The Intersection between the World's Greatest Need and Your Greatest Passion

It is not often that we post two blog articles in one day. But I came across a quote that got my attention and I wanted to memorialize it in our blog:

"Your life should be about finding the intersection of the world's greatest need and your greatest passion."

Wow! How many  of us are searching for meaning and purpose in life? This quote gives us a little direction.

It came from an article I am reading as background for an MBA class I will likely be teaching in the fall on Corporate Social Responsibility. Water is a hot sustainability topic. Fast Company just this month published an article that talks about a new organization, water.org, which was co-founded by Matt Damon, who has found his passion in addressing the water crisis.  

In an era when so many celebrities are making the news by breaking laws and misbehaving, it is encouraging to read about Matt, who is using his celebrity to lead others to do something about a very important issue that affects 3 billion people around the globe. What an inspiration he is!

Questions to ponder: What is my greatest passion? How can I use it to server the world's great needs? Or even the world's little needs right here in my own neighborhood?

It's Just an Inconvenience

It is only 6:30AM on the west coast and already I have been inspired! A friend sent me a link to Diane Rose's story and I was so uplifted I had to write and share her story with you!

You see, Diane Rose is a master quilt maker. Her gorgeous quilts are displayed all around her home, which you can see in the news report. What makes Diane's story remarkable is that she has been blind since childhood.

Her interviewer asks Diane how she deals with her handicap. She says she doesn't see her blindness as a handicap -- it is only an "inconvenience"! Her blindness can get in her way when she wants to do something, she says; but, she can always find a way to get around it!

She goes on to encourage others to just get out and do! No matter how much you hurt, physically or emotionally, no matter how down you may be, she says just get up off the couch and go do something for someone else and you will be on your way to feeling better!

Diane is a wonderful leader. She is leading from right where she is, in her small home making quilt after quilt. Her attitude and accomplishments are inspirational for all of us.

Questions to ponder: What "inconveniences" am I allowing to slow me down? How would perceiving them as inconveniences, instead of as problems or something worse, enable me to better master them?

Creating Positive Change

Appreciative Inquiry. Ever heard of it?

Appreciative Inquiry is a ground breaking approach that Janet and I have translated into a suite of tools that we call Appreciative Business Practices. We recently presented some of these tools to groups of Job Seekers at Job Connections and Experience Unlimited. Materials from our talk, Creating Positive Change for Job Seekers, is available to anyone who is interested here.

In a nutshell, Appreciative Inquiry is simply focusing on what is working in a situation -- the strengths and positive attributes of a situation, the individuals involved, and the environment.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Not so easy in practice! Think about it ... we humans are oriented to look for what is wrong -- we conduct "root cause analyses" and "gap analyses". Performance reviews focus on "areas needing improvement". We are applauded for solving problems.

It is a sea change to begin by focusing on what is right and good. If we can make this change, we can create an atmosphere of energy and enthusiasm. Creativity and innovation flourish. Happiness and fulfillment surface.

We love to spread the positive, uplifting message of Appreciative Inquiry and to introduce our Appreciative Business Practices. Let us know if you would like to have us speak to your group.

Questions to ponder:  How much time do I spend thinking about what is good and right about a situation or person? How much time do I spend thinking about what I don't like or what is wrong with a person or situation? How would things be different if I spent more time on the positive aspects?

Leading like a Woman

This morning, I listened to a talk by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and Fortune's #16 Most Powerful Woman in Business in 2010. Her focus was why we have too few women leaders. She cited disappointing statistics: 9 of 190 world leaders, 5%, are women; 13% of parliament level leaders; 15% of C-level business leaders; and 20% of non-profit leaders.

Sheryl gave a number of reasons for this. She believes that women "drop out" of their careers, in her mind to raise children (and, in my mind, to accept early retirements and workforce reductions that seem to target women and older workers). But she also believes that the mindset women bring to their careers impede their ability to make it to the top.

This is an assertion that has been made many times. Statistics indicate that women underestimate their own abilities while men overestimate them; that women attribute their success to external factors and men to themselves; and that women are disliked when they are successful when men are both liked and respected for their success. Most messages suggest that women need to change their thinking on the first two points and toughen up on the last one.

