Grow and lead for all of us

Leadership

Episode 30: The Triple Perspective Combo, A Jedi Leadership Trick [The Amiel Show]

Episode 30: The Triple Perspective Combo, A Jedi Leadership Trick [The Amiel Show]

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This Jedi Leadership Trick is for complex situations where seeing things from a single perspective won’t cut it.

Example: senior leaders in your organization make a decision and ask you to “communicate the message to your team.”

You’re preparing to meet with one person on the team, and you know she won’t be pleased by what she hears. You want to be loyal to senior leaders yet are concerned about the impact on her. And you’re not sure how you feel about it yourself. What do you do?

Listen in as I describe:

  • The three default moves many of us make in this situation–and the risks of each
  • Why it’s important that your response embrace not one, not two, but three different perspectives
  • The three steps you can take to embrace this complex situation with greater skill and less stress

the-triple-perspective-combo

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Episode 28: Sarita Chawla On The Near Death Experience Of The Ego [The Amiel Show]

Episode 28: Sarita Chawla On The Near Death Experience Of The Ego [The Amiel Show]

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Sarita Chawla is a wise woman. Wise enough to realize that when it comes to developing people, deeper isn’t always better.

It’s important to meet people where they are.

In this episode, we discuss vertical development–how it differs from most approaches to leadership development and why it matters for mastery. Sarita walks us through two stages of development where most people experience challenges. New Ventures West calls them Immediate Concerns and Balance. One describes an inner life of constant firefighting with little capacity for self-reflection. The other deals with life as a proud juggler of “necessary” responsibilities.

Think these sound like you? Think they don’t? Either way, Sarita has a message worth hearing.

sarita-chawla

Highlights

  • 3:00 What is vertical development?
  • 14:30 The challenge of letting go
  • 16:00 A near death experience of the ego
  • 22:00 After the “aha” moment is…disorientation
  • 30:00 Immediate Concerns–a life of constant firefighting–and beyond
  • 37:30 Balance–a self-important juggler of many things–and beyond
  • 40:00 Reinterpreting the networking lunch
  • 48:30 What Sarita is personally practicing in her life

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Episode 25: Pamela Weiss On Leading With Clarity, Courage, And Curiosity [The Amiel Show]

Episode 25: Pamela Weiss On Leading With Clarity, Courage, And Curiosity [The Amiel Show]

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Pamela Weiss is an amazing coach and teacher. She has one foot in the corporate world and another in the world of Buddhism. In fact, she spans so many domains that sometimes I think she must have three or four feet. That’s why I invited her to join me for this historic (play drum roll) episode 25 of the podcast.

In this interview, we talk about three important qualities of leadership: clarity, courage, and curiosity. These are qualities of bodhisattva leaders, “wise feeling beings” who are “dedicated to supporting the welfare of others.” Pamela challenges us to deepen our understanding of what it means to lead in the world.

Before the interview, I introduce a new feature to the podcast: the Jedi Leadership Trick. This week we explore one called Two Feet, Five Breaths. It’s pretty nifty.

Pam-Weiss

Highlights

  • 0:30 Jedi Leadership Trick: Two Feet, Five Breaths
  • 5:20 Introduction of Pamela Weiss
  • 10:40 Leadership: role or way of being?
  • 13:40 Bringing bodhisattva leadership into the vernacular
  • 20:15 Clarity, courage, and curiosity
  • 33:00 This isn’t easy…and it’s not meant to be
  • 35:30 The Personal Excellence Program (PEP)
  • 38:30 Selecting a quality to focus on in your leadership
  • 44:30 Refining your capacity to observe
  • 49:30 Why lack of self-care is often a symptom of something else
  • 52:00 Building authentic connection and the power of group coaching
  • 58:00 What Pamela is deliberately practicing in her life

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I’d like the term bodhisattva to be as commonplace in our language as cappuccino.

–Pamela Weiss  Tweet this quote

Our world is a mess. There’s so much we could help with. What’s most important to me?

–Pamela Weiss Tweet this quote

Read The Transcript

You can view (and then download) a complete, word-for-word transcript of this episode here.

