Chapter 10

Internal Cohesion

Internal cohesion involves learning how to align the beliefs of the ego
with the values of the soul and aligning the energies of your ego with
your soul’s purpose. It is about bonding these two aspects of your
personality (the ego and the soul) into a unique, undifferentiated
whole. If you have achieved some degree of personal mastery, then
you will normally begin to experience internal cohesion in your forties
and fifties, sometimes earlier. Spiritual practices such as meditation
and yoga can accelerate internal cohesion. There are two preconditions
for internal cohesion: personal mastery and individuation.

Personal Mastery
It is impossible to achieve internal cohesion until you have attained a
significant level of personal mastery. You must be able to manage,
master, or release the subconscious fear-based beliefs that influence
the ego’s conscious and subconscious decision-making before you can
achieve a significant level of internal cohesion. Managing your
subconscious fear-based beliefs means being able to return to a state of
calm within twenty-four hours or less after feeling resistance,
impatience, frustration, or anger.

Individuation
With all good intentions, when we are children, our parents impose
their beliefs, standards, and expectations (or lack thereof) on us,
whether they are aware of it or not. By the time we reach adulthood,
our family environment and the culture we were brought up in have
thoroughly conditioned us. We are completely unaware of the mind
conditioning that has occurred during our childhood and early teenage
years. We begin our adult lives with a set of beliefs and assumptions
192 The New Leadership Paradigm

that we own, but are effectively not ours. They totally condition our
relationship to the world.
Finding out who we really are, free from this conditioning, is
called individuation. It takes courage to individuate, especially if you
are close to your parents and siblings. When you openly challenge
your beliefs and assumptions, you are also challenging theirs. Standing
tall and expressing your needs and your values is not easy in such
circumstances. However, this is what is necessary if you are going to
individuate. Individuation is the way you start the process of
uncovering your true self. You uncover what is hidden in your psyche
and make it known to yourself and others.

Stages in Developing Internal Cohesion

Six stages are involved in developing internal cohesion: shifting to
values-based decision-making, understanding your motivations,
understanding your purpose, uncovering your mission, creating a
vision, and getting aligned with your work.

Shift to Values-based Decision-making

I explained the principles associated with values-based decision-
making in chapter 6. I repeat them here for the purpose of expediency.
• Thought precedes action. You reflect on the values that you
believe will allow you to get your needs met and make
decisions accordingly.
• The decisions that are made are not based on past
experiences. They are based on the future you want to
create.
• You are in control of your actions and behaviours.
• You can consult with others to support and enhance your
decision-making.
Values-based decision-making starts with identifying the values
that are most important to you, understanding the beliefs that support
these values, and identifying the behaviours that demonstrate that you
are living these values. For example, the three most important values
in my life at the moment are: clarity, creativity, and compassion. I
 Leading Self 193

created Table 10.1 to help me understand why these values are

important to me and what they look like in action.

Values Beliefs Behaviours

Clarity Clarity is important to me Read widely, explore

because it supports my many points of view, stay
writing and enables me to open to feedback, and
make good decisions. synthesise multiple data
points.

Creativity Creativity is important to Stop doing and create time

me because it makes me for reflection, listen
feel alive and brings me closely to my intuition,
closer to my soul. and keep my mind open.

Compassion Compassion is important Be quiet, listen deeply,

to me because it helps me understand my needs and
to feel connected and the needs of others, and
support others. embrace forgiveness.
Table 10.1. Values, beliefs, and behaviours.

