Nowhere and now here
Terminus a quo for leaders
Nowhere and now here. The same arrangement of letters, separated only by a small space. Similarly, a fine space separates leaders from orientating to the ‘grey zone’ – where the landscape of what was once known and assured on terra firma now meets a new, vast and endless sea - and leaders must find their sea legs.
The conversation this month continues to explore this unfolding reality for leaders with a specific focus on the terminus a quo – the starting point. The research evidence points not to the obvious skills of leadership (such as IQ), but to what lies below the iceberg. Why? Because leading from the inside out is the key ingredient to making a lasting impact with teams and across the organisation (McKinsey & Company 2024).
Leaders nowhere in the grey zone
Some leaders are walking around in autopilot like they are not here at all –disengaged and disorientated (read more in our March Substack), desiring a different world. This leadership mindset can present as an obsession with the past or a preoccupation with the future (Sue Monk Kidd, 2016). While the past can be a great place to visit and learn from, leaders and organisations cannot live there. To constantly relive the past is to miss out on the present. Likewise, being fixated on future goals (while not unimportant) is also to miss out on the wonder of the present.
Neurologists argue that lack of attunement to the present makes humans feel disconnected from the place where life is most vital and real – now. If leaders invest their primary consciousness in the past or the future, they lose touch with the nowness of life. Constant comparison to past experiences does not enable leaders to address present challenges and opportunities. The brain is a reconstructive process, not a recording device, therefore memories are not always factual or helpful. Likewise, preoccupation with the future can become a hedonic treadmill bringing dissatisfaction and frustration with the present. So how can leaders positively orientate to the ‘now here’?
Terminus a quo – where are you coming from?
Leaders have a natural bias towards action - getting the job done. As a result, many leaders think mostly about where they want to go. But the more important question is, first - where are you coming from?
As leaders, we live and work so much from unconsciousness. We can become so familiar with functioning from a place where we assume our stances are just ‘who we are’ rather than something we choose. We believe what we think is accurate and true, and we create our own realities based on those perceptions. This perspective then becomes our ‘lens’ from which we view people, events, and things and determines how we respond and make decisions.
As research by McKinsey and Co explains, what holds leaders back as they push themselves and their teams ahead is their own psychological conditioning, which is rooted in the very habits and behaviours that got them where they are. Most leaders think that how they see things is ‘just the way it is’. But if they stood in a different place, they would see things differently. And this new perspective could open exciting new possibilities for success.
Attuning to the ‘now here’
How do leaders better understand the lenses hindering change? Julia Galef describes the role of a scout as understanding the terrain, not defending a fortress. The scout mindset focuses on truth-seeking – the desire to see things as they really are, even if it is uncomfortable or inconvenient. The soldier mindset, in contrast, is driven by motivated reasoning, seeking to defend existing beliefs, win arguments, and protect identity or ideology. We consider the starting point of the inside-out leadership journey to be the development of the scout mindset: that of a curious explorer, with the requisite openness to sail the vast and endless sea.
Attunement for leaders starts with overcoming internal barriers and biases. The McKinsey Global Institute (2023) offers some questions to help leaders start the journey - what is it you really want to accomplish? What behaviours do you want to model? What assumptions are you making, including about yourself that stand in the way? The answers lie within the leader and their openness to really listen for what they don’t want to hear - the greatest challenge of all.
Scouting the inner terrain
While one of the most obvious applications for the scout mindset is to look at our outer terrain, for many leaders, our greatest uncharted territory is the inner terrain of ourselves (Showry and Manasa, 2014). Indeed, large-scale research by Tasha Eurich has confirmed that only 10-15% of people are actually self-aware - despite 95% of people believing they are - and this was confirmed by similar research by Korn Ferry in 2024. Counter-intuitively, Eurich found the greatest barriers to self-awareness among leaders were power and experience. This is because experience can lead to a false sense of confidence about our performance, while power makes a leader more likely to overestimate their skills and abilities. Other subtle barriers to self-awareness according to Showry and Manasa, can include incompetence, motives, self-presentation, core self-evaluation, high self-monitors, self-deception, distorted feedback, and narcissism (2014).
The research evidence is clear - IQ and technical skills are far less important to leadership success than self-awareness. In a world of unprecedented business complexities, leaders - besides knowledge - need an inner compass of self-awareness to walk the tight rope of leadership. This requires leaders to, like scouts, invite and hold a true perspective of their strengths and shortcomings and understand what it is like to be ‘on the other side’ of them, if there is any chance of navigating the complexity and uncertainty of our new seascape.
Where to now?
The self-awareness required of us as leaders, while one of our most fundamental responsibilities, requires a conscious cultivation. To that end, we have put together an Illuminaire learning guide to self-awareness for leaders, which we have made available for free. Download here.
Reflection questions
What realm am I living in as a leader?
Do I spend more time reliving history or devising the future?
How can I recenter my consciousness on the now here in the grey zone?
Considering any changes made will probably be met with some resistance as those around us (who will be affected by our changes), what reactions do you expect?
How will you hold fast to your growth despite resistance?
Want to read or listen to more?
Check out the following resources:
Burnison, Gary (2025) Know Thyself: https://www.kornferry.com/insights/special-edition/know-thyself
Eurich, Tasha (2018) Working With People Who Aren’t Self-Aware: https://hbr.org/2018/10/working-with-people-who-arent-self-aware
Wise, Natalie (2015) Darling Issue 12: The Art of Being a Woman: https://darlingmagazine.app.box.com/s/bbu2y1sdp2xf847ag1so1dghl50ak0i6?goal=0_0b80f5c96a-eb241cc25b-315938476&mc_cid=eb241cc25b&mc_eid=909607f1f4
Galef, Julia (2024) The Scout Mindset, Piatkus
Illuminaire Press Volume Two (April 2025) Leading in the Grey Zone: https://www.illuminaireleadership.com/store
McKinsey Global Institute (2023) Performance Through People: Transforming Human Capital into Competitive Advantage: https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/performance-through-people-transforming-human-capital-into-competitive-advantage
Monk Kidd, Sue (2006) When the Heart Waits, Bravo Limited
Siegal, Dan (2010) Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. New York, NY: Random House Publishing
Showry, Mendemu and Manasa, K.V.L., Self-Awareness - Key to Effective Leadership (October 7, 2014). The IUP Journal of Soft Skills, Vol. VIII, No.1
Tucker, Sean (2021) The Meaning in the Making, Rocky Nook
We are delighted to announce that pre-orders are now open for Illuminaire Press Volume Two! Our annual leadership publication is dedicated, in this second issue, to the theme of ‘Leading in the Grey Zone’.
The old era has passed, and a new era is emerging - we are living in the grey zone. In this in-between space, a new leadership paradigm beckons. Leadership is no longer about the leader but the people they serve, and how they serve them in the face of great change and unpredictability.
In this second annual publication of Illuminaire, we are drawing on science, strategy and story to bring light to what really matters when it comes to leading in the grey zone. These pages consider the leadership response-ability of the “me” (leading self), “we” (leading teams and organisations) and “all of us” (leading in the larger eco-system) to help leaders develop the courage and capacity to be makers in a new and uncertain world.
LAUNCHING 30 APRIL, 2025
PRE-ORDER TODAY
https://constance710.substack.com/p/the-cv-theyll-actually-read-executive