http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

This is a link to a TED talk on Motivation and what works and what does not work. It is terrific and will help organizations re-think how they are "motivating" their employees. A good one for all us parents out there too!

“Do you have the patience to wait till the mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?”

-Tao Te Ching

Embracing the Paradox

Oriah Mountain Dreamer, a beautiful poet, wrote this wonderful piece regarding the paradoxes we live in, live through and live with, in our lives. As I follow along my own path, I find her words to be filled with truth, wisdom and humor.

“This is the reality we live: aspiring to be our best, longing for and sometimes finding meaning and connection within ourselves and that which is larger than ourselves, we are undone by messy bathrooms, traffic jams, and burnt toast. I am not interested in a spirituality that cannot encompass my humanness….Beneath the small daily trials are harder paradoxes, things that the mind cannot reconcile but the heart must hold if we are to live fully: profound tiredness and radical hope; shattered beliefs and relentless faith; the seemingly contradictory longings for personal freedom and a deep commitment to others, for solitude and intimacy, for the ability to simply be with the world and the need to change what we know is not right about how we are living.”

Doesn’t it all come down to handling the small things like burnt toast? I find that rather than "fighting" with paradox and "beating myself up" for not always living in my best self, that evolving my perspective is more likely to come as I recognize the grace provided in all of life’s experiences and embrace the entirety of the paradox created (by design or by default) in my journey.

As always, I look forward to your insight and thoughts.

Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership

The Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership were written by Kent Keith in 1968, when he was 19, a sophomore at Harvard College. They apply today just as they did in 1968. Interestingly, Kent was active and passionate about student leadership in high school and worked with high school kids long after he left college. During his first couple years of college, he found that he could get many students excited about making a difference in the world, but when they hit the real world, they became discouraged and decided that being a leader wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

When Kent introduced the Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership in his book about leadership in student councils, now referred to by John C Maxwell and others as seminal work for the mantle of leadership, he said, "I laid down the Paradoxical Commandments as a challenge. The challenge is to always do what is right and good and true, even if others don't appreciate it. You have to keep striving, no matter what, because if you don't, many of the things that need to be done in our world will never get done."

The Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

I have read and re-read these a few times a year now for several years, and I have to say that every time I do, I am motivated to be a better person, reaffirmed in doing good because good is always good, and humbled by a 19 year old students wisdom.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts and insights!

How is Life like a Video Game?

One of my collegues and friends wrote a great post last week on a re-frame for the challenges in his life. that came from his frustrating experiences learning new video games.

He writes, "Then I had an epiphany. The people who designed these games don’t design them so that a person can get one third of the way through just to quit. It is in their interest, in the game publisher’s interest, for users to want to finish the game. So they have built a way to finish the game into it. There is a way there, I just have to find it."

I generally believe that the universe is designed to support us not "take us out of the game." There is not always a way out of the challenge or around the painful experiences in our path, but there is always a way "through" it.

So for all of you that enjoy video games or have people in your life that love them, this post may be one that brings a new way to teach your children and yourself about facing the challenges that appear on your path!

You can read it here - http://enfineitz.com/wp/

As always, I look forward to your insights and experiences!

Conscious Practice

“If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.”

Jascha Heifetz became an unparalleled violinist; born with a divine gift he started playing the violin at three years old and played for the first time in the United States at Carnegie Hall in New York at the age of 16. He is widely regarded as one of the finest violinists of all time and continues to be admired for his immaculate technique and a tonal beauty that many violinists still regard as unequaled.

Perhaps this serves as a dramatic and simple example of Aristotle’s words, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

It may well serve us to be very conscious about our own practices, by determining:

1. What are my chosen practices, the things I repeatedly do, to ensure a habit of excellence?
   For example, I know for me that in order to be playing at the top of my game professionally and as a mom, I must incorporate weekly and even better daily, the practice of meditation, reflection, exercise, prayer and learning or I find myself slipping from center ground.
2. Am I conscientiously staying “in those practices” in such a way that I am consistently moving toward a manifestation of gifts given and my potential?
3. Do I know how long does it takes me to notice when I am “not” practicing and do I have conscious triggers to ensure I get back on track quickly?
4. AND, if I have lost the rigor of consistency in my life for awhile (because let's face it, it happens), my favorite question to ask my self and my clients is always, “When would now be a good time?”