I think I see it a little differently.

I believe that women are leaders, right here and right now. As Janet and I have been saying for two years in this blog, true leadership begins right where we are; it is not the sole domain of C-level leaders. Women lead through influence and example, even when they don't have a leadership title -- even when they are not earning an income. Women make a difference, every day and every where.

So, what if, instead of changing mindsets, women advocated their mindsets?

• If every leader (and every contributor, for that matter) recognized his/her own strengths and abilities and estimated them accurately -- rather than under or overestimating them -- how much more confidence and relevance would their contributions and results have? how much more long-lasting might they be?
• If every leader recognized that external factors such as timing, circumstance, and other people's contributions were as vital to her/his success as her/his own abilities, how would that change the decisions made? the compensation paid? the jobs retained?

Let's consider leading like women, rather than asking women to change the way they lead. We might create a better world!

Questions to ponder: How do I lead each and every day? Do I recognize my true abilities and use them with confidence? Or do I think small and underestimate what I can do? Or do I get cocky and overestimate what I can do? Do I give credit where credit is due? Or do I credit myself for all my accomplishments?

Leading as a Wife or Husband

This morning, my husband and I experienced a significant snafu that I believed was due to a shortcut he had taken a couple of weeks ago. I knew he knew what I thought; so, I was praying intently to keep my mouth shut!

He later told me he wanted to avert me telling him what he could have done to have avoided this snafu; so, he started in on me. Well, I wasn’t about to keep my mouth shut after that!

Our little spat didn’t last long, but we were quiet as I drove him to the ACE train. My husband was big enough to break the silence by apologizing, which I quickly did, also. Then, we laughed as we told each other what had been going through our minds…and we realized that we could have avoided hurtful words and tones if only we’d focused on ourselves instead of trying to anticipate the other’s actions and protect ourselves from them.

What was remarkable to me was that the tension lasted for such a short period of time and that the little episode ended with love, laughter, and appreciation for each other.

I believe that is thanks to the prayer that I pray nearly every day and in which my husband joins me on weekends. I share it with you here in the hope that it will inspire you to be a leader in your own marriage.

The Married Couple’s Prayer

Dear Lord,

Thank you for giving us each other as spouses and for the love that has grown between us. Help us to be good partners to each other.

We fully realize that we don’t have what it takes to be so without Your help.
Teach us how to pray for each other and to make our prayers a true language of love. Show us what unconditional love really is and how to communicate it in a way the other can clearly perceive.

Bring unity between us so that we can be in agreement about everything (Amos 3:3). Grant us to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus (Romans 15:5).


Make us a team, not pursuing separate, competitive, or independent lives, but working together, overlooking each other’s faults and weaknesses for the greater good of our marriage.


Make us each other’s helpmate, companion, champion, friend, and support. Help us to create a peaceful, restful, and safe home together. Teach us how to take care of ourselves and stay attractive to each other. Grow us into creative and confident people who are rich in mind, soul, and spirit. Make each of us the kind of spouse the other can be proud of.


Help us to pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another (Romans 14:19). May we be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10).


We lay all of our expectations at Your cross, Lord. We release each other from the burden of fulfilling each other in areas where we should be looking to You. Help us to accept each other the way we are and not try to change each other, yet still release each other to change in ways we cannot even imagine. We leave any changing that needs to be done in Your hands, fully accepting that neither of us is perfect and never will be. Only You, Lord, are perfect and we look to You to perfect us.


We pray that our commitment to You and to one another will grow stronger and more passionate every day. Show us how to support and respect each other as we rise to places of leadership in our home. Help us to understand each other’s dreams and see things from the other’s perspective. Reveal to us what the other wants and needs and show us potential problems before they arise.


Breathe Your life into this marriage, Lord. Make us new people each day. Give us fresh perspectives and positive outlooks. Help us to see each other with new eyes, new appreciation, new love, new compassion, and new acceptance.


Amen.


