Befriend Your Shadow
The leaders I coach all have a face they want to show to the world. But we also have a face that usually stays hidden. That’s our leadership shadow. Leading well means making it your friend.
The idea of our leadership shadow comes from the psychologist Carl Jung. For Jung, we all have a light side and a shadow side. The light side represents traits, habits, abilities, emotions, or needs we want others to see. We might be proud of these things, or at the very least, we feel safe showing them.
We often see coaching as helping us strengthen and bask in our leadership light. And that’s definitely true. We associate our light with our strengths and our positive energy. We think our light is why we’ve been hired or promoted, why we get awards or have glossy magazine profiles about us, or why our family and friends like us so much. All of that may be true.
But Jung believed our light hides deeper truths about ourselves, things we don’t think the world wants to see. They may be:
Traits or habits we think are weaknesses.
Strengths or abilities we’ve been told to be ashamed of.
Pains and worries we’re too scared or ashamed to talk about.
Needs or emotions we’ve suppressed because we’ve been told we shouldn’t (or can't) have them.
Those things we want to hide are our leadership shadow. Often, we’ve become so good at pushing it out of sight, we don’t even know it’s there. But just as our leadership light has energy, our leadership shadow has energy, too.
This energy leaks out whenever we least expect or want it, causing us frustration and heartache.
Our leadership shadow may be why:
We’re attracted to colleagues or bosses who are harmful to us.
We’re so competitive.
We take failure so personally.
We keep sabotaging our interpersonal relationships.
We blow some things way out of proportion.
We waste years saying what we want to do instead of doing it.
In coaching, we need to make space for your leadership shadow, too. We’re not trying to get rid of it. Jung believed it’s not only impossible to get rid of your shadow, but it’s also profoundly harmful. Because your leadership shadow is just as much a part of you as your leadership light.
Instead, we need to learn to notice and befriend our leadership shadow to understand what it wants and needs, the story it has to tell, the wisdom it has to share, and how it might help us.
Imagine what it would be like to bring your leadership light and leadership shadow into balance. How would that change your life?
That’s what my coaching can do. Are you ready for some shadow work? Book your free Discovery Session here.
