Leadership Insights
The inner journey to system leadership
Tuesday 12th August 2025
Michael Mullins
‘We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die’ W.H. Auden
In the final article on the development of outstanding system leaders I explore the most critical step of them all – a willingness to commit to an inner journey of growth.
Auden’s words capture the inner resistance many of us feel when confronted with the need to change. There is a human tendency to cling to the familiar, even when it holds us back because growth can feel like a loss of certainty, identity and control.
The most critical step to being an undefended system leader is working on self integration, recognising and owning, with compassion, our strengths, values, and motivations, along with our shadow self, self defence mechanisms and blindspots.
This is hard work but it frees us as leaders from our habitual mindsets and behaviours, so we can make even more conscious and effective choices as system leaders. It allows us to embrace different, perhaps conflicting perspectives, to collaborate more deeply with stakeholders, building vulnerability-based trust across teams and organisations.
Let’s explore those three concepts the shadow self, self defence mechanisms and blindspots and how they relate to becoming a effective undefended system leader.
First the Shadow Self
The shadow self refers to the parts of us we repress, or disown because they don’t fit our ideal self-image or our social conditioning.
There are several characteristics of the Shadow Self:
• It includes negative traits like anger, jealousy, greed, or selfishness—but also can include positive traits that we've suppressed (like creativity, assertiveness or aspiration) due to upbringing, trauma, societal pressure.
• It often operates unconsciously, influencing our thoughts, behaviours and reactions in subtle or harmful ways.
• Integrating the shadow is essential for the process of becoming whole. Facing and accepting the shadow leads to greater self-awareness, authenticity, and psychological balance.
• The goal is not to eliminate the shadow but to understand make a friend of it, transforming its raw energy into something constructive rather than destructive.
Your shadow self is like a hidden inner room where you’ve stuffed all the parts of yourself you don’t want to look at. But until you open the door and start rummaging around, those hidden parts can sabotage your life from behind the scenes.
2. Self-Defense Mechanisms
Self defence mechanisms are psychological strategies that protect our egos from anxiety or internal conflict. There are quite a few but the most common we’ve seen in leaders are:
• Denial — Reduces anxiety by pretending a threat doesn’t exist. For example, when a leader might diminish the impact of staff cuts on patient outcomes
• Rationalisation — Inventing logical explanations to justify behaviors or feelings that stem from unacceptable motives. E.g. When leaders claim they didn’t know about inappropriate decisions / behaviours or claim they were misled rather than admit deeper motives such as protecting the reputation of their organisation and avoiding large compensation payouts.
• Projection — Attributing one’s own unwanted thoughts, impulses, or feelings to someone else. For examples where leaders might accuse others of being uncollaborative in a system but perhaps deep down they really want control
• Displacement — Redirecting emotion from its true source toward a safer target. For example, we’ve had a tough day at work maybe our boss or a patient has had a go at us and we get home and snap and our partner and kids
You might have experienced others. One of my defence mechanisms is the habit of reframing seeing the positive in difficult or painful situations. This has its benefits but it can also get in the way of deeper learning.
What might your defence mechanisms be?
For leaders, these defence mechanisms:
• Keep us from feeling vulnerable, uncertain, or inadequate.
• Prevent deep feedback from landing with us
• Create a disconnect between how we think we lead and how others experience us.
So defence mechanisms guard the doorway to the shadow. They keep the unconscious unconscious.
3. Blind Spots
Blind spots are simply the areas of self we cannot see clearly — the behavioural patterns, assumptions, or emotional triggers that others perceive but we don’t.
• They often form where the shadow is strongest and defence mechanisms are most active.
• For instance, a leader who insists they “value feedback” but becomes defensive when challenged likely has a blind spot around control or insecurity.
In leadership development terms, blind spots are evidence of unintegrated shadow material.
What we notice in our work with great undefended system leaders is that they are skilled at bringing unconscious material (shadow) into consciousness by noticing their defences and blind spots, owning them, and transforming them into wisdom.
A whole leader, an undefended system leader is one who:
• No longer splits “good” and “bad” parts of self.
• Is self-aware enough to name their fears and triggers.
• Can hold paradox (strength and vulnerability, confidence and humility).
• Leads from presence rather than command and control
Self integration or leadership maturity is the journey of turning all three into sources of awareness, empathy, and authenticity.
Paradoxically, the journey of self-integration is often richer and more powerful through crucible experiences that stretch us to the edge, and may even end in failure and humiliation. Some event, relationship, loss, death, or idea will lead you to the brink of your own resources, your action logic, and you will stumble over what the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 8:14) called a necessary “stumbling stone”.
There are three key challenges for a leader who wants to engage with this journey of self-integration to become more whole:
a. Understanding what you stand for as a leader and your life’s purpose, your why
b. Being clear about your strengths and the positive difference you make to people and situations.
c. Noticing, understanding and making a friend of your shadow, self-defence mechanisms and blind spots
How might you do that as a leader?
The key is to build awareness in safe, structured ways so your ego doesn’t feel attacked. Here are two practical exercises you can use for yourself or with a group:
1. “Trigger Tracking” Exercise
1. At the end of each day, recall 1–2 moments when you felt irritated, defensive, or emotionally charged.
2. Write:
What happened?
What emotion arose?
What story did my mind tell to justify it?
3. Then ask yourself gently: What might this reaction be protecting?
Over time, patterns emerge — these are clues to your blind spots.
2. The Shadow Strength Flip
"Think of a trait you might have been punished or shamed for growing up?" for me it was my humour
Then ask:
• "Where might that trait actually be a strength?"
• "How would it feel to express that in a healthy way now?"
For leaders and organisational development professionals seeking to nurture the next generation of undefended system leaders, the key question is: what environment and support best enable this growth?
We see three essentials:
1. Supporting leaders through crucible moments – Helping leaders recognise and embrace challenging transitions (new roles, turnarounds, cross-functional moves, or cultural shifts) that disrupt old thinking and open them up to new ways of understanding complexity.
2. Exposure to diverse perspectives – Create environments that challenge existing mental models by engaging leaders with people of different worldviews, action logics, and experiences.
3. Reflective integration – Encourage coaching, mentoring, or peer dialogue to help leaders make sense of these experiences and evolve toward higher leadership consciousness.