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!