In case you missed it, the Wisdom 2.0 Conference was held in March. It is the third of such conferences that bring “together people from a variety of disciplines, including technology leaders, Zen teachers, neuroscientists, and academics, to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age.

“The conference addresses the great challenge of our age: to not only live connected to one another through technology, but to do so in ways that are beneficial to our own well-being, effective in our work, and useful to the world.”

It’s founder, Soren Gordhamer talks about the danger of feeling disconnectedly connected. We live in a largely extroverted culture that seems to be on steroids in the current climate of social media. When you are constantly on, you can never really be on from the inside out and are in danger of burn out or overexposure. This reminds me of a guy, Dan Pearce, who blogs, Single Dad Laughing. Recently, he posted that he had over 4 million followers but felt lonely.

Feeling lonely means being cut off from people and connotes a desperation. It is not the same as being in solitude. The latter means you are by yourself but suggests a getting in touch with something deep inside yourself that you can only do when separated from people. Much can be revealed and learned when we bask in our solitude. Solitude revives and renews us. It brings us back to our vulnerability and our humanity. Solitude is a precious and underutilized – dare I say – tool – in today’s technologically-driven society.

Checkout the Wisdom 2.0 site for archived videos of insightful speakers – and then unplug, just for a while to absorb the thoughts.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Hiring for agelessness is based upon someone’s consciousness, their perspective, their ability to shift from me to we. The individual is focused on how we can create something great together. These are ageless attributes.

You may know someone who, at twenty, is fearful, domineering and stuck in their ways. Or, perhaps you know of a sixty or seventy-something who is as vibrant, vital and eternally curious as your five year old? Passion, wonder, the ability to work collaboratively knows no age bounds.

These are all qualities that are core requisites for working in the 21st century: the age of speed and technology. It’s up to the user how they manage themselves to make the best use of this environment. They either lead themselves to more fragmentation or more wholeness – leveraging their own wisdom and that of the collective wisdom, their teams or families.

Solving our complex problems today requires an integration of different disciplines and a sense of how to creatively bring together seemingly disparate factors or factions. We can’t afford any less of our whole selves showing up to the party. You hire for agelessness first and foremost by paying attention to the individual in front of you, not just what the packaging looks like or what their resume says. It’s a brave new world.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

4Cs + FAA = Change. To create true, sustained change in your life you need:

Courage, Competency, Compassion, Commitment + Focused Attentioned Action.

Courage: Take a stand for or against something that you want to be different – whether it’s losing weight, being a nicer person, being a stronger leader. These all require you to think about yourself differently, do things differently and have a different experience of yourself and yourself in relationship to others and the world around you.

Competency: Have or acquire the problem solving tools or skills you need to make the change. If you don’t have them, acquire them or solicit someone else’s expertise.

Compassion: Exercise it with, and for yourself when you come up less than successful. If you are lucky, it will happen that you will not succeed on the first or twentieth time. This is a test of your commitment to your goal and an ingredient that strengthens you and teaches other lessons yet to be revealed. Feel with, be with your emotions in this process or you will marginalize your results.  When trying to change, you will have emotions! They give you information about what is happening and what might need to be adjusted.

Commitment: You are tested to stick with it, not matter what! Get the resources or supports you need to bolster this, if you need to.

You can have the rest, but if you don’t have FAA, you won’t create change. Period.

Focused: Stay on it! Minimize distractions. Put on blinders, if you need to.

Attention: Pay attention to what you are doing. Pay attention to what others say or how they receive what you are doing.

Action: No change happens without actually doing something different. When you act, your thinking or perception can change also. This reinforces your positive, focused attention.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Dan Heath quotes a psychological study where two group of people are given different kinds of foods – one cookies, the other radishes. They are then asked to solve an insolvable puzzle. The high sugar group lasts 2 1/2 times longer than the vegetable group. I am a leadership/change consultant and a trained holistic health counselor/therapist so - I wonder if the radish group realized earlier on that the puzzle was unsolvable since they had healthy food in their systems!

I agree that change requires enormous energy and self control. We have so much energy to expend before we need to replenish, and so much self control before we have a meltdown. Individuals (and organizations) have a limited capacity of how much and what kind of change they can handle. You start with your desire, will and some advice/support on how to change. Then you try. If you don’t get the desired results, you either modify WHAT you are trying to change or HOW you are doing it. Change requires will, action and experimentation. To keep trying requires commitment.

