Goal Setting (Photo credit: lululemon athletica)

I am really happy about regarding 2012?  What need/ cause will I have served?  What hidden gift has been lying dormant, that this year will have come to the fore?  How do I name those cornerstone attitudes and intentions, so that when things get rough they still pop up in my mind and behaviour?

I am doing pretty well right now working my way through these questions, talking with others with aligned intentions, jotting down my wonderings and doubts, as well as my inspirations and  moments of brilliance!

It is all a bit BIG though!  I came across this very simple article this morning which talks to the fact that we can let our days pass, aiming for those huge goals, yet miss the moments for real presence and connection – which after all are at the heart of our biggest goals.  Here are 5 simple suggestions for small changes or at least areas to attend on a moment by moment basis.   I have plucked them straight out of the original article from BK communique  referencing  Ken Jennings and Heather Hyde’s new book The Greater Goal: Connecting Purpose and Performance 

1. Pick Just One Positive Behavior: Pick one behavior and commit to practice it every day. For instance, if you want to become known as an encourager, find three occasions every day when you see someone doing good work and recognize them for it. Put three coins in your left pocket each day and each time you encourage someone, move the coin from your left pocket to your right pocket.

2. Connect with Just One Colleague: Most jobs, functions and projects in organizations are highly interdependent, but people try to operate as if they weren’t. Select someone who is working on a project with you or working on a project that directly or indirectly impacts you. What power does that person have over your ability to achieve your goals? What power do you have over their outcomes? Talk over how you can help each other reduce effort. Challenge each other to come up with a specific request or offer of help that will make a positive difference in your shared goals.

3. Just Listen to One Person at a Time. All coaching starts with great listening – being really present to the one who is trying to do their very best thinking. Next time a friend asks you to listen about an important decision they’re making, ask them “What do you care most about achieving by making this decision?” Then just listen without interrupting, probe for details, maintain a relaxed and attentive presence, and resist the urge to react or think about your response. The other person will eventually reveal their deeper, greater goals.

4. Have People Share and Trust One at a Time: Sometimes lack of trust occurs simply because people haven’t had the opportunity to share hopes or concerns in a “safe space” – a forum where they won’t be judged negatively for sharing. To build trust at your next work meeting, suggest that you begin with asking each person present to state the greater purpose for the meeting — from their personal perspective. End the meeting with another round for each person to express what’s working well with trust and alignment, and where they see opportunity to expand trust.

5. Examine Just One Unexpected Success. It’s funny how larger companies forget that unexpected success is really important feedback that should be paid attention, rather than just celebrated and then disregarded. Find an unexpected success in your work that occurred somewhere on the fringes of your efforts, rather within the core of your focus, and see what it tells you about your customers, your products and your future.

I’m keen to hear your own simple guidelines – the very day small ones that keep you “on to it” and present to what’s really going on.

I’ve registered already for this Summer Institute in Canada.   I’d love you to come too.  I went back in 2009 and I loved

it.  For me it integrated so many aspects of my life – leadership in complexity, mindful presence, innovation and social change.  Some fabulous presenters will be there – but they do not “present” – instead they create the space and context for us to deeply learn.  I’m going, are you coming with me?  How awesome it would be to get a NZ contingent there.  What difference could we make together to our world – right here in NZ?   Here is the brochure.

Go to http://aliainstitute.org/summer2012/ to register before December 12th for the early bird rates.
ALIA Summer Institute

Halifax, Nova Scotia • June 18-23 • Earlybird registration now available

LEADERSHIP STARTS HERE
Resilience and Innovation in Turbulent Times
June 18, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm

The times are calling for leadership that is resilient, daring, and innovative. This leadership creates an environment that is inviting and empowering. It reaches across old divides, bringing together unlikely partners to “build the road as they walk it” towards a more sustainable and resilient future. Where will we find this leadership if not in ourselves, our businesses, and communities? In this one-day session you will hear voices and stories from across generations, across sectors, and across the globe. Together we will share our discoveries and surface patterns of success.

