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Archive for the ‘Human Potential’ Category
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
In October I did a talk on Making Meaning & Mission, which is shared here as an audio file.
You may also want to try the prompts we used in small groups in your group of inquiring friends:
- Where do you derive meaning? What matters to you most?
- What desires are underneath the things you do in the world?
- What problems in the world are you attracted to working on?
- What problems have you been able to see, or have insight into, due to your unique life circumstance- how has your life experience itself prepared you to serve?
- Where are your deepest values and actions aligned now, where do you want more alignment?
- Where are you acting on someone else’s (culture, parents) values, not your own?
- If you are living your purpose, how did you arrive in that place? What can other people learn from you?
Thursday, July 14th, 2011
You know I’m mad for TED Conferences, and the whole global juggernaut of TEDx and TED conversations- especially for how it taps into a worldwide need for meaning, impact, connection- and awakens our infinite curiosity. After attending 5 big TEDs and organizing 5 TEDx events, and attending several of the other conferences and events on the list, I have come to believe that shunning mass hypnotism and engaging with real ideas, idea generators and activators is one of the most important things you can do in your lifetime- to be woken up, to share yourself, to act and interact in a new way- and to get into content that hasn’t been overcooked, sanitized and reheated so as not to offend (eg mass media outlets, textbooks). Then act from that information, as well as from your own deep knowledge and direct experience. If you can attend in person, these are among the best networks in the world to be engaged in. If not, have a video over your morning coffee- play idea roulette, and get inspired.
Here’s my list of broad thinking conferences and organizations that inspire innovation and dialogue across disciplines (and, in some cases, partying and playing with the global elite). (more…)
Tags: Aspen Ideas Festival, Aspen Institute, CGI, Clinton Global Initiative, Conferences, Dwell on Design, Global Elite, Google Zeitgeist, Ignite, New Yorker Festival, Pecha Kucha, PopTech, Renaissance Weekends, Summit at Sea, SXSW, TED, TEDx
Posted in Conscious Living, Human Potential, Leadership | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
As a preface to this: This is a personal account, told as bluntly as I can tell it, and because I hope that others will be helped if I narrate my path. Also, I have come to completely love, accept and forgive anything in my family of origin- and I really loved my dad. That doesn’t change the truth of the story.
I had a mad dad. When things didn’t go well, he would bang and break. He would bully sales clerks and support people with his analytical brilliance. There was usually a low level of exasperation and sighing in his presence. It was this way before my mother died, and continued until he was well into stage 4 cancer. My stepmom wore her jaw down by clenching it over many decades, and although she’s a very cool and aware person now, I can remember her kicking her foot through my plywood bedroom door, because I had locked it and wouldn’t come out. I never understood their anger, I just learned to get out of the unhappy way, and wait for the good part of them to return. I would run, hide out, dream, and wait for the wave to pass. But the loneliness and fear in these moments didn’t stop me from growing up and doing the same kind of thing in my own household. (more…)
Tags: anger management, communication, fruits of the spirit, greg baer, improving relationships, Love, marshall rosenberg, overcoming anger, relationships, spiritual development
Posted in Conscious Living, Human Potential, Love, Yoga | No Comments »
Sunday, May 8th, 2011
We’re looking a conference room full of 40 to 50 year old executives from all around the world, gathered for leadership school, the majority in standard issue khakis and well pressed shirts- corporate casual. And they are giving us that evaluative eye common when you arrive to address a room full of people. We’re here to get real, to invite these mid career professionals to share their untold stories and big ideas, to go out on a limb and say what the organization needs to hear. And we’re putting all their shiny faces on video. Essentially, we’re taking a few days helping people go deeper, looking for the treasures of their company’s culture and eliciting the kind of stories that would never make it into an ECM system but are the heart of the what it means to be part of the company, and tell the world (or perhaps just the leadership team) who this organization really is. (more…)
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
Do you know what it takes to raise a child to adulthood, and then what it takes for them to make their strides from early adulthood to get to the point where they are mature decision makers in the world? Say, 30 years old?
I decided to do some back of the envelope calculations to get to an answer, starting with figuring out what has been invested in a person by the time they get to this age. Basically each person is a walking treasure, an immense investment by their families and the culture- and simply walking around with that realization has shifted the way I see each person. So, here goes:
The hard dollar costs of raising a person: In the United States, we can use some government data that says it costs parents on average $250K to raise a child from zero to 18. $350K if their parents made over $98K per year. If the parents don’t pay, the society picks up the slack. (more…)
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
If you call “your people” assets or human resources, you may want to rethink your approach.
True leaders see people, not replaceable widgets. Leaders understand the full range of capabilities, values, desires and concerns of the people on their team. Conversely, the commodification of people as Assets, Resources, or Employees dehumanizes them, creates assembly line mentalities, and dissuades people from giving their all to the work they are doing.
If you want enthusiastic, committed support, cooperation, collaboration and an ownership mentality, you have to see and treat individuals, not widgets.
