How well do you really know what goes on in your company?

In “Bursting the CEO Bubble” by Hal Gregerson (Harvard Business Review), Hal speaks to one of the biggest challenges that CEOs and Executives face – the CEO bubble.

The CEO Bubble is the insulation of the role of being an executive. The CEO Bubble comes in two forms, people telling you what they think you want to hear and people being fearful to tell you things they believe you don’t want to hear. Both of these situations occur because people are trying to avoid confrontation and negative reactions from a person who is in a powerful position. This can be very isolating and lead to blind spots where you miss opportunities or threats to your business due to lack of real, on-the-court information and feedback.

To avoid creating a CEO Bubble, executives must intentionally seek out different situations where you are likely to experience the unexpected. You need to design what we call a “Listening Strategy”. A “Listening Strategy” is a plan that will take you outside your bubble and allow you to get access to real information about your company and the market without the filter people attach to the title of CEO.

To do this you need to develop a “Probing Mindset” which means to design questions and make observations that provide insight and intel into how well your organization is really doing. You will use this “Probing Mindset” with various stakeholders such as staff, clients, suppliers, bankers, other executives and entrepreneurs inside and outside your company.

As part of your “Probing Mindset” you need to develop the skill of listening and observing what is being communicated, but not being said such as body language, vagueness, and reactions to situations.

1. Closed body language

Example: People don’t look at you when they talk to you or they look away or they are fidgety

2. People are giving you vague answers

Example: You ask a question to get an update on a key project and the other person’s response is, “Everything is on track, no issues.”

3. People exhibit hesitation or are nervous

Example: When you ask someone a question and you hear hesitation or nervousness in their voice ask them to pause and explain their point again. If the hesitation or nervousness gets worst you have a red flag.

4. People are speaking in non-accountable language

Example: When you ask a question and you hear non-accountable language like – I think, we should be able to, I assume, or I tried, it is time to ask clarification questions by asking, “What do you mean by you assume that data in the report is accurate?”

 

Get out of the CEO Bubble with these 6 questions:

1. “If you were in my job, what would you be focusing on?”
2. “How is your project doing – what is working and not working?”
3. “What is one challenge you are currently working on that has you stuck?”
4. “What is a key trend in the industry that you see could impact our business in the next two years – positive or negative?”
5. “What do you think our company should be exploring that could impact our business over the next 18 months?”
6. “What is one thing you think I need to hear that people in the company are too afraid to tell me?”

 

Leadership Challenge:

Take the CEO Bubble Challenge. Click on the link below and answer the 10 questions under “Are you trapped in a CEO Bubble?” (Click the Read More link).

Bursting the CEO Bubble

The ideas from this article come from a HBR article entitled, “Bursting the CEO Bubble”, March/April 2017

 

As an Executive, how prepared are you for the workforce of the future?

By 2025 millennials will account for 75% of the workforce, which will have a significant impact on the corporate world. Millennials are a generation driven by the need for purpose and crave making a real impact on the world. They are seeking something bigger than themselves. They desire being apart of communities with shared purpose, making a difference in society, a sense of contribution and real action on issues that matter to them.

As leaders of companies today, are you preparing now of how to support your up and coming workforce?

In this insightful video, “Millennials haven’t forgotten spirituality, they’re just looking for new venues”, it discusses an important trend happening with millennials and provides some foresight for the business leaders about the demographic shift and changes that millennials bring to society.

Millennials are abandoning the traditional church and what it used to provide, and seeking to fulfill their needs elsewhere. Why is this and why should leaders of businesses today care about this trend?

In the past, the church was the primary arena for community building, finding your purpose and making an impact in society. As time moved on, the institution of the church has struggled to adapt and progress with the needs of an expanding demographic with ever-changing needs and ways of being in the world.

Millennials have grown up in a society designed by the baby boomers, and many leaders struggle with the millennial mindset – independent thinking, openness to change and confident at challenging authority’s ideas and decision-making. An institution that is currently feeling the effects of the millennial mindset are traditional churches.

Most churches have been designed to preach and monologue to their congregations, whereas millennials are seeking to engage in dialogue and work together in collaboration for new ideas and ways of putting their ideas into action.

