Who are you as a leader and what is your impact?
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I’ve been considering this week what I stand for in the world.
Who am I as a leader?
What is the impact I want to have?
These are challenging questions. Challenging because it is questioning my fundamental purpose in life, my fundamental role as a leader. Challenging because in asking these questions, I realise that who I am as a leader is not always who other people want me to be.
Martin Luther King, Edward Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Bob Geldof, Bono. These people are inspirational leaders. They were visionary. They challenged the status quo. They upset people along the way and they carried on because they knew that what they were fighting for was important… to them and the world.
And they inspire me. Oh they really do. They inspire me to know that I can be fallible, that I can have faults, make mistakes and that I can trust enough in myself and what I am doing to carry on. Read More→
Finding clarity in the chaos
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My desk is a mess. It’s covered in papers that need filing, acting on. Post it notes to remind me of things to do and people to call.
Outside, my garden is also a mess. I didn’t make time to do the usual autumn clearout so there are remains of dead plants and leaves everywhere.
So it’s no surprise to me that my mind is also jumbled. It’s reflecting my physical environment. (Or is it the other way round?)
My head is full of exciting project ideas, people I want to work with, ideas about a book I want to write, plans for my future but also old projects that I don’t enjoy, things that I need to do that are a chore. And I notice how I am hopping from one thing to another, unable to settle on one thing at a time.
It’s difficult to be effective when everything is cluttered.
And yet…. Read More→
Taking personal responsibility for action
By · CommentsIt’s with sadness and hope that I followed the talks in Copenhagen on climate change.
Sadness…
Sadness because at great expense, global leaders came together to discuss a really important topic, something that is pivotal to society and our future and they failed to come to a satisfactory agreement.
Sadness because I watched countries pointing the finger at each other, trying to find someone to blame for the poor deal.
Sadness that Read More→
12 lessons in leadership from 2009
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Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog tips is doing a group writing project where bloggers write a review of 2009. Now is an ideal time for me to look back over the last year before moving on to 2010.
It’s surprising how much change there has been and how much I have learned along the way. I hope my regular readers have enjoyed learning alongside me.
Here’s my summary of my key leadership lessons in 2009:
January – Creating the change we want to see in the world
Obama was inaugurated and set the tone for the year. He opened people up to possibilities, to dreaming what is possible rather than fighting the things we don’t like. He inspired me to realise that if we want to create the change we want to see in the world, our own small world or the larger global world, then we need to start acting. We need to do our bit. I realised that I was not making the best use of my talents and I started to change course.
What is the change you want to see in the world and what step can you take towards it?
Read More→
Exploring different perspectives
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We choose our perspectives. We don’t always realise it and we are still choosing.
When we make a mistake, we can choose to see it as an opportunity for future growth and personal development or we can choose to see it as a failure. I have to remember that because it’s easy to forget.
I had my first singing lesson yesterday. I was a bit nervous because I’d never sung in front of anyone before. My teacher recorded my voice so I could take the recording away and listen to it and learn from it. When I listen back to me singing, I hear all the tuning errors (there were more than I thought there would be!!!). I hear all the things that I do with my voice that I don’t want to do.
In my head, I know how I want it to sound and it’s not like it actually sounds! It’s really easy to be critical. I could easily say it sounded terrible. Yet this is not a persepctive that serves me well. It’s the perspective that is most likely to make me want to give up.
Instead, I’m choosing another perspective…. Read More→