Be prepared for a day that will engage, challenge, and inspire, and that will leave you with fresh ideas for your own innovations back home.

LEADERSHIP INTENSIVE
June 18, 6:00 pm – June 23, departure

The four-day Intensive is an immersion in the practices, skills, and connections you need to deepen your leadership and accelerate your work. Here you will learn new skills and practices, in community with thought leaders, artists, meditation teachers, and inspired change-makers from around the world.

You will leave ready to
• step into leadership in a way that is authentic for you
• engage uncertainty and change as your ally
• bring out the leadership in others
• navigate effectively through challenge and complexity
• apply new lenses and strategies to your current leadership goal or project
The Leadership Intensive weaves together three integrated streams: foundations of authentic leadership, skill-building for action, and community dialogue and exchange.

LATEST UPDATES:

Six track descriptions are now on the website. Two of these (Cutting through Complexity and Leader as Spiritual Warrior) are about “going deeper” into some of the ALIA practices, as some requested in the recent survey. A third personal leadership track will be led by Erica Ariel Fox, founder of the Harvard Negotiation Insight Initiative (welcome Erica!) Three additional tracks take us further into the practical application of powerful systems tools: the Change Lab, Scenario Process, and Appreciative Inquiry. Read about these tracks here.

• A seventh track now in the works will focus on grassroots community movements, with case examples from different parts of the world. One example is the Oasis Game which began in Brazil and has now spread to communities worldwide and is connecting local innovation with online gaming metaphors and social media. Another is the Future Centres work that Bob Stilger is now working on with Japanese business leaders.

• A PechaKucha (20 slides @ 20 seconds) evening will surface stories of innovation in the program community, including some of the leading-edge work being done in networks such as Presencing, Berkana, Art of Hosting, and Reos. In the days that follow, people will be able to self-organize around those stories they want to explore further (and/or present their own).

• On Thursday afternoon, a plenary session with guest speakers will continue the theme begun on June 18, under the tentative title “Global Winter or Global Spring? Making Sense at the Crossroads.”

REGISTER NOW

Click here to view the embedded video.

David Whyte speaks on this Ted Talk about letting go of our aloneness as leaders. He speaks of realising that we do not need to carry the burden of our mission on our shoulders alone, that through turning to the edges – having the conversations that matter – sensing the visible and invisible (all the factors at play), and their interconnectedness  we can move ahead.  He speaks of how each moment and each element co-creates the next and hence implores us to let go of any seeking for perfection.

Image by InaFrenzy via Flickr

10) Can I be the blessed saint that my future happiness will always remember?

David Whyte is the author of The Three Marriages, Crossing the Unknown Sea, and poetry collections including River Flow and Everything is Waiting for You.

This is his 10th of 10 powerful questions.  They are questions that last a life time.  Questions to ponder, and to love, not necessarily to answer fully, and certainly not to answer quickly.   I have posted all the previous questions and added a wee bit of my own too, in previous blogs.   This one stands as it is.  Here is what David has to say and to challenge us with.

“Here’s the explanation for what sounds like a strange question. I have a poem called “Coleman’s Bed” about a place in the West of Ireland where the Irish saint Coleman lived. The last line of that poem calls on the reader to remember “the quiet, robust and blessed saint that your future happiness will always remember.”

We go to places of pilgrimage where saints have lived, or even to Graceland, where Elvis lived, because these people gave something to the rest of us—music or good works— that has carried on down the years and that was a generous gift to the future.

But that blessed saint could also be yourself—the person who, in this moment, makes a decision that can make a bold path into the years to come and whom your future happiness will always remember. What could you do now for yourself or others that your future self would look back on and congratulate you for—something it could view with real thankfulness because the decision you made opened up the life for which it is now eternally grateful?”

Image by SIDΔ via Flickr

9) Can I live a courageous life?