Monologue and dialogue conversations are vastly different.

In a monologue, someone is telling you what to do versus a dialogue is a conversation with a high level of transparency (open and honest) and the intention to connect and co-create and be collaborative.

As millennials are turning their backs on traditional churches, they are seeking direction, guidance, connection, and purpose from other sources such as community groups, online social networks, and their workplaces to support their needs.

This millennial mindset is creating a huge gap and a huge opportunity for leaders of business today to be listening to their younger staff to develop support structures that will engage and attract the millennial mindset to your company.

 

Ideas for engaging millennials:

• Create committees people can join to collaborate on new ideas and possibilities as a team
• Develop Mentorship Programs
• Create co-leadership roles where millennials can have the opportunity to work with experienced leaders to gain knowledge and expertise
• Organize social events to promote and encourage Team Spirit
• Develop learning programs where people can sign up to learn specialized skill sets

The purpose of the structures above is to tap into millennials’ curiosity and creativity to unlock future trends and ideas that will add value for your business.

At Awesome Journey, we challenge the leaders of business today to find ways to create authentic communities for collaboration, learning, mentoring and desiring to challenge the status quo so that their voices can be used to make a difference for good that will support people, planet, and profits.

 

Your Leadership Challenge:

Over the next 2 weeks connect with Millennials within your organization and seek their feedback and input.

 

References:

59 Percent of Millennials Raised in a Church Have Dropped Out—And They’re Trying to Tell Us Why

What Millennial Employees Really Want

 

Every now and then a great book comes along talking about the importance of business culture. Business culture is the environment a company creates for how they do business and how they treat people. Culture is a set of collective beliefs, values, and attitudes that influence management, high-level decisions, and all business functions.

In the book “Everyone Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for your People like Family”, by Bob Chapman, he outlines how developing your people is the cornerstone of a sustainable and successful culture.

Bob Chapman is the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, a private company with over 5,000 employees and revenues north of $1.5 Billion. The company specializes in manufacturing packaging equipment in the US for clients all over the world.

In the book, Bob highlights the importance of developing your people and how a company’s performance is directly linked to how they care for their people. Bob and his senior leadership team built their culture on a key mindset – Truly Human Leadership, where they believe in sky-high morale, loyalty, creativity, and business performance.

This book is a great real-life example of a company living, breathing, and being their culture.

From the CEO down, they are committed to a strategic direction that is intentionally designed around their beliefs and values that caring for their people like family is great for business. This culture is the driving force for employee retention, strong bottom-line profitability, employee engagement, productivity, high morale, growth, and development.

They have successfully differentiated themselves in the marketplace by leveraging the power culture.

Being the CEO of a company brings with it a level of prestige that other positions do not have. You are in a position with power, but surprisingly your power is tempered by many factors internally and externally.

In Harvard Business Review – Seven Surprises for New CEOs by Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Orsch and Nitin Nohria, it speaks to the seven things new CEOs learn while on the job.

Here are the 7 Surprises that CEOs learn on the job:

1. You can’t run the company

Most CEOs have climbed the corporate ladder from an operational/managerial level, to a CEO – visionary and strategic level. The first requires deep involvement in the day to day of the company, while the other requires a 10-story view with strategic leadership and strong direction. As CEO, your role is one of influencing and articulating a clear strategy, establishing guiding structures and processes, setting values and culture, and hiring the right people to run the company.

2. Giving orders is costly

Trust will become a key component of your world now. As the CEO, your job is to ensure that the right people are in the right seats, so you can trust them to run the company while you attend to the strategic direction and overall vision. Dictating and overruling thoughtful decisions made at lower organizational levels erodes senior manager’s confidence and creates a culture of “check before do anything” that will stall decision making and bring progress to a halt.

3. It’s hard to know what’s really going on

Once you’re CEO, others withhold bad news and speak through a filter to not upset you fearing you’ll shoot the messenger. The questions now become – how to get solid information? How to keep a pulse on the true morale and culture of the company? You can consult customers, other CEOs, industry associations, and engage with independent advisers from various industries and make it safe for them to criticize your thinking and challenge your ideas to get out of the “yes” bubble.