You may want to do the same by identifying the three most

important values in your home life and the three most important values
in your work life, along with the accompanying beliefs and
behaviours. Write them on a small card, laminate it, and put the card
where you can see it every day. Share your values with your family or
work colleagues. Ask your family and colleagues to help you live your
values by pointing out when you are out of alignment, and ask them to
make suggestions about how you can do better.
What you are trying to do is bring your values to the fore and
give them a more important role in your decision-making. Effectively,
when you use values in this way, your values become your needs, and
your needs are your motivation. You begin to live your life through
your values rather than through your beliefs. When you use your
values for decision-making, it brings you closer to your soul and builds
your authenticity.
Another way of exploring your values is to take the Individual
Values Assessment (see section on getting aligned with your work) or
the Personal Values Survey that is available on the Barrett Values
194 The New Leadership Paradigm

Centre Web site.87 This survey asks you to pick the ten values that are
most important to you in your personal life. The results of the survey
show the levels of consciousness you are focused at and the different
values types you have chosen.
Ultimately, the objective in building personal internal cohesion is
to develop your authentic self, to live in alignment with the values that
support you in becoming all you can become. Values-based decision-
making helps you achieve this objective.
As you let go of the beliefs (assumptions) you learned in your
formative years, you need to replace them with your own unique
guidance system. This means understanding and focusing on the
values that are important to you.

Understand Your Motivations

The purpose of understanding your motivations is to get very clear
about why you do what you do. For example, why do you go to work
each day? Do you go to work to earn money so you can survive? Do
you go to work for the camaraderie? Do you go to work for the sense
of authority, status, or power you get? Do you go to work for the
challenge of learning and doing new things? Do you go to work to find
meaning in your life? Do you go to work to make a difference? Do you
go to work to serve humanity? Each of these motivations corresponds
to a different level of consciousness, which is a reflection of your
needs. Everything we do each day and every plan we make is in the
pursuit of a need.
At this moment in time, take a moment to ask yourself, “Why do
I go to work?” In the end, you may decide that you go to work to have
fun and enjoy yourself. There are no right answers. There is only what
motivates you. What is your core motivation regarding your work? If
you do not go to work (if you are a student, retired, or simply do not
need to work), then ask yourself the same set of questions about why
you do what you do each day.
I am asking you these questions so you can get a clear
understanding of why you do what you do and which levels of
consciousness you are operating from. Are you focused on satisfying
your deficiency needs or your growth needs? Getting very clear on
what your needs are supports you in making decisions.

87
http://valuescentre.com. The Personal Values Survey will be available in 2011.
 Leading Self 195

Understand Your Purpose

The first time you experience purpose in your life is when you pursue
a goal that supports you in meeting one of your deficiency needs. It is
something you desire or value. It is usually a need that has a specific
outcome. You know you have a purpose when you feel a sense of
urgency or commitment around the need you are trying to satisfy and
its attainment brings you a sense of achievement or happiness. For
young people, getting a job after leaving school or college is a primary
purpose. It is a survival need. If you have an ego goal (a goal focused
on satisfying one of your deficiency needs) and you have managed to
satisfy it, you will find the sense of achievement you feel will
normally be short-lived. You will find yourself quickly moving on to
your next goal and develop a new purpose.
For many people, family is their primary purpose. They are
devoted to their partner and children. Serving the needs of their family
brings them great joy because that is how they make a difference in the
world. Work for such people can be a means to an end, to earn a good
income so they can meet the needs of their family.
Sometimes, people make work rather than family their primary
purpose. They are more devoted to what they do each day outside their
home rather than inside their home. This can lead to family issues if
you get out of balance. When you make your work a priority and are
unable to spend quality time with your partner or your children, your
relationships with them will begin to suffer. Finding the right balance
between your work life and home life is extremely important if you
want to find lasting joy. It matters little what your purposes are. What
matters is that you have clarity about where your energies are focused
and the priorities you have in your life and you can keep your life in
balance.
Purpose, in the context I have described it, is often related to
taking one of your ego’s deficiency needs to a new level: moving
beyond surviving to thriving, building strong positive relationships
with the people you love, and becoming the best you can become in
your line of work.
For example, in my early twenties, I was focused on achieving a
first-class honours degree in civil engineering. After that, I focused on
becoming an associate member of the Institute of Civil Engineers. I set
myself these goals that furthered my career so I could satisfy my
deficiency needs.
196 The New Leadership Paradigm

