Meet Sharon Vasher
My Background
I kickstarted my career as a chemical engineer and soon developed a mission to help solve some of the toughest problems in manufacturing processes and business management systems. With a solid progression through various leadership roles over a 25-year career, I took on numerous challenges to lead and support growth at a titan Fortune 200 global chemical company. I relocated several times around the U.S. to take on increasing depth of leadership responsibility, including challenging turnaround situations at multiple manufacturing facilities.
The various cultures I worked in over the years provided me profound insight into the nuanced needs of individuals and teams—physical safety, mindfulness, flexibility in learning, authentic connection and support, as well as nurturing people's desire for growth and purpose—needs that I have experienced as most essential for individuals, teams, and organizations to truly thrive. I developed a passion for co-creating the structures and guidance systems for people to continuously expand their capacities and excel. I fell in love with the experience of working to help them unlock their true potential. This focus provided very high returns and resilience within very demanding team-driven manufacturing environments.
My Lessons as a Self-Possessed Leader
Over the years I have learned that my core essential self-growth needs to transcend typical self-improvement tactics. I had encountered the trap of continuously adding while not remaining conscious to my need to also actively subtract the behaviors and beliefs that no longer served me. This was my initiation into a deep transformative journey to discover the place of my being that I was making decisions from and how those self-imposed roadblocks were often times preventing me from effortlessly tapping into the guidance aligned with my inner truths. My evolution required radical self-honesty, emotional depth and clarity, and authentic alignment with core values.
Stability in Uncertainty
- In moments of chaos or crisis, a self-possessed leader doesn’t add fuel to fear.
- Teams often calibrate their nervous systems to their leader.
- Your steadiness becomes a stabilizing anchor.
Resistance to Manipulation
- Leaders are constantly subject to projections, persuasion, flattery, or criticism.
- Self-possession shields you from being swayed by the tides of approval or attack.
- This protects the integrity of decisions.
Authority Without Force
- When you are self-possessed, people sense it: your authority doesn’t need to be declared or defended.
- Your presence carries weight, which reduces the need for over-explaining or over-asserting.
Clear Discernment
- A self-possessed leader sees reality as it is, not through the lens of egoic insecurity.
- This sharpens judgment, strategy, and long-range vision.
Empowerment of Others
- Because you’re not spilling your anxieties into the group, you create space for others to step up.
- Your possession of self allows them to find possession of their own.