Change is hard because energy and attention are finite resources. It can be easier when we realize that it is about creating different neural connections and/or rewiring well-grooved neural pathways in the brain (changing a habit).

Focusing your attention, repeatedly over time, literally changes the chemical circuitry in your brain. True, sustained change is hard because we often don’t “get it right” on the first, fifth or fiftieth time and we need encouragement, support and tools to stick with it until our brain gets with the program!  Staying focused on the positive, the outcome you want, versus what you are not getting, is the key. It’s as simple and hard as this.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Yesterday I talked about making sure you have accurately assessed yourself – WHY you are putting off action.

Here are some strategies to address the root causes of why this happens:

1. For fear: Identify similar tasks where you have been successful in the past to bolster your confidence. Focus on the present possibility of success and try to stay with that versus jumping ahead to the implications of success. Stay present. Enjoy the ride!

2. For worrying about what others think: ask for support and feedback from your “fans” on what you do well. Remind yourself about what you do well by creating a list of successes, and know that you can only control yourself. Put on mental blinders: It’s not your business what people think of you. Your job is to do the best you can with the matter at hand.

3. For being overwhelmed: work with your boss, coach, peer, spouse or friend to talk out loud to “de-whelm” yourself and make the project or task more manageable: break it down into smaller, step/step tasks; ask them for guidance, coaching, suggestions as to what to do or how to do it; ask for helpful resources (books, articles, websites, training).

4. If you don’t like the task: delegate it, if you can. If not, then find a way to make it fun: play music, dance, doodle, give yourself a reward after key milestones and upon completion.

5. For fear of loss: acknowledge the loss – what you loved about the previous project or team, make plans to (re-) visit if appropriate and/or say good-bye.

These are some brief suggestions to get you started. (I’ve done whole seminars just on procrastination!). The key is to identify one of the above solutions or create your own – and try it. Don’t delay.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

We all have moments – hours, days or weeks – where we are putting something off: a task or a project. It could be making a phone call to someone confronting an issue, starting a project, or doing the last step to finish a project.

Considering what “it” is that gets put off, you first need to give yourself a proper diagnosis – to delve into why you keep putting “it” off – before you can create an action plan around it. Today we’ll talk about the diagnosis and tomorrow we’ll talk about how to address it.

Typically there are two root emotions that allow procrastination to grow. They are fear and loss.

1. Fear falls into two categories: fear of failure or fear of success. We have these fears for a number of reasons. To name a few:

2. We are worried about what others think.

3. We are overwhelmed and not sure how to manage or prioritize the project - we don’t know WHAT to do or where to begin; we don’t know HOW to do something; we don’t believe we can do it or have something of value to offer; if we succeed more will be expected of us in the future. We are thinking of all of this at once!

4. We plain just don’t like the task.

5. You might think “loss” is an odd thing to have on this list. But sometimes you could be putting off finishing a project because you love it so much and don’t want it to end. All endings are beginnings and all beginnings are the end of something that came before. You might not want to start a project as it signifies leaving another project team behind or going to a different office building. By putting it off, you don’t have to deal with the loss of that project or group.

If you are frustrated with yourself and want to get yourself to action, ask yourself is your procrastination due to one of these reasons? When you answer yes, then you can start brainstorming how to address it. If it is none of the above, then ask yourself: Am I really being honest? Why won’t I do this task? Keep asking why until you get to the core emotion or reason. If it’s not one of the above, what else is it?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Here is an interesting New York Times article on the controversial topic of what makes a good life coach – and does age matter?

I do executive coaching, focused on a very specific population: Organizational leaders. All work is done within the context of conducting extensive assessments and creating a development plan, which involves the leader’s manager. All actions are behaviorally-based with targets and measurements. Yet I still have people referring to my work as “life coaching.”

Because people are whole creatures, often coaching executives requires that we touch on aspects of their lives that effect and impact their effectiveness as executives – which includes their personal lives – But the focus is on making them a better leader.

“Life” coaching is such a broad and complex topic. Philosophers, psychologists and poets take very different approaches at looking at and solving the most complex of human dilemmas.

I understand life coaching is focused on making someone’s life “better” in a way that the coachee has defined as better. I don’t think someone should be dismissed as a life coach just because of their young age, but they should be suspect. Age should be one of a number of filters. There IS something to be said for age, which implies but does mandate, experience and wisdom.

