The Inner Game of Leadership
- Andrew Ramsden
- Oct 19
- 10 min read
The most important conversation you'll have as a leader isn't with your board, your team, or your stakeholders—it's with yourself.
The Limitations of the Outer Game
The Outer Game of leadership focuses on what to do, not do, say or not say. It's the DOING of leadership. But that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Research shows that the words you use are only a very small percentage of communication, and that the vast majority of what is understood between two people comes from the non-verbals we are projecting out to the world all the time. For example, Ambady and Rosenthal (1992) found that people form accurate personality assessments from observing mere "thin slices" of behaviour lasting under five minutes—judgments based almost entirely on nonverbal cues that correlate strongly with comprehensive evaluations. Similarly, Burgoon and Dunbar (2006) showed that in healthcare settings, patient satisfaction and treatment outcomes depend more heavily on providers' nonverbal behaviours—such as warm expressions and attentive body language—than on their verbal communications. These findings confirm that we're continuously projecting information through nonverbal channels that others read, interpret, and respond to, often more powerfully than any words we might use.
But the influence of nonverbals extends beyond mere one-to-one interactions. Research on emotional contagion demonstrates that leaders’ moods and internal emotional states are unconsciously absorbed by their teams (Sy, Côté, & Saavedra, 2005; Barsade, 2002). This means that your mindset, energy, and emotional presence ripple through your organisation, affecting morale, motivation, and even performance outcomes—often without a single word being spoken.
Leaders often ask me "what should I say in this situation?", or "how could I have done that better?" The truth is, it doesn't matter. We can work together to come up with the perfect combination of words, and yet, if your non-verbals contradict your words, the message you transmit will be undermined. For instance, imagine saying "I believe in you." Your listener can sense instantly whether you genuinely mean it or not, based on your tone, body language, and facial expression. Conversely, if you say “you've got no chance 😉” with a cheeky grin and the underlying intention that you fully believe in someone, your belief comes across without needing to be explicit.
Why Trying Harder Doesn’t Work
So how then do we change our non-verbals?
One approach is simply to TRY HARDER: consciously review everything you say and do, monitor your subtle postures and gestures, your facial expressions and tone of voice, and adjust them in real time.
It's exhausting!
Not to mention, under pressure, we can’t remember the thousand things we’re "supposed" to do, nor can we perfectly control the more subtle non-verbals—let alone our instinctive reactions.
Alternatively, you might attempt incremental change—practicing one small adjustment at a time until it becomes muscle memory. Yet this approach fights against your deeply ingrained habits and beliefs; it’s like swimming upstream against your subconscious autopilot. While behavioural changes can be beneficial, lasting transformation comes from working at the source—rewiring your internal operating system.
Enter: The Inner Game of Leadership
What if you could change your relationship with yourself? The “Inner Game” of leadership is about shifting the internal beliefs and patterns that drive your outward behaviour. When you transform internally, your presence, energy, and non-verbals change effortlessly—even under pressure—because you’re no longer fighting your subconscious autopilot; you’re updating it. This can also be referred to as the BEING of leadership.
Recent advances in neuroscience confirm this is possible. Studies by Boyatzis, Smith, and Beveridge (2013), as well as Rock and Schwartz (2006), show that experiences which evoke positive emotions, self-compassion, and new insight stimulate neuroplasticity—the brain’s capacity to rewire itself. Through focused inner work and mindful awareness, you can literally create new neural pathways that change how you lead and connect with others.
Not only does this internal shift change how you feel—it tangibly alters your impact. As Barsade (2002) and Sy et al. (2005) showed, your inner state “contagiously” shapes the mood and productivity of your team. In fact, according to research on psychological safety by Amy Edmondson (1999; see also Frazier et al., 2017), leaders who have developed internal security and openness create environments where teams feel safe to take risks, speak up, and innovate. This is less about saying the “right” things, and more about projecting genuine presence and confidence through your actions and attitude.
Invisible Barriers: Self-Limiting Beliefs and Strategies
What does 'your relationship with yourself' mean? It’s about what you fundamentally believe about yourself, others, and the world.
Beliefs can set the boundaries of what’s possible. For example, up until 1954, the four-minute mile was thought to be a physiological impossibility. But when Roger Bannister broke the barrier, others soon followed in rapid succession. The visible limit was always there; it was the belief—and the mindset—that was the true obstacle.
Something similar happens in leadership. Research by Steele et al. (1999) on stereotype threat shows that simply telling highly qualified women that a math test typically shows gender differences is enough to lower their performance compared to men. When the stereotype is removed, the gap disappears. Their abilities never changed—only their beliefs about what was possible.
Likewise, Alia Crum's (Crum & Langer, 2007) work with hotel housekeepers demonstrated that learning to perceive their physically demanding work as exercise—without any change in their actual activities—led to measurable improvements in health markers. The mindset shift literally triggered different physical outcomes.
