Marcel Schwantes: How to Lead, Live and Work in Congruence

Episode recap:
 
Marcel highlights a growing trend of executives seeking coaching to align inner beliefs with outer success. He outlines steps to achieve congruence and invites listeners to explore congruence coaching—focused on inner alignment and purposeful leadership. A free discovery call is available for those wanting to lead from their core values and integrate purpose into work and life.   

Book your free, 15-minute discovery call here:
https://calendly.com/marcelschwantes/15-minute-discovery-call?preview_source=et_card&month=2025-06 

Bio:

Marcel Schwantes is a speaker, author, and acclaimed executive coach with a global following. Marcel delivers presentations, workshops, courses, and coaching programs about the human side of business and how cultures of care, connection, and belonging power companies to thrive and outperform the competition.

Key Quotes

• “Congruence is the experience of being deeply aligned, where your inner world—meaning your values, beliefs, deep emotions, and purpose—is in sync with your outer world.”
• “Authentic leadership isn’t about oversharing or emotional dumping. It’s about integrity—so your words and actions match your intentions.”
• “The most powerful leaders are not the loudest, the most exuberant, or the most polished—they are the most congruent.”  

Takeaways

• Audit your calendar: Remove tasks that don’t align with your top 3 priorities.
• Daily check-in: “Are my choices moving me closer to or further from my true purpose?”
• Set boundaries: Say no to requests that drain your energy.
• Spend 15 minutes each morning reflecting on your core values and checking if your actions match those values. 

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to the Love in Action Podcast
00:40 Today's Topic: Self-Awareness and Limiting Beliefs
02:18 Understanding Congruence in Leadership
04:51 Steps to Achieve Congruence
08:55 Aligning Inner and Outer Worlds
13:09 The Importance of Congruence
15:37 Invitation to Congruence Coaching
18:19 Closing Remarks and Call to Action

Conclusion
 

Real leadership begins when your actions reflect your inner values—not just external goals. It's not about image or performance, but showing up with honesty and clarity. Congruent leaders build trust that can’t be faked, prevent burnout, and lead with deeper meaning and lasting impact. Alignment is more than a buzzword—it’s your leadership foundation.

The book: Humane Leadership: Lead with Radical Love, Be a Kick-Ass Boss

Substack: https://marcelschwantes.substack.com/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/marcelschwantes/
Twitter/X: https://x.com/MarcelSchwantes
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@MarcelSchwantes1
Instagram: https://instagram.com/marcel.schwantes/
Schedule a free call

Transcript

Marcel Schwantes 00:00 

Welcome to the Love in Action Podcast! I'm your host, executive coach, speaker and author, Marcel Schwantes, I believe that when we show up with our full humanity to work and lead from a place of love, joy, purpose, care and inclusion, it's going to make a radical difference in your leadership, your business and your bottom line. This is a show about actionable, practical love the verb as a leadership and business strategy. Let's get rolling.  

Hey guys, welcome to the show. It's you and me today. No guest, and so I'm going to share what's on my mind. And Well, here we go. I'm seeing an interesting shift happening in the business world. You know, I talk to a lot of global decision makers, a lot of my coaching clients and more high level decision makers, very successful, I may add, are coming to me asking for coaching to raise their self awareness around limiting beliefs and mindsets. So what's going on here? What's in the water? Well, I figured it out. Okay, people in high places, executives, founders, scholars, investors, educators and others are figuring out that their inner world and outer world are misaligned.  

Okay, you're wondering, all right, Marcel, where are you going with this? Okay, so I'll expand on it. All right, these days you can be wildly successful, you know, you got a great title, you got a thriving business, you have a high performing team, and still feel like something's off. Maybe it shows up in and constant overthinking, or a sense of disconnect between, you know, the face that you put on at work and who you are behind closed doors. Maybe you're just exhausted for making decisions that look right, but in your heart or hearts, it doesn't feel right. So that feeling, it's a signal, folks, it's a signal, okay?  

And for many leaders I work with, it points to a deeper misalignment, a lack of congruence. All right, let's talk about it, because I just dropped a big word on you. Okay, what is congruence? Congruence is that experience of being deeply aligned, where you know your inner world, meaning, your values, your beliefs, your deep emotions, your purpose, is in sync with your outer, outer world, right? These are your actions, your decisions, the data that that supports what you do, maybe even your leadership, presence.  