4. You’re always sending a message

Being at the top of the food chain means that all eyes are on you. Your every move – inside and outside the organization – is scrutinized and interpreted. To minimize misinterpretation, be self-aware and understand what signals you’re sending and how your words and actions are being perceived. Carefully consider how different audiences might interpret your actions and communications. Use simple, clear, and often repeated messages illustrated with memorable stories.

5. You’re not the boss

You may have an entire company of subordinates below you, but you are not the boss. You have ten or twelve bosses; the board of directors. They can set your compensation, evaluate your performance, overturn your strategy, and fire you if they see fit. Boards typically have limited knowledge of your business and scant time to acquire it, so your job will be to educate them and collaborate with them to gain their trust so they trust you to move the company forward.

6. Pleasing shareholders is not the goal

Shareholders tend to be short term focused with immediate results and short-term gains as their primary objective. As the CEO, your role requires long term focus and planning. Work on influencing and shaping their perceptions of your company through constant explanations and reminders of your long-term strategy to develop and build buy-in.

7. You’re still only human

The rewards and adulation that come with being CEO can tempt you into acts of hubris and make you feel untouchable. Make a disciplined effort to stay humble. Revisit your decisions. Find forthright people – and listen to them. Maintain connections to family, friends, your community, and hobbies to avoid being consumed by your job.

Referenced from Harvard Business Review: Seven Surprises for New CEOs – FULL ARTICLE HERE

By: Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Lorsch and Nitin Nohria

I was recently chatting with a potential new client and he made the comment that many people make about Executive Coaching – “We have never gotten the quality returns from any Leadership Development program we have invested in, why should we keep investing?”

This comment makes a good point. Many executive leadership programs preach about the unbridled success that will follow after attending their coaching, seminars or programs, but then fail to live up to the expectations of real and genuine change within a person or an organization.

Why?

Many traditional leadership coaching and programs provide the teaching and materials for leadership but fail to provide the real-life, as-lived practices and exercises needed to turn what is learned into reality.

At Awesome Journey, we work with great leaders to develop and continuously maintain their “leadership muscles” through intentional practices. Similar to a diet and exercise regime where a balanced diet and regular exercise are needed for long-term sustainable results, daily practices are needed for leadership development.

Leadership muscles are the practices you do that enable you to be an authentically powerful leader that can bring forth transformation for yourself and your organization.

 

7 Daily Practices for Leadership Muscles:

1. Breathing Practice: 10 to 20 minutes of deep breathing daily will support building Mental Clarity to reduce stress and improve decision making.
2. Time Mastery Practice: Having a routine for reviewing your schedule at the beginning and end of each day to bring clarity and organization to your priorities to ensure you are focusing on the right things at the right time.
3. Design & Planning Practice: The outcome of each activity or task in your day is a result of how well it was planned and designed to achieve its goals.

What is the purpose and objective of an upcoming meeting/conversation?

How can I prepare to ensure we achieve our objective?

4. Self-Awareness Practice: Being aware of your emotional triggers and having mechanisms to cope, focus and move forward. Being self-aware means you have awareness of your strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and how you react to certain situations and environments.

• Power of the Pause (taking a few moments to breathe deeply when triggered)
• Journaling
• Working with a Leadership Coach who can provide reflective 3^rd party insights
• Meditation (10-15 minutes per day)

5. Generative (Action-Oriented) Language Practice: Generative language is language that is action-oriented and is supported with commitments, clear requests, promises and quality agreements.
6. Listening Practice: There are 4 levels of listening.

Level 1 – Listening to Protect – We React Mindset

Level 2 – Listening to Facts – We Predict Mindset

Level 3 – Listening to Relate – We Connect Mindset

Level 4 – Listening for Being – We Create Mindset

Great leaders listen at level 3 – 4 – “Listening to Connect and Create”.

When you listen to connect with others, you hear what the other person CAREs about through their complaints/objections/issues and problems. There are hidden requests in all of these.

Eg.  A colleague complains that Adam is always late to meetings. The colleague may view Adam as being less committed to the team and goals, and therefore less likely to work hard to accomplish their goals. This is likely untrue, but this complaint shows that the colleague is highly committed and cares about achieving the goals.

7. Ask Empowering Questions Practice – To support generating action through others, master the skill of asking others empowering questions vs telling others what to do.

