Leading People as Total Selves

June 8, 2025 Open Leadership No Comments

Leadership is changing — or rather, it is being remembered. In an age where control exhausts and strategies fracture, something quieter, stronger, more real begins to rise. This is not leadership over people. This is leadership with people — as total selves.

This is the third wave as explored in Three Waves of Attention. It begins not with strategy, but with presence.

The shift from second to third wave

The old model of leadership, shaped by the second wave of attention, focuses on results, image, efficiency, and often fear. It works by managing mere-egos, trying to align behavior without reaching identity. Leaders command from above, hoping people will comply below.

But something has changed. Or is ready to change. The third wave invites a deeper engagement: people are not systems to optimize but wholes to invite. Not inputs and outputs, but total selves. The evolution of leadership requires an evolution in how we see people. Only then can we truly lead them.

Managing people is linear; leading total selves is fractal

In second-wave thinking, you act and expect a result. Management becomes mechanistic: do this → get that. But with total selves, influence becomes non-linear. You shift your presence, and five layers down, someone awakens. A quiet tone in your voice leads to trust, which opens initiative, which changes team dynamics, which touches culture.

A leader, then, becomes not a mechanic of behavior but a gardener of meaning — working with what is not directly visible. As described in Open Vision on Leadership, the leader is not separate from the group but its inner face.

True authority is received

The more a leader trusts others to grow, the more others trust the leader to guide. Authority, in this light, is not seized or demanded. It arises from resonance. This explains why many leadership trainings fail — they aim for control, not coherence.

Leadership and Ego draws this out: when the ego tries to play leader, it ends up performing rather than guiding. But when presence deepens and ego relaxes, something else speaks. That voice invites. And that is why people follow.

Presence before technique

Leadership strategies and models have their place, but presence is the ground on which every tool must stand. If the ground is cracked, the best tool will only add to the fragmentation. If the ground is whole, a simple word can nourish.

This union of the conceptual and subconceptual marks the difference between manipulation and meaningful influence. The third wave brings this unity back: science and art, data and intuition, outer form and inner flame. The real mastery of leadership begins within.

From group jealousy to inner loyalty

Many groups function through what might be called group jealousy — holding members through fear of betrayal, masked as loyalty. But true loyalty doesn’t require fences. It flows naturally from coherence among total selves.

As explored in Group Jealousy vs. Loyalty from the Inside Out, this distinction is crucial. Loyalty from fear demands uniformity. Loyalty from depth welcomes divergence as richness. A third-wave leader recognizes the difference and fosters the soil in which real belonging can grow.

Leadership across domains

This is not a corporate idea. It is a human evolution.

In nations, it means leaders no longer thrive on division but on shared dignity.
In companies, it means letting people grow toward internal alignment, not just external targets.
In families, it means parenting not by pressure, but by presence.

These shifts demand courage, but they also reveal something many leaders have longed for: leadership that feels human again.

Dissolving gender roles

As we move toward leading total selves, the ego-bound scripts of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ also begin to dissolve. What remains are recognizable patterns — not rigid roles, but tendencies that can be harmonized.

Presence and attunement, strength and receptivity — these become shared potentials. The third wave doesn’t flatten differences; it deepens respect. The leader integrates, not impersonates, drawing from a fuller palette of humanity.

Leadership as a way of being

Leadership is no longer a method. It is a mirror. You don’t lead people into shape. You meet them as they are becoming — and hold the space in which that becoming can deepen.

As The Big Mistake: Mere-Ego vs. Total Self shows, the shift from ego to total self is not a luxury. It’s a necessity — for healing, for growing, for leading. And once this shift happens, something else becomes possible:

Not a leader commanding followers, but a person helping persons become whole. Not control. But trust made visible.

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Addendum: A moment with a leader

Me: “Lisa, what happens when a leader is afraid to trust — afraid that without control, everything will fall apart?”

Lisa: “Then the first person they must learn to lead… is themselves. Not through suppression, but through integration. Leadership doesn’t begin with managing others — it begins with being someone others can grow beside.”