Twenty years later, I discovered another level of purpose, my

soul purpose—my mission in life. It turned out to be something
completely different from the purpose I had been pursuing to satisfy
my deficiency needs. I found I had to let go of my professional career
in order to follow my soul purpose. Letting go of more than twenty
years of career growth is not easy when you are uncertain of what your
soul is asking you to do.
If you want to find out what your present purpose is (ego or soul),
look at where you are devoting most of your time and energies and the
goals you are trying to achieve. When you clearly identify what you
are working towards (the purpose behind what you are doing), you will
understand your present needs and know what levels of consciousness
you are operating from.
Aligning the beliefs of your ego with the values of your soul
usually occurs in a similar time frame as the emergence of your soul
purpose (what you are focused on and passionate about that goes
beyond satisfying your deficiency needs). When your soul purpose is
firmly established and understood, it becomes your life mission (what
your soul wants to do in the world). Once you have a sense of mission,
the next step is to develop a vision (what you want to create in the
world with your soul purpose). When you reach the next stage of your
personal evolution (external cohesion), you will learn how to go
beyond your vision and step fully into your inspiration. I will explain
how this happens later. For the moment, let us continue to focus on the
six stages of internal cohesion.

Uncover Your Mission

The difference between a purpose and a mission is the level of passion
and vigour you bring to your endeavours. When you are enthusiastic
about something, you have a purpose. When you are passionate about
something, you have a mission. This extra boost in energy comes from
your soul. You may have many purposes throughout your life, but you
will usually only have one mission.
A mission is larger than a purpose and more inclusive of others.
It affects people who you may not know personally or an aspect of
your living environment that is in need. A mission is for life. It is not
time-dependent. It does not depend on meeting a target or goal.
A mission is often called a soul-purpose or your soul’s purpose. It
is what you do to make a difference in the world. You know you have
 Leading Self 197

a mission when you know there is nothing else for you to do. It
consumes your time. You get energy from it. It feeds your soul. That is
what a mission feels like. It is what you came to do. It is what Maslow
described as a growth need. It is one of the fundamental characteristics
of a self-actualized individual.

Create a Vision
A vision is a picture of the future you want to create that is the natural
outcome of your mission and has your full energy behind it. It is
“Harley Davidson-like intention,” something with energy behind it
that keeps you focused on where you are going. Vision is more than a
direction. It’s a direction with attitude.
Once you have a sense of mission, it is extremely useful to build
a vision of the future you want to create. It helps direct your energies.
The following process is designed to help you identify your mission
and your vision. It is called the Four Whys process and is shown in
Table 10.2.88
Box 4. Internal Vision Box 3. External Vision
What do you want to achieve for What do you want to achieve
yourself? for the greater good?
To be a global resource for the To build a values-driven society.
evolution of human
consciousness.

Box 1. Internal Mission Box 2. External Mission

What do you want to focus on?
What motivates you in your work?
To develop models and tools to
promote the transformation of
individual and collective
consciousness.
What do you want to do in the
world and for whom?
To support leaders in their
personal and organisational
evolution.

Table 10.2. The Four Whys process.