 

Great reading for building Leadership Muscle – Unlocking Human Potential

 

Your Leadership Challenge:

Create one daily practice that you will commit to doing on a daily basis and watch your Leadership Transformation occur.

 

As Executive Leadership Coaches, one of the key reasons our clients come to us is to help them grow their leaders, so they can grow their business faster.

Every time a CEO tells me they want to grow their business, I ask myself – is this company ready for growth? Many companies get too narrowly focused on the concept of bigger is better, but fail to see gaps in their development that will impede sustainable long-term growth.

 

Development and Growth are two different things:

• Development means to increase the capacity of something, therefore creating what was previously not possible.
• Growth means to add something to your company, such as more staff, clients, sales, equipment, products, and locations to expand what you’re already doing.

At Awesome Journey, we believe that for an Executive Leadership Team to create sustainable growth in their business, they must first start with Development of Key Assets and a 3-year plan that focuses on the key assets of your business including your people, your products, your systems/processes, and your culture.

 

Key Assets:

1. People:

Develop language that is generative vs descriptive. Generative language is action-oriented with clear requests and promises that lead to clear agreements.

2. Time needs to be Reliably in Existence:

Putting your day’s activities and tasks into your calendar so time is automatically allocated to priorities. Remove the idea of “not enough time”.

3. Reality that is Grounded in Facts vs Opinion:

Quality leaders are disciplined to listen for pure facts vs perceptions, interpretations or opinions. An opinion is an expression of a person’s feelings vs facts is a statement that can be proven right or wrong.

As leaders embrace both horizontal learning development (acquiring and experiencing new knowledge) and vertical learning development (increase awareness so you can shift your language from descriptive to generative), they can create new action, outcomes, and possibilities that will now emerge because of the leadership development.

In the “Future Trends in Leadership Development” article by Nick Petri, the author speaks to why Vertical Development is necessary for business and how it makes an organization immune to the trials and tribulations of change in the marketplace.

What I like most about this article is how the author talks about 3 distinct mindsets that a leader will evolve through as part of their own leadership development journey:

• Dependent Conformer
• Independent Achiever
• Interdependent Collaborator

4. Products:

Increase functionality, which will give your organization a larger capacity to support clients’ requests.

5. Systems/Processes:

Increase the level of workability to improve efficiency and the ease in which people do their work. As workability increases, people become more productive and happier, and clients find it enjoyable and easy to buy from your organization.

6. Culture:

A High-Performance culture is formed when everyone in the company is having intentional conversations that are aligned to the core values and the mission statement.

When your organization is intentional about developing your core assets – people, products, processes and culture, your company will be able to deliver excellence consistently, and the company will become attractive and in demand in the marketplace.

Now that you have a solid foundation you can focus on growing your business.

An excellent growth model to use as a framework is the Greiner Growth Model which speaks to the natural evolution of a business that is growing and where the tensions points are that can cause disruption.

Most companies begin at Phase 1 where the group is small and informal, and the organizational structure is flat. Typically, the entrepreneur invests heavily in acquiring new clients to build the business.

Phase 2 is where development comes into play. As more clients come on-board, the organization sees the need to hire more people for support, and with more people comes the need to standardize and create processes and structures to manage the business and maintain alignment throughout the organization. This phase is where you build the foundation of the company.

When a company intentionally or unintentionally goes into growth mode before they have developed a foundation through their keys assets (people, products, systems and processes, culture), the business will suffer as cracks begin to show as previous band-aid solutions come apart and there is a lack of coordinated action and communication because the organization is not set up to function at a higher capacity.

 

How do you know you are ready for Growth?

• High workability in your organization (tried and tested processes, systems, practices, and principles)
• Right people in the right seats (people have the skills, knowledge, competency needed to do their job well)
• Financially stable and profitable (organization can afford the expenses that come with growth)
• Clear on expertise and differentiation factor in the marketplace
• Clear vision and solid growth plan (actual plan vs just saying you want to grow)

 

Leadership Weekly Challenge

Slow down.

Do a deep and honest assessment of where in your company is in terms of developing core assets so that a future growth plan will be set up for success.