Even your relationships with others start with what you believe deep down. Changing your inner beliefs about yourself, others and the world changes your level of commitment and your intentions, which in turn changes what you are capable of, including every non-verbal signal all at once, effortlessly.
Why does this work?
We each learned strategies for dealing with the challenges the world sends our way, and how we should feel about them very early in life. And then we tend to stick with those strategies and default responses, because after all, if they're working, why change?
Well, as we get older, often those strategies that worked when we were small stop working quite so well. Or perhaps they get us a good outcome but not a great one:
The tantrum that got us what we wanted as a child, now a more refined yet still pointed reprimand results in burned bridges and retaliation.
The way we avoided difficult conversations to survive school, now means we aren't able to successfully navigate conflict and important conversations in the workplace.
That perfectionism that helped us perform well at university, now leads to stress, fatigue and even burnout.
As attachment theory has found, early relational patterns profoundly shape a leader’s capacity for trust and connection (Davidovitz et al., 2007). Leaders who do the inner work to reexamine these patterns—by exploring and healing the origins of their self-view—gain access to greater resilience, creativity, and emotional intelligence.
The Science Behind Inner Work
Neuroscience, psychology, and leadership research converge on this truth: deep, sustainable change is only possible by addressing belief at its source.
Neuroplasticity enables you to form new habits, emotional responses, and even default ways of relating to others (Boyatzis et al., 2013; Rock & Schwartz, 2006).
Polyvagal theory (Porges, 2011) shows how regulating your internal state—through deep work such as mindfulness or therapy—shifts your nervous system into a pattern that communicates safety and openness, impacting how others react to you on a subconscious level.
Growth mindset (Dweck, 2006; Heslin et al., 2006) research indicates that changing fundamental beliefs about your own and others' ability to grow leads to greater adaptability and higher performance.
Implicit bias (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995) highlights the power of unconscious beliefs to drive behaviour, regardless of our conscious intentions. Inner work uncovers and rewrites these biases, leading to more authentic and effective leadership.
Leaders to Follow
Several high-profile leaders have publicly credited deep inner work and therapeutic processes with transforming their lives and capacity for impact.
Oprah Winfrey participated in intensive inner-child work with educator John Bradshaw in 1990, involving guided visualisation to heal childhood wounds—work she describes as “life-changing.” She later collaborated with Dr. Bruce Perry on What Happened to You? (2021), documenting her journey toward “post-traumatic wisdom.”
Michael Phelps sought intensive therapy during a personal crisis, calling it “a sign of courage, not weakness.” He credits inner work for unlocking greater resilience and becoming a mental health advocate.
Brené Brown confronted a “spiritual awakening” through therapy, transforming her understanding of vulnerability and authenticity. This shift became foundational to her research on courage, shame, and connection.
Each leader attributes increased authenticity, resilience, and impact to their commitment to inner work.
Inner Work: Rewiring Your Internal Operating System
Inner Work is not a wellness trend, nor a set of feel-good affirmations. It is disciplined, often uncomfortable self-confrontation. It means diving beneath the surface of what you do — and into why you do it. It’s the process of reprogramming the operating system that runs you, so that your mindset, emotions, and body all align behind your intentions instead of unconsciously working against them.
Inner Work exists on a spectrum. At the shallow end, leaders begin by building self-awareness — learning to watch themselves in real time. This might involve mindfulness, reflective journaling, 360-degree feedback, or noticing recurring emotional triggers. The goal is to stop living on autopilot. As you begin to observe your thoughts, emotions, and patterns instead of being ruled by them, you start to realise how much of your “leadership style” is merely an inherited collection of defences, fears, and habits masquerading as strategy.
The next level is deeper and more disruptive. This is where you start to unearth and dismantle your self-limiting beliefs— the invisible convictions that determine what you think you deserve, how you see others, and what you believe is possible. This often involves working with a skilled coach or therapist who can safely help you explore formative memories and patterns that shape your current behaviours. You reconnect with the parts of you that learned early on to suppress emotion, hide vulnerability, or equate worth with performance. In doing so, you create an opportunity for profound closure — giving expression and understanding to what your younger self never could.
This is where real empowerment begins. When you stop outsourcing your sense of value to others’ approval, you no longer need to grasp for validation, love, or respect. You stop giving your power away to the moods, biases, and agendas of other people. You become your own stable source of security and worth. That shift changes everything — not just how you feel, but how others feel around you.
