Introducing Self-Realized Leadership
A New Method for Leadership Development
I’m a coach who works with the top people in £1B+ businesses, helping them succeed in delivering their strategic agendas.
At the Heart of what I do is championing a style of leadership I call ‘Self-Realized Leadership’. Central to Self-Realized Leadership is a foundational premise: there is a greater reality to who we are that is entirely positive in nature.
What makes this so relevant for leaders is that it’s also the most effective place from which to operate.
The good news? This positive self is always available, no matter your current circumstances or internal state. The less good news? Being human, we all have ways in which we disassociate from or doubt it - especially when under pressure.
So a big part of my work is supporting leaders to have more consistent contact with this greater self, and to resolve the patterns that pull them away from it. Self-Realized Leadership is the method I’ve developed to embed that contact and resolution as effectively and as rapidly as possible.
A Next Level
It’s important to emphasise that the leaders I work with are typically already highly effective. In many ways they tend to be at the top of their game. Certainly at the top of their organisations. My agenda is not to take anything away that is working well. Rather, my agenda is to help leaders elevate to a next level of operational effectiveness.
And there is always a next level.
Increasing Impact
One way I think about effectiveness in leaders is through the lens of impact. I use the word ‘impact’ very deliberately, because impact is not necessarily a function of technical skill or volume of work.
Many leaders rise through the ranks by being technically brilliant or operating with extraordinary intensity. These are real strengths. But once you're in a senior leadership role, they are no longer the primary source of your value.
Rather, your real value as a leader is in being able to:
maintain enough elevation to see and think strategically,
operate cross-functionally with peers,
engage externally with resources and stakeholders,
and positively influence and enable others to succeed.
These are the factors that create value and determine impact.
Expanding Capacity
Capacity is also important.
Leaders in large businesses are operating in environments of infinite work, across geographies and time zones, with an ever-expanding horizon of growth and delivery targets. Overwhelm is common and when demands are relentless, critical personal priorities (and even core leadership functions like reflection, coaching others or long-term thinking) are often the first to go.
This is where Self-Realized Leadership makes a significant difference.
When leaders reconnect with the greater, positive reality of who they are, they increase their capacity. Not by working harder or longer, but by working so much smarter.
They become clearer about:
what must take priority, professionally and personally,
how and where they can have greatest impact,
when and with whom to invest their energy,
which activities generate greatest value for the business,
what enables their teams to thrive and succeed.
It’s not that they are doing more work, but that they are getting more done... and with greater ease, creating space for what truly matters, at work and at home, and bringing people with them.
The Promise
This is the promise of Self-Realized Leadership: expanding capacity and increasing impact.
In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more on the principles, practices and transformations of this new model for leadership development.
You’re invited on the journey and I’m looking forward to travelling with you.
Sam Wigan
Founder, Self-Realized Leadership.
July 2025