Lived Life vs. Life
A Soundbite is NOT a Meal
A soundbite is precisely that… a bite, a taste! It is not a dish, not a meal, not a course—just a bite. It gives you a quick impression—sweet, salty, spicey, sour, savoury—enough to spark curiosity or trigger an emotion. But it does not nourish you, and it can be misleading if you assume that one taste represents the whole dish, or the entire meal!
A full explanation is like a multi‑course meal. Each course builds on the last: starters awaken the palate, mains provide substance, sides add texture and colour, and dessert leaves a lasting impression. Together, they give you balance, depth, and context—the true experience of the fare.
And let’s not forget about the setting—an anywhere anytime lonely morsel ready for a toothpick, versus a well-planned collage of complementary abundance.
Influential Leadership is NOT a Soundbite!
Did you know that humans have an average attention span of 8 seconds, less than that of a goldfish?
It certainly feels like that, often, but the assertion is not to be trusted. It is a soundbite that clogged the ether for a while, being attributed to an apparent Microsoft Corporation study.
However, while it is babble, it serves to make the point that soundbites are simple, and even if accurate simplifications of complex matters, they always have inherent limitations.
Leadership is a complex social construct that is neigh impossible to describe through a soundbite—yet it often is. I contend that one of the reasons we have 1,001 so-called definitions for leadership and leader is because we rely on soundbites.
It is for this reason—the inherent complexity of the construct—that the Influential Leadership System (iLS) Architecture has been constructed. Leadership is a multi-course meal, not a morsel!
With that being said, let us move on to a particular element of Influential Leadership’s definitional soundbite that often gets questioned, namely lived life.
Influential leadership is the application of Social Agency to influence and shape people’s lived lives and life trajectories for their better.
Commentators ask why Influential Leadership’s definitional soundbite refers to lived life and not just life.
Here is the answer.
The Difference Between Life and Lived Life
Life and lived life might sound like the same thing at first glance, but they describe two very different dimensions of our existence. One is the raw material—simply being alive—while the other is the smart weaving of purpose, experience, meaning and impact into that material.
The first table describes each concept, and the second table compares them.
TABLE 1
| Life as Existence | Lived Life as Fulfilment |
| Life is the baseline condition of being biologically alive. | Lived life transforms potential into intention, reflection and action. |
| It includes the rhythms of breath, heartbeat, and basic physiological processes. | It is the ‘quality’ layer atop the ‘quantity’ of years and days. |
| It is the framework, the system that carries the potential for growth, relationships and contribution. | It is marked by conscious intentions, thoughts, choices, experiences and cognitive depth. |
TABLE 2
| Aspect (Variables) |
Life | Lived Life |
| Nature | A noun, representing a state of being or a time period. It can be passive and is characterised by basic biological function. | A noun phrase, representing a dynamic process of engaging with the world. It is an active state of existence marked by intention, purpose and action. |
| Experience | Can be a matter of routine, habit, and simply ‘going through the motions.’ It is an unexamined existence focused on survival. | Characterised by a deep, conscious engagement with one’s experiences, emotions and personal growth. It involves finding meaning even in hardship. |
| Control | Often perceived as a series of events happening to you, a passive state of enduring circumstances. | Built on self-efficacy and personal agency, and making choices. It is the understanding that you control your response and attitude, even when you cannot control external circumstances. |
| Meaning | May lack a sense of fulfilment, purpose or direction, as it is just the raw material of existence. | Is infused with meaning and significance, which is defined by a person’s values, connections and goals. It moves beyond happiness toward a feeling of completeness and meaningfulness. |
| Perspective | A person with only ‘life’ is stuck in a fixed mindset, fearing failure and avoiding challenges. | A person with a ‘lived life’ functions from a growth mindset, embracing challenges and expanding their perceived boundaries. |
Quality is where the difference lies between the two forms of ‘life’.
What is the Business of iLeadership?
The business of iLeadership is to influence and shape events, conditions and circumstances for the betterment of people’s lived lives—the dynamics of their life—the things that are important and meaningful for individuals, their families, communities, teams, schools, business, countries…
Furthermore, the Influential Leadership soundbite is supported by a complete architecture—there is an entire eight-course meal that the taste represents—it does not stand on its own.
The Taste Test
The leadership taste test is to look for the meal behind the titbit. A fine-sounding definition that has no grounding, no substance and no architecture is what has opened the door to the concepts of leadership and leader to be anything and thus nothing.
A soundbite without context or architecture, whether about leaders (e.g., ‘a leader is a person that has followers’), or leadership (e.g., ‘the team’s leadership is meeting to discuss the budget’) is indeed a morsel and best left alone.
One of the powerful characteristics of having an architecture from which the Influential Leadership soundbite is constructed, is its auditability—the taste test.
If what you see or experience does not look like leadership, and does not taste like it, then it is not—no matter what it is called.
If you have not yet equipped yourself with Influential Leadership, you are invited to join us on the Alpha Programme—we shape lived lives for the better!