88
For more information, consult chapter 6 of Liberating the Corporate Soul.
198 The New Leadership Paradigm

There are two dimensions to this exercise. You are going to be

asked to identify not only your external mission and vision (the needs
you are trying to address in the external world and the impact you
want to achieve), but also your internal mission and vision (the needs
you are trying to address in your internal world and the sense of
fulfilment you want to achieve for yourself).
• The internal mission is a statement about what you want to
focus on or what motivates you in your work.
• The internal vision is a statement about what you want to
ultimately achieve for yourself. How you will find
fulfilment.
• The external mission is a statement about what you want to
do in the external world to satisfy your internal mission.
• The external vision is a statement about what you want to
ultimately achieve for society or the greater good.
You begin by finding your core motivation. What is the most
important thing that you can contribute to the world? What are you
passionate about? This enables you to fill in the bottom left-hand box.
I have filled in the boxes with my own mission and vision. My core
motivation is transformation.
This is called the Four Whys process because of the way you fill
in the boxes. When you have filled in Box 1 (internal mission), you
ask yourself why you want to do whatever you have written in this
box. You look for an answer that aligns with what you want to do in
the world and write this in Box 2. Then you ask yourself why you
want to do what you have written in Box 2. You look for an answer
that describes what you want to achieve for the greater good and write
this in Box 3. You then go back to Box 1 and ask yourself why again,
but, this time, you look for an answer that aligns with what you want
to achieve for yourself and write this in Box 4. Finally, you ask
yourself why you want to do what you have written in Box 4 and
check if what you have written in Box 3 provides an answer.
You can check the integrity of your mission and vision by asking
how. Starting in Box 3, you ask how you are going to do what you
have written and find the answer in Box 2. Then you ask how you are
going to do what you have written in Box 2 and find the answer in Box
 Leading Self 199

1. Then you go to Box 4 and ask how you are going to do what you
have written there. You should find the answer in Box 1.
The shift from purpose to mission to vision may take one or two
decades to evolve. Some people are content to stay with their
purpose(s) the whole of their lives. Those who play golf often never
stop trying to lower their handicap. Some mothers never stop focusing
on the needs of their children. Some people develop a mission and
vision for their lives when they are quite young. We are all different in
this regard. Up to the age of forty-five, I was focused on my purpose,
being the best I could be in my profession as transportation engineer.
When I reached forty-five, I found I had achieved everything I had
wanted to achieve and began to feel seriously bored. I then figured out
that I was more interested in transformation than transportation. I had
spent all my spare time for decades reading books on psychology, God
and physics, spirituality, religious experiences, and transformation. I
realised when I was forty-five and had satisfied my deficiency needs,
my career was not bringing me fulfilment. Transformation was clearly
my core interest and a strong part of my core motivation.
I then developed an intention that I translated into an affirmation
by putting it into the present tense. When people asked me what I did
in life, I would say, “I am an internationally recognised speaker and
author on personal and organisational transformation.” This was my
aspiration in the form of an affirmation.
Three years later, my soul spoke to me in a very direct way. I was
conducting a weekend workshop on finding your mission in life with
about twelve people in Boulder, Colorado. On the last afternoon,
someone in the course asked me what my mission was. I was about to
tell him my affirmation, but I could not find the words. I felt
embarrassed that I could not remember something so important to me.
I closed my eyes, centred myself, and waited a few seconds. Out of my
mouth came the words, “I am an architect of global transformation.”
I had never used these words before or even thought them. It was
immediately clear to me that this was my soul speaking to me. About
two years later, after I had developed the Four Whys process, I created
the first version of my mission and vision shown in Table 10.2.
I hold my soul purpose close to my heart. I embrace it fully. I
think about it frequently. I tell people about my mission and vision, but
I do not usually speak about my soul purpose. It is the diamond that
shines in my soul and brings light to my world.
200 The New Leadership Paradigm

Getting Aligned with Your Work

At this point, it is useful to see to what extent you are aligned with
your current work environment. Is your work feeding your soul? Are
you able to bring your personal values to work (values alignment)? Do
you think your organisation is on the right track (mission alignment)?
What needs to change for you to feel more fulfilled in your job. One
way that all these questions can be answered is by carrying out an
individual values assessment (IVA),89 which compares your personal
values with the values you experience in your workplace and the
values you would like to experience in your workplace. Figures 10.1
and 10.2 show the results of an IVA assessment. The three questions
that are used in the survey are:
• Personal values: Which of the following values/behaviours
most represent who you are, not what you desire to
become? Pick ten (from the personal template).
• Current culture values: Which of the following
values/behaviours most represent how your organisation
currently operates? Pick ten (from the organisational
template).
• Desired culture values: Which of the following
values/behaviours most represent how you would like your
organisation to operate? Pick ten (from the organisational
template).
The personal template is a list of approximately eighty words or
phrases. The organisational template is a list of approximately one
hundred words or phrases.
Figure 10.1 shows the values chosen by an individual in response to
the three questions. The dots on the three diagrams represent the chosen
values. Grey dots represent positive values, and white dots represent
limiting values such as blame, hierarchy, and information hoarding.
When we look at these results, we see that there are no matching
values between this person’s personal and current culture values, which
tells us that this person probably does not feel at home in his organisation.