So many times in leadership groups I’ve run the question of courage comes up.  How to take courageous steps ahead? What is courage?   This is David Whyte’s 9th question.  I am relating it to leadership.  How do we know when we are wholehearted? Is it when we feel courage?  Or when we feel fear perhaps and respond with strength regardless.   How often do we hold ourselves back from reaching our full potential, or that of others, for fear of “breaking our hearts”?  If we truly believed that our broken heart was just part of living…what would that free us to do?  What could that free me to do?

Here is what David Whyte has to say on his question ( from www.davidwhyte.com )

“If you look at the root of the word “courage,” it doesn’t mean running under the machine-gun bullets of the enemy, wearing a Sylvester Stallone headband, with glistening biceps and bandoliers of ammunition around one’s neck. The word “courage” comes from the old French word coeur meaning “heart.” So “courage” is the measure of your heartfelt participation in the world.

Human beings are constantly trying to take courageous paths in their lives: in their marriages, in their relationships, in their work and with themselves. But the human way is to hope that there’s a way to take that courageous step—without having one’s heart broken. And it’s my contention that there is no sincere path a human being can take without breaking his or her heart.

There is no marriage, no matter how happy, that won’t at times find you wanting and break your heart. In raising a family, there is no way to be a good mother or father without a child breaking that parental heart. In a good job, a good vocation, if we are sincere about our contribution, our work will always find us wanting at times. In an individual life, if we are sincere about examining our own integrity, we should, if we are really serious, at times, be existentially disappointed with ourselves.

So it can be a lovely, merciful thing to think, “Actually, there is no path I can take without having my heart broken, so why not get on with it and stop wanting these extra-special circumstances which stop me from doing something courageous?” ”

David Whyte is the author of The Three Marriages, Crossing the Unknown Sea, and poetry collections including River Flow and Everything is Waiting for You.

Image via Wikipedia

How can I drink from the deep well of things as they are?
This is David Whyte’s  8th Question.   Wow how powerful is this?  As leaders we must have vision to see things as they are, to draw on all the available wisdom and not be living in an illusionary world, or to be reacting to symptoms only.  This question is a timely reminder. Here is what David has to say on it:
“In the West of Ireland, there are very old, very sacred wells everywhere. The locals call them “blessed wells” or “holy wells.” At them, you find notes to the dead, bits of ribbon, keepsakes that people have left when they’ve said a prayer for a child or someone who’s sick. Often a local church will have a Mass out there once a year. These holy wells are everywhere, and they’re part of the local imagination and have been for thousands of years.

So to me, a well, a place where the water springs eternal all year round, is a very real, blessed place to stop and think. Almost always, when I’m struggling over a particular situation, I realize that I am only looking at the surface of the problem and refusing to go for the deeper dynamic that caused all the tension in the first place.

All intimate relationships—close friendships and good marriages—are based on continued and mutual forgiveness. You will always trespass upon your friend’s sensibilities at one time or another, or your spouse’s. The only question is, Will you forgive the other person? And more importantly, Will you forgive yourself? We have to deepen our understanding, make ourselves more equal to circumstances, more easy with what we have been given or not given. We must drink from the deep well of things as they are.”

Image via Wikipedia

How can I know what I am actually saying?

This is question 7 of a series of 10 questions posed by David Whyte (Poet and Author). Here is what he has to say about this question:

“Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn’t know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future. We need that same skill as an art of survival. We need to overhear the tiny but very consequential things we say that reveal ourselves to ourselves.

I have one friend who, when she is in a quandary, goes out for a drive in her car and sings. Whatever she’s grappling with, she sings about it—to the windscreen, to the road, to the oncoming traffic. Then she overhears herself singing how she actually feels about something and what she should do about it.

Sometimes she pulls up to a stoplight, other people look over and she’s singing, slightly crazed, into the windscreen, but that’s her way of finding out.”

In my own experience I have found a couple of things help me to “reveal myself to myself”.  In some phases it is journalling, sometimes it is in a casual but very present conversation with a good friend, sometimes it is during a mindful sitting practice , or even a mindful run in the forest.  More recently I have found that the very deep reflective place we get to in our Innovation Action Learning group conversations is just the medicine. I am very grateful to this group. (More on this another time).

