inside me right now?
And that one question can shift everything. It turns leadership from this. Place of performance into presence. It turns conversations from being defensive to being open. It turns failure from shame into feedback, and the possibility to grow Conscious. Leadership isn't about perfection. It's about awareness, responsibility, and choice.
Now at the heart of conscious leadership is what I refer to as radical self-responsibility. It doesn't mean blame. It doesn't mean shame. It just means ownership. It's asking how am I contributing to this dynamic? Instead of saying, [00:04:00] you know, who's at fault or what did they do? When something goes wrong, unconscious leaders will look outward.
They blame the team, the system, the circumstances. But what we do as conscious leaders is we look inward first and we ask the question, well, what's mine to own here? And that's not self blame, it's just awareness and, and it leads to self-empowerment. Because when you take ownership of your part, you actually are regaining a sense of agency.
You stop being at the mercy of everyone else's behavior, and you start influencing from a place of integrity. Now in every role, whether it be parent, boss, partner, friend, that shift from blame to ownership changes the tone completely. It brings emotional and psychological safety, accountability, respect back into the dialogue and the conversation.
Now most of us learn to lead by performing. We perform competence, we perform confidence, we perform certainty, but being [00:05:00] present is different than performance. Presence doesn't need to be proven. It's not about pretending you have everything figured out. It's about being grounded enough to admit when you don't says okay.
I am here and I'm listening. When we're present, rather than performing, we're actually inviting others to meet us and meet us with some sense of authenticity rather than fear. Whether we're talking about employees or children or peers, you know, when we don't. Shoot for perfection. It allows for authenticity, like I said, as well as honesty.
And when you lead with presence, you give everyone around you permission to actually breathe and to feel real and to show up as real and just be human. And that's what really builds trust. That is the trust is that currency of leadership. So let's talk about the pause. One of the most powerful leadership tools there is.
In the tiny space between stimulus and response lives. Conscious choice. Viktor Frankl, that's one of his quotes, and most of us [00:06:00] skip that. Pause. We react, we defend. We problem solve too quickly. But conscious leaders use that space, that pause intentionally. They breathe, they ground. They get curious, they ask the important question, you know, what's happening inside me?
What story am I, am I telling myself right now? Am I reacting from fear? Am I reacting from ego? You know, what's actually in alignment here? What does this moment actually require of me taking the time to ask those questions builds this awareness. And when we have that awareness, it prevents us from taking knee jerk reactions and creating damage.
Because leadership is not about doing more. It's about doing what matters and doing it intentionally. Conscious leadership isn't calm all the time, right? I mean, even as a conscious parent, we're not calm all the time. It's emotionally agile, but it does mean, so it means that you can feel frustration and you can feel disappointment, and you can feel fear, [00:07:00] but it also means that you'll slow it down and you'll respond with integrity.
Emotional agility is the ability to notice and name and navigate your emotions instead of just being ruled by them or reacting. By them or through them. It doesn't mean you suppress, and it doesn't mean that you explode. You integrate them. So for example, when a team member misses a deadline or a child talks back, instead of reacting instantaneously, you actually take a pause and you, you pay attention to what's true.
I feel frustrated because I value reliability or I feel disrespected because connection actually matters to me. And then after that, you communicate the emotion and the value underneath it, not just. Reacting and behaving a certain way, and that's how you lead consciously by turning that emotion into information, not ammunition, but information that then you take that information and you choose how you wanna respond.
And something we don't talk about enough. Is that leading consciously means also healing consciously. Unhealed wounds [00:08:00] lead unconsciously. They show up as over control. They show up as avoidance, sometimes even defensiveness. So if you want to lead differently. It does invite you to be different, and it means doing that inner work that sometimes is not the easiest to do.
So just asking yourself, what am I trying to prove through my leadership style? Where am I leading from? Fear instead of from alignment. What part of me means compassion before I might be able to offer it to others. When you heal, you lead from a place of wholeness, not from the need to fill a void. And that healing ripples outwards, it changes how you speak to your team.
It changes how you speak to your partner, your friends, your kids. So it's not just leadership, it's actually your own personal legacy in how you show up in relationships. One of the defining traits of conscious leadership is curiosity. Unconscious leadership needs to be right, right. Conscious [00:09:00] leadership actually.
Wants to understand and curiosity turns judgment into learning. It says, tell me more instead of, you're wrong and I know better. In leadership, curiosity builds connection. In parenting, it builds trust, and in relationships it builds safety. And it starts by being curious, curious with yourself. Instead of saying, I shouldn't feel this way, try instead, um, I wonder why this feels so hard right now.
I wonder why I am so upset right now. That's the kind of self dialogue that transforms not just how you lead, but also how you live, how you show up, and who you are being. So I wanna just bring this into everyday life. If you're a parent. You're a leader in that unit. If you're in a relationship, you're a leader in that connection.
If you're managing your own healing, you're a leader. Conscious leadership at home means leading with awareness, humility, and empathy. It may look [00:10:00] like potentially apologizing when maybe you do react with temper. Um, it may look like asking your child how they're feeling instead of just assuming you know how they're feeling.
It may look like owning your own triggers instead of projecting them onto maybe your partner or a friend. Modeling emotional responsibility so others feel safe to do the same. Your home becomes your first leadership. Classroom your first leadership space. It's a space where compassion and accountability and authenticity literally grow side by side in professional settings.
Conscious leadership is what transforms burnout cultures into. Emotionally and psychologically safe environments. You know, it's when leaders stop managing from a place of fear and hierarchy and start leading from alignment and connection. Instead of, I need my team to perform, it becomes, I want to create an environment.
I want to create conditions where my team can actually thrive. Conscious leaders know [00:11:00] performance follows belonging. When people feel seen and they feel heard and they feel supported, they naturally show up with creativity and commitment to actually see projects through. And it really does start at the top, not with motivational quotes, that's not what I'm talking about, but with actual modeling, you know when you own your own mistakes, when you take feedback with openness, when you invite honest dialogue, your team will follow suit.
So, you know, again, it's about leadership starts from the inside out, and so I just wanna offer you some questions to just think about and reflect on where in my life am I leading reactively instead of consciously? Instead of with responding what emotions tend to drive my leadership When I'm under stress, how do I respond to my own mistakes as well as mistakes of others?
What would it look like to lead from curiosity instead of control? Who am I when I'm fully present and aligned? And again, these questions aren't offered to you with a sense of shame or judgment. They're really inviting awareness and also an opportunity for [00:12:00] curiosity and compassion because awareness is that first step to actually making change zero's.
What I want you to remember, conscious leadership isn't a role, it's a practice. It's choosing awareness over autopilot, integrity over image. Curiosity over certainty. It's not about being the loudest or the most confident in a room. It's really about showing up. The most authentic and the most in alignment with yourself.
When you lead from the inside out, you're creating the ability for that to ripple down within your workplace, also within your family and within your community. And you're modeling what it looks like to live in that connected state. So whether you're leading a company or a classroom, a family, or simply just learning to build your own self-leadership skills, I want you to pause.
Breathe. And just notice what's happening within you because when you understand yourself, you lead with compassion and you stay grounded in your [00:13:00] own values and you stay grounded within your own integrity, and that's when you're living consciously. And then you give others permission to do the same.
Thank you for spending some time with me here today. I hope this resonated for you. If you'd like to ever chat about how coaching could be a way to support you with whatever you've got going on in your life, feel free to reach out to me anytime@coachwithcomedy.com. Until next time, stay well.