Tag: authentic leadership course

Refresh

I hope that the people who interacted with us during Leadership Week both at our workshops or the many that I am grateful passed by this blog and the Centre’s site took something away.  If they did, I hope that something grows. Discovering my leadership happens at many levels as I was reminded again today by my friend Dr Vikram Murthy.  We can now see on MRI examinations much of what we previously estimated through observations and testing. It’s a bit like knowing the world is round by looking at it from space. Not that long ago we humans thought it was flat, but slowly the thinking developed and we established that it was, well you know the rest! These developments in Neuroscience are  incredibly exciting. The neuroscientist Sam Harris has put forward the proposition that the determination of our values can also be from a scientific basis. More on all this another day.

Last week was both exhilarating and tiring. Exhilarating as I watched eyes opened to values, authenticity and leadership discovery. These were eyes that might not ordinarily get to go on a course. Tiring because, I’m proud to say, I gave it all at our workshops. To do less would have just been work. Add shop to work and I’m away!

I see my diary has another authenticity workshop this week at the ATEM Aotearoa Conference. Fortunately for me I was playing around with the AUT HR system and got myself some leave yesterday (strange but true) and I spent time refreshing.  We all need to refresh and now I’m ready for more.

That we can continually discover things about ourselves and our leadership is the most exciting part of it all. When we think it’s done and dusted, then I reckon that’s when we’re done and dusted. But today I feel like it’s just starting again.

Bring it on!

The real story of Bill and me

After a fortnight which included our Authentic Leadership Course and two workshops on Authentic Leadership I was ready for lunch today with the Finance Minister. That sounds very grand for a minion like me and yes, there were about 120 other people there. But sometimes you just get lucky and I arrived in my little panel-beaters loan car about the time the big silver BMW arrived and we walked in together.

Not being one to let an opportunity go amiss, he Continue reading “The real story of Bill and me” →

A strange impact

On Thursday I was driving to work on Puhinui Road, Manukau.  A young woman was tailgating me and when I stopped at a pedestrian crossing behind another vehicle, she didn’t. Well, actually she did by driving into the back of my car. I felt like I was in one of those slow-motion TV adverts for car safety as my head was pushed forward and then lashed back with considerable force into the head restraint.

It hurt and gave me Continue reading “A strange impact” →

Lighting a torch

Tim and I went shopping this weekend in preparation for our 6 days camping on the Essentially Men father/son retreat. We bought polyprop tops, camping lights, a new pocket knife (as instructed) for Tim and torches.

My good friend Nigel phoned from Christchurch this afternoon to suggest that one of the most valuable pieces of equipment we could bring was a head lamp: “when it’s dark on camp it’s dark, so you can do whatever you want with a torch strapped to your head”.

This retreat has been a long-time coming and Tim has been very brave in agreeing to go into the unknown with me and a group of other guys.

I’m excited and apprehensive. My hope this week is that Tim sees the way forward from boy to young man. It’ll be big for me too I’m sure.

We’ve got those head lamps ready.

See you in a week.

Stephen