Dr. Ruth Zaplin

Leadership development is a lifelong journey that takes discipline.

Becoming an effective leader calls for developing confidence in one’s own resources and capabilities. That confidence comes from an ongoing journey of inner exploration. Self-awareness is critical to accelerating personal leadership growth and manifesting authenticity, characterized by a willingness to be vulnerable and share one’s true self. Being authentic is crucial for forging genuine connections, particularly in today’s world—where leaders can no longer depend solely on formal hierarchies and processes. I also integrate mindfulness meditation and journaling, two practices known to deepen self-awareness and inner reflection.

Our traits can be altered if we are willing to do the work.

At an organizational systems level, this tenet implies that transformation is impossible without a preceding transformation in the consciousness/operating system of the leaders, both individually and collectively. Towards this end, mindfulness meditation and self-reflective practices like journaling are very useful tools, not only for self-observation and reflection but for altering traits; they can shape the brain.

Leadership does not depend on title or position but is a quality honed through the disciplined inner work needed to foster a connection with one’s authentic self.

Leadership is distributed. It resides not just with the person at the top but in every person at every level who, in any way, acts as a leader to a group of followers. That means that a leader who is connected to their own higher purpose and best self and who is guided by their core values will naturally express genuineness and authenticity, and that, in turn, naturally encourages whole-person relationships needed to get people to perform to the best of their abilities.

In teaching, executive coaching, and consulting, I strive for a seamless integration of deep theoretical knowledge and practical applications. My goal is to equip students and clients with the ability to immediately implement new concepts and strategies in their work situations. Leveraging research in adult development, positive psychology, neurobiology, emotional and social intelligence, and complex adaptive systems coupled with decades of mindfulness and contemplative practices, I support students and clients with a unique skill set.

I developed and hold the following as foundational tenets:

1. Leadership development is a lifelong personal journey that takes discipline.

2. Our traits can be altered if we are willing to do the work.

3. Leadership does not depend on title or position but is a quality honed through the disciplined inner work needed to foster a connection with one’s authentic self.

Organizations, as living systems, are capable of increasingly cooperative resource-sharing and adaptation, a process catalyzed by the mindsets and behaviors of the organization’s leadership.

“By increasing my self-awareness and self-management, I was able to manage my interactions with others better.”

“A practice I have adopted in tandem with my focus on my career is also to maintain a vigorous focus on health and well-being. The amount of effort and energy spent on my career requires a requisite amount of self-care and space to rejuvenate, re-process, and re-focus”.

“Some of the patterns that have emerged in my life’s priorities is that decisions made within the context of a healthy détente between career and personal health and well-being are more likely to be sound and result in actions that are successfully executed.”

Organizations, as living systems, are capable of cooperative resource-sharing and adaptation, a process catalyzed by the mindsets and behavior of the organization’s leadership.

Beyond simply fostering individuals’ skills, organizations now need to learn and connect more sophisticatedly to marshal collective intelligence better to make changes on a bigger scale and more intentionally. This will require organizations to develop the capacity to shift and sustain co-creation, co-action, and collaboration on a larger scale—environmentally, health-wise, economically, and socially. Giving up traditional command-and-control hierarchies means leaders must find new ways of influencing. They need to focus on building deeper networks of relationships across and beyond the organization. Today’s leaders must be as compassionate as they are capable. This necessitates whole-person growth across three distinct dimensions to enhance their:

• Head: to envision the future and the priorities required to succeed.

• Heart: to inspire, empower, and enable others.

• Hands: to ensure innovative and agile execution capabilities.

 And, in an increasingly complex world, leading with head, heart, and hands requires a concerted effort to create new structures and practices that support organizations becoming deliberately developmental so that they have the human resources they will need to meet increasingly complex challenges.