As a leader, you have no shortage of opportunities that cross your path. This is both a blessing and a curse, as most leaders say “yes” too often because they don’t want to miss out on an opportunity. This mindset of saying yes to everything is killing leaders and stopping them from becoming great, because you can’t do everything well.

To be a Great Leader, you must have FOCUS!

Mental Focus is key to great leadership. To build Mental Focus, leaders must create practices, support structures, and accountabilities to fuel their capabilities.

 

Become a Master of Being Mentally Focused:

Component One: Practices

“Quality of Attention” to improve mental focus comes through practices like Meditation/Breathing, Visualization, Self-Reflection, Power of the Pause (managing your emotions when you get emotionally triggered), Journaling, and Acknowledging your accomplishments.

Component Two: Support Structures

• People – who in your network is supporting you in keeping you mentally focused on executing on your top priorities?
• Systems/Processes – do you have a time management system that keeps you mentally focused on executing on your top priorities? For example, if one of your top priorities in a week is to have 90 minutes of self-reflection time, is this time scheduled in your calendar?
• Practices – daily practices to support your ability to strengthen your “Quality of Attention” to be mentally focused when you need to be.
• Tools – tools such as templates, checklists, and processes are all great for automating certain things in your life so you can focus on more important tasks at hand.

 Component Three: Accountabilities

Accountability starts with your “ability to count” and “account” for the choices you have made.

How disciplined are you at “counting” in your life? Do you count steps in a day, calories consumed, balance in your financial accounts, hours in the day, or time spent on relationships? Counting is vital to ensuring your time, money and energy are going towards things that really matter to you, and things that you can use to create future possibilities. When you don’t count things in your life, they will have power over you; they control you rather than you controlling them.

Here are some examples of things you want to count to support your ability to maintain mental focus vs spending your valuable time in mental worry (which doesn’t serve you or your future):

• Your top priorities
• Meditating/deep breathing
• Looking for things that have been misplaced
• Accomplishments – day/week/month/year
• Counting how many times in a day you get Emotionally Triggered from conversations
• Counting/aware of what you allow into your mind – What you read, What you listen to, What you watch, What you talk about, Who you spend time with

All leaders have the same 24 hours in a day to create. The difference between Great Leaders and Good Leaders is how they are able to focus their time on executing their top priorities and creating new possibilities.

 “Always remember your focus determines your reality” – George Lucas

 

Your Weekly Leadership Challenge:

If you want to improve your “Quality of Attention” to support your ability to be able to Mentally Focus when you need to, then step back and evaluate the three cornerstones of Mental Focus – Practices, Support Structures and Accountabilities and do a quality self-assessment to see what is missing for you to improve your “Mental Focus”!

As an Executive Leadership Coach for the last 17 years, a common question I get asked is, “What is the key barrier that limits a CEO from being great?”

Many CEO’s are good, but there is a fundamental difference between good and great. This fundamental difference is “Self-Awareness”.

What do I mean by “Self-Awareness”? “Self-Awareness” is all about your ability to make conscious choices that allow you to create abundance for yourself and with others consistently.

6 Areas of Self-Awareness

Stuck vs Action

Most people don’t know when they are stuck. When you lack self-awareness, you are unable to see beyond your issues, concerns, problems, worries or counterproductive behavior. There tends to be a lack of accountability and a struggle with making quality decisions. This “stuck” cycle leads to key deadlines and opportunities being missed, and overall poor results.

• How do you know when you are stuck?
• How do you go from being stuck back into action?

Support

Most CEO’s and C-Suite Leaders think being vulnerable (being open to asking for support or help) will cause them to look weak or incompetent. Because of this mindset, many CEO’s become and stay stuck, and avoid important decisions or make poor decisions.

Vulnerability actually equals power, which means being open to support gives you more power.

• When was the last time you asked for support to get un-stuck?
• Who is in your support network?
• How is your support network holding you accountable to your promises?

Gifts of Greatness

Great CEO’s and C-Suite Leaders play a big game in business which means they are constantly seeking out new ideas that can bring “Game Changing Value” to their organizations.

This commitment shows a high level of self-awareness. They are “Self-Aware” of their Gifts of Greatness that support them in finding “Game Changing Ideas”.

