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3 Leadership Questions for the New Year

1/7/2018

 
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January 7, 2018
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #61
From the Greenbelt of Boise Idaho, Sunny Skies


Leader: a person who leads.
 
Lead: to guide on a way or direct on a course.
 
Leadership: the capacity to lead.
– Merriam-Webster.com
 
We become what we practice.
– Richard Strozzi-Heckler
 


As a Leadership Coach, I hear a lot of questions about leadership. Here are three I find helpful to reflect upon.
 

1.  Who is a Leader? 
We often assign the word “leader” to someone with a title or position, or someone having great influence during a moment in time. Yet, the definition of a leader is “a person that leads”, and to lead is “to guide on a way, or direct on a course” (Merriam-Webster.com).
 
In this context, we all lead our own lives, and influence those around us by guiding or directing as we fulfill roles with our families and friends, teams and organizations, and communities. Interdependent, we’re always leading and following each other. We choose our course and accept ways of being, consciously and unconsciously each day. Our opportunity is to claim our role as leaders and consciously choose when and how we lead and follow.
 
We can consciously choose our own direction, even in dire circumstances. As Holocaust survivor, neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl shared, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
 
Consider, when and how am I choosing to lead and follow?
 

2.  What are we creating? 
As events arise, our biology reacts quickly checking for intention, is this a threat to my survival, imagined or real? Our predictive brains create interpretations based on patterns of memory and experience. We then react to what we perceive with the conditioned responses embedded in our bodies.

Our unconscious capacity to react reinforces the same patterns, and can stand in the way of creating better results, new outcomes, and a brighter future. Our opportunity is to pause between stimulus and reaction to consider what we want to create.

To create requires clear intentionality, and the presence to make mindful choices in the moment. To paraphrase one of my teachers, Kimbal Anderson, “it takes great courage and focused attention to create with each of the mundane events of daily life.” It is easier to just react to what arises without thinking about what we’re creating.
 
Consider, what is it I want to create in the situations I experience?
 

3.  Why develop our capacity to lead? 
We are incredibly adaptive beings, and we entrain to the communities in which we live, learn and work. This is why “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
 
To paraphrase Einstein, “we can’t solve today’s problems with the same level of leadership that created them.” Our future and that of those who follow us, depends upon our evolving to greater levels of leadership.
 
To develop new capacities, we must engage with teachers and communities that practice the skills we want to develop. Developing mastery requires refined practice with the guidance of someone who has gone before us, and who is able to teach and show us the way. It requires us to consciously evolve our practice of leadership.
 
Consider, where and how do I consciously evolve my practice of leadership?
 
I work with teams and leaders to create better results through the conscious practice of leadership, cultivating resilient effectiveness and compassionate action. Let’s create a better future today!

Choosing to Focus our Attention

12/28/2017

 
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December 28, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #60
From the Rincon, Ventura, CA, Warmth of Sunrise 
 

For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
– William James
 
Each of us chooses, by our ways of attending to things, the universe we inhabit and the people we encounter…The reality that appears to us is not so much what’s out there as it is those aspects of the world we have focused on.
– B. Alan Wallace
 
 
 The time and space between Christmas and New Year’s Day is for me a wonderful time for family and reflection. As I reflect on events of the past month, I’m increasingly aware that what I focus on is what I perceive.
 
I spent a lot of energy focused on the Santa Paula fire where my parents and much of my family lives. Being here, it is a common topic of conversation. The conversations lead to a story in my mind full of interpretations that shape my perspective. It seems more raw and real as I personally connect to places where I grew up and see and hear what my family has experienced. It is possible to spiral in on the anxieties and fears that arise.
 
Yet, when I step back from the story, I can take a different perspective. Here, as in many places of the world this year, a tragic event occurred. People responded as best they knew how, to deal with a dramatically new reality, and are now taking steps to rebuild and move forward in their lives.
 
Trusting in others, and compassionately caring for those in need, has in many ways strengthened our family and the communities we live in. We’ve reconnected with what we care about and what we share together.
 
We each have an opportunity to choose what we focus on in each moment. I find it helpful to consider:
  • What do I care about in this situation?
  • What outcomes would I like to see?
  • What is my intention as I engage with those around me?
 
