Self-worth is a cause, not an effect. Self-esteem is not something that is purchased or bargained or attained through conditionally applied effort. So much culturally and systemically reinforce conditional self worth. “We are better when…” “We are good if…” From performance reviews and bonus plans to stock awards and exit packages, we consider ourselves only as good as the deal we can extort. When we review our life insurance, we think of ourselves as “worth more dead than alive.” Not only is our self-value erroneously calculated by what we do and what we have, we are subject to the fickle projections of others’ feedback. We tend to feel better or worse about ourselves based on the irrelevant opinions of others. When flawless leaders finally realize the inestimable value of inherent self-worth, they become the proud owners of all that cannot be bought. To whom do you sell your self worth?

The most painful poison to the leader is isolation. The antidote to isolation is not to surround one’s self with people, for a person can often still feel lonely in a crowd. The cure is in submitting to authentic relationship. Relationship is severely misunderstood. Relationship is the dynamic attachment or connection between two or more people. Physicist Fritof Capra said that it was impossible to measure a relationship. Love is the apex of relationship, and many would naturally agree that love cannot be measured. Independence is the opposite of relationship, and yet independence is part of what makes one a leader. This common leader infection of independence-driven relationship avoidance creates isolation. And it is impossible to lead effectively in exile. At the core of love and relationship is a healthy dependence, a willful limiting, a mutual submission, a selfless service, a lavish generosity, a happy incompatibility. Relationship is the flawless leader’s quintessential task, not the worship of avarice and ambition. To flawlessly lead, leaders must do what they fight intensely to avoid: surrender, in mutually submitting trusting relationships.

What is your successful surrender? What is your powerfully influential submission? What isolation is limiting your relationships? How would your closest friends describe your relationship building acumen?

Flawless leaders radically honor human freedom. Freedom is uniquely human, and humans are uniquely free. The dehumanizing effects of manipulation are the symptoms and aftershocks of the human race’s most debilitating disease: slavery. It is dehumanizing to be an instrument of a will other than your own. Leaders who insidiously use “human resources” for self-serving means are deceptive tyrants enlisting slaves. Human beings are not means to an end; they are ends in and of themselves. The age of the oppressive domineering leader might never end. The sex appeal of suppression and the pain of equality might be too strong for the healing art of contribution to overcome. But there will always be lighthouses shining in the dark storms: flawless leaders. Flawless leaders honor the free will of others; they do not cover coercion in accountability schemes and regulatory controls. Flawless leaders honor with their lives the adage “You cannot get a flower to grow by pulling on it.”

Who are you using as if they were means to an end? On what flowers are you pulling, expecting them to grow? What tyranny are you disguising as leadership?

Authentic humility is the bedrock essence of a flawless leader. However strenuously we strive for relevance, we are rarely really relevant. It is high time leaders not only accept this but also embrace it. Embracing irrelevance is a holy reverence for the equality of all humans. Most leaders are constantly in search of their own relevance and thus are chained to illogical and unarticulated fantasies of being God. They think they should lead because they are “the best choice for the job,” they have been “appointed.” When we embody the paradigm of constant relevance we repel followers because they sense our need to be dominant, however covert our condescension may be. Our past accomplishments and accolades shallowly support our self-pertinence. Leading and following are intensely “present-time” sensitive. Followers disregard past track records once they are with you in the moment’s current affliction. In our present anxiety, our past triumphs melt feverishly into triviality. Flawless leaders reject continuous relevance because they have chosen a lifelong submission to authentic service and meaningful purpose.

With which of your accomplishments do you over-identify? What is it like for others attempting to relate with you and your ego? What purpose is worthy of your surrender?

To fully engage followers a leader must be fully whole. Unfortunately, we too often and unknowingly choose to fragment our lives, meticulously shattering our wholeness into secret collections of sharp chards. We often speak as though we are comprised of several liquid compounds, which cannot be combined, like salad dressing of oil and water and vinegar. “This is my personal life”, “this is my work life”, “this is my spiritual life”, “this is my family life”, “this is my public life”, “and this is my private life”. This is not organization; this is separation. To separate something out from the whole is to call it “sacred.” Leaders often fail by sacrilegiously creating sacred splinters from their inherent wholeness. We incrementally destruct our lives through sacredness. This habit of segregation and compartmentalization is rampant and pervasive in our societies. Some societies pride themselves on the separation of church and state while others feel honorable in the separation of a specific day or time as sacred and holy. But when we choose separation within one life, we usually cause harm.

When we separate out portions of our lives, we give away our rightful authority and make unconscious assumptions that control us. For instance, we assume that we are in charge of our personal life; our dark-side is in charge of our private life; either the boss, the board, the customer, the profits, or the shareholder is in charge of our work life; the family’s needs take over in our family life; and if we have a spiritual life than maybe God can have a say in that. By portioning out our lives we dilute our power as we defend against unity. It is no wonder so many feel less than whole.

Through our deconstructions we diminish. By dissection and separation, we relinquish wholeness, strength, freedom, and choice. In battle, effective strategists bisect their opponent’s forces, fragmenting their potential capacity. Weakness is the natural side effect of separation and isolation. Some battles are won just by severing the opponent’s ability to communicate between separated battalions. Similarly, through self-fragmentation we self-weaken. Through self-severing we self-diminish. Through our sacred separations we become our own silent saboteur; we embody our own worst enemy. We sacrifice fully living our wholeness. We dishonor others and ourselves by living less-than-whole and less-than-fully-present. We choose the slow suicide of self-shrinking. We choose to slice out a portion of life as sacred and unintentionally commit sacrilege. This pervasive sacrilege creates scattered splinters from what was a full oak of a life.

The immoveable reality is that we all have but one life and every minute occurs on holy ground. Every second is sacred; every moment a miracle. The awe and wonder that a unified, aligned life brings is wholly sacred and defies diminishment. Flawless leaders have no room for diminishing any life. For when one life is diminished, we are all diminished. Flawless leaders speak health into an ill and fractioned world by creating wholeness in their own lives: through living both contentment and submission to unique purpose. In what ways are you less than whole?