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A surprise discovering of my vital voice, and me

6/5/2019

 
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“it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” ~ Henry David Thoreau
For some time, I’d had a yearning to discover and say what I knew was within me, what I really had and wanted to say in the world. What was in my mind was in the realm of posting things online, social media, publishing something. I didn’t realise at the time though that this was really about going deeper into a further cycle of discovering who and what I am in the world.
 After five years it was the dogs that took me there
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For about five years now Linda and I and the dogs have gone to the Northumberland coast in the north east of England for a week’s stay by the sea. Although I’m Scottish, it’s a place where I really feel at home. My soul seems to rest and come alive here. Northumberland is full of gorgeous beaches (please don’t tell anyone), glorious landscapes, ancient, fortified castles, fantastic seafood, and of course the friendliest people imaginable.
 
We discover new gems each time, but also have our favourites and rituals. One of these is to venture to Holy Island or Lindisfarne – a small tidal island with a rich spiritual heritage. You have to plan a trip carefully as only at low tide is the causeway road passable. Arrive too soon or too late, or forget about returning, and you’ll have a long wait until the tide drops again.
 
We park up, (visit the loos), head towards the castle, let the dogs off the lead and on to the coastal path. Walking along the path, eventually we can see a white stone obelisk in the distance. In past years we’ve decided it’s too far and take a left turn to bring us back to the village. But this time the dogs ran on ahead. Clearly, we were going further – to the obelisk.
 
It’s strange that this large construction is here on this beautiful headland, yet it feels in the right place and the right size. It’s a white granite daymark navigation beacon positioned to help seafarers navigate the correct way into the channel. So, it needs to be in that place, and it needs to be that size given its purpose.
 
Now closer up than ever before, in that instant I held the image inside me – “that’s it” I said, “that’s my vital voice”. With a new realisation I could speak with a different timbre, a braver more authentic voice. Sometimes we are gifted an image or form or words (sherpa was to become another such for me) that speaks to us in a way that is instantly transformational. We are taken across a threshold to a place of certainty, a big Yes!.
 
These moments and gifts are giving conscious awareness and form to our unique transformational proposition in life. They are naming and sighting that which sits at the centre of our being and that we simply have to be faithful to, because to do otherwise would mean we are not living our unique and distinctive life. Spiritual teachers talk of this experience and knowing being akin to discovering our own personal myth, or the realisation of our mythopoetic identity (e.g. here).
 
Whatever way we describe it or experience it, I have found little value in deconstructing its meaning. I have adopted the practice of apprenticing myself to it. I come back to that image, and moreover the sensation it evokes time and again. I often find myself inquiring “what is the obelisk asking of me now?”.
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A foundational leadership model - 6 Critical Leadership Capacities

30/1/2019

 
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​These ideas were developed along with my good friend and colleague Tony McGuire. In this paper we introduce the idea of leadership capacity, offering a foundational model of leadership and the critical capacities needed to successfully navigate strategic inflection points.

The 6 Capacities of Leadership framework helps leaders and teams understand and develop those key inner traits and outer action abilities essential to taking an organisation from where it is today, to where you want it to be tomorrow. 


Click on the link below to download the paper and to use the mini self-assessment:

 
6 Critical Leadership Capacities

Discovering Self, Leadership and Service

5/12/2014

 

I've had the great good fortune to discover who I am and what I love doing. My sense of self, of who I am, and what's possible has transformed. I love seeing more of who people are, and their potential. Transformation comes from uncovering the wonder of who we really are, and fully expressing our potential.
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National Geographic
Finding and shifting towards a sense of purpose, progressing towards a capacity for authentic leadership may not be a simple linear activity. The latest top 5 or top 10 “must haves” for success simply don’t capture the dynamic, psychological, and often conflicting experiences that many people work through. My own experience, and what I've witnessed in many clients, is more complex, more multi-dimensional.

In the attached paper I set out a framework of what I’ve seen many times, suggesting some of the key development areas to consider, and some of the major challenges, that if addressed will lead to realised potential.

I offer elements of a map – not a set of directions, but a survey of orientation and navigation points, examples of what I and others have found important. These could illuminate the territory you may find yourself in, allowing you to navigate your own path, to uncover your own answers, to be the expert in your own life.

I hope this is useful to you in understanding some of the difficulties and obstacles you might be facing, in overcoming your own hindrances, and in guiding you towards the resources you want to focus on.


Spirals, Edges and Traverses

How Do I Find My Purpose?

27/8/2014

 
“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”      Joseph Campbell
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When clients ask me “how do I find my purpose?” I tend to have mixed reactions. It’s a joy to see that realisation, that awakening in someone, looking for a bigger sense of themselves, their path in the world, their pathway to bliss. It’s a privilege to be with a person at that time.

And often the question comes with the expectation of and answer laid out as a set of guidelines, or rules. “Follow these steps, in this order, and you can be sure to find your purpose”.


My experience is simply that it doesn't work like that, there are no guidelines. We each have to find our own path. That’s the point, it’s your own path, nobody else’s.

Exploring and embracing the awareness that the question reveals is a great place to be at first. Then rather than force an answer, a linearly driven result, let the journey begin, take what seems to be a first step (despite the inevitable trepidation), be aware of resistances that are the ego not wanting to let go (this is a journey of self, and the ego doesn't like that), and be open to guidance and synchronistic opportunities.

That are however a few things that seem to help people get a sense of what they’re looking for. Again these are not steps along a predestined map, they are simply suggestions for exploration. These questions are best explored in a place where you’re relaxed, comfortable, at ease with yourself and the world. A place where you can be quiet and think and feel. Maybe in your favourite spot in the garden, on the beach, in the woods; maybe with your favourite poetry, or art, or music.