Explore Additional Resources

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  1. Sign into iTunes using your ID and password
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  4. Give it a rating. Bonus for a review
Episode 23: David Rome On The Wisdom Of A Leader’s Body [The Amiel Show]

Episode 23: David Rome On The Wisdom Of A Leader’s Body [The Amiel Show]

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In the past decade, an increasing number of leaders have had an astonishing insight: they have bodies.

This sounds silly to point out. Of course we all have bodies. We are human beings. Why is this a big deal?

Here is why: For decades, we’ve left the body out of the equation. Look at any book on leadership or management published between 1950 and 2005. You’ll be hard pressed to find anything about leaders’ bodies. Consider my own experience. When I started developing leaders in the mid 1990s, we talked about leadership competencies, how people change, and a dozen models of excellence. Cool stuff, but it was purely cognitive. One hundred percent was about how to shift minds. The body was nowhere to be found.

Fortunately, this has begun to shift.

David-Rome

Neuroscience teaches us that changing ourselves involves rewiring the brain’s neural pathways. The study of emotional intelligence suggests that reading our emotions and others’ is a distinctly physical act. And studies of high performance reveal that sleep, nutrition, regular breaks, and sustained periods of “flow” are must-haves for leadership excellence.

The secret is out: The body isn’t a peripheral concern. It is central to leadership.

So if you’re facing a big decision, navigating an interpersonal conflict, or building a team, keep this in mind: your body knows the answer.

Your Body Knows The Answer. That’s not just a clever phrase. It’s also the title of a new book by David Rome. David is a mindfulness teacher and seasoned executive. He began practicing Buddhism in 1971 and served for many years as the private secretary to the great Tibetan Buddhist master, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

This week on the podcast, David and I talk about how to use mindful focusing and the body’s “felt sense” to rise to many challenges of leadership.

Highlights

  • 9:00 What are “felt senses” and why do they rarely break into your consciousness?
  • 16:00 Negotiating a complex deal between two organizations–and how the felt sense saved the day
  • 24:30 How the felt sense can help you in a crisis
  • 31:00 Using mindful focusing when you have to fire someone or make another tough decision
  • 40:00 A simple focusing practice you can do right now
  • 51:00 When and how to practice mindful focusing
  • 53:00 What it was like being private secretary to the great Tibetan Buddhist master, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
  • 57:00 What David is deliberately practicing to grow as a person

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Episode 22: Michael Dolan On Becoming Relaxed And Present By Improving Your Workflow [The Amiel Show]

Episode 22: Michael Dolan On Becoming Relaxed And Present By Improving Your Workflow [The Amiel Show]

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Everyone wants to know your plans for the Fourth of July.

Michael Dolan has a different question: Will your mind be clear and relaxed enough to enjoy the long weekend? Or is it cluttered with unfinished actions and other “stuff?”

If it’s cluttered, there’s a reason: your mind is not meant to store all the agreements you have with yourself.

That’s why we all need a trusted system for identifying, tracking, and taking action on all this “stuff.”

This, Michael says, is the purpose of workflow coaching–and GTD.

Michael-Dolan

In Episode 22, I welcome Michael back to the podcast to talk through how this works and the practical steps you can take to clear your mind and be present. Michael is just my second return guest (after Jennifer Garvey Berger). When you listen to this interview (and Episode 2), you’ll know why.

Apart from being respected and liked by everyone he meets, Michael brings a rare gift. Of the thousands of productivity experts around the world, Michael is one of the few who takes a truly integral approach. His work is about getting more of the right things done with less stress, but that’s not all. He also helps you bring your whole self to the table so that others feel an invitation to do the same.

That’s why, yet again, I have set aside my envy of his hair–which is much better than I had even in my prime–and decided to share his practical wisdom with you again.