Both these books are treasures.  I’d suggest you download them in colour and slowly digest their wisdom with all your senses.   When I read them (which was just now!) I was immediately grateful for the integrity they both display of the source of the ideas and practices, for the integrated readily available wisdom they portray.  For me they serve to bring together in one place (or 2 perhaps) what I have been  learning and practicing for the last 3-4 years.   They are almost “text books”  (although that makes them sound dull) for the workshops and retreats I lead with Stephen Archer on innovation for social / complex change and leadership presence.

The Lotus, by Christopher Baan, Phil Long and Dana Pearlman, presents nine personal leadership capacities that authentic leaders find essential in their work when facilitating large-scale, complex, transformational change in organisations and communities. It suggests practices (ranging from contemplative and spiritual to physical, engaging head, heart and hands) that help develop personal leadership capacities.  You will see that  Mindfulness (the practices  and the view)is  integral  to the work.

The Weave, by Tracy Meisterheim, Alison Cretney and Steven Cretney, provides guidance for sustainability practitioners wishing to more deeply engage people in creating their sustainable future. The Weave integrates the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), also known as The Natural Step Framework, with strategic process design principles and dialogue-based methodologies. The FSSD is the skeleton that provides the structure of planning for sustainability, while the ABCD process provides a high-level approach for moving through the strategic planning stages in a step-wise manner.  They integrate a number of bodies of work here including Theory U and Appreciative Inquiry.

(These notes are adapted from notes also found in the ALIA Institute Field Notes )

Image by michael.heiss via Flickr

I just listened to Ellen Langer’s new pod cast- a presentation she made at the ADC Future Summit June 2011 in Melbourne.  It’s definitely worth a listen as she explores some research and makes practical links to the practice of  leadership.  Here are some points she made with some added thoughts from me.

• We are sealed in un-lived lives…and it’s important to free ourselves to reach our and the worlds potential.
• Mindfulness is energy giving.
• No matter what we are doing we are either mindful or mindless (there is no in between) and the consequences are enormous for each place to stand.
• When we notice novelty it reveals uncertainty.  Perhaps this is why we have trained ourselves not to be mindful – people tend to be attracted to certainly way more than uncertainty.
• Mindful attention is about drawing novel distinctions vs. seeking  certainty.
• We confuse stability of mind for stability of context – which is an illusion.
• Mindfulness is see-able and hear-able …and found to be attractive eg. when it is the basis for a production (eg art or music).
• A major road block to mindfulness is fear of making mistakes.  So we follow rules in order not to make mistakes!
• The job of a successful leader may be to increase peoples mindfulness because what we realize as mindful attention arises is that most of what we “know” is not so certain after all.
• From a mindful leaders perspective judging or evaluating others’ behaviour at work is not useful.  It is more useful to look at the behaviour and understand what is behind it…what it means to the person – and learn from that together.
• We succeed by letting everything vary and exploiting the power of uncertainty – fighting against this and going with the illusion of control or stability, limits future and current possibilities.
• The world is a social construction – when something no longer makes sense (fits us)  then reconstruct it so it does.

Just before I listened to this podcast I was working with a colleague and had found my self fascinated and somewhat  frustrated by how clear and definitive her “recommendations” were about a path forward.    I could not quite put my finger on what was going on.  I think I can now and I must speak to her about it because others have come to me mentioning this quality in her.   She sees her role as minimizing risk for the business.   I think in order to feel safe (and help us to feel safe) she expresses herself without uncertainty.  Often times this may be needed.  In this case however we are in a place where we need to be innovating and shifting to adjust to a changing context constantly.   I am looking forward to a conversation with her about mindful grace  (or is it patience?) … letting us see more, and learn more, before we make decisions which close off other possibilities.

Can any one else relate to this?  Please do let me know of your own experience.