Ideals in Motion

The Language of Complaint vs. Commitment

I am currently in the middle of a fascinating new book (How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work) that has raised an intriguing question about competing commitments. Without going into a lot of detail that is beyond the scope of this posting one of my biggest takeaways is that complaints rooted in frustration, disappointment and anger at a situation area wonderful gateways into discovering something that is at the root of putting my ideals in motion - specifically, a commitment to something that is often entirely out of my awareness. I will only complain about something because I am committed to the value or importance of something else. 

What's interesting about this is that the language of complaint is, from an energetic and possibility standpoint, so fundamentally different than the language of commitment. The power here is in realizing that language creates reality; that culture lives in language; and that culture will "eat strategy for breakfast" (in the words of Peter Drucker).

We can rail and complain all we want about the unfortunate and unfair vicissitudes of life. Many will stay stuck here.  An alternative is to learn to recognize and leverage the power inherent in our disappointments when we see them as window into what we truly are committed to having, doing or being in life.

Sustaining Success

Relative to sustaining success over a lifetime I've defined sustainability in previous posts as being about developing the competencies necessary in order to continuously start over. In a chapter I've recently written for a new anthology with Steven Covey, Ken Blanchard and Brian Tracy entitled Discover Your Inner Strength I go into some detail about these core competencies. In this and subsequent posts I want to offer these competencies up for your consideration. Let me know what you think.

One thing that I've experienced to be true is that before I can begin considering what competencies to develop I have to consider my and/or my organization's capacity to develop. Capacity has to do with the breadth and depth of resources I have available such as energy, skills, education, emotional intelligence, and time view to name just a few. It's important to understand that these (and other) resources are the enablers of the core competencies. While I obviously do not need an infinitely deep and broad capacity "pool" I do need some capacity in order to develop. The (not inconsequential) good news is that from wherever I begin, capacity is expanded as I work on developing the sustainability competencies.

The five core competencies necessary for a sustainably successful life are:

1. Self-awareness
2. Courage
3. Discernment
4. Practice
5. Inclusion

In upcoming posts I'll write about each of these competencies one at a time and expand upon it with practical examples of development strategies that are relevant to both individuals and organizations. I look forward to your comments as I open up this dialog.

The Conversation is the Relationship...

I just finished working with a client's retail team. A major part of our work together focused on defining their vision for the future and on their current sense of identity - literally, the questions "who are we" and "where do we belong". It goes without saying that the level of emotional engagement exhibited by their people relative to both of these areas will be crucial to their utlimate success. Of course, the question is how to achieve high levels of emotional engagement.

One way is to create the space for an intentional conversation. A focused conversation that places people in relationship with both as well as with each other. It's our position that the conversation about the company's vision and about the team's identity needs to be structured so that it becomes the relationship rather than being about the relationship.

By making time for conversational exploration it becomes possible for the individual's voice to be heard; for their assumptions to be aired and vetted; for the ownership of the vision to begin to transfer, and for a common identity to be forged. In being allowed to have a voice we create the probability of emotional engagement. Simply put, it's impossible for me to be passionate about another's vision...I can only be passionate about mine. It's with my vision that I have a relationship. It's with my vision that I have ongoing conversations.

It's the connections...

Our lives are made up of connections. Connections with people, jobs and organizations as well as connections with all kinds of material things – our cars, houses, boats, clothes and other possessions. The most important of these connections is our connection with our self. It is not a stretch at all to say that the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our connections. We define ourselves through our connections.

It used to be that deep, sustained, rich connections developed because we were far more stationary. Not much changed; the pace of life was slower. Today, that’s not likely. In my adult life I’ve lived in four countries and in 10 cities in the U.S. on both coasts. Yesterday I was in phone and email conversations with friends and colleagues in Japan, Finland, China, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Portland and here at home in Seattle. It can be hard work maintaining these connections. To do less jeopardizes the quality of my life.

Am I connected to my ideals? Are they connected to me? How do we create and maintain connections in today’s fast paced and rapidly changing world? The book “Women Connected: A Session-by-Session Coaching Guide for Women’s Groups” is an answer to these questions. It is written in a way that acknowledges that the quality of life is a function of the quality of one’s connections. It is written in a way that provides tools and resources designed to forge and enhance connections – with both my external world and my internal world. Pick it up today by going to www.womenconnected.com.

Superman naked...

