Thriving in leadership is not a fixed state. It evolves as our consciousness evolves. Many wonderful thinkers, including Jim Dethmer and Diana Chapman (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership) and Michael Beckwith (The Life Visioning Process), have described the inner evolution of consciousness as a progression of perspectives: To Me → By Me → Through Me → As Me.
These perspectives are not measures of worth or competence, but expressions of how consciousness organizes our experience of ourselves, others, and the systems we lead. As leaders, these perspectives unfold depending on our level of stress, context, life circumstances, and self-awareness.
With each perspective, our understanding of what it means to thrive also transforms—from outer authority to stewardship of the whole.
Thriving as Conditional → “To Me”
Consciousness: Life happens to me.
From this perspective, leadership is often driven by fear, urgency, or outer demands. Leaders operate from survival and defense, reacting to pressures, seeking approval, and defining success (and oneself) through external validation.
Thriving here may look like “winning” today—hitting targets, pleasing others, appearing successful—yet it’s often brittle. It comes at the cost of physical resilience, relationships, and genuine wellbeing. Because thriving is tied to external conditions, leaders can lose contact with the internal signals—especially from the body—that would otherwise reveal their reactivity isn’t sustainable. As a leader’s identity becomes overly fused with performance, thriving can collapse; what looks like success may actually be self-exhaustion in disguise.
The doorway into a different kind of thriving can appear when leaders feel the limits of their reactive patterns. A new possibility emerges: agency.
- Question Guiding this Perspective: How do I win today, no matter what?
- Self-Reflection: Where do I feel dependent on external validation to feel like I’m thriving? Where do I sense myself reacting rather than choosing?
Thriving as Optimization → “By Me”
Consciousness: I make life happen.
From this perspective, leaders step into agency, responsibility, and self-efficacy. They drive productivity, set goals, and use their will to create results they define for themselves. Thriving here becomes the pursuit of optimizing performance personally, and for some, organizationally.
This definition of thriving feels powerful and freeing compared to To Me. Yet it carries risks: overcontrol, burnout, and the illusion that thriving equals relentless improvement. When thriving is reduced to “doing more, better” or “hacking our way to thriving and success,” it can disconnect us from deeper fulfillment and from the larger systems we are part of.
In this mode, thriving matures through discipline and focus. Paradoxically, its evolution requires a counterpoint: releasing control. Optimization can accomplish a great deal, but it cannot bring about wholeness.
- Question Guiding this Perspective: How do I function better, faster, more efficiently?
- Self-Reflection: Where am I equating thriving with productivity alone?
Thriving as Wholeness → “Through Me”
Consciousness: Life flows through me.
From this perspective, leaders align with purpose, intuition, and the intelligence of life itself. Leadership becomes less about force and more about flow. Thriving is experienced as coherence—body, mind, and spirit in harmony—and as deeper integration with the whole system.
Leaders in this stage model wellbeing, adaptability, and presence. They may pause more, listen longer, and act with greater discernment rather than urgency. They understand that their own thriving and the thriving of their teams and organizations are interdependent. Control gives way to trust, and striving gives way to surrender.
This mode is thriving as wholeness: an integration of being and doing that nourishes both the leader and the wider system around them. The sense of separation softens, though it has not yet dissolved.
- Question Guiding this Perspective: How do I live and lead in ways that are life-giving, fluid, and regenerative?
- Self-Reflection: Where do I experience flow or alignment with a deeper purpose?
Thriving as Oneness → “As Me”
Consciousness: Life expresses itself as me.
From this perspective, leadership becomes an act of service to the flourishing of all. The leader no longer sees themselves as separate from others or from the planet; they experience themselves as life leading itself. This does not remove leaders from action; it roots action in service to life rather than self.
Thriving is defined by interconnection and collective wellbeing. It reflects humility, compassion, and the recognition that our thriving is inseparable from others’. Indigenous wisdom traditions and regenerative movements around the world embody this “As Me” consciousness as unity, reciprocity, and stewardship.
Here, thriving transcends personal achievement. It becomes a shared legacy—leadership as love in action. In this mode, thriving is no longer personal or organizational, but planetary.
- Question Guiding this Perspective: How do we flourish together as part of a larger whole?
- Self-Reflection: Where do I sense my thriving is inseparable from the thriving of others?
An Invitation
Where do you find yourself on this arc today? And what might thriving look like if you expanded into a different perspective? For leaders and leadership practitioners, this arc invites not diagnosis, but discernment to meet leaders where they are and support the next natural unfolding.
As Dethmer, Chapman, and Beckwith remind us, these perspectives are not a ladder to climb but a continual unfolding of awareness and the capacity to relate and act. As we evolve, so does our definition of thriving—from surviving to me, to optimizing by me, to flowing through me, to uniting as me.
In this evolution, leadership is more than a role. It is a practice of continual growth and a commitment to a world where all people can thrive.
Let’s Connect
At Wisdom Works, we are devoted to cultivating a global community of leaders committed to helping people and organizations thrive. If these ideas resonate, we welcome a conversation: Contact Us Here. This content was supported by our AI team member, Sage.
