Category: Leadership Development

Take your time

It’s a crazy time of the year – hot, wet today, busy, traffic is mad. And all the time our planet is hurtling through space at 1m km/h (that’s the relative speed of earth around the sun and our galaxy through our universe I think but I digress!). It’s been a busy couple of weeks. After 12 years of waiting, my son Tim had a replacement cornea graft which is promising for his vision. I was surprised how emotional I felt when he went into surgery. It’s been a long time, or felt it, waiting for his eyes to be in good health for the procedure. Before and after the surgery I’ve been helping lead teams develop their charters and learn about themselves. Which takes time.

The charter is usually just the beginning, but it’s a really important beginning, setting the rules of engagement and developing a vision of what the team would like the future to look like. One exercise that was supposed to take 15 minutes yesterday with one group took an hour and a half. You might ask if that mattered? Well yes it did. It mattered a lot that the team went where it needed to, taking the time. At the end of the session, they said that this first part was the most valuable.

Management requires action. Leadership needs patience. We need both but the best actions are those that follow a patient time of leadership. Professor Charles McGhee, Tim’s masterful surgeon who espouses opportunity and optimism on each encounter knows about patience. He knew not to rush in. But when it was time, he showed the best action you could hope for.  Two hours of careful surgery and Tim’s new cornea was in situ. And all around was a medical team who worked as one, including a theatre nurse who was there for Tim in 1995.

Vision for vision.

Stephen

Out and forward

Time has nearly run out on the 4th Authentic Leadership Course with only this afternoon left. It’s one year since us at the Centre for Innovative Leadership ran the first Course and we’ve done lots in-between.  The participants will head out today after a week of experiences that will touch them personally and professionally. And others will notice.

But what of Monday morning at work? Will it be reading emails  and catching up on work from this week? Probably yes.

In stepping out from a deep experience there are often unanswered questions – for some there are more questions than they started with. Stepping out of the old ways and moving forward with new insights and questions will embed changes.

Just like the Authentic Leadership Course. Each time we’ve run it, it’s been new, fresh and different from the last one. Learn from the past, grow, adapt to the new environment and forward we go.

There’s a paradox. If you’re always looking forward, you’ll miss the present. This week we had seven guests join us at different times to share their experiences and insights. We all listened and learned while they were here, in the present. Taking that, adapting to our authentic leadership is leveraging the take-out.

Big hit for me this week: Where you go is in your hands.  I thank our guest Lorraine for that one. Thanks. I’ll take that out and forward. Where to you might ask? Not sure yet, but I’ll decide, that’s for sure.

What are you taking out? And where? You better know.

Stephen

Inside Out

When I hang the clothes on my clothes horse, much to the disdain of any casual observers, they go on the line, like, well they just go there. Often inside out. When it’s all done and dried, then they are sorted and folded. They’re pretty and neat then, you’ll be pleased to know. Ordered.

Being someone how leaves the possibilities open it can mean last minute activities to get ready. Like having slightly wet socks drying on my car’s parcel shelf on the way out to Waitakere Estate yesterday. So at least now I look okay on the outside – well no-one has told me otherwise yet!

Eckhart Tolle tells us about life having an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Outer purpose concerns doing, and is secondary. Inner purpose, on the other hand concerns our Being and is primary. He says  “No matter how active we are, how much effort we make, out state of consciousness creates our world, and if there is no change on that inner lever, no amount of action will make any difference.”

It’s a year today that we started the first Authentic Leadership Course in the same room I am writing this blog. Even more than then, I believe that our authenticity is the key to leadership, organisational and business strength. And happiness. We have well-developed processes, great exercises and exceptional people that work with me. Our participants, like those before them want to make changes. Sometimes quickly. Identification of opportunities and issues early is fantastic and 24 hours into the programme, we’re seeing this already.

But changes happen from the Inside. Start there and change your being. Otherwise, it’s inside out. And you’ll have action, but it’ll be temporary.

We’ll spend the week feeling a bit mixed up at times, a bit disordered and the participants will feel at times that there’s lots to do in such a short time.  But a week of it and we’ll be clean and dry and suddenly, sometime unexpectedly, we’ll crinkle it all out and be ready for action.  

Stephen

Own yourself

I’ve had a busy time the last few weeks and over the next few weeks I have friends staying, the Authentic Leadership Course, my folks up, then Uncle Stan, more programmes and workshop and whew, the year will be almost done.

It could be the reflective mood that Dire Straights Telegraph Road is giving me, but I felt a sense of ownership tonight. Ownership of my own spacetime. It might also be something to do with having a productive afternoon at work, some more opportunities and seeing Tim enjoying his 18th birthday.

It’s not selfish to own yourself. In fact I say it’s selfish not to. If you don’t take care and grow yourself through reflection, enjoying your own thoughts and contemplating what has gone and what is to come (is that reflection!?) then you’re not caring for yourself. That’s selfish as you’re not going to be much good for anyone in your world.

According to psychometric testing and my own work I’m an extrovert. I get my energy from the external world. But I get lots from my internal world – the place where it is just me in my own spacetime.

We notice authentic leadership coming from within. It has that quality of depth and meaning that brings out the best in each of us. The authentic leader has ownership of self. When did you last renew it?

Stephen