Embodied Leadership and Humble Power
At the heart of the Advent story is a truth that quietly challenges many of our assumptions about power. Transformation does not arrive through spectacle or dominance. There is no grand entrance, no performance of certainty, no display of control. It arrives small, near, and human.
In the Christian tradition, this idea is called incarnation. It names a way of showing up that is grounded in embodiment and presence rather than abstraction or performance.
Richard Rohr returns to this again and again in his teaching. Power, he suggests, is most trustworthy when it is lived from the inside out. When it is rooted in presence, relationship, and humility rather than image or control.
Embodied leadership reframes authority as presence rather than position, trust rather than visibility, and steadiness rather than control.
Embodied leadership is not about doing less. It is about leading from a different center.
Performing Leadership and Embodying Leadership
This is where nuance matters. Performance itself is not the problem. Excellence and results matter. Leaders are accountable for outcomes. The question is not whether leaders perform. The question is where performance is coming from.
When leadership becomes primarily performance driven, performance often turns into proof – of competence, worth, or control. In these moments, performance becomes a way to manage anxiety or protect identity. Leaders perform confidence rather than embody it. They perform certainty rather than hold complexity. They perform strength rather than practice steadiness.
Embodied leadership offers a different posture. Performance still exists, but it flows from alignment, clarity, and presence rather than fear, image, and pressure. Performance becomes expression, not armor.
This is not an either-or. It is a both-and. Leaders are asked to hold high standards and remain deeply human, to lead decisively and resist collapsing nuance into false simplicity, and to act with urgency and stay emotionally present.
The leaders who navigate this well understand something essential. Real influence does not come from proving strength. It comes from embodying it.
Holding Paradox and Practicing Emotional Agility
Leading this way requires emotional agility and maturity. It requires the ability to hold tension without rushing to resolve it. It involves staying present in discomfort without shutting down or speeding up, and allowing oneself to feel deeply without being flooded by emotion.
Emotionally agile leaders can hold empathy and boundaries together. They can name reality without hardening. They can lead with care without absorbing what is not theirs to carry. They can allow emotion without repressing it and without letting it leak sideways into reactivity or withdrawal.
This is where many leaders lose their center under pressure. Some become overly porous, carrying emotional weight that was never meant to be theirs. Others suppress their own emotions in the name of professionalism, only to have those emotions surface later through tone, impatience, or disconnection.
Embodied leadership charts a different path. It calls for differentiation, not distance and not enmeshment. A grounded inner stance that allows leaders to stay near without being consumed and to act with clarity without performing certainty.
A Familiar Pattern I See in Leaders
I see this pattern often in my coaching work. One leader in particular comes to mind. Beth is highly capable, deeply committed, and widely respected. When pressure rose, she did what had always worked.
She performed with certainty.
It looked like being the fixer, having the answers, and offering strong opinions quickly. She moved to decisions before slowing down to invite perspective. Responsibility sat heavily on her shoulders, and she carried it alone. If something felt off, she felt compelled to step in and make it right.
On the surface, this leadership was effective. Things moved. Problems were solved. People looked to her for direction. Underneath, it was exhausting.
Over time, Beth began to notice something important. The moments when she rushed to fix or decide were often preceded by an intuitive signal that something was not quite right. Rather than trusting that inner knowing, she translated it into action. Certainty felt safer than curiosity. Decisiveness felt more respectable than pause.
As our work deepened, the shift was subtle but profound. Beth learned to trust her inner voice and stay anchored in her values rather than her fear of being wrong. Instead of channeling concern into conclusions, she turned it into questions. These questions invited colleagues into sense making and surfaced perspectives waiting quietly at the edges of the room.
Beth stopped playing a game where leadership meant winners and losers, right and wrong. In its place emerged collaboration and shared understanding. She worried far less about upsetting others and focused more on making sense of what was happening and how the team needed to work together toward the impact they desired.
The impact was tangible. Meetings felt calmer. Decisions became more durable. Trust deepened. The room experienced more confidence, not because answers came faster, but because leadership felt grounded.
This is the quiet power of embodied leadership.