Embracing Liminality in Leadership
Compass Point | 001
As mentioned in Contour Lines 009, this week’s Compass Point (and the first one published) focuses on the concept of liminality as it relates to leadership. I’ve been increasingly obsessed with this concept as 2024 has gone on, taking my own experiences in personal growth and using it to analyze my behavior in past leadership roles as well as leadership development and organizational culture. Liminality thus will be explored more than once in Cultivar, and it may even become the topic of a full length researched article in the Cultivated Perspective section.
Leadership is rooted not in inherent ability, a set of learnable strategies or tactics, nor a role, or an art, or a science.
It could be argued that all of the above play a part in developing exceptional leaders, but even then what differentiates good leaders from exceptional is awareness of self and awareness of the “selves” of those they lead.
Leadership is found in perspective, and the ability to act upon seeing it’s intersections, but not in holding to one over another unless it is the right course forward. It is a semi permanent state of being at the borderlands of social groups and personal identity, responsibility and self-care, a liminal space, uncomfortable yet familiar.
The moment you step out of your comfort zone either as a new leader, a promoted leader with more responsibility, or even a longtime leader who is simply seeing the larger picture for the first time, you may question “who you are.”
A question struggled with by nearly everyone at some point in their life, it is especially true for those in charge of others or effecting change within themselves. Leadership is an epistemological revolving door, if framed in Taoist perspectives, liminality is our most natural state.
“Nature is not only spontaneity but nature in the state of constant flux and incessant transformation. This is the universal process that binds all things into one, equalizing all things and all opinions.” A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, Wing-Tsit Chan.
Perhaps it is worth defining liminal states a bit further before diving into the leadership aspect. Liminality is an anthropological term originating from the Latin word for threshold, and refers to the state of in-betweenness one finds themselves in whether physical or mental.
It is the mental spaces that must be navigated for leadership to be cultivated in a person, and they can be just as unsettling as physical liminal spaces.
Think of the moments in time when you were unsure if you could accomplish something, but you went ahead and tried anyway. A time in which you didn’t feel like you fit in. You weren’t sure what a friend or significant other was thinking about you. You took a new role but didn’t feel like you knew what you were doing for 6 months. These are all examples of navigating liminality.
We experience liminality constantly, but it is imperative for leaders and those effecting change to embrace it rather than trying to move out of it. It starts with becoming comfortable in the self.
It’s possible to be in multiple and overlapping liminal spaces at the same time. When leaders get caught in the bottleneck of the hourglass, grains of knowledge erode and shape you pass back and forth between the intrinsic and extrinsic structures of self, they suffer what is commonly referred to as imposter syndrome, and burnout.
No longer part of the team, yet responsible for it. Required to understand the perspective of those who don’t necessarily understand the overarching vision and how they fit in, as well as why higher echelons of leadership aren’t willing to listen to them. True leaders see the entire ecosystem of the interconnected spaces they inhabit and how everything in it overlaps.
These liminal ecosystems and existences are everywhere. Perhaps the most commonly recognized are cross-functional teams, decentralized teams, sociopolitical identities, social media, insurgencies, and increasingly, AI.
Not only do we see and feel liminal space in our everyday lives, but we explore the concepts in our media and entertainment, depictions ranging from mental prisons and portal of horror to mystical places of transformation.
Perhaps the uncomfortability comes from it’s association with, or liminal spaces phenomenon on YouTube. Maybe it’s because as we become disconnected from each other in the digital age liminality is more visible.
Liminality, while always portrayed as unnerving, invites us to question what we know and critically think about how to navigate forward, an essential component of leadership. Our stories are rife with liminality being essential for one to triumph over insurmountable odds.