I was working the other day with a group of people and we were exploring the nature of success. Specifically, we were considering the somatic implications of whether we as individuals and organizations have a "body" that can accept success when it appears. Success in any field comes with a significant amount of visibility - is our "body" comfortable being seen. Success requires an energy investment in terms of both generation and reception - is the "body" large enough for this. The "body" needs to be a container that can support success.

In the course of our exploring success it was mentioned that Superman was the only super hero that does not need to put on a costume to articulate his power. Indeed, he is the only super hero that purposely puts on a costume to hide his power. Taking this notion and applying it to many of our lives the "costume" is a metaphor for our personalities and the many habits we engage in daily that form our way of being in our lives. These become like a suit of clothes that hides our true power.

The challenge with having ideals to live into is that to do so is often thought of as something only the heroic can do. We often struggle with finding the right "suit" to put on that will empower us. The questions we need to be asking ourselves are not how we change our personalities or our habits. Rather, it is more useful to ask what purpose does this suit I’m currently wearing serve? What suit can I take off knowing that I can always put it back on again. What does taking this particular suit off make possible?

Too Many Balls to Juggle?

There is a lot going on in my life…where do I hold it all? How do I manage to keep what’s important to me alive and in focus when there are other things that are equally important and equally urgent? They all need attending to…they all require my active involvement.

In my body there is a lot going on…energy, tension, emotions. All of it attached to what else is going on. How do I sort through this so that I have access to all of my body, and all of my emotions, and all of my intellect when I need it.

Compartmentalizing. That’s one strategy – and it’s effective to a point. The challenge is to make the walls of the compartments porous. If they become rigid and impenetrable I will lose something important. I need the resources behind those walls for other things as well. I need all of the "me's" that are behind those walls.

I guess the question is less about having too many balls to juggle and more about making sure I know how to keep the walls porous. Keeping the walls porous – this will allow me to keep my life alive while juggling.

Truly, ideals in motion...

Today, dozens of Amish neighbors turned out to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.

Rather than condem and vow revenge these remarkable people did the most difficult thing of all...they lived their ideals of forgiveness and love.

Passion Leading to Performance...

What is it about how I view myself and my place in life that empowers the reasons and stories in my life? Especially the ones I use to explain and justify why I don't have what I say I want?

What am I passionate about? This is my identity. It is my "ideal" life. It is the life born from the imago cells of my core (“imago” is the word used for the final & perfect stage of an insect after metamorphosis, e.g. a butterfly) that define who I am and where I belong.

Give me a reason why you weren't able to accomplish something and I'll find for you someone, somewhere, who could accomplish what you didn't. It's not the reason that holds me back. It's the reason's expression as an artifact of something more fundamental. What is it about how I see myself - how I see my place in life - that validates the reason?

Taken as simply one example of the myriad content pieces of my life the reason is given meaning and relevance by the context that frames it. This context is my sense of identity.

The significance of this is that everyone is in some way passionate about their sense of identity. I can't not be. This passion leads to very specific performance characteristics and, eventually, to the result that is my life.

What am I passionate about?

Life in the stew...

I've just returned again from China. I am continuously amazed by how similar disparate people really are. I've lived in Japan, Australia, Europe and the east coast, the south, the middle and the west coasts of America. I've worked on every continent except Antarctica. As the peoples and economies of the world become more inter-dependent and as communication becomes more instantaneous we as a species can no longer afford the luxury of holding onto beliefs that we are different from one another. The economic policies as well as the politics and religious dogmas that espouse exclusion, that foster illusions of being "chosen" in some fashion prevent us from recognizing our similarities. If I am continuously sorting for differences I will never recognize (or be able to capitalize on) our similarities. I'm afraid that we as a "civilized" and "advanced" species are doomed to continue fueling an accelerating rush to a suffocating stagnation unless we can begin leading with our ideals.

I'm intersted in what would happen if God could raise his or her voice loudly enough (or perhaps soften it enough?) to be heard and asked humankind a simple question - "What do you want?"

I doubt if the answers returned would be "I want to live a life of fear", "I want to hate my neighbor", "I want to live a life dominated by another", "I want to feel inadequate", "I want to hate", or "I want to be reviled and hated". Experiences I've had during almost three decades of travel and living around the world suggest to me that exactly the opposite answers would be given.

Our ideals are universal; they are shared and connect rather than separate us. We as a species need to select leaders that honor this fact; we as individuals can't afford to live our lives in denial of this truth.

