Manila, 15 December 2021 — What masterpiece will you become?

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs

Story

It happened twenty years ago and for me, it started with listening to music on an iPod and using iTunes. The transformation then grew on me to an iPhone 4, later followed by a MacBook and an iPad. Since then, the story has continued, as I discovered the value of embracing an ecosystem of simplicity, functionality, and minimalist design in an ever more complex world.

It’s no surprise then that, over the years, I wanted to know more about the people who designed these remarkable products. So I watched interviews and read books about their style and the mindset of Steve Jobs. The self-styled founder was eccentric and became known early on for receiving fellow executives in his home without furniture, sitting on the floor. Then I found out more, including that it took Jobs years to develop trust in his own intuition, and that a journey to Asia played a key role in that transformation.

You may already know that Jobs stored just one book on his iPad and that he re-read that book every year. Even more remarkably, before he left life, he arranged for each of the 500 guests to his memorial service to receive a boxed copy of the book at the exit, as his farewell gift. The book was titled Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952), a teacher from India who became known as the father of yoga in the West. Taken from the yogi’s book, Job’s last message to his friends was to Actualize Yourself. Just as he had done at Apple. So how did that happen?

Challenge

According to Les Kaye, a fellow Zen meditation group member, Jobs found spiritual refuge and expression in his work, where he believed in infinite possibilities. “He could invent things that no one had ever dreamed of. There were no roadblocks in his mind — nothing that said, Oh, no, you can’t do that.”

What Jobs was not known for was the outward practice of Zen and meditation. He was intense and often short-tempered and demanding. His interest, however, was in the internal transformation of his mindset. That had started years earlier, when he read Be Here Now by Ram Dass. Called the ‘counterculture bible’ by The New York Times, this 1978 book inspired Jobs to find spiritual awakening and take control of his life. That’s why he went to India, just like The Beatles and many others did before him.

After Jobs left life, Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce, shed some more light on this inner transformation. When Jobs went to India, he said, “he had this incredible realization that his intuition was his greatest gift and that he needed to look at the world from inside out.” That insight, it turned out, came to him from reading Yogananda’s autobiography with its focus on self-realization. This transformation, however, remained a work in progress, and he needed to keep working on it every year, hence the annual re-reading of the book.

Question

My belief is that there is much that leaders can learn from developing their intuition and working on self-actualization. To start, now is always the best time. This week offers a good opportunity to reflect on what you have learned about yourself this year, including the ups and downs, warts and all, as they say. Stepping back from the crowded and busy world, why not review where you have come from, where you are going, and who you are becoming? That’s the question I’m asking you this week.

Among the leaders I coached, several shared how they discovered that a transformation this year had come from a shift in their mindset, from realizing that they had a choice and that it was up to them to make their next move forward in life. The coaching helped them to see this and to take action as they navigated their transition, supported by the practice of effective leadership behaviors and the building of strong habits.

Reflecting on the life of Steve Jobs, and of Michelangelo centuries earlier, their stories resonate with my experience as a coach. There is a masterpiece in each of us, waiting for the ‘artist’ who is prepared to chisel it out and make it appear to the world like Michelangelo did by working on a block of marble, and Jobs did with his brilliant and innovative work at Apple. That artist is you, and my calling as a leadership coach is to help you actualize that masterpiece inside you. To get started, why not listen to your heart and intuition about who you want to become? As Jobs said, everything else is secondary.