Leading From the Inside Out
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
By Krystle Phillips
For a long time, leadership felt like something I had to perform.
I became responsible early in life. Caregiving shaped me before confidence ever did. I learned how to anticipate needs, manage crises quietly, and keep moving even when I was tired. That way of being followed me into entrepreneurship. I built companies, made decisions under pressure, and carried the weight of being the one people depended on.
From the outside, it looked like strength. On the inside, it was survival.
Heart centered leadership did not arrive for me as a trend or a title. It emerged when I realized that leading without alignment was slowly hollowing me out. I was doing good work, but I was disconnected from myself. Faith, for me, is not loud or performative. It is lived. It shows up in how I choose restraint over reaction, clarity over control, and compassion without self abandonment.
Spirit led living does not mean avoiding hard decisions. It means making them with integrity.
As a founder, I lead in complex environments where money, trust, and livelihoods are involved.
There is pressure to move fast, to dominate markets, to always appear certain. What grounds me is a quiet daily practice of returning inward before responding outward. Prayer for me is not about asking for more. It is about listening. Stillness. Discernment. Asking whether a decision is rooted in fear or alignment.
That pause has changed everything.
It has shaped how I communicate with my team. I no longer lead by urgency alone. I lead by clarity. People know where we are going and why. I have learned that when leaders regulate themselves, organizations stabilize naturally. When leaders abandon themselves, everyone feels it.
Compassion used to mean overgiving for me. Now it means boundaries. It means saying no when a yes would cost me my integrity. It means designing systems that do not rely on burnout or martyrdom to function. That shift was spiritual as much as it was strategic.
Heart centered leadership is often misunderstood as softness. In reality, it requires immense discipline. It asks you to stay present when avoidance would be easier. It asks you to speak truth with care. It asks you to hold people accountable without humiliation. That kind of leadership does not inflate the ego. It humbles it.
Living with purpose, for me, means faith expressed through action. It means building businesses that serve real needs. It means honoring people as whole humans, not just outputs. It means choosing sustainability over spectacle. My personal brand is not separate from this. It is simply a reflection of how I live and lead. There is no version of me online that does not exist offline.
I believe the new era of leadership is not about louder voices or curated perfection. It is about inner coherence. Leaders who are aligned internally create environments where others can do the same. Profit then becomes a byproduct of trust, not the cost of it.
Leading from the inside out has taught me that purpose is not something you declare. It is something you practice quietly, every day, especially when no one is watching.
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