A great question to end each day with is to ask myself how each person I encountered today felt about themselves while they were in my presence. As a practice, living my life so as to answer this question in a way I can be proud of can begin the process of truly living my ideals.

What's in a name?

When it is consciously evoked such things as identity, relationship, place, and possibly even sentience.

Who we are is defined not just by our sense of self. It's a function of how we are known by others and how we come to identify ourselves - our place - within the networks of others with whom we live. This is why some recent research data about dolphins is so interesting.

The new research expands on previous knowledge long known to scientists that dolphins' whistle calls include repeated information thought to be their names. CNN reports that the new research indicates that "bottlenose dolphins can call each other by name when they whistle, making them the only animals besides humans known to recognize such identity information." Even more compelling, Laela Sayigh, one of three authors of a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that two dolphins may refer to a third by the third animal's name. They know themselves, they know their place in the relationship network of which they are a member. We are not the only self-aware animals on the planet. Similar information has long been known of primates - although not to this extent. Some chimps have learned very extensive vocabularies and can communicate quite consciously with humans using hand signals. The ability of another species to consciously reference another within the context of self is critically important to us as a species.

Our ideals as a species are too often predicated on an assumption that we are the uber species on the planet. We view the world through this filter of dominance and infallablity. We act on the environment with impunity, we interact with other species as if our lives were the only lives that mattered. It is worth considering that any particular culture can only be understood by someone outside of it - a neutral observer, unaffected by prejudice or belief. In a wonderful book I read years ago (Ishmael by Daniel Quinn), the reader is able to see our culture through the eyes of just such an observer. In order to be sustainable my ideals - our ideals - need to be seen through many eyes. What's in a name? Perhaps our future.

Prelude to Opportunity...

Often times I am asked by leaders I am coaching how to reconcile apparent conflicts between the values and ideals of their company and apparent and intransigent market realities. Rather than have these seeming conflicts be experienced as an either/or dilemma there is another alternative.

I was speaking with a client today who related an incident where an emerging conflict of values with one of their clients resulted in something other than a breakdown. One of the core values of my client's firm is environmental sustainability. A new client of theirs was asking them to assist with the development of a new product that would result in an enormous use of oil to transport critical raw material used in the product. Because of concerns about environmental impact (contributing to global warming through the burning of huge amounts of oil in transportation) the initial reaction of the project manager at my client's firm was to tell their new client that the firm wouldn't be able to work with them on this project. The dilemma this posed is that their client would likely retain another firm to do the work, my client's company would lose a significant amount of revenue as well as likely lose the client for other projects, and they would not have any positive movement toward one of their ideals of helping create environmentally sustainable business practices.

The solution as it was related to me was my client requesting that his project manager go back to the client and invite a conversation to explore alternative ways of developing the product that would not involve the use of this particular raw material (which is a definite but not obvious option). This would negate the need for oceanic shipping and would thereby provide this developing product with a new and previously unrecognized niche with "green" consumers. Rather than the value (sustainability) linked to the realization of of an ideal (environmental responsibility) being the source of polarization and breakdown it becomes the catalyst for exploring new ways of working together and of developing a uniquely new product.

Leaders cause movement. Effective leaders use values as one of the core mechanisms for doing this. A seeming conflict with a company's espoused values in the face of market "realities" can be used as a prelude to opportunity - the opportunity to keep the organization's ideals moving and an opportunity to challenge people to live into the ideals that we say are important to us.

So, what's the purpose again?

What's so important about knowing your purpose in life? Maybe the following examples will help clarify this:

• Imagine that you're playing golf. What's the purpose of golf? If you say to put the ball in the hole you'd be wrong. If that was the purpose the game could be over fairly quickly. No, putting the ball in the hole is one of the goals of golf - as is grooving your swing, breaking par or beating your partners. Goals are not the same as a purpose. So, what's the purpose of golf?
  
• Imagine that you're an archer. What's the purpose of archery? If you say to hit the bullseye with the arrow you would again be wrong. If that was the purpose of archery why would one stand so far away from the target? Again, hitting the bullseye is one of the goals of archery but it is NOT the purpose of archery. So, what's the purpose of archery?
  
• Imagine that you're given a life to live. What's the purpose of that life? If you say it is to make money (or be successful, or be a doctor, etc.) you'd be wrong one more time. If that was the purpose of life there would be far more people on the planet with money than without - just the opposite of what we have today. Making money is a goal one can have in life but it is not the purpose of a life. So, what's the purpose of life?

