Ideals in Motion

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?