I work with teams and leaders to create better results through the conscious practice of leadership cultivating resilient effectiveness and compassionate action. Let’s create a better future today!

Accelerate Growth with a Coaching Culture

12/3/2017

 
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December 3, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #57
From the Greenbelt of Boise, Idaho, First snow in town
 

The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.

– Harvey S. Firestone
 
From a developmental perspective, real growth requires some qualitative shift, not just in knowledge, but in perspective or way of thinking. Growing is when the form of our understanding changes; we often call this “transformation.”
– Jennifer Garvey Berger
 
Last week I co-facilitated a program for twelve leaders, preparing them to become internal coaches for their organization. It was an intense three days filled with new knowledge and extensive practice, enabling growth and development for each of us.
 
We built on a growth mindset, and shifted fixed interpretations to see strengths and resourcefulness. We transformed our own abilities while supporting the growth of each other. We fostered a community of practice to carry into building a coaching culture in their organization.  
 
Our knowledge and use of coaching has shifted significantly over the past twenty years. Once known for helping individuals with “performance problems”, coaching is now used to develop people and team effectiveness. Organizations are increasingly expecting all their leaders to coach, to accelerate collaboration, innovation and growth.
 
Leaders are being asked to make a qualitative shift from telling others what to do, to developing people and teams to create better results together.  It requires a transformation to let go of old habits, and build new capacities to guide others.
 
When overwhelmed by today’s complex challenges it is easy to be triggered into reacting with old habits. Our opportunity lies in what Viktor Frankl articulated, “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
 
What are you choosing to do?
 
I work with teams and leaders to create better results through the conscious practice of leadership. Let’s create a better future today!

It's about Them (not me)

8/27/2017

 
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August 27, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #49
From the Greenbelt of Boise, Idaho, Quiet summer evening
 
 
Everything alive has cognition and uses it to determine what to notice. We humans, with higher mental powers, complexify the process of cognition. We see the world through a well-constructed, tightly controlled personality.  This is not a good thing: It reduces our cognitive capacity. Instead of being conscious, we are self-conscious.
– Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose to Be? (2017).

​I frequently hear, the problem is them. What goes unsaid is, of course it has nothing to do with me.  I find it happens easily and quickly for me. All I need to do, is recall the last time I was surprised by someone cutting in front of me in traffic. I can quickly play the part of "victim" and assign responsibility to the "villain".
 
As human beings, we’re very good at finding what we look for, and overlooking what doesn’t fit our beliefs and sense of ourselves. We all develop coping mechanisms to survive from early childhood. The defenses and strategies of our personality can become like castle walls and moats between ourselves and “others”. It's not about me, it's about them.
 
It is easy for me to look out from my vantage point, see what others did wrong and now need to do, and totally miss how I am part of the situation. Yet that only serves to raise the drawbridge further, reducing my choices and cutting me off from what we need most: connection and a sense of belonging in a community.
 
It helps me to look at the situation from different perspectives. When I feel surprised by someone cutting me off in traffic, I can realize I was not noticing them enough in advance to adapt accordingly.
 
If I go out onto the road thinking only of myself and where I’m going, I’m likely to be surprised. When I approach the road as a shared community resource that helps us all get to where we want to go I have a very different experience.
 
Last week I shared a unique experience with tens of thousands of people in the Idaho mountains watching the solar eclipse. Returning to Boise was challenging as two roads merged, requiring flaggers to alternate who merged when. Traffic was backed up for miles. Yet I found it remarkable that as we repeatedly stopped and started in single file down the two-lane highway, we became a community. Twice in a 15 mile stretch passing lanes were available, and we all stayed in line together.
 
When we are conscious of how interconnected and interdependent we really are, we can realize it is about us, and choose to create a better community together.

When I'm thinking it's about them, I find it helpful to consider:
  • What perspectives am I missing?
  • What part am I playing in the situation?
  • How might it be about us?
 
Let’s widen our perspectives, and create a better future today! 

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    A Clear Confident Leader engages, inspires, and assists people to develop themselves, enabling them to create new possibilities and a better future today.

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