Grace in the Workplace

Why would grace be a lesson on leadership?

How can it not? Grace is the state many wise leaders seek: grace under fire. The state of grace, however, is not just essential under fire; grace serves leaders all of the time. During times of stress, confusion, joy, and peace, grace is always at its best.

Many leadership books talk about policies, procedures, and processes. The extreme challenge in today’s organizations is that we value policies and procedures more than we value and honor people. As the Rev. Dr. King, Jr. said, “we need a heart full of grace”. Grace is found in love and personifies elegance, politeness, and generosity of spirit. An organization steeped in love, is an organization steeped in grace.Grace is a word and concept ripe with different mental models for people. Most definitions and constructs have common elements such as beauty, elegance, dignified manner, generosity of spirit, and a gift from God. The ability to see beauty in anything is a gift of grace.

Mother Teresa saw beauty in the poorest of the poor, when she said, “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.” Grace is seeing with the heart and eyes of God.Victor Frankl described the worst of horrors in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. He told a story of sitting on the floor in the concentration camp eating soup, exhausted after laboring all day for the Nazis, when a fellow prisoner rushed in to ask them to join him outside to marvel at the wonderful sunset. Even in the midst of the heinous concentration camps, those prisoners understood the beauty of grace.

Grace is elegance personified. Many of my female executive clients work with me to reclaim their femininity in their high-level leadership positions. Through the process of reconnecting with their feminine energy, they discover elegance and grace. Elegance is refined confidence in self. It is a calm, quiet knowledge of self-efficacy that you can handle anything that comes your way with dignity. This comes from knowing you will never run out of resources because you are tapped into your source, the source of all resources, God.

Grace through elegance is a powerful leadership example. I’ll never forget when Paula, a colleague 20 years my senior said to me, “I never knew that a woman could lead with softness and femininity. I always thought you had to be tough, hard-nosed, and aggressive for others to follow. Thank you for showing me another way, an even more effective way.” An authentic way. Paula learned the power of elegance and grace in leadership. She saw it in fact, move mountains.

How do you see grace manifested in your workplace? How can you impart grace in this holiday season?

With love,

Maria

BTW – This is an excerpt from my book!

Chocolate, Rock-N-Roll & Leadership Awareness

In my experience, the words leadership and management are used interchangeably in the workplace. In the management and leadership classes I’ve taught over the years, we define those terms differently, while recognizing that leadership is a critical part of management.

Like Forrest Gump’s mama, I have always believed that life and leadership are like a box of chocolates. Defining leadership as a component of management was like saying cocoa is a component of chocolate. While cocoa is the critical component in making chocolate, there is a process in taking the cocoa through critical steps before the chocolate is produced.Such is true with leadership—critical steps for leadership development are necessary.

The first steps begin with awareness.Need another rockin’ example? Click here:We tell the truth to ourselves when we acknowledge our own imperfections. In one of my favorite leadership books, “Leading with Soul”, the authors Boleman and Deal stated, “To deny imperfections is to deny our humanity and to become disconnected from our soul.”Accepting our imperfections and taking the introspective, reflective journey, we travel to our core and find our authentic leader within.Try these 3 simple steps to start your deep dive into self-awareness:

1. Keep a journal and start writing in it daily. When you make this part of your routine, you will find this time of reflection become a habit.

2. Set aside a small amount of time each day – just 10 minutes to be quiet. Unplug, turn off, or sit in your car if you need to. In this stillness, we find profound awareness.

3. When you notice an uneasiness like fear or worry and simply ask yourself, “Where is this coming from?” Once we learn how to acknowledge this feeling, we can choose to release it if it does not serve us.

I would love to hear from you. What do you suppose keeps us from our vulnerability and authenticity as leaders?

With love,

Maria