However, when stress and fear come into play, high-level executives often forget their Gifts of Greatness and focus on their weaknesses which then impacts their performance.

• What are your top 5 Gifts of Greatness that make you a great leader to your organization?
• How can you utilize your Gifts of Greatness to overcome moments of stress and fear?

Presence

Are you aware of your presence on others? Many CEO’s are not.

When a CEO or other leader becomes irate or aggressive in a leadership meeting, how does that affect the room? The room likely becomes tense and silent, and everyone stops sharing their ideas hoping to remove the discomfort. Many CEO’s and C-Suite Leaders often comment that they feel alone a lot. This sense of isolation may be due to your presence and how it is currently affecting your support team around you.

To improve your Presence so that you can impact the room in positive ways think about:

• What makes you attractive to others?
• Collect any feedback from your staff that speaks to your presence impacting your staff in positive ways.

Quality of Attention

Distractions are one of the key factors that impact the performance of CEO’s and C-Suite leaders. Great leaders can stay focused on the task at hand and block out distractions because they have developed a set of practices (meditation, exercise, etc.) to support their “Quality of Attention”.

What are your practices to improve the quality of your attention?

When you are distracted what is your practice to get yourself re-focused in the moment?

Stress/Fear Management

Risks and uncertainty are part of a CEO’s daily life. CEO’s must move past fear to move their organizations forward. Embracing the unknown can cause substantial stress and fear to show up in self-talk and behaviours.

It is critical to develop “Self-Awareness” around how to manage fear and stress by asking yourself these questions:

• What causes you to become “Emotionally Triggered?”
• What are three practices that keep you grounded when stress and fear are present?

 

Here are two on-the-court examples of CEO’s who are struggling with Self-Awareness and how it is impacting their ability to lead others.

 

Travis Kalanick (currently on leave of absence, CEO of Uber)

Prior to his leave of absence from Uber, Travis was struggling with his Self-Awareness:

Lack of Presence:

Getting angry with an Uber driver on camera with little thought to the consequences of his actions.

Lack of Practices to support him when he is stuck. Rather than lashing out in anger and frustration when he was stressed, he could practice “Living by the Power of the Pause” whereby he would breathe deeply for 10 breaths and ask himself – Is this a “Threat or an Opportunity”

Support:

Not knowing who his support network is and who to reach out to for support to share his fears and challenges as a young CEO who is building a rapidly growing global company.

 

Tiger Woods (CEO of the TGR & Tiger Woods Foundation)

Tiger recently made a poor choice that put him in a bad place with the law and in the public eye. To me Tiger is lacking a level of “Self-Awareness” in the following areas:

Support:

Tiger seems to be resisting the support of others while he is going through a rough time. As a high profile public figure, any incidents in the public arena will plunge him into the spotlight. With his level of financial resources, Tiger can enlist a full-time driver to support him as he manages his physical conditions and medicinal needs. Tiger struggles with relinquishing control and letting people in to support him.

Stuck:

Tiger is clearly unaware of that he is “Stuck”, and he is allowing his negative self-talk of “I can handle this myself” to take over, and it is not working.

I really love what Jack Nicklaus said the other night in an interview,

“I feel bad for Tiger. Tiger’s a friend. He’s been great for the game of golf. He needs our help. I wish him well. I hope he gets out of this dark place to play golf again. He needs a lot of support from a lot of people and I’ll be one of them.”

 There is a great leader who is “Self-Aware” of his power to create abundance for himself and for others!

Here are a few articles that speak to Supporting Leaders:

How Great Leaders Support Others

How Great Leaders Face Their Issues

What is Real Support to a C-Suite Leader?

 

Your Weekly Leadership Challenge:

Ask 5 of your trusted colleagues and friends for feedback about what they see is your “Blind Spot”. Then take that valuable information to support you in becoming more “Self-Aware” so you can create abundance for yourself and for others.

Or contact me directly at 1-403-710-2765 and I will support you in creating clarity as to what your Blind Spot is so you can become more “Self-Aware” of your power to create abundance for yourself and for others.

“What is Courage?”

This is a question I have been pondering and my thoughts are:

“Courage is when a person is willing to take a risk and leave their comfort zone to honor their commitment. When their “why” or their “personal mission statement” becomes more important than being afraid, therefore they take action.”

