by: MJ Mathis, Managing Director of L&D
In her last post, Jennifer wrote about awareness as the first act of leadership: the moment when we begin to see clearly the systems we’re a part of and the patterns we’ve internalized.
But awareness alone doesn’t change us. Awareness invites us to do something much more vulnerable: to look within.
This intrapersonal turn is the next step in Leverage to Lead’s Leadership Journey. It’s the moment when we shift from seeing the system to seeing ourselves in the system—our reactions, our fears, our assumptions, and our agency. And while this stage is essential, it’s rarely comfortable.
The Emotional Landscape of Looking Inward
When leaders first turn inward, the emotions that surface can feel confusing or even confronting. Most of us have been conditioned to understand leadership through an external lens—How do people see me? What perception am I managing? Am I performing as a leader well enough?
Looking inward disrupts that pattern and often confronts us with some challenging truths.
For many leaders, awareness brings the realization that they’ve been leading from what they think a leader should be. Maybe they’ve been anticipating others’ reactions, trying to influence outcomes, avoiding conflict, or shaping themselves to fit expectations. That can show up as imposter syndrome or over responsibility.
So when awareness arrives, it can feel like an internal jolt:
- “Am I aligned with the values of this organization?”
- “Do I even want to be?”
- “What do I actually stand for?”
This moment is disorienting because it shifts the center of leadership from the outside world to the inside one. It asks you to tell the truth about yourself within a system that has never given you the opportunity to slow down enough to do so.
Looking inward is the first courageous step toward leading with integrity.
Seeing Yourself in the System Takes Courage
It’s one thing to notice what’s happening around you. It’s another to notice what’s happening within you as a result.
Systems teach us to focus outward; on performance, productivity, deadlines, external rewards, and comparisons. They teach us that looking inward is indulgent or irrelevant. So when we finally turn toward ourselves, it can feel like breaking a rule we didn’t even know we’d agreed to.
Seeing yourself clearly requires courage.
It asks you to explore:
- What am I feeling?
- Why am I reacting this way?
- What story am I telling about myself or other people?
- Where am I complicit, resigned, or depleted?
- What parts of me are trying to stay safe?
This kind of vulnerability is not a weakness. It’s the foundation for integrity.
A Moment from my own Leadership Reckoning
Since 2019, our work at Leverage to Lead came at us like a firehose. Organizations were actively seeking to create values-aligned, human-centered cultures, and that demand affirmed what I believed: that centering humanity was both necessary and possible.
Then 2023 arrived. With the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling and the rising political backlash that followed, the landscape shifted abruptly. It became harder, and riskier, for organizations to publicly affirm the values they had once championed.
Almost overnight, our steady flow of clients slowed. Not because our work changed, but because the world’s perception did. As a Black woman–owned firm doing leadership and culture consulting, we found ourselves folded into the broader DEI backlash, whether or not that label reflected the reality of our work.
My first response wasn’t strategic. It was emotional. Fear told me a familiar story: If the work is slowing down, it must be because I’m not skilled enough. I’m not doing enough. Maybe it’s time to get a “real job.”
It was a painful and very old pattern of measuring my leadership by external signals rather than internal alignment.
But this was also the moment when my leadership journey began to accelerate. Instead of following the fear, I returned to my values and my value-add. I listened to the clients who were still committed to prioritizing humanity alongside outcomes. I remembered why this work matters, and why I believe in it even when the cultural winds shift.
And then I turned inward again: Is it financially possible for me to remain steady while we navigate this moment? What systems can I build for myself that support clarity, resilience, and sufficiency?
Looking inward didn’t magically solve the uncertainty. But it grounded me in truth instead of panic, and it reconnected me to the kind of leader I want to be: one who does not abandon her values when the system withdraws its validation.
Reclaiming Agency When Choices Feel Limited
One of the hardest truths about leadership to accept is this: We may not always have good choices, but we always have choices.
Systems may constrain us, but they do not fully decide for us.
Intrapersonal work is the shift from:
- Reward and punishment → accountability to values and consequences
- Reaction → reflection
- Fear → agency
This shift is how we choose to move with integrity inside systems that may never fully align with our values, even when we can’t opt out of them and the choices we do have carry real weight.
Agency isn’t total freedom. It’s telling the truth about what is within your control and then acting from your values.
Intrapersonal Work as a System of Care
If outer systems don’t always honor humanity, we become leaders who build inner systems that do. This is where Human-Centered Practices become essential. They help us create internal grounding when external grounding is not available.
The intrapersonal stage invites us to:
- Build and share our narrative — Who am I? What do I value? What are my unique strengths?
- Define sufficiency — What is enough for me to feel steady during uncertainty?
- Practice compassion — How do I hold myself gently while making space for multiple, conflicting perspectives?
- Listen deeply — First to myself, then to others, so I can respond instead of react.
These internal systems don’t make the world less chaotic. They make us steadier inside it.
What Comes Next
The intrapersonal stage teaches us how to see ourselves honestly within the system. But the next step in the Leadership Journey asks something different:
Can I lead differently now that I know what’s true?
This is the beginning of Stage 3: Practice, where leadership shifts to responsible power. It’s where we stop acting from “best practice” and begin acting from values. It’s where we learn to design systems, large and small, that align with values, clarity, and shared accountability.
If intrapersonal work helps us understand who we are inside the system, practice is where we begin building the systems that reflect who we are becoming.
And that’s where we’ll go next.