As always, I look forward to your thoughts, reflections, stories and comments here or on facebook!

Are you listening to your own being?

"If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also you will have betrayed our community in failing to make your contribution to the whole."-- Rollo May (1909-1994), American psychologist, from The Courage to Create

This is one of my favorite quotes. If you are like me, you will want to read it 3 or 4 times to make sure it sinks in and to ponder your own response and self evaluation. I believe that each of us feels at certain times in our life, a spark of ideas, intuition or creativity that seems to call to us unrelentingly from with in. When we do not listen and ignore that inner wisdom, the results are usually not favorable. What I have experienced myself, and what I have seen from those I know and have coached is an ensuing state of discontent. The things that once fulfilled us, do not. The thing that was okay for years, is suddenly simply not okay. This is because, in the moment we chose to ignore our inner voice, we betrayed our path and the path we are on however safe, however justified, becomes inwardly unbearable, as we find ourselves out of integrity with what needs to happen to bring us toward fulfillment.

What we may fail to recognize in that discontent, is not only have we betrayed ourselves, but as Rollo May suggests, we have failed our community by never letting them hear or be apart of something that could have been and needed to be.

Think of the many times you have been in a meeting when someone finally spoke up and told the truth, finally popping the blister in the room which allowed the meeting to flourish. Now, think of the many times that has not happen and ask, how is that not a betrayal for our whole community?

Think of the times we choose fear over faith and belief and stay stuck on a path that only brings growing resentment and stagnation. Self-betrayal is a most deadly poison. There is nothing like choosing courage over fear to unleash new possibilities and realities.

What thoughts and feelings does May call up for you? I look forward to your thoughts and insights.

The Three Persistent Challenges of Our Time

Last week I attended the World Business Forum. It is always a great conference and Bill and I enjoy it very much. This year, former President Bill Clinton was the closing speaker. He articulately presented three persistent challenges for our day in the world. I believe they are critical to the leadership conversation and challenge as well.

The World is Inter-dependent. Inter-dependent is not just "global in nature", but truly tied to each other. This can be viewed as both good and bad – in terms of consequences. However, divorce is not an option. We have to strive for a world where we share benefits and accountability's to create healthy inter-dependence.

The World is Incredibly Unstable. The inequality in the world and the nature of shared vulnerability is a constant threat. He used a couple examples of the economic downturn and its ramifications throughout the world suggesting that any country that was highly leveraged lost unforeseeable fortunes due to the domino effect around the world. Even China that had significant cash reserves and thought they were in the clear, soon found that the customers dried up and found themselves in a situation where they had 35 million unemployed factory workers! Bottom line: There is no such thing as a solution without an unintended consequence. This is chaos theory and a real quantum physics reality we are seeing play out.

The "How" is Unsustainable. The climate change issues worldwide and the way in which we use energy and resources currently are simply not sustainable. President Clinton discussed this "how" question and its importance. At this time large amounts of his life now are about proving that it is good business for us to find ways of operating that are sustainable.

Implications. This leads me to implications for the new leadership required to meet these challenges in our own lives, communities, organizations and the world. Learning and knowing how to operate in a interdependent universe is about understanding systems much more deeply and knowing how to influence in a whole new way; we cannot succeed in an old style of command and control or by disengaging through passive distance. We must view "control and safety" in a completely new way.

It also requires the ability to maintain personal stability in instability. This requires personal grounding, agility and adaptability unlike we have previously had to demonstrate. Lastly, it requires that we look at how we view sustainability in our own jobs and careers, in our organizations and utilizing a higher order “how” in our criteria for achievement. It may well be that sustainability is not about year over year incremental returns, but about creating completely new ways of operating, new visions and new markets. In times of crisis, markets never return to their previous state. Understanding what that means when choosing a degree, looking for a new job, or staying in business is critical. Understanding what it means for the planet and our stewardship, even more critical.

At Maxcomm we work with leaders to evolve their current leadership operating system (internal and external) to a higher order system. After listening to Clinton, it became clear to me that leaders will need to evolve even more quickly than they have before if we are collectively going to meet the enormous challenges of our day.

As always, I look forward to your thoughts and discussion!