Leading From Within
– When Attention Becomes Leadership Strength
Authentic leadership begins with attendance to and awareness of one’s own patterns, values, and ways of acting. The article connects the Gestalt tradition’s understanding of awareness with organisational practice and shows how inner clarity creates stronger leadership space and greater capacity in the organisation.
The article is part of our professional work with business and leadership development and our perspective on leadership and business, where we work with the interaction between strategy, leadership and organisation in practice.
The Free Leadership Space is a professional reflection space on LinkedIn created by Susanne Hjort. This examines the part of leadership that is rarely considered in everyday life – judgment, responsibility and the ability to lead from within.
Authentic leadership starts from within. It’s not a phrase I’ve just read – it’s an experience I’ve had over many years as a consultant, psychotherapist and Gestalt therapist.
Some see a vase. Others see two faces. The point is not what is right – but that we can’t see both at the same time.
It’s a basic principle in the Gestalt tradition: What we direct our attention to emerges as a figure. The rest becomes the background.
And that’s exactly how leadership works too.
What Do You See – and What Don’t You See?
In my work with leaders and organisations, I see again and again how attention shapes decisions, relationships and results.
When the pace and the complexity is high, something will almost always come to the fore:
At the same time, something else slips into the background:
The Gestalt tradition gave me a language for this particular field. Not as therapy in organisations – but as a precise understanding of how people actually function in systems.
Fritz Perls, psychiatrist and co-founder of Gestalt therapy, worked with awareness, contact and responsibility in the present. His basic point was simple – and still highly relevant in leadership today: Change only happens when we become aware of what actually is.
As Perls put it: Change begins with awareness.
The Layers We Lead From
Perls described human development as a process where we gradually peel layers of ourselves – often referred to as peeling the onion.
In my work with leaders, I see these layers very clearly at play:
Authentic leadership is not about removing the layers. It’s about knowing which layer you lead from – and being able to adjust when the situation requires something different.
From Human Insight to Organisational Capacity
At Hjort & Frøik, we work precisely at the intersection of:
Our experience is clear: The business cannot move faster than the organisation can carry. And the organisation cannot carry more than the leadership space allows.
That’s why we work with:
The Free Leadership Space
The Free Leadership Space has emerged as a common language for this way of thinking about leadership.
A space where leaders can:
It is not about lowering ambitions. It is about creating the internal and external conditions that make them possible to fulfill.
A Final Reflection
For me, authentic leadership is not an ideal. It is a practice.
Being able to stand within oneself while leading others. Being able to navigate change without losing orientation. Being able to connect human insight with business reality.
That is what we work with at Hjort & Frøik
An Invitation
If you are curious about this way of thinking about leadership, you are welcome in the Free Leadership Space on LinkedIn – or to have a dialogue with us at Hjort & Frøik about how leadership, business and human insight can play better together.