What is it that gives the goals we set meaning? What is it that keep me coming back again and again? What is it that makes it possible for even the smallest of acts to bring joy and fulfillment?

Purpose is not a goal to be achieved. Purpose is not provided by the "rules" of the game. Purpose is created by thoughtful individuals living with and asking the question "for the sake of what" am I pursuing this goal? Purpose is what the attainment of a goal may eventually make possible. Purpose is what I greet the dawn with each day. Without it my life has no meaning. With it all is possible - and any of what I have is fulfilling. What's the purpose of your life?

What a strange machine man is!

You fill him with bread, wine, fish and radishes, and out of him come sighs, laughter and dreams.  - Nikos Kazantzakis

I am my conversations (Part 2)

In one recent day I was on phone calls, IM exchanges and face to face conversations with individuals in Helsinki, Moscow, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Seattle, Istanbul and Portland. In a very real sense I was in each of those places within a time span of no more than an hour - I was truly in more than one place at the same time. This is only possible - me being in more than one place at the same time - if I don't think of myself as defined by my physical being or constrained by traditional understanding of time and space.

When I left the physical conversations I was having did "I" leave? I don't think so. Part of me remained with the other person as a conversational memory - perhaps even as an emotion experienced by the other party. Who am "I" then? For most of us our sense of self is, in large part, informed by and limited to what our physical senses tell us about who we are - I am my body, my feelings and my thoughts. These artifacts of self go with "me" wherever "I" go and where "I" am is where they are. But what if I thought of myself as moving through the world in another way. What if "I" occupied time and space in a different way? What would be my approach to inteacting with others if I thought of myself moving through the world as a conversation.

As a conversation I become the stories others have about me. I become the internal conversations they have about the meaning of my behaviors, my actions, my mood, my words and my spirit. I become the the internal conversation they feel about me. These conversations contain me and they are the raw building blocks used to co-create our futures together. How congruent are these "conversations that I am" with the ideals I hold as valuable? In the beginning there was the "word" and from the word conversations began that created what we have and who we are today.

Think of idealism as the abandonment of practicality...

Descartes got it partially right when he said “I think therefore I am.” I've written in a couple of other postings that what limits me is not who I think I am but who I think I am not. This notion can be taken as a practical way of exploring and understanding the power of containment.

When explaining what I mean by containment I’ve also used the word boundary. I can also use the word context. With either of these synonyms – containment, boundary or context – I’m describing a framework or container that holds the content of my life. This “content” includes not only the physical or material content. It also includes the content of my being…such things as my behavior, my language patterns, my way of viewing the world, my beliefs, and my values and mores. These “things” are highly personal and their meaning, definition and power are determined by the frame in which they reside. It is the frame – the containment field, the boundary or the context – that is of interest for our growth and for our capacity for keeping our ideals in motion. My ideals are made up of a lot of content. Viewed from the vantage point of today, my ideals may seem impractical or even impossible. For them to become part of my reality something has to change.

I’ll give you a simple example of why paying attention to our containment fields are so crucial. About 14 years ago my wife and I were in the market for a new house. We’d recently been married and the houses we each owned weren’t suitable, for a variety of reasons, for the life we were creating together. Being prudent and fiscally responsible we (read “I”) quickly established the maximum price we could afford to pay and we (read "she") set out searching. That’s when reality reared its head. What our ideal was and what our budget was were seemingly as much of a mismatch as oil and water. The easy and practical thing to do was lower our expectations. Interestingly, for both of us that option wasn’t acceptable. This resulted in a bit of a dilemma and set in motion a fascinating process that resulted in me shifting my sense of identity.

Identity is one of the major containment fields for human beings. It is my sense of who I am and it's that sense that determines what content is practical and “appropriate” for me. By not giving up on our ideal I forced a change in my sense of who I am. I expanded; I stretched the containment boundary of my identity. Up to that point a portion of my identity was defined by me as including a certain income level. It was a comfortable level but it didn’t allow for the experience I desired to create with this new house. Buying the house wasn't practical. It was a huge stretch. I had no idea how we were going to pay for it - I just knew that it wouldn't be a problem. Expanding the boundary of my identity allowed me to include more of what my ideal represented. I challenged who I thought I wasn't.

Here's our challenge as a society: shift the question we've all lived with - "who do we think we are?"

The question we need to be asking is "who do we think we're not?"