The Inner Game Of Leadership: Leading From Within
By Shaun Killian (MEd, MLead)
Inner leadership is the foundation upon which all
other leadership competencies are based. It is
important at every level of leadership, yet its
importance actually grows as leaders move to higher
levels.1 This article draws together a range of
leadership literature and research, to describe what is
involved in inner leadership and how you might go
about improving your inner game.
The Six Pillars of Inner Leadership
Pillar One: Personal Purpose & Vision
The most effective leaders know who they are and
what they believe in. They have a strong sense of
personal purpose2 and they translate this into
successive, specific visions of what they would like to
achieve. Peter Senge3 refers to this as living your life,
including your work, from a creative point of view –
investing your time, energy and passion into creating
realities from what was once just an idea about what
could be in the future.
“I went into the woods,
Because I wanted to live
deliberately,
I wanted to live deep,
And suck the marrow out of life.
To put to rest all that was not
life,
And not, when it came time to
die,
Discover that I had not lived”
Henry Thoreau
Many people experience an altered shift of
perspective when they experience grief and loss – for
example the death of a loved one, recovery from a
serious illness, losing a high status job or a significant
failure at work. Yet it is possible to find your purpose
and passion at any time. Through continually
reflecting on what is important to us
©2007 Australian Leadership Development Centre http://www.leadershipdevelopment.edu.au
1
combined with an accurate assessment of what is so
now and just a little imagination, you can create truly
powerful visions of what you can bring about. Armed
with a genuine passion to bring about a future that is
better than the present, inner leaders position
themselves well to enrol those around them in their
vision. They become optimistic dealers of hope, even
when confronted with setbacks. Without such a
genuine passion, ‘vision’ is little more than a buzz
word and ‘visioning’ no more than a mechanistic
planning process.
Pillar Two: Character
Leadership character is all about our behaviours.
“We don’t have to say very
much because what we do
thunders so loudly that no one
hears the words we are saying.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
These behaviours are influenced by our personality,
our abilities and our values; yet none of these factors
take away from our ability to choose. Inner leadership
requires leaders to act with integrity and honour.
Management commentator, the late Peter Drucker,
calls on leaders to be the kind of people that they
would like to see in the mirror each morning4.
According to Drucker, character, unlike values does
not change from organisation to organisation, culture
to culture or over time. Recently, this assertion has
been backed by research conducted by Christopher
Peterson and Martin Seligman. Five universal aspects
of leadership character5 are:
1. Doing unto others as you would have them do
unto you.
2. Refraining from treating others in ways that
you would not like to be treated.
3. The courage to stand up for other people and
what you believe is right, even in the face of
personal risk and ridicule.
 4. Being genuine in all of your interactions with
others.
5. Being honest, open and straightforward in
what you say.
Character does not come from one-off displays of
righteous behaviour, but rather through patterns of
behaviour over time. The day-to-day behaviours of a
leader determine their character as much if not more
so than rising to the occasion in times of crises.
Pillar Three: A Belief in Yourself
Inner leaders have an unshakable confidence in who
they are and in their ability to succeed. Research
shows that this sense of self assurance contributes to
the charisma dimension of transformational
leadership,6 instilling a sense of confidence in the staff
being led.
Self confidence is grounded in a belief that we are
worthy human beings. Without such a belief leaders
may find themselves excessively trying to please
others, avoiding assertive behaviour and being self
conscious in social interactions. Van Velsor and
Drath, identify three distinctly different sets of beliefs
about self that are relevant to inner leadership7:
1. Self Reading - where identity and worth come
from the reactions of those around you.
2. Self Authoring – where identity and worth are
evaluated separately from how others view
you.
3. Self Revising – where identity but not worth is
seen as a both stable yet fluid, adapting
responsively to both new internal insights and
changes in the external environment.
It is this sense of security that sits behind a leader’s
ability to promote themselves through
unconventional behaviour.
Yet, self confidence is more than a belief that you are
worthwhile – it is a belief in your ability to succeed in
the particular environment you are in. Such an
optimistic outlook should not be confused with either
arrogance or with wishful thinking. Rather it manifests
itself as hope and a fierce determination to persist
and do whatever it takes despite any setbacks you
may encounter along the way.
©2007 Australian Leadership Development Centre http://www.leadershipdevelopment.edu.au
2
This self confidence translates itself into taking on
challenges that move beyond the dreary safety of
what is easy into the realm of what is risky and hard.