Then there is the deep work — the shadow work. This is not gentle introspection. It’s an excavation of what you’ve hidden from yourself — the envy, rage, shame, pride, and fear that polite society taught you to suppress. It’s about integrating your shadow, not eradicating it: learning to see that the parts you once disowned often hold the key to your authenticity, creativity, and full power. At this depth, inner work stops being tidy. It can feel like emotional surgery — confronting, messy, and profoundly humbling. But for those willing to face it, the transformation is nothing short of rebirth.
This work is not for everyone. It will ask you to face your fears head-on: the fear of failure, of rejection, of not being good enough — the very fears that quietly run your life and shape your leadership. It may demand that you dismantle identities you’ve built over decades: the competent professional, the fixer, the resilient hero. It takes courage, humility, and relentless honesty — qualities not often cultivated in corporate life but essential for authentic leadership.
The rewards, however, are extraordinary. When you shift your inner world, your outer results follow naturally. You’ll move through pressure with clarity instead of tension, power instead of pretence, and calm instead of control. As one CEO in a recent BetterUp (2025) study described it, “My job hasn’t changed—how I move through it has. I’ve stopped reacting to everything, and people can feel the steadiness.”
In short, Inner Work is the highest form of personal mastery. It’s about evolving from managing impressions to embodying integrity. It’s only for those ready to face the truth about themselves—not to punish, but to free. And if you’re brave enough to do that, the world around you cannot help but transform in response.
The Results: Unlocking Your Leadership Potential
No, you won't lose the ability to connect, collaborate, or be open to others' influence. Inner work means you stop wasting energy on self-censorship and performance, and instead bring the full range of your authentic self to your leadership. These changes are visible to others—not just in what you say, but in the comfort, optimism, and presence you project.
Research on transformational leadership (Lai et al., 2020) and self-determination theory (Slemp et al., 2018) reveals that inner transformation in leaders measurably increases team engagement, well-being, and creative performance. Edmondson's (1999) foundational work on psychological safety demonstrates that when leaders operate from a place of authenticity and openness, their teams achieve higher learning, innovation, and impact.
Sounds too good to be true? The literature below speaks for itself. Better yet, try it for yourself—reach out and book a session today.
References
Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1992). Thin slices of expressive behavior as predictors of interpersonal consequences: A meta-analysis.Psychological Bulletin, 111(2), 256-274.
Barsade, S. G. (2002). The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior.Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(4), 644-675.
BetterUp. (2025, January 20). What is Inner Work®? It’s the key to being a better leader. BetterUp. https://www.betterup.com/blog/to-be-a-better-leader-start-on-the-inside-with-inner-work
Boyatzis, R. E., Smith, M. L., & Beveridge, A. J. (2013). Coaching with compassion: Inspiring health, well-being, and development in organizations.The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 49(2), 153-178.
Brown, B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection: Let go of who you think you're supposed to be and embrace who you are. Hazelden Publishing.
Burgoon, J. K., & Dunbar, N. E. (2006). Nonverbal expressions of dominance and power in human relationships.In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of nonverbal communication(pp. 279-297). SAGE Publications.
Crum, A. J., & Langer, E. J. (2007). Mind-set matters: Exercise and the placebo effect. Psychological Science, 18(2), 165-171.
Davidovitz, R., Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P. R., Izsak, R., & Popper, M. (2007). Leaders as attachment figures: Leaders' attachment orientations predict leadership-related mental representations and followers' performance and mental health.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(4), 632-650.
Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams.Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
Frazier, M. L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R. L., Pezeshkan, A., & Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological safety: A meta‐analytic review and extension.Personnel Psychology, 70(1), 113-165.
Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes.Psychological Review, 102(1), 4-27.
Heslin, P. A., Vandewalle, D., & Latham, G. P. (2006). Keen to help? Managers' implicit person theories and their subsequent employee coaching.Personnel Psychology, 59(4), 871-902.
Lai, F. Y., Tang, H. C., Lu, S. C., Lee, Y. C., & Lin, C. C. (2020). Transformational leadership and job performance: The mediating role of work engagement.SAGE Open, 10 (1).
Perry, B. D., & Winfrey, O. (2021). What happened to you? Conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing. Flatiron Books.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Rock, D., & Schwartz, J. (2006). The neuroscience of leadership. Strategy+Business, 43, 1-10.
Slemp, G. R., Kern, M. L., Patrick, K. J., & Ryan, R. M. (2018). Leader autonomy support in the workplace: A meta-analytic review.Motivation and Emotion, 42(5), 706-724.
Spencer, S. J., Steele, C. M., & Quinn, D. M. (1999). Stereotype threat and women's math performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35(1), 4-28.
Sy, T., Côté, S., & Saavedra, R. (2005). The contagious leader: Impact of the leader's mood on the mood of group members, group affective tone, and group processes.Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(2), 295-305.
Taylor, C. (2023, May 16). Michael Phelps says therapy 'saved' him during darkest moment. Cassy Bayarea.
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