Highlights

  • 9:30 How you can be complete about being unfinished
  • 13:50 The five phases of workflow
  • 19:00 How to decide what to do in the 22 minutes before your next meeting
  • 22:30 Why the old methods of defining priorities often fall short
  • 27:00 GTD gives meditation a run for the money in producing presence
  • 33:00 The Weekly Review is the uber practice of GTD
  • 37:00 It’s up to us to define our agreements with ourselves
  • 39:00 A story of when processing the inbox reminds someone of what matters most in life

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Episode 21: Ba Luvmour On Parenting 8-12 Year-Olds [The Amiel Show]

Episode 21: Ba Luvmour On Parenting 8-12 Year-Olds [The Amiel Show]

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When you’re with 8-12 year-olds, ask yourself, ‘Am I building trust in this moment?’

–Ba Luvmour, headmaster of Summa Academy in Portland, OR   Tweet this quote

[Update: in July 2017, Ba’s school, Summa Academy, suddenly closed. It was a shock to our family and others.  The way Ba and the other administrators handled the ending fell short of what we wanted and expected given the closeness of our relationship the prior four years. It hurt. Still—and this is the main point I want to make—our family continues using the parenting practices we learned at Summa and continue to see positive results from them. There’s good stuff in here!]

Leadership is about your life as a human being. It encompasses all of you. That’s why I’ve chosen this week to focus the podcast on parenting.

In particular, parenting 8-12 year-olds.

This is a crucial stage in children’s lives, yet almost nobody talks about it with wisdom and rigor.

That’s why I reached out to Ba Luvmour. A pioneering educator and author, Ba is a man of big ideas and enormous practical experience. He talks a big game–and delivers. I know this because our older son is a student at Summa Academy, an independent school in Portland, Oregon for kids ages 4-14 where Ba serves as headmaster.

Ba2

 

One big reason we chose Summa Academy is that it knows children’s interpersonal lives inside and out. To give a simple example, what do you do when your child refuses to do something you ask? According to Ba, it’s not helpful to answer that question in a vacuum. First, you ask: what stage of development is this child in the midst of–and what are the nourishments and toxins of this stage?In two years, our older son will turn 8.

So I asked Ba to give me a sneak preview of what to expect at this stage, which Ba calls FeelingBeing. What’s specific challenges do kids this age face socially and emotionally? What kind of relationship do they need with you to thrive? What mistakes do many parents make–and how can you avoid them?

Ba bring enormous enthusiasm, wisdom, and love to this interview. He offers specific tips for handling common situations–what I call conversational practices.

I promise that you will learn something new from this conversation. And I hope you’ll share it with friends.

Highlights

  • 4:15 What a camping trip can do for an 8-12 year old’s social bonds and feelings of adventure
  • 14:00 How to help an 8-12 year old identify what they think is unfair and understand why
  • 20:00 What to say–and not say–about divorce to children at this age
  • 23:00 Why losing friendships at this age can produce grief and loneliness–and how to work with this
  • 27:00 Why it’s not helpful to tell a child, “Hey, it’s OK. You’ll make new friends.”
  • 33:00 The long term cost of using rewards and punishments
  • 42:00 Stop talking about winning and losing. Start asking kids to describe their experiences in detail
  • 46:45 How watching Star Wars can subvert a 5-year-old’s imagination

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Episode 18: Brian Underhill on executive coaching, politics, and presence [The Amiel Show]

Episode 18: Brian Underhill on executive coaching, politics, and presence [The Amiel Show]

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Brian-Underhill

Brian Underhill founded the world’s most experienced leadership coaching company, CoachSource. And he’s personally seen it all. So, I thought, what better person to ask about the “undiscussable issues” in leadership coaching?

In Episode 18 of the podcast, we discuss:

  • 10:30 Why many people still associate executive coaching with being messed up
  • 16:45 When leaders’ direct managers want them to be more like them
  • 19:45 The crucial role that HR leaders play in coaching
  • 23:00 How companies discuss the ROI of coaching
  • 29:00 Executive presence, grooming, and media skill
  • 38:00 Political challenges around executive coaching
  • 41:00 When coaches are asked to be surrogates for managers like George Clooney’s character in the film Up in The Air
  • 43:00 The challenge of integrating leaders from other cultures
  • 48:00 Brian’s personal use of peer coaching to stick to his goals

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