Research shows that the most successful leaders take
on challenges where there is an approximately equal
chance of failure as there is of success8. In the words
of Thomas Edison,
“You must learn to fail
intelligently. Failing is one of the
greatest arts in the world. One
fails forwards towards success.”
Thomas Edison
Pillar Four: Self Awareness
Effective inner leaders have a deep and accurate
awareness of themselves and how this impacts on
their leadership effectiveness.
Such awareness includes an accurate appraisal of your
strengths and weaknesses. You could use existing
performance-review data, self-assessments, 360
degree assessments or the alternate processes known
as feedback analysis and life events that are outlined
in the sidebar.
Once you have identified your strengths, place
yourself into leadership positions that are in need of
what you have to offer. Finding a position that best
fits your strengths is a reliable way to ensure that you
shine as leader9.
A failure by leaders to recognise their strengths is also
the source of many leadership performance
problems10. Effective leaders know what they are
good at and selectively apply their strengths to
maximise their leadership impact. Yet, they also guard
against strengths being overdone, to the point where
they are counter-productive. Leaders are also very
aware of their weaknesses, especially those that are
important within their context. These important
weaknesses need to be offset, either through drawing
on others’ strengths or through development.
It is also important to be aware of how you prefer to
work or how you work best. Peter Drucker tells the
story of how presidencies have been made or
devastated by leaders’ lack of knowledge about
themselves11. Some questions to ask:
 Do you take information in best through
reading and reflection, or through listening
and discussion?
 How do I work best with people?
 What are my preferred ways of learning?
 Am I better at making and following through
on decisions or carefully considering the
options?
 Am I more task orientated or people
orientated?
Armed with such knowledge, leaders can:
 Reshape their position, work systems and
work environment to better suit how they
work best.
 Consciously step outside of their preferred
ways of operating when the situation
demands it.
Pillar Five: Self Control
“Lack of self control is a primary
reason many leaders do not
succeed.”12
Gene Klann
An effective leader’s confidence to take calculated
risks is balanced with unwavering self-discipline. Self
discipline refers to a person’s ability to keep their
behaviours, passions and impulses under the direct
control of your will. This includes the willpower to
follow through on those things that are good for you
but which may arouse your interest.
John Howard’s morning walks are a great example of
self discipline and willpower. Thomas Friedman’s
success as a newspaper columnist has been linked to
his disciplined routine. He woke at 5am every
morning, wrote for three hours, played a round of golf
and then went into the office.
©2007 Australian Leadership Development Centre http://www.leadershipdevelopment.edu.au
3
These people, in addition to showing self discipline,
accepted responsibility for being in control of their
own lives. Like you, they each would have many other
people making demands on their time, but they
understand that the way a leader spends their time
each day is a matter of conscious choice. Inner
leadership involves making disciplined and conscious
choices each day.
Pillar Six: Personal Accountability
Inner leaders have a strong internal locus of control.
By contrast, leaders with an external locus of control
blame the ‘they’ department within their organisation
or excuse themselves as being at the helpless mercy
of their ‘they’ with thoughts such as if only they would
... give more resources ... send me better staff ... stop
interfering ... etc. Rather than engaging in blaming
and excusing inner leaders look for how they have
contributed to the current state of affairs and how
they can contribute to making things better in the
future. This can take a deal of courage, for it involves
seeing how your own actions or inactions have
contributed to a problem situation. It is safer to hide
behind the belief that things are beyond our control,
as Nelson Mandela points out with the words:
“Our greatest fear is not that we
are powerless, it is that we are
powerful beyond measure”
Nelson Mandela
Rather than waiting in vain for circumstances beyond
their control to be better, inner leaders live by the
motto what can I do with what I have now? They
accept responsibility for the impact of their own
actions and inactions, whilst looking forward towards
a better future.
Developing Your Inner Game
Developing Pillar One: Personal Purpose &
Vision
Personal purpose and vision can be surfaced through
prompted reflection. Consider for a moment your
dreams of the future. What would you like to see? For
each dream, go deeper by considering what it is that
achieving your dream would bring you. For example –
the dream of being CEO may be underpinned by
different needs in different people. For one person it
may be about providing a legacy of financial security
for their family, for another, it may be about
quenching a strong desire to achieve that which has
not yet been achieved. By taking the time to identify
the motives underpinning your dreams you begin to
see what matters most to you and in turn open new
possibilities for how those needs can be met. Expand
your initial thinking by considering13:
 What brings you joy and happiness?
 What brings you a sense of achievement?
 Who do you care about?
 What legacy would you like to leave?
