Cultivating Leaders
‘Tis the season of giving and receiving. Although gift-givers may have thoughtful intentions, it’s rare that we receive a gift that speaks to our heart – that leaves us feeling truly seen, understood, and appreciated.
With this Holiday Edition, we offer a way to end the year ceremoniously, with heart and meaning.
You may want to grab a notebook or blank sheet of paper (electronic or old-fashioned) [Read more...]
(This post may look a little long because it’s packed with juicy quotes and ideas for you to put into practice.)
Dr. Jekyll
Most of us like to think we’re good people and that, if put in an unethical or dangerous situation, we’d do the right, noble thing. We claim assuredly that if given power, we’d wield it fairly; or that we’d call the police if we saw someone getting abused.
Perhaps.
But study after troubling study shows that the majority of us, when put in certain difficult circumstances, would act in ways we’d later be ashamed of. The truth is, while on the fringes of society we can talk about saints and sociopaths, we are all capable of good and evil.
Mr. Hyde
I had the pleasure of listening to Philip Zimbardo at a recent Neuroleadership Conference. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about good and evil. While you may not recognize his name, you’re probably familiar with his infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment where normal, healthy people cast as guards became sadistic authoritarians, while those cast as prisoners became hopeless and traumatized. The 2-week simulation experiment was cut short after just 6 days.
People aren’t born heroes. Our brains run on a 100,000-year-old operating that errs on the side of self-protection and suspicion. Scientists literally refer to it as negativity bias. Put in a threatening situation, our brain makes saving ourselves top priority.
While it may not be our default nature to act in others’ best interest, we can retrain ourselves. We can build a heroic brain and become the person we’d like to be — the person we claim to be. And when we act heroically, we improve our home environment, work environment, and communities. In essence, we improve the lives of everyone we touch, including our own.
Here are some essential hero-building steps: [Read more...]
Dia de Los Muertos
On this Day of the Dead (aka All Souls Day), I celebrate another birthday.
I love my birthday.
I often marvel when people lament their birthdays. It’s not that I don’t understand where they might be coming from. I don’t romanticize growing older. I know that birthdays can remind us that we’re drawing closer to our death. But that’s true of every moment, and you don’t hear people complaining every 5 minutes that they’re closing in on death.
Reflecting on why I might have a somewhat unusual context about aging, I recall my Grandma Dori’s frequent saying about birthdays: “It sure beats the alternative.”
My context is influenced not just by my family, by my own health history which has a bit of a Benjamin Button quality about it so far. I began life needing to have my hip rebuilt. At age 6 my vision got bad enough to warrant thick glasses. At 22, I was in an car accident and broke my back, which led to over a decade of pain and sciatica. At 27, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis.
So, while my contemporaries were thriving physically in their 20s, I was trying to heal physical conditions often associated with old age.*
Seeking treatment for these conditions led me to a world I would have never sought had I been pain free. As a result, I discovered healers and treatments–Western, Eastern, Ancient, and High Tech–that many people don’t know exist. And I discovered this truth: [Read more...]
“What are you pretending not to know?”
- Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations
Cracks in the Foundation
My house in Oakland was built in 1924 on a steep downward slope. When someone would ask if my house had a bolted foundation, I’d say something like “Oh, I’m sure it must” and would change the subject. I liked to assume that, since a lot of renovations had taken place before we moved in, someone must have fixed it. The fact that someone had actually sealed off any access to the foundation made it easier for me to ignore it: can’t assess what you can’t see.
For a while, this avoidance strategy saved me money. Then, a crack in the foundation revealed itself. And over the course of a year, with a few minor earthquakes, and good ol’ gravity, the crack grew. It grew until one day, I decided to pull my head out of the sand and bring in an expert to tell me what I had.
Expert Deniers
We humans are really good at ignoring cracks in all sorts of foundations: the body that we keep pushing until we suffer a debilitating injury or illness; the resentment that we allow to fester until the relationship is beyond repair; the key employee that we ignore until they quit and sign up with the competition; the waistline that grows until we can’t button our skinny pants…then our fat pants.
The laundry…
Just in Time [Read more...]
Are you in the zone? You know..that place where you feel energized. Where you like going to work, where you feel a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, and gratitude. If you’re not living there, how far away are you? Around the block? Next County? Neighboring planet? For managers, how would your employees answer?
When we ask program participants and clients about times when they felt in the zone, nearly all can name one. Barely anyone claims to there now. And survey research supports this observation. According to a Gallup poll, more than 70 percent of people are disengaged from their job.
There are several key ingredients to peak performance. Knowing them can make it easier to diagnose what’s missing.
Recipe at-a-Glance: One part S (Strengths) to four parts P (Passion, Purpose, Preferences, Progress).
One Part ‘S’
1. Strengths:
In every peak moment, you will find that you are doing what you do best. Strengths may be learned skills or innate abilities. Either way, they are things that you excel at. Sometimes it’s hard to notice your own strength because it comes easily to you. What comes easily to you – public speaking, playing music, interpersonal skills, listening, remembering and using data – is terrifyingly difficult for others. Where you exhibit grace, others stumble or exert more effort for the same or less outcomes.
Ways to determine strengths:
Four Parts P [Read more...]
Conversations for Brilliance
Tools to Help You Inspire
Extraordinary Results
From Yourself and Others