So on the flip side, that off feeling that that that's a sign of incongruence. When you're out of outer success no longer aligns or reflects your inner values, your purpose, your truth, whatever that truth is for you. Do you see that there's a it's incongruent who you are, that that that feeling of something is off, is that sign that you are no longer living in congruence with who you truly are, your values, purpose and your truth. So living and leading in congruence means really showing up the same in every room, because you're not you're not switching masks, right? It's making decisions from a grounded place, rather than reacting to external pressures of how you should perform and or your ego or performance anxiety, right?  

Congruence doesn't call you to be perfect. So it's not perfection. It's being whole, it's being authentic and kind of understanding your current reality and sort of being okay with whatever is going on, especially when the shit hits the fan, you don't have all the answers. So when you lead from that place, let me tell you, Okay, people feel it, it's palpable when you lead from that deep inner place that is congruent with who we truly are, people notice. So there are steps that you need to take to experience congruence in your life. I'm going to. Give you a few of them, and so I hope you got pen and paper ready.  

Okay, step one, you got to get aligned with your true self. Get aligned with who you truly are, okay, so, so this process of becoming congruent really starts with building self-awareness, because most of us have been conditioned to lead from the outside in. We focus on optics, expectations and business outcomes. You know, what are the numbers? What have you done for me lately? And so we've, we've learned to kind of put on this external sort of hard shell, right?  

And we've learned how to perform for others, but rarely do we stop, pause, back off and ask, Am I still in alignment with who I really am? So to get back to your center, here's what I do in my coaching sessions with clients. Okay. Number one, check in with your core values, what truly matters to you right now, not five years ago. No, I'm talking about now. Number two, notice your inner signals. So when something feels heavy, off or forced, don't bulldoze past it. Pause and ask yourself, why.  

And then the third thing that I do in my coaching sessions with clients is I ask, I ask them to question the story. I tell them to question the story. What does that mean? Well, it means, are you saying yes, out of maybe people pleasing, are you playing a role that no longer fits? So get curious and question your story. Okay, and all the stuff that I mentioned is done. It's not fluffy work. In case you're thinking that okay, it's, it's courageous work, and it requires you to slow down long enough to listen to yourself, right? Okay, so that's step one.  

Step two to get more congruent is be brave enough to get authentic. Be brave enough to get authentic. So once you're more in tune with what's true for you, congruent leadership becomes a practice of acting on that truth. Right? You got to act on it, and that requires full authenticity. Whatever your current reality is, you're responding with authenticity. So this means that you say what needs to be said with compassion, with clarity. You make decisions that reflect your values, not just your fears, and you let people see the real you, not some curated version that hides behind the whatever mask you're wearing. No, let people see the real you. 

So authentic leadership isn't it's not about over sharing or, you know, emotional dumping, because, you know, so many of us are afraid of being vulnerable. No, this is about integrity, so your words and actions match your intentions. You mean what you say. You walk your talk. Okay? And that consistency over time. Guess what that does? It builds trust. It builds trust, first with yourself. You begin to gain more confidence in in who you truly are, but it also builds trust with other people. Okay?  

Step Three in your plan, though, on becoming more congruent is really well, the whole crux of this thing is to align your inner and outer worlds. I mentioned this earlier, okay, because this is where real transformation happens. Leaders who experience congruence don't just feel better. They lead better. Why? Because the gap between their inner world and their outer world, it disappears. There's no more, you know, emotional whiplash between how you feel and how you act. Your two worlds are now aligned. So you're not no longer performing, you're no longer second guessing. You're not you know, over compensating. You're leaning from your center as a whole person. 

So to support that alignment, what I do is I make my clients ask themselves some questions, and here are a few of them. Okay, you want to ask yourself, am. I honoring my boundaries? Because if you are a whole person who is living out of congruence, you're going to have to set some really good boundaries. So the first question I have my clients ask is, am I honoring my boundaries? The second one is, is my calendar aligned with my priorities? Because if you are people pleasing and focus on making other people happy at the expense of your own priorities and your own growth and whatever you know is going to get you ahead is not going to it's going to be incongruent.  

So look at your calendar. Is it aligned with your top priorities, the things that you have committed to, to further yourself in life and in business? Because, if it's not because it fits filled with other things, it needs to come off okay? And the third question that I have my clients ask themselves regularly is, are my choices moving me toward or away from my purpose? We all have a purpose that has to drive us innately. You know that inner sort of intrinsic motivation that drives us to something that is greater than ourselves, right? That that's that purpose that gets us up in the morning.  