89
The IVA is a Web-based feedback self-assessment that forms part of the Barrett Values Centre’s
Cultural Transformation Tools® . For more information, go to http://valuescentre.com.
 Leading Self 201

Values Values Values

Balance (home/work) Accountability Accountability
Continuous learning Blame (L) Achievement
Courage Efficiency Adaptability
Enthusiasm Goals orientation Balance (home/work)
Family Hierarchy (L) Clarity
Honesty Information hoarding (L) Efficiency
Humour/fun Innovation Empowerment
Integrity Organisational growth Information sharing
Perseverance Profit Leadership development
Well-being Strategic alliances Respect
Figure 10.1. Values plot, IVA.

There are two matching values (accountability and efficiency)

between the values he sees in the current and desired cultures. This
tells us that, overall, he does not think the organisation is on the right
track. Immediately, therefore, we know he feels a low level of values
alignment and mission alignment with his organisation.
Based on the results of this assessment, we can see that, in the
opinion of the person who did the IVA, the critical issue in the
organisation is a lack of personal mastery skills among the leadership
group. Blame, hierarchy, and information hoarding are all signs that
the leaders are more concerned about satisfying their egos (deficiency
needs) than working for the common good. Consequently, this person
is calling for more focus on leadership development. Other signs of
poor leadership are evident through the values this person has chosen
202 The New Leadership Paradigm

for the desired culture. He wants to see more adaptability,

empowerment, clarity, and respect. When we typically see such values
showing up in the desired culture, it is a sign of rigidity, confusion,
and poor emotional intelligence among the leadership group.
An important need for this person that is not being addressed is
the need for more balance between home and work. Family life is
important to this person. This person is individuated. He has a strong
level 4 consciousness and has begun to self-actualize. He also has a
strong level 5 consciousness. It is unlikely that a person of this
consciousness will remain in this organisation for a long period if
things don’t change. The levels of consciousness this person is
operating from and the levels of consciousness of the organisation are
out of alignment. What is working for this person is the organisation’s
focus on accountability and efficiency. What is not working is the lack
of leadership skills, particularly with regard to self-mastery.
The organisation is bottom-line and performance-driven, as
demonstrated by the values of organisational growth, profit, goals,
innovation, efficiency, and strategic alliances. What is missing is a
focus on people.
The results of the business needs scorecard (BNS),90 shown in
Figure 10.2, confirm the conclusion. This diagram shows the
distribution of the current and desired culture values to six business
categories. What we see here is a significant jump in the number of
values in the culture sector of the scorecard. The six categories of the
scorecard are described in detail immediately after figures 17.2 and 17.3
(the cultural values assessment results for a high performing team).
There are only eight values shown in the current culture
scorecard and only seven in the desired culture scorecard because
some of the values chosen were so general in nature that they could
not be allocated to one specific category of the scorecard.

90
For more information on the BNS, go to http://valuescentre.com.
 Leading Self 203

Figure 10.2. BNS results.

The insights that the IVA provide allow you to understand what is
important to you in your life (personal values) and the changes you want to
see in your organisation for you to find fulfilment in your place of work.
The transformational insights that the IVA provided have been
used to great effect as part of an award-winning programme to bring
the chronically unemployed back to work in the Netherlands. This
programme, known as the Upside Down approach, designed by the
Netherlands-based consulting firm Peer Facilitation, has had a major
impact on reducing unemployment among those who have participated
in their two-day training. The IVA is used to help transform
participant’s mind-sets by giving them an appreciation of the different
levels of consciousness that they could operate from and their needs,
values, and priorities.