We see this in Star Wars: Ahsoka, with The World between Worlds, a physical representation of liminality that exists outside time and space that allows for growth to happen. Similar to the interplay of our past experiences and traumas mixed with our dreams for the
It’s also seen in Stranger Things, with the the Upside Down, a mirror realm of our plane of existence with beings that torment and taunt us with the intent to control us and take over our world. Sound like intrusive thoughts, depression, and listening to the voices of your haters, doesn’t it? What must the protagonists do to stop the chaos from overtaking their world? They have to into the Upside Down itself, into the liminal space that terrifies them so, because only in that space can they defeat what breaks through to the surface and erodes the mindset of confident leaders.
The Studio Ghibli classic movie by Hayao Miyazaki, Spirited Away shows a less visually terrifying example of liminal spaces. Rooted in Shinto lore, the story centers around the perspective of a child separated from her parents. As Margarita from PlainFlavoredEnglish puts very eloquently:
“By purging her of her former identity and pushing her forward into a liminal state, Miyazaki does for Chihiro what she does for the characters she purges: helps her to confront the fear of emptiness that makes her so passive and helpless to begin with. Only then can she really recognize that she is not empty or helpless at all.”
Notice that in all these stories if the heroes are not receptive to growth, the darkness that dwells in liminality triumphs, and it is only with intentionally going into liminal spaces that it is defeated. Navigation via perspective of the liminal space is a requirement for growth, both for the individual leader and their team.
Liminality overlaps these stories with the real world as well. The viral explosion of artist Hanumankind (real name Sooraj Cherukat) onto the global rap scene with his song Big Dawgs in the past few weeks shows liminality in multiple ways. An Indian born son of an oil industry worker, Cherukat spent years abroad with formative years spent in Texas, the rap styles of the southern U.S. heavily influencing his sound.
Moving back to India where he has resided now for 12 years, the liminal state he finds himself successfully navigating is one of cultures and musical sound. A clear leader in the south Indian rap scene (now global), this is only possible through pressing forward through liminality by believing in his artistic identity that encompasses all of his experiences.
While successful at showcasing his identity with confidence, his journey hasn’t been without struggles, seen in other songs such as Go To Sleep as well as interviews showcase how Cherukat has navigated the intrinsic and extrinsic struggles of multi-cultural liminal spaces.
In a completely different industry, Professor of Governmental and International Affairs Gerard Toal talks about liminal spaces in his book The Near Abroad, but rather than explicitly discussing liminality this discussion centers on the geo-political discourse and culture shock felt by the member states of the former Soviet Union, where even to this day countries that border Russia experience liminal states of existence and identity which leads to international conflict. The macro-liminality can be narrowed back down to the micro of individual leaders with Toal’s assertion that:
“Aspirational and ideal visions of [world order] how things ‘ought to be’ in the abstract without references to constraints and necessary compromises.” (Toal, 2017).
These images, or levels of ecosystem analysis, of the self, the team, and the world show that in order to be a leader, we must learn to navigate the liminal spaces, not run from them.
We beg to be told how to do this, or to at the very least ease our discomfort by sharing this state of disconnect that connects us all. Perhaps it is because this liminal state is at the core of our societal processes that politics and war intertwine to create uncertainty like no other. It is so much easier for leaders to become entrenched in their ways and not consider another path towards meeting ones goals, yet if one continues to hop out of the river because they are uncomfortable with swimming, they won’t get very far upstream.
Your perception of self is not distinct from that of your perception of you are a leader. You are defined not by who you were or are, but who you are as a process, and how well that process embraces and navigates liminality.
Compass Points: We all need a direction to go in, especially when trying to grow personally and professionally. This series is a reflection on a lesson or concept I've thought about the previous week that helps you readjust or maintain the direction going forward by enhancing your perspective of your ecosystem.
Fantastic read Chris!
Leadership is indeed a "peculiar place" to be in. I distinctly remember that feeling of liminality with my first leadership position, due to promotion. And how all of a sudden I was caught in the in-between of still being 1 member of my team, but also their lead. It took some adjusting.
Awareness is a great topic. What it is, how is it defined, and the immediate ripple and feedback- if you can see it!