Lead from Within
When I was a little girl, my family frequently visited our dear relatives at their Adirondack camp at Lake Nebo, in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. There, playing amongst the whispering hemlocks and soft, mossy rocks or eating a picnic after canoeing across the pristine lake, I felt great happiness. The clear, shimmering water reflected both sunlight and moonlight, always offering an invitation to dive in. My siblings and I spent many happy hours there. To me, the name “nebo” is a synonym for inner balance and peace, a reference to not only an actual geographic lake on Earth, but also to a state of well-being from which one can best contribute to the rest of life. My question to myself has been: how can I carry that feeling of inner balance with me even when I am not at the lake?
I’ve learned that most people have a place that they love; they have their own version of Lake Nebo. Even those who don’t have just one place in mind recognize the state of well-being that I have described. We understand intuitively that, when we are connected with ourselves and with the natural world around us, we can do our best work, access our greatest strengths and joyfully contribute what is ours to give.
In the fast-paced world of 21st century leadership, we struggle to stay connected to this inner place of highest potential. We lose our centeredness and forget to cultivate inner balance and resiliency as we jump from commitment to commitment and responsibility to responsibility.
At The Nebo Company, we commit to working closely with our clients to help them remember their unique sources of resilience and inner balance in order to tap into those strengths as they lead tough and demanding challenges. We know that leading “from within” means accessing their deepest inner resources in order to bring forward the quality of contribution of which they are capable. We know from personal experience and almost fifteen years of working intensively with leaders and teams that the complexity of leading knocks us off balance and puts us “on our back foot.” To us, lead from within means leading from your own center, accessing the “lake within,” the wealth of your inner resources, even when you are far from the serene settings and conditions that are your happiest places.