As Atul Gawande, a surgeon focused on top performance says, “Jobs that involve the complexities of people or nature seem to take the longest to master: the average age at which S. & P. 500 chief executive officers are hired is fifty-two, and the age of maximum productivity for geologists, one study estimated, is around fifty-four.”

The focus of assessing a life coach should be on the quality of their skills, as evidenced by the degree of success they have achieved in their life (however long or short) and the results of their clients. One can have a long life and not have learned from it. One could have a short life and learned a lot from it.

In addition to education and experience, it is ultimately the quality with which the coach has processed their life experience that gives them the competency (skills and characteristics) required for excellent coaching: presence, deep listening skills, quality questions, clear boundaries, and the courage to give difficult feedback.

What is your take?

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Yep.

If you’re a star can-do person – then set your sights on higher or different goals that rock your world.  What will really test this attitude so you know where it’s coming from and how strong it is?

To achieve self-mastery, you must be willing to break beyond your current level of success or competency. This is how you get to the next level of success and can only be done by embracing different kinds of challenges. It’s like strengthening a muscle. To lift a weight you actually break down the fiber of the muscle. With a day or two of rest in-between the heavy lifting, this exercise makes the muscle stronger. Rest is key as it allows for integration and a rebuilding.

What do you need to breakdown (eliminate or reduce) or exercise more of to make you a stronger leader – more in control of yourself and therefore better able to influence others?

• Breakdown could be your apathy. What has you numbed or defensive to caring about how others experience a challenge? What buttons do they press in you? Where do they need more of your support? How deep do you have to dig to be present to their perspective?

• Exercise could be a strength that is not fully leveraged. Are you showing your team how you stay positive and can-do despite repeated obstacles or setbacks? How do you transfer this strength to them? A positive team in unison can move mountains.

Ultimately all activity is comprised of exercise, breakdown, rest and build up for optimal results. In leadership development terms, I identify rest as reflection. Stepping back and integrating what you are working (or pushing) on helps you understand if you need to make an adjustment on the breakdown, exercise or rest (let it go) piece of the equation.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Einstein said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

As a Leader a key piece of your job is to clearly articulate your vision and get others excited about it and acting on it. If you don’t have followers, you aren’t a leader.

This task requires you to leverage imagination and empathy. First, you imagine a world that is different than what you currently see and experience. Second, you empathize with your constituents. Empathy requires that, if you don’t have their experience, as JK Rowling says, you use your imagination to empathize with them. This means you “feel with” them and/or create an idea of what you think their experience is. In doing so, you are best able to translate your vision and articulate why it should matter to them.

Rowling says Empathy is the rare gift we humans have that separates us from many other creatures of the world. We can “learn and understand without experience.”

And we are all gifted in one way or another with our ability to refuse to know. When we don’t exercise our empathy muscle, “we become masters at colluding in apathy.”

When you don’t have empathy for your constituents, they feel it and you are disconnected. They are not onboard – don’t get it or don’t care. It is your ability to enter your constituents’ world that will truly allow you to understand what is required of you – and them – to achieve a different world together.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com

Whether you are a student of life or leadership, be honest, life and leadership are hard work. Don’t you occasionally want the cliff notes or to test out of the exam?

Don’t you want to cut through the heavy lifting, the pain and muck to get to the glory?

True leadership means embracing your failure, strengthening your courage and cultivating your imagination to try yet again to create a better world – whether it is in your organization or at home.

What good is failure? How does it serve us? As JK Rowling says it helps us strip away the essentials that matter. For it is only when you face your greatest fear and survive that you are truly liberated. As Rowling says in her wonderful commencement speech at Harvard, hitting rock bottom is the most solid foundation one can build upon because there’s no place to go but up!

Our outer reality is only a reflection of what we have mastered within our selves.

Said another way by Greek author Plutarch, “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”

So you can start outside and make changes – and this will inevitably change something about your internal workings. Or you can begin inside working on your perspective with a dream or vision and the outside world will give you feedback molding and shaping you. Either way the two are inextricably bound. So, your starting point is irrelevant as you will land in the same place. Anything worthwhile has some stones in it’s path. These are gifts to strengthen your resolve to keep going.

© Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.               www.sagelead.com