Take a look at the questions below and consider those that resonate. Don’t force it, don’t feel you have to answer them all, don’t answer at all, just consider and notice what comes. Having a notebook or journal or sketchbook to hand at these times is useful.

  • What did you love to do as a child; what was it about that, what was at the heart of it? (get to the underlying structure or driving force of the experience).

  • Who were your idols and hero's; what was it about them or what they did? (again, think about the underlying structure)

  • What writing, poetry, art, craft, or music do you love, and what signs might this offer?

  • Look over your life, major milestones and significant events. What themes and patterns do you see? What good decisions did you make, and why?

  • What are your strong intelligences - artistic, musical, mathematical, scientific, athletic, spiritual, empathetic, …?

  • Notice the call of the question you’re asking and the potential that lies beyond the threshold.

  • What do your mentors and guides notice in you, what potential do they say they see? (caution - this needs to be in service of you and your potential, not their unfulfilled lives).

  • At the end of your time in this world, what is that you want to be known for, what will your contribution have been?

  • As you are remembered in the imaginary “book of life” what do you want to be written? (just 3 sentences, 15 words or less each).

  • If your purpose was wrapped up in a song or slogan that you could sing or say every day, 365 days a year, what would it be?

  • You have the chance for a 15 minute slot on the “world microphone” that broadcasts simultaneously to the whole world – what would you say?

  • Try completing your personal Purpose statement – “I serve the Purpose of …”

I’d love to know how you get on, what questions were most useful to you, how you see your purpose. Here is a link to My Purpose, and to the great essay by Jospeph Jaworski Destiny and the Leader.

Leadership Sunscreen

2/8/2014

 
Wear Sunscreen is the common name of an essay written as a potential commencement speech by Mary Schmich, and published in a June 1997 Chicago Tribune column titled "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young". The text, giving a series of general advice intended to live a happier life and avoid common frustrations, spread massively via viral email, often erroneously attributed to author Kurt Vonnegut as an actual commencement speech he would have given at the MIT. The essay became the basis for a successful spoken word song released in 1998 by Baz Luhrmann, "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)", also known as the Sunscreen Song. The song itself inspired numerous parodies.   source

The Mary Schmich original starts with these words:
Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.

I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt. Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:  

Wear sunscreen.   
                                                                                               source

Inspired by this I've been developing over the years observations from clients and others on what makes them great, what is it  that they do consistently that results in great leadership presence and performance, for them and for those they have the privilege to lead.  

I love the models from:

  • Peter Senge on the Learning  Organisation in The V Discipline (Personal Mastery; Shared Vision; Mental Models; Team Learning; Systems Thinking).
  • from Steve Jobs wonderful approach in his Stanford Commencement Speech (Google it).
  • Jim Collins model in Good to Great (Level 5 Leadership; First Who … then What; Confront the Brutal Facts; The Hedgehog Concept; A Culture of Discipline; Technology Accelerators; The Flywheel).
  • Martin Kalungu-Banda from Leading Like Madiba (Cultivate a deep sense of awe for human beings; Allow yourself to be inspired by the giftedness of other people; Grow your courage; 'Go and preach the Gospel' Where necessary, use words; Create your own brand of leadership; Practice humility; Learn to live with the Madiba paradox; Surprise your opponents by believing in them; Celebrate life; Know when and how to make yourself replaceable).
My current list follows; perhaps some of it resonates:
1. Keep in mind The Integral Leadership Equation:

      HOW should WHO lead [motivate/manage/teach/influence, etc.]
      WHOM to do WHAT for WHICH people [culture/group, etc.] living WHERE?

2. Develop Leadership Presence
    • being mindful, showing vulnerability, humility
    • let go of the need to control; choosing to serve
3. Clarity of Purpose; Discipline of Action,
    • start with Why; map out and story the trajectory
    • be precise about goals and declare them
4. Values and Behaviours
    • being very clear about the values that underpin and give life to what you believe in
    • expressing them in short, clear sentences, that go beyond cliché to give a real sense of what matters and why?
    • seeking out and endorsing the behaviours that follow from, and embody these values; rooting out the contrary taboos
5. Develop Systems thinking and work at a Systems level
    • meet the people and the system in their map of the world, in their value set
    • moving from working at a reactive/problem stance to a creative/outcome stance
    • harness the leverage points (gas pedals); resolve structural conflicts (brake pedals)
6. Listen to understand
    • perceptions and organisational need
    • maximise strengths and address ineffective behaviours and fatal flaws7.
7. Build Agency and Capacity; Hire the best people you can
    • individuals who seek to advance the organisation
    • those who are highly self-actualised and who possess strong dialogue skills
    • seek out and embrace oppositional views
    • know what you don't know and can't do - and what great looks like8.
8. Learn and Collaborate
    • learn through action and experience
    • hang out with paradox
    • collaborate over individual performance
9. Develop foresight
    • to know the unknowable; to see the unseen
    • when and when not to make decisions
    • how you make your best decisions
10. Become a master of dealing with new, changed, chaotic, crisis situations
    • be able to deep dive to understand what is going on and make connections at the coal face
    • be able to rapidly come up again to the strategic view and provide direction and leadership
What's your own Leadership Sunscreen List?  What practices will you adopt to discover and build great leadership?
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    That and This is my occasional thoughts and blog spot for reflections and questions that I hope prove useful. I'll also use this section to flag a variety of other resources that have helped and inspired me. Enjoy!

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