A Vision of Kindness and Truth

March 26, 2015 //

In life and in leadership having a vision is a keystone to success. A vision is an imaginary destination. The fruit of our creativity and our sense of possibility, a vision taps our longing for a sounder self and a better world. It inspires our attitude and guides and sustains our effort.

At some point in his life my father seized upon a maxim that became his signature admonition to his family: Be always kind, be always true. I have adopted it.

For me this vision is an aspiration that grows from two roots. One is nurtured in the spiritual soil of love and loving kindness. The other springs from a core value of integrity, captured in the advice of Polonius to his son Laertes in Hamlet:

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Having a vision does not mean that one always achieves it. I am painfully aware of coming up short in fulfilling my own, as I am sure family and friends will attest. On the other hand, if we achieve our vision consistently such that we are not stretching, it may be that our vision is too small.

Our personal visions must be large enough to embrace those of others. The daily media bombardment of the abuse, violence and warfare we inflict upon each other and the primacy of deception in commerce, politics and foreign policy cries out for a vision of kindness and truth.

What is the vision that guides your life today or that of your organization? Does it spring from your truths, your gifts and your longings?

Categories Leadership, Performance, Personal Growth, Spirituality

How Do We Take Charge?

March 20, 2015 //

The serenity prayer inspires us to change those things we can control, accept what we can’t change and cultivate the wisdom to know the difference. Often, we can take control over much more of life than we initially think possible. The question becomes, how do we take charge?

Over 30 years of research and practice conducted by the Self-Management Group yields two elements that do the most to affect performance: attitude and effort. A positive attitude coupled with sustained effort yields the highest performance. Those of us who have run marathons, launched businesses, learned to live with debilitating diseases, trekked or paddled in remote places, or lived with a host of other major challenges know the importance of optimism and perseverance.

The question becomes how? How do we cultivate a positive attitude? How do we sustain our effort? Charles Duhigg provides the key in his book The Power of Habit. Habits control more of our lives than we realize, and we can change them. Four of Duhigg’s conclusions struck me.

1) The brain seeks habitual responses in order to free itself either for rest or for more complex tasks.

2) More than 40 per cent of the actions we perform each day aren’t decisions but habits.

3) Habits can be changed if we understand how they work.

4) There are keystone habits that leverage significant change in individuals, organizations and societies.

We will explore more about habits in future posts. Meanwhile, what is one habit you wish to change? Is it related to your attitude or your effort or both? Developing new habits will enable us to take charge of our personal lives and inspire the teams and organizations we lead.

Categories Leadership, Performance, Personal Growth

Being to Do, Doing to Be

March 12, 2015 //

For many of us being busy is a badge of honor. We spend much of our lives doing. We define ourselves by the roles that we perform.

For many decades I have done the same, identifying myself by the function I played – student, athlete, spouse, priest, parent, CEO, coach, grandpa. Life was a to-do list of activities, many of which were linked to what I was taught men were expected to do; as Sam Keen described in his book Fire in the Belly – protect, provide and procreate.

Sometimes I “did” well; at other times, not so well. The defining by “doing” in and of itself is done, whatever impact it may have had for good or ill.

Today, I am shifting my focus from defining myself by living to do, to doing in order to be. No doubt, it is in part a reality check as the days remaining in this life grow fewer. I am choosing more activities that cultivate awareness of the simple beauties and complex dynamics of our journey. Meditating, being physically active, working and walking outdoors, writing and playing music are ways for me to develop awareness and attend more to the energy of the moment.

How do you define yourself? Is it the sum total of your activity and the roles you play? Is it the impact your activity generates on those around you? Is it the container you hold for yourself or others to receive the grace of each moment? Perhaps it is all of the above, a harmony of doing and being. We can be grateful and accountable for the fact that it is ours to choose.

Categories Growing Older, Overview, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Both / And

March 5, 2015 //

Each day the media delivers a preponderance of news that is discordant to my values. I think of the polarization of gotcha politics; the insidious and blatant strains of racism; the persecutions of righteous fanaticism, secular and religious; the degradation of domestic violence; the myriad manifestations of a self-absorbed culture.