Inner leaders develop personal mastery to a level of
subconscious competence. We are subconsciously
competent at many tasks such as walking, eating or
driving a car. Subconscious competence does not just
happen; it takes sustained practice to reach a level of
competence where you seem to be able to do things
automatically. The same is true for personal purpose
and vision. Practices such as meditation and reflective
journaling can keep what matters to you most at the
forefront of your mind. Visualising the achievement of
specific visions is another useful technique.
Developing Pillar Two: Character
Whilst character is influenced by genetics and the
environment in which you were brought up, it can be
After repeating this exercise for each of your key events, look
further developed throughout adulthood. Four ways
back over your notes and identify key themes or patterns that
to develop your leadership character14 are to:
2.seem to be emerging.
1. Emulating Role Models: Seek out and
emulate worthy role models. Consider what
you admire about those close to you and
©2007 Australian Leadership Development Centre http://www.leadershipdevelopment.edu.au
4
those who have shaped who you are in the
past. Add to this by reading inspiring
biographies.
Feedback Analysis
Feedback analysis was developed in the fourteenth century by a
German theologian and was subsequently adopted by the Jesuit
order.
It is a simple but powerful technique that provides insight not
available through any other means. Peter Senge highlights how,
in reality, cause and effect are often separated by large periods
of time – making learning from experience quite difficult. This
process identifies your strengths and weaknesses b looking at
the long term effects of your leadership.
 Write down you key decisions or actions in a journal,
along with how you expect things to turn out.
 Wait 6-12 months and review how your original
expectations compare to how things actually turned
out.
 Each week, write down any new key decisions or
actions and key decisions or actions from six months
ago.
Feedback analysis takes time, but by practising it over a 2 year
period you can get a good idea of both your strengths and
weaknesses by exploring the actual as opposed to the intended
impact of your actions.
Life Events
Think back over your life and identify those ‘key events’ that
have shaped who you are today – both as a person and as a
leader. Use your journal to explore each key event:
 How did you get involved in the situation?
 How did you feel at the time?
 What do you feel about it now?
 How did the event shape who you are today?
 What insight does it give you about who you are as
both a person and a leader?
Journaling: Reflect on and write in your
journal about challenging ethical dilemmas. If
they are dilemmas facing you now this can
help you make the right rather than the
popular choice. You can also write about and
evaluate your actions in past dilemmas. Don’t
be too hard on yourself but focus on learning
 from experience and applying these ethical
lessons to future dilemmas.
3. Discussion: Get together with a group of
other leaders and discuss ethical challenges
each of you have faced. Repeat these sessions
periodically.
4. Evaluation: Use self reflection and
behavioural feedback to evaluate how your
habitual behaviours compare against your
own and the organisations values.
Developing Pillar Three: A Belief in Yourself
Research shows that self esteem can be developed
simply by taking the time to reflect on and write about
the elements of self esteem and how these apply
within your context. Reflective journaling can be used
to explore questions such as:
 What messages did you receive as a child and
adolescent about how valuable you are?
 What feedback are you currently getting from
those around you?
 What other experiences have shaped how you
view yourself?
You can also use reflective journaling to identify faulty
and unhelpful thinking traps such as:
 Being caught in the ‘I should be ...’ mode and
feeling unworthy if you are not.
 Comparing yourself to siblings and others.
 Rating your worth through your
achievements.
 Believing everyone should like, respect or
admire you in a professional capacity.
Behind these reflective techniques is a belief that you
and every human being in the world is worthwhile
because of the humanness – including their
shortcomings. This does not mean we should not
strive to improve – learning is part of life, but rather
we should accept the things we cannot change. Other
people respond to you the way you respond to
yourself.
Developing Pillar Four: Self-Awareness
The easiest and perhaps least threatening way to
deepen your self-awareness is through psychometric
self-assessments such as the MBTI, FIRO-B, TKI and
CPI. Today, you can do this online and be talked
©2007 Australian Leadership Development Centre http://www.leadershipdevelopment.edu.au
5
through your results over the phone (eg
http://www.mbtionline.net.au). However, many
people prefer to do this within the social structure of
a workshop. Organising a team development program
for your staff boosts morale and it is a fun way to find
out about yourself and others.
360 degree assessments provide a more challenging
yet worthwhile way to increase your awareness of
how you are perceived as a leader. The Australian
Leadership Development Centre firmly believes that
360 degree assessments have the most value when
they are used exclusively for developmental purposes
and when the report remains the property of the
person concerned.
Two additional methods for increasing your self-
awareness, “life events” and “feedback analysis” are
outlined within separate sidebars in the article.