DURING TIMES OF DIFFICULTY:


Dear Lord,


Take our selfishness, impatience, and irritability and turn them into kindness, long-suffering, and the willingness to bear all things.


Take our old emotional habits, mindsets, automatic reactions, rude assumptions, and self-protective stances and make us patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled.


Take the hardness of our hearts and break down the walls with Your battering ram of revelation.


Give us new hearts and work in us Your love, peace, and joy (Galatians 5:22-23). We are not able to rise above who we are at this moment. Only You can transform us.


Show us where there is sin in our hearts, especially with regard to each other. We confess the times we’ve been unloving, critical, angry, resentful, disrespectful, or unforgiving toward each other. Help us to put aside any hurt, anger, or disappointment we feel and forgive each other the way You do – totally and completely, no looking back. Make us tools of reconciliation, peace, and healing in this marriage. Enable us to communicate well and rescue us from the threshold of separation where the realities of divorce begin.

(BTW, I pray the section for difficult times every day, too -- because I know I do things that irritate my husband and that I am annoyed by things he does; this prayer helps me to deal with that reality!)

Leaders as Stewards

Not too long ago, I listened to Ken Blanchard talk about leadership. He made a point about "self-serving leadership". YouDictionary defines self serving as "... serving ones own selfish interests, especially at the expense of others.”

Self-serving leadership is very likely a big part of the reason our economy is suffering as it is. Which suggests that, if we want to make a better world for our children, we had better start building leaders who are not self-serving. So, what kind of leaders do we need? What kind of leader is not self-serving? Back in 1970, Robert Greenleaf introduced the concept of Servant Leadership and since then renowned authors such as Stephen Covey, Peter Block, Peter Senge, and Margaret Wheatley have advanced the idea.

Servant-leaders achieve results by making the needs of others a priority; they practice Spiritual Intelligence, a concept Janet and I discuss in our presentations. Servant-leaders are often seen as stewards of their organization's resources (human, financial and physical).

Which leads me to the point of this blog. It seems to me that, to be an effective leader, one must be a responsible steward. Think about it ... if corporate leaders were truly stewards of the people in their organizations, they could never accept giant sums of money for business deals that cost employees their jobs and livelihoods. A steward mindset would recognize that the purpose of business enterprise includes providing livelihoods to the people who work there.

We don't have to wait until corporate leaders recognize their role as stewards. We can begin right here at home by leading where we are. When we act as stewards of our environment, our neighbors, our families, our possessions ... we are exhibiting the very leadership qualities those who lead us must adopt.

Questions to ponder:  What example do I set by the way I care for the people around me? for my possessions? for my environment? How can I be a better steward of all that I have, people, possessions, and finances?

RENEW for Interview Planning

Rosemarie and I firmly believe in the power of positive planning and bringing your whole self to every circumstance. To that end, we have created the RENEW model and applied it to the Interview Planning process. RENEW uses an appreciative approach and is focused on "Research", "Enjoy", "Navigate", "Execute" and "Win".

By bringing this approach to the interview planning process, candidates are better prepared, focused on their strengths, and bring a plan for not only themselves but for the company they interview with. They are able to execute with the power of leadership and influence, and focus on how to make a Win out of every interview/circumstance/interaction.

How many times have we heard interview candidates talk about negative experiences with interviews? Interviews can create anxiety, fear, and the potential for disappointment. When we take an "appreciative" approach (more on this in a future BLOG post), we look at interviews as an earned opportunity to make a difference - for ourselves and for others. This way the interview is now a refreshing opportunity to soar, learn, and serve. Imagine how your interviewer will respond when the focus is on helping them solve problems in the scope of the interview process. By positively preparing and understanding the organizational challenges, even interviewees can provide benefit to business.

To learn more, visit our BLOG often as we unravel a positive approach to interviewing in future posts.

Questions to Ponder: Am I being a leader in my interview opportunities? Do I proactively highlight how my strengths and skills suit a position, or do I let the interviewer unravel them through seemingly random questions? When anxiety takes over, am I able to learn and serve in the process?