Trying to understand I turn first to what motivates us as human beings. Historically it has been to avoid pain and to seek pleasure. At the core of each is fear, fear of being hurt or not being worthy. Fear of not being hurt is certainly basic to our survival, but once we are safe does fear suffice? On the other hand, can the constant quest for pleasure supplant our fear of never being good enough?

Viktor Frankl and more recently Daniel Pink identify other motivators: the search for meaning (purpose), autonomy (independence) and mastery (control and the pursuit of excellence). For many of us having purpose in our lives and being able to control our destiny are inspirational motivators.

Whatever drives us as human beings, the code words for me are this: do we look at life as either/or, or do we embrace it as both/and? The former view says that one of is right and the other wrong; for one to win the other must lose. Both/and acknowledges that each of us holds a truth and that we are tethered; “winning” accrues benefit to both.

Embracing both/and is to appreciate paradox, the reality that two apparently contradictory assertions can be true at the same time. Both/and also recognizes nuance, the subtle layers of meaning that reveal a richer reality. Whether or not we are able to arrive as a species, the path to a higher consciousness follows the route of both/and.

Categories Leadership, Performance, Personal Growth

I Think I Can, I Think I Can

February 26, 2015 //

The chant of the little engine that could is a child-like reminder of the role expectations play in performance. Henry Ford put it this way: Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.

In training for my coaching certification I was introduced to a model developed by the Self Management Group. Performance is the result of the interaction of Talents, Opportunities and Habits. Talents are our inherited potential. We can develop it up to a point. We can prepare ourselves to take advantage of Opportunities, but we are dependent upon if and when they come along. The greatest leverage in the performance equation comes from our Habits. The dynamics over which we have the most control, habits influence whether and how we expand our talents and manage opportunities.

There are two kinds of habits that influence performance, habits of thought and habits of behavior; our attitude and our effort. Pulling a long train of cars up and over a mountain pass was a huge challenge for the little engine. With an optimistic attitude and a sustained effort she did it!

Returning to expectations, how many of us limit our potential by expecting too little of ourselves? And how many of us pass on the sustained effort it takes to pull an apparently heavy load?

Let’s ask ourselves. What train load of cars awaits our engine? What attitude will serve us best in hitching up? What will it take to move forward each day a little bit at a time until we reach the top of our mountain pass?

Categories Coaching, Leadership, Performance, Personal Growth

Love the good that is.

February 19, 2015 //

At our 50^th high school reunion almost five years ago, several of us found ourselves at dinner together. Connected that night by the promise in our conversation more than memories of our adolescent past, we agreed to stay in touch. Since then we have had over thirty conference calls and several in-person gatherings.

An email this week from one of our group struck home. At its core was a simple and profound call to action in our attitude. It is particularly poignant for those of us elders facing the passing of peers and the loss of capacities we once took for granted.

My friend is a gentle, strong, persistent, mindful and very caring individual. Her husband has been battling cancer for the past twelve years, and she has been by his side every step of the way. Taking advantage of a positive energy plateau in his treatment cycle, they are right-sizing. Her email describes sorting through and disposing the accumulated stuff of many years. She notes that the most difficult aspect in letting go of “things” is the memories associated with them, and she shares some examples.

And then she says, “I remind myself – love the good that is, not what is lost.”

What a great reminder to each of us personally and professionally: tune our attitude to focus on that which is going well, the beauty around us that awaits only our attention and the love that asks only to be received. It is a matter of mindfulness for the moment rather than what was or might have been.

Categories Growing Older, Inspiration, Leadership

At the Threshold

February 12, 2015 //

How often each day do you cross a threshold? Probably many times, when you stop to think about it. Every door you pass through is a threshold from one space to another.

In the familiarity of our daily routines most of us don’t pause to think about it. Even when we close a door to achieve privacy or to contain a pet, stepping across sills doesn’t rise to our awareness. That is, until we come to a new one.

A threshold grabs our attention either when it beckons us with opportunity or threatens us with adversity. Leaving home for the first time called to many of us, as did committing to a relationship and pursuing our dream. Something compelled us to leave our zone of comfort to embark on a path of learning. For others of us the loss of a loved one or a job or the arrival of an invading disease impelled us into a new realm of discovery.

