Tale of an Activist Leader

 
 

Nearly Exhausted Naiya

Naiya is in demand. Her team of two, commands 8000. Her global reach is growing. Emotionally she has reached her limits.

Envied by others for her rising star, fast track momentum for a Fortune 50 global flagship enterprise, she is dismayed. Disheartened to be rising so very fast in the wrong direction.

Naiya makes more money that she knows what to do with - because she knows what to do with people and business that other people don’t know what to do with. Naiya makes growth happen for everyone but - herself.

Naiya’s in line for another significant promotion, one that has no significance for her.

She dreams of advancing a cause driven, values centric, non-profit business, one that values people over profit and drives principles over initiatives.

Naiya and I first speak one week before she plans to quit her job. Two days after our first hour introductory call she accepts an offer of promotion that she has changed her intention around wanting and brought about. 

Three months into her coaching program she receives another promotion, more scope, more responsibility, even greater work footprint.

Her design is to still to leave but now it will be on her own terms at the time when her storyline has developed the way she now intends it to.

Eight months into her program she responds to yet another promotion with a request for a 3-month leave of absence. Her peers who secretly admire the courage in her, that they don’t see in themselves - only try to discourage her. Misery truly does love company.

One day before her leave, she is offered her best offer yet. Her ideal boss, not the jerk boss she has had, proposes she work for her - at an altitude level she hasn’t seen before and in an environment of cooperation she never imaged existed – plus, she starts after her requested and granted 3-month leave of absence.

Still overpaid and valued she’s no longer feels under appreciated. Still richly funded with resources to achieve her goals she now is richly engaged and motivated because she now sees how to make her life work the way she makes work, work.

Still with plenty of positional authority her influential power has increased exponentially and brought her to where she previously could not have imagined. 

9 months into her program and 1 month into her leave of absence, she announces she’s not returning to work. She’s returning to her dream. Her magic has returned.

Naiya’s no longer exhausted.

From giving up, to opening up, to stepping up. From not imagining how, to seeing precisely how. From maybe one day in the future to, now I will.

From isolated values to share values. From victim, to control. From despair to aspiration.

To low role awareness, sense of self and future direction to role and path clarity.

Regardless of what others tell us or what we tell ourselves, each of us engage, respond and follow – only, that which we recognize as right within us.

Activist leaders actively listen. We recognize we weaken what we protect and strengthen what we activate.

Opportunities and conditions for activating turn-around leadership, abound.

In order to become the activist leader we secretly want to be – we need the right support and conditions to better recognize and activate the leader we’re called to be.

We all respond more to what we recognize in ourselves that what we tell ourselves. We just need someone to help us think it through and play it out.