A short YouTube talk by Clegg promoting 'conscious leadership'—the idea that effective leadership begins with self-leadership and presence. Clegg recounts a personal mistake (multitasking during employee conversations), the feedback that prompted change, and a simple behavioral fix (closing his laptop, making eye contact). He issues a weekly challenge to be more introspective and present to increase leadership impact.
Chapters
Leadership isn't just about guiding others. It's about guiding yourself first. Too often we jump into leadership roles thinking our main job is to manage people, push for results, or to set a vision. And those things are true. But the truth is we need to lead ourselves first before we lead anyone else. So let's talk about conscious leadership now. What does conscious leadership mean? It's about getting real with yourself, digging deep into who you are, what drives you, and how you're showing up every single day. It's about asking the hard question. Am I the best version of myself? Am I leading from a place of clarity and authenticity? Early in my leadership career, I made a big mistake. And honestly, I was making this mistake every single day. When an employee would come into my office, for whatever reason, you know, I'd be typing away and looking at my laptop, and as they were talking to me, I stayed typing on my laptop. Whether I was doing an email or writing a memo, whatever it may be, I continued to multitask, or at least what I thought I was doing. However, you have to understand a key part of my leadership, which is always giving the expectation of my team to provide constructive feedback to me. And this went on for a while until someone finally said, you know what, Clegg? You really give off the perception that you don't care what we have to say, that you're not listening when you're constantly typing or multitasking or looking at your phone. And that was a big moment for me. Right? That was big. Aha. That said, man, I really do look like I don't give a crap about what this individual is saying. The bottom line is I wasn't fully present in those discussions. And it really took a lot of deep introspection and confront myself with the fact that I was not leading consciously, and I didn't understand what conscious leadership was. At this time in my career. I was constantly reacting to the busyness around me. So I started closing my laptop. I. I would shift my body towards the individual that I was speaking to, and I would make direct eye contact and listen to what they had to say. That small change greatly improved my connection with the employees and those around, because the chances are if you're doing it at work, you're probably doing it at home with a spouse, a child, or a loved one, or someone you care about. So here's the challenge I'm putting in front of you this week. Take a little bit of time to look inward, like, truly be introspective. Find one area where you can be a little bit more focused. Maybe it's how you interact with your team, maybe it's how you make decisions, or maybe it's how you manage your time. But I need you to be introspective. Ask yourself, are you truly conscious of who you are as a leader and the impact that you're making? What's driving the decisions? Are you fully present or are you just going through the motions? The strongest leaders that I've ever seen are the ones that make the biggest impact. Impact. By doing the work on themselves first, they created the highest value in themselves before they tried to create a significant amount of value to those around them. And that's the secret. When you lead yourself first, leading others becomes pretty natural. So let's make this week about you. Focus on becoming the best version of yourself. The work you do on yourself will have a ripple effect across everybody that you lead, every and those that you don't lead. Remember, leadership starts within. I appreciate you watching my Inner Circle Weekly video. If you have any comments or questions, please, please, please don't hesitate to reach out. I love responding to the messages that I get. See you next time. Thanks.