Here are some ways that can show up:
- Stop the cookie cutter job design. You meet the needs of the individual, taking their needs and the organizations goals to heart. Often, it’s caring about how the job fits into the person’s life, and adjusting the framework of the job to support the overall life that creates long term loyalty and minimizes undesired attrition.
- You attempt to create jobs that use the whole person. Vary and combine jobs to tax and utilize the brain’s cross training skills and eliminate boredom. Overspecialization minimizes creativity and effectiveness.
- You celebrate the individual. See each person’s gifts, contributions and unique qualities in a way that makes them feel seen for who they are, not as a widget. Play to their strengths, and everyone wins.
- You invite the person to express their authentic self. Whether by default or intention, see where you are trying to have people fit a mold that makes the dominant group (the group in charge) feel more comfortable, and where you are valuing their individuality, their true selves.
- You love. When we see all people as their highest and best selves, as their full potential realized, they live up to the expectation. We move from a perspective of judgement and criticism, to one of wholeness, contribution and possibility. We highly recommend Ben Zander’s book The Art of Possibility, especially his chapter on “Giving an A“.
Cube living can already feel rather closed- like a person is not living fully. As a leader and a manager, sending the message- you matter, I see you, you exist- can make all the difference in creating a better life for everyone you have the privilege to lead and guide.
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
When we review the attitudes people have toward public speaking, being on camera, or leading a meeting or a workshop, one of the most common comments is something along the lines of “I feel fine if I’m prepared- otherwise pretty much sick to my stomach”.
But as an audience member, how many times have you seen the phenomenon that a presenter only comes alive in the Q&A, when they are thinking on their feet? (Maybe I should have titled this piece “Start with the Q&A Mindset”- this is where speakers are most themselves, and are often most in touch with their expertise.)
The preparation and rehearsal in and of itself can sometimes lock a presenter up mentally and physically, and that shows on stage.
We would urge all presenters to release the performance mentality. This can include one or more of the following themes: “I’m here to show what I know…. to perform”, “I need to have my lines memorized”, “I don’t want to forget anything”, “I want them to think I’m smart/competent/etc.”- in short, some variation on “they will judge me.”
An alternative is to KNOW deeply that you are smart, competent, that you already have a mastery of your materials. Know that you will be able to access this knowledge when you need it and structure a cogent response on the fly. We urge you to shift your whole presentation energy to giving- what can you GIVE to the audience, and away from performance.
Simply being you, and being at ease, you will be able to offer what you do know with no stress- to bring forward your knowledge in an easy and compelling fashion.
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
From SCALE:
Everything about our human scale causes us to foundationally misapprehend reality. The very fact of being in our bodies creates a perceptual bias.
The limits of our sensory capacity- what we can see with the naked eye or hear unaided, the length of our lives– even the size of our bodies- conspire to limit our understanding. How can we truly understand continents that disperse and come together in 400 million year cycles if we only live 80? How can we hear the language in whale song when it is at a frequency is so much lower than our ears can take in?
Although most of us are not conscious of it as we walk through the world day to day, we are collectively conscious of these limitations, and something in us is always reaching farther- to surpass them. We develop instrumentation to see more and hear more: think of the countless enhancements to our naked perceptions that we have devised- tele and microscopes, infrared, amplifiers, carbon dating- the purview of science. Or, we go deeper into awareness practices that enhance our perception while leaving the machine tools behind: trying meditation, ritual, altered states- the perceptual domain of the mystics.
In fact, we could see the entirety of scientific exploration, and possibly spiritual as well, as attempts to transcend and surpass our biological limitations. (more…)
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
This piece is excerpted from Before Speaking A Word, which is from Unit 2 of our Resonant Presentations workshop.
Click here for upcoming public dates and to register. We are running this for FREE for Founder’s Den members on Sunday, December 12, 2010 in San Francisco.
What is this thing called “Presence”?
The quality of your presence speaks before you even say a word. Presence is a catch-all term for all of the unspoken parts of communication: the combination of thoughts, attitudes, postures, gestures and expressions that send messages before a word is spoken.
People rapidly “read” what someone is saying through unspoken and unconscious signals, before they even begin to speak. In Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell describes this as “thin slicing”, a phenomenon in which observations and interpretations are happening so quickly in the brain as to be subconscious. (more…)
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
On November 16th, the San Francisco TED community will explore the Edge of What We Know in many dimensions- the physical and the conceptual, the artistic and the unconscious. Our hope is that people leave inspired and curious, asking the questions: What do I know? How do I know this? What don’t I know? And maybe even leave more comfortable in saying I don’t know…. with all the humility that brings, and inquiry it invites.
From deepest space to the forest floor, from governance to money, from our internal “edges” to communal outreach, join these phenomenal speakers for an inspiring afternoon and evening.
Join us online at www.TEDxSF.org, starting at 4 pm Pacific Time, for the free web simulcast:
| Jason Johnson/Welcome |
4:00 |
| Christine McCaull/The Edge of What We Know |
4:02 |
| Juan Enriquez/Strange Tales of Chiapas |
4:05 |
| Dr. Alex Filippenko/Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe |
4:23 |
(more…)
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