And you know, I got my purpose, and so you have to question that to stay consistent with that alignment, to make sure that your choices are moving you toward and not away from your purpose. So this isn't about becoming a different person or even a different leader, okay, it's about becoming a more fully integrated version of yourself. That's why we question those things of why that's why we, you know, create more clarity around that alignment, to be more fully integrated in who you are and how you walk, how you talk.  

So let me tell you, it, yes, it takes practice. Okay, I won't lie. It takes practice. It takes commitment, and especially because we juggle so many things, and we got, you know, we got or, or lot of us come to a workplace, and the first thing that happens is we got complaints and we're doing damage control, and now our whole day goes down the crapper. So to live in congruence with yourself takes intentionality, right? And you have to get back to what is it that aligns your inner and outer world? Because if you're just spinning wheels all day every day, you're not living out of congruence. Okay?  

So, yeah. So yeah, it like I said, it's going to take practice commitment and intentionality, but if you keep at it and stay consistent, you're going to experience more congruence for yourself. So why does all this matter? Why? Why? What's the why behind congruence? Well, without it, you risk a very dangerous thing, burnout. You also risk self sabotage by being incongruent with yourself and wearing masks, etc. You sabotage who you really are, and so people don't really know the true you, right? And sometimes that leads to disengagement, disengagement in your own work. But also if you're in a leadership role and people don't know which person is showing up today, it disengages your employees.  

So with it, meaning when you're living from a state of congruence, you lead with more clarity, more confidence and more calm. Your team feels safer in your presence, your decisions are cleaner and personally speaking, you're just you're more fulfilled in your leadership role. I hope that resonates with you. So let me put it to you this way, okay, as I wind down to finishing this, this this episode, okay, if you're feeling out of sync, and if you feel like you're stretched too thin, or like you've lost touch with your why your purpose? I'm here to tell you that you have to take that seriously. Okay, I have seen clients that have experienced the same things, and it has derailed them from their path.  

So this is a sign of misalignment, and it's a call for you to recover. Connect with yourself the most powerful leaders and coaching clients in the highest places. They're not the loudest or the most exuberant or the most polished or even the most popular, they are the most congruent. Their leadership flows from who they are and not just what they do or, you know, their status or how much money they make. So when they're congruent, their leadership isn't just effective, it's, it's, it's truly magnetic, because it draws people to them. So here's my invitation for you as I close this out, slow down. Listen in, align and lead from the inside out.  

And one more invitation if you want to dig deeper with me. Look, if you're making money, you're landing clients, you're achieving success on the outside, but something feels off on the inside. Hey, that's the universe talking to you. Okay, so it's time to take action. I work with high performing leaders who have checked all the boxes, but they still feel like something is missing deep down. If that's you. This is where coaching for congruence comes in. So again, it's not about fixing performance or modifying your behavior.  

Congruence coaching with me is powerful inner work. It's going to take work, but it's going to guide you to identify what's driving you and what's holding you back. Is going to help you clear out old stories or scripts or beliefs that no longer serve you okay, it's going to help you to lead from your core values, not your coping mechanisms, and you're going to be able to integrate purpose into both your work and your life, so that you show up more grounded and you show up, reconnecting to who you really are, and, and let go with, let go of what no longer fits.  

Okay, so this whole idea of congruent coaching is to align you, your leadership and your life with what matters most. If that speaks to your heart, let's talk. I mean, I work with leaders who are ready to lead with more clarity, more integrity, more freedom, not by doing more by but by becoming more aligned, becoming more congruent. I'm going to leave a link to the show in the show notes for you to book a free no pressure, no hard sales, 15-minute discovery call to explore if this is right for you. Okay, I'm going to quickly know if it's not, and I'll make other recommendations. All right, so jump on the call real quickly with me. It's a chance for you and me to finally meet in a zoom fashion. If you've been listening to the show for years, months, etc. Hey, I'd love to chat with you to explore whether congruent coaching is right for you. I hope to talk to you soon. I'll see you next time. Take care. 

Announcer 18:24 

Thank you for listening to the Love in Action Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it, subscribe and leave us a review until next time. Don't forget. The future of leadership is love in action. Believe it, practice it, and watch your leadership and business flourish.