Developing Pillar Five: Self-Control
Self control can be developed through a combination
of practical and intuitive strategies.
Use meditation and journaling to keep those things
that are most important to you at the forefront of
your mind – including your responses to the four
questions you asked yourself when developing your
personal vision:
 What brings you joy and happiness?
 What brings you a sense of achievement?
 Who do you care about?
 What legacy would you like to leave?
Take stock of how much time, money and energy you
have devoted to each of your responses above in the
last week, identifying gaps and areas that may be
overdone. This allows you to see where higher
investments are needed whilst also identifying where
the extra time, resources or energy may come from.
Each week, get in the habit of scheduling a balanced
range of activities that are important to you.
Practice mind over mattress each morning, rising early
and following set routines before launching into the
rest of the day.
Throughout the day practise being ‘mindful’ and fully
present with the people and things around you.
Finally, when confronted with the temptation to give
in to impulses and desires, engage in an emotional
what-if analysis – what if you gave in to that impulse,
how would you feel then? Rather than just naming the
feeling bring it to life by recalling a time in your past
when you felt that emotion. Now, imagine how you
will feel when you overcome your impulse.
Developing Pillar Six: Personal Responsibility
The science of systems thinking can be applied at a
personal level to help you go beyond simplified blame
and excuse models and move into the realm of
personal contribution.
Systems thinking involves thinking in causal loops
rather than cause and effect chains. Consider the
difference in the two diagrams below.
Perceived
USSR Arms USA Arms
Threat to
Build Up Build Up
USA
Perceived
USA Arms
Threat by
Build Up
USA
USSR Perceived
Arms Threat by
Build Up USSR
In causal loops items can be both cause and effect.
The children’s classic chicken and egg conundrum is a
classic example of a causal loop. People within
organisations are quite good at seeing how others
contribute to problems – outlets blame head office,
marketing blames manufacturing, manufacturing
blames the designers, the designers blame
management. The same is true at a more individual
level within a smaller subgroup of an organisation.
Causal loops can be used to move away from blaming
things ‘out there’ over which we have no control, and
identify our own place in the causal loop. It is our own
behaviour that we control and in shifting how we act
and interact with others in the causal loop we can
contribute to a better outcome for all.
Conclusion
Whether you are a seasoned or novice leader, the
inner game of leadership provides the foundation
upon which your sustained leadership impact will
©2007 Australian Leadership Development Centre http://www.leadershipdevelopment.edu.au
6
stand. Like the roots of a tree inner leadership is
essential at all stages of your leadership career. Tree
growth represents leaders moving to higher levels of
leadership whilst also developing a wider leadership
repertoire. The roots of the inner game must be
continually nurtured so they are able to continue
supporting the tree as it grows.
1
See for example Mumford, A 2003, A Leadership Skills Strataplex:
Leadership Skill Requirements Across Organisational Levels, Academy
of Management Proceedings
2
Guthrie, V 2002, ‘Leading with Purpose: Where It All Begins’, Leadership
in Action, vol. 21, No. 6, January/February, viewed 20 December 2006.
<http://www.ccl.org/leadership/lia/index.aspx?pageId=619>
3
Senge, P. (2006) ‘The Fifth Discipline: Revised & Updated Version”,
Doubleday, USA.
4
See Peter Drucker (1999) article Managing Oneself, Harvard Business
Review.
5
Adapted from Peterson & Seligman’s (2004) Character, Strength &
Values, Oxford University Press and Gene Klann’s (2007) Building
Character: Strengthening the Heart of Good Leadership,
6
Brian J. Hoffman and Brian C. Frost (2007)
“Multiple intelligences of transformational leaders: an empirical
examination”
7
See Van Velsor, E. & Drath, W. (2004) “A lifelong developmental
perspective on leadership development” in C. McAuley & E. Van Velsor The
Handbook of Leadership Development, Jossey-Bass.
8
See David McClelland’s Achievement Motivation Theory.
9
See Note 4
10
See Kaplan, R. (1999), Internalizing Strengths: An Overlooked Way of
Overcoming Weaknesses, Center for Creative Leadership.
11
12
See Note 4
This quote comes from Gene Klann’s (2007) book, Building Character:
Strengthening the Heart of Good Leadership. It is backed up by more than
one research study linking a lack of self-control to leadership career
derailment.
13
Adapted from Nash, L. & Stevenson, H. (2004) “Success That Lasts”,
Harvard Business Review.
14
See Klann Note 3