Most of Leadership Isn't Conscious

For years I thought the hardest part of change was willpower. Decide clearly enough, want it badly enough, and the follow-through would come. It rarely did, and for a long time I took that as evidence that I wasn't disciplined enough.

In 1999, Yale psychologist John Bargh and Tanya Chartrand published The Unbearable Automaticity of Being in the journal American Psychologist, a review that's since become one of the most cited papers in the field. Drawing on estimates from psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues, they put a number on something most people sense but rarely name directly: only about five percent of everyday behaviour is under conscious control. The rest runs on pattern, laid down long before the decision in front of you today.

That reframes the willpower problem entirely. A leader who knows exactly what needs to happen and still doesn't do it isn't failing at discipline. A part of that leader learned, a long time ago, that holding on was the safer move, and that part is still running the decision.

I spent years trying to think my way out of a fear. It never worked.

What actually worked was learning to work with it directly instead of arguing with it. In Internal Family Systems terms, that fear is a protector, a part that formed a long time ago to keep me safe from something real. Logic never worked on it. Being seen did.

This is the actual shape of the work I do with leaders now. It starts in the body: somatic awareness, so a person can notice what they already know before their mind catches up, alongside an understanding of the neuroscience underneath, why the old pattern activates faster than conscious thought can intervene. Then comes the reframing work, giving the belief driving the pattern something more current to run on than the story it formed around years ago.

Becoming a conscious leader means working with the ninety-five percent directly, until the old pattern stops making the decision for you.

Reference: Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The Unbearable Automaticity of Being. American Psychologist, 54(7), 462–479.