Leading With Presence

If we want to be competent, ethical leaders, we must start with presence—the foundation of leadership.

Take a moment to think of someone who influences you—not by title or status but by how they show up. And then imagine them in a room full of people.

Do they stand out? In what way? What sets them apart? Do other people’s behaviors change when they are present? Is there something almost palpable in the air, something that encourages you to straighten your back a little, the feeling of really being seen, an almost unspoken encouragement to be your best self?

This is the power of presence. It’s carried on your body. It’s felt and known without words. There’s a confidence that is expressed in the calm, stability of your nervous system, a confidence born from a commitment to acknowledge, love, and listen to all that unfolds in the unformed space of mind, which includes the outer world and everyone in it.

In the West, we are hyper-focused on our conceptual understanding—learning about the various labels we put on everything. But there is another kind of understanding, something the East has studied for millennia—the art of being. The art of presence. It is an immediate kind of knowing, a direct intimacy with the moment, with oneself.

It can’t be given to you. It can’t be read in a book. You must examine directly for yourself your own heart and mind. You must awaken to your own true nature, which is simultaneously unbound yet immediate, entirely unformed yet felt, empty yet immanent.

To lead with presence, we must first become students of ourselves. We must learn to embody our own authentic, non-dual nature—love and wisdom. Only then can we walk beside others, not to fix or control them, but to offer our faith and support as they find their way back home.

As Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that is love. And between these two, my life flows.”

By John Driggs