We know we are on the verge of a new possibility or threat when it involves risks and it demands our response. Our fear buzzer goes off. Adrenalin rushes to mobilize us, our signal that what we are facing is significant down to our core. We are at a defining moment on the brink of action. There is no turning back.

What is the threshold before you today – Defining yourself anew after ending a relationship? Committing to another day of sobriety? Taking that next step forward on a postponed path of heart? Whatever it is, embrace it with the knowledge that retreating may be safer in the moment but in the long run debilitating to the person you could be. And, remember, there is a company of sojourners who will support you over the brink and beyond.

Categories Inspiration, Leadership, Personal Growth, Spirituality

What Wants To Happen Here?

February 5, 2015 //

Do you remember the last time you were blindsided, when your words or actions or those of others caught you by surprise and threw you off-balance? Maybe it was at home, or maybe it was at work. Maybe it was in a special relationship or in your role as leader. Like a troll springing suddenly from under the bridge of our routines, it can happen anytime or any place, usually when we’re least expecting it.

It happened to me this week in a very mundane set of interactions. The details are less important than the fact that the episode triggered a response from my darker energies. The shadow followed me around most of the day…until a familiar question seeped into my funk: “What wants to happen here?”

It is an excellent coaching question that I first encountered several years ago in a workshop facilitated by Alan Seale. Through his teaching and coaching Alan encourages us to tap into the energy of our feelings in order to discover the potential that waits. Seeing and honoring the potential provides a powerful antithesis to the apparent negative block of the moment.

The question acknowledges at least two things. First, whatever we are doing or feeling isn’t working for us, probably because our ego has taken over. Second, maybe things are not working for us because there is a greater potential waiting to be released. Alan characterizes that greater potential as our soul and its mission, which may be 180 degrees from our current impasse.

The next time you’re stuck or surprised by your troll, it might help to ask yourself, “What wants to happen here?” Seeking the answers may open a whole new horizon.

Categories Coaching, Leadership, Personal Growth, Spirituality

Beneath the Snow

January 22, 2015 //

Outside on this mid-winter day the snow has an icy crust. One wonders what lies beneath? In his book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, Mark Nepo provides a reminder that may be helpful, especially to those of us going through a dark time.

In nature, we are quietly offered countless models of how to give ourselves over to what appears dark and hopeless, but which ultimately is an awakening beyond our imagining. All around us, everything small and buried surrenders to a process that none of the buried parts can see. We call this process seeding and this innate surrender allows everything edible and fragrant to break ground into a life of light that we call spring.

As a seed buried in earth can’t imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt or a mind filmed over with despair imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that, once cracking, it cracks all the way. To move through the dark into blossom is the work of the soul.

Tags Mark Nepo, Work of the soul

Categories Personal Growth, Spirituality

We stand at a new doorway…

January 16, 2015 //

Krista Tippett’s On Being post for the New Year featured the thoughts of two people whose writing is special to me and whose presence in person both calms the troubled spirit and troubles the complacent mind. Parker Palmer writes:

We look with uncertainty to the year ahead. But if we wrap our lives around life-giving questions — and live our way into their answers a bit more every day — the better world we want and need is more likely to come into being.”

He then frames the questions from the poetic insights of Anne Hillman:

We look with uncertainty beyond the old choices for clear-cut answers to a softer, more permeable aliveness which is every moment at the brink of death; for something new is being born in us if we but let it. We stand at a new doorway, awaiting that which comes… daring to be human creatures, vulnerable to the beauty of existence. Learning to love.

Palmer then asks himself and us five life-giving questions. Which do you choose to answer as you stand before the doorway that beckons this coming year?

How can I let go of my need for fixed answers in favor of aliveness?

What is my next challenge in daring to be human?

How can I open myself to the beauty of nature and human nature?

Who or what do I need to learn to love next? And next? And next?

What is the new creation that wants to be born in and through me?

Tags Anne Hillman, Parker Palmer

Categories Coaching, Spirituality