Rosa Parks was a courageous leader who was also a Catalyst for Change (creativity, commitment, courage) whose actions led to significant change in the global consciousness around Civil Rights & Racial Equality.

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama she made a conscious choice to sit in a seat on her local bus that was assigned for “white” people only. As a Catalyst for Change, she used her creativity to see a new possibility where others only saw “status quo” and changed her behaviour to foster a new conversation.

Her creativity enabled her to see a new possibility, and she honoured her commitment of “I am a Human Being who deserves to be treated equally with all other Human Beings”.

I believe that her clarity to live in her commitment (being treated equally) was the trigger for her to have the courage to act and sit in a “white” seat and have a courageous conversation with the Bus Driver who told her she had to move and she said, “No, I have every right to sit in this seat!” The Bus Driver then proceeded to have her removed from the bus and arrested. From her commitment, she became a “Catalyst for Change”, and changed history around the global conversation of Civil Rights and Racial Equality.

Rosa Parks was a courageous leader who took her inner strength and deep commitment to being treated equally and she stood up for Civil Rights and Racial Equality.

As an Executive Leadership Coach, I am very interested in how to unlock the power of courage, because, for me, people who can tap into courage can use their “Courageous Voice” to be “Catalysts for Change”. When people are self-aware of how to tap into their “Courageous Voice” amazing transformations occur.

 

Your Leadership Challenge for this week is:

I would love to hear your definition of courage, and any experiences you’ve had or know of that support your definition.

You can email me here, I looking forward to hearing from you!

Three weeks ago, my wife and I went to New York City for business and pleasure. I found the trip very eye opening. Everywhere I turned I found people being what I called Catalysts for Change – seeing a future possibility and turning it into a reality.

Whether is was the American Museum of Modern History, the Brooklyn Bridge, or the new construction in Hudson Yards – I saw people being Catalysts for Change.

 

Ways of Being a “Catalyst for Change”:

1. Creative – where others see a problem(s), the Catalyst for Change sees a possibility to bring something new into existence
2. Commitment – a Catalyst for Change will take a stand with a commitment to make a difference for good and they are willing to commit time to bringing a possibility to reality
3. Courage – a Catalyst for Change will find the courage to step into the unknown and use their voice in generative ways (action-oriented) to turn their idea (their possibility) into action by enrolling others into their possibility to make it a reality.

While in NYC, my wife and I walked the “High Line” in Chelsea (neighbourhood in lower Manhattan). The “High Line” is an abandoned elevated rail line that runs from lower Manhattan into the meat packing district.

In 1999, the city and many local people became tired of this rusted out abandoned rail line running through their neighbourhood. They wanted this eye-sore metal structure demolished so they could re-purpose the land.

Then 3 “Catalysts for Change” stepped in and transformed history in Chelsea.

First Peter Obletz a resident of Chelsea challenged the demolition efforts in the court and won to save the elevated rail line.

Then two architects (Joshua David & Robert Hammond) heard about what Peter Obletz was doing and they saw a new possibility for the abandoned elevated rail line; they saw the possibility of a beautiful park filled with indigenous plants and trees of the area.

From the initial efforts of these three “Catalysts for Change”, today there is a beautiful walking park in Chelsea that is free for all to walk the High Line and to enjoy its beauty. This is a fascinating story of how three people chose to see a future possibility and make a difference for the good of their neighbourhood.

Friends of the High Line 

Enrolling the Naysayers in Future Possibilities

How do you enroll naysayers to see a vision and want to take an action?

1. Design Generative Conversations
2. Intentional About Speaking into Another Person’s Listening
3. Courageous Enough to Stand Alone for What You Believe is the Right Thing to do

When designing a Generative Conversation (action-oriented), you want to be intentional about speaking into another person’s listening (what they care about) and create a dialogue conversation to transform your possibility into reality (courage to take a stand).

 

Your Leadership Challenge:

Be a Catalyst for Change by being a designer of a generative question that shifts others’ perspective to your possibility. The question must speak into a person’s or a group of peoples’ listening such that a conversation occurs that creates new possibilities for your idea.