I took a break from this blog for 100 days to regroup on my personal and professional life. All I knew is that I needed time to integrate some deeply disturbing personal matters and to not be so public for a time. And despite what I did or didn’t do, stuff happens anyway.

It’s amazing what a business quarter can bring…. And it’s amazing what radical inner re-sculpting events can activate.

My world changed forever and completely in this time:

My father died suddenly and unexpectedly.
Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the Northeast U.S.
The U.S. re-elected President Obama.

My worked carried on but I am different on the inside being effected by these events:

I take nothing for granted.
I am working on radical acceptance of what is.
I have tremendous gratitude for what I have and who I am.

Just those three events aroused a ton of of other emotions in me: grief, sadness, relief, safety, insecurity, loss, hope, joy.

Even though I was able to sit vigil and say good-bye to my dad while the infection that ravaged his body took him within a week, he is still gone and I miss him. Even though I suffered minimal damage from the hurricane, thousands are still suffering and I’m aware of that. Even though I chose Obama as being the better of no-perfect candidate, his re-election still has implications.

Profound loss for what was, what could have been. I’m working on accepting what is. …and understanding what it means for my life going forward.

That’s all for now. Sometimes taking pause and breathing in change is enough. For now.

It’s like in my yoga practice – one of the greatest poses is shavasana. This is where you are lying down resting. It allows for your body to integrate all that has come before it to help it reset itself. In our culture allowing for integration is not valued. We rarely pause and are on to the next thing. Ebb and flow is the grace of nature that can be our greatest teacher, if we allow it.

Sometimes nothing happens on the outside but we change drastically inside. Sometimes major things happen externally and we don’t change inside. Sometimes it’s hard to change both our external circumstances and our worldview at once. All change requires energy – and we have a finite amount to manage. When things are moving, you need stability somewhere to navigate the waters. Slow down and listen. I am talking to myself here.

I’m learning to allow more space between activity and accomplishments. This fosters integration, the precursor to wisdom.

What is new in your world – either on the inside or the outside?

Copyright 2012 Sage Leadership Strategies, LLC All rights Reserved.

In my last post, I discuss Asana, the company. Founders, Moskovitz and Rosenstein are contributing to the global shift occurring on the planet right now that espouses we are interconnected, transitioning from me to we.  They are living their belief that they can turn a profit in a way that does the least harm and actually contributes to social good.

They believe groups create larger contributions to the world than individuals. They operate from the premise that all problems are solvable if we work together. “While corporations are excellent vehicles for collecting resources and making money to build better services, they are also excellent vehicles for creating joy and alleviating suffering.”

This sounds like Buddha in business attire.

Rubinstein says, “As a collective, co-creators do great things vs. human resources who extract things…. companies [should be] a means to an end to create joy on earth.”

Finally, they espouse a radical concept and departure from traditional corporate speak: Transparency of being – “let people be who they are…” don’t make them have to switch modes when they come to work.

What if you worked for a company that supported all of who you are? What if our corporate culture shifted from exploitation to working partnership to create life nurturing goods and services versus selling us things we don’t really need or want?

I heard a financial analyst the other day give an overview on his view of the economy. “We have been living beyond our means for 30 years.  We now have to lower our expectations.”

This we know. The real question is, can we come together as a nation, as a world and think differently about how we make money and about how much money we really need? Afterall, whatever you make, you can’t take it with you when you go.

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

Asana – not just a yoga pose but a company!

Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein founded Asana to enable teams to accomplish their goals more effectively. They do this by leveraging technology to form a collective memory, a “source of truth” as they describe it. They facilitate self organization so others see the information – and have a more immediate way of acting on it. It’s like a fluid project management system.

Do you suffer from continual partial attention? Their objective is to facilitate optimizing your energy with what is most important at any given time.

These entrepreneurs embody and apply what they know to be true:

• Powering through things and driving yourself is not what makes you most effective.
• Doing sprints, with rests in-between is more effective (as described in Loehr’s and Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement).
• In order to do creative work, it is important as an individual and as a company to understand your energy patterns and work with those in a deliberate way.
• It is possible to be in sync – work in harmony with a higher spiritual mission and be a business and a successful company.

Company practices that support these beliefs:

• They have a company chef to make good, nutritious food, in order to maximize energy levels.
• They align their people with a mindfulness practice – to pay attention to what they are doing and how they are doing it.
• Every Friday they have a TGIF where they share one thing they are excited about and one opportunity to put more attention to.

Food for thought….

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

Sherry Turkle speaks wise words when she says, “Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be alone. Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved.”  …versus a mystery to be explored.

What would it mean to not be heard? How in control are you of where you place your attention? What does it mean to be alone?

Turkle’s written a book that explores how we are alone together. Technology’s promise is to support our lives by making the daily tasks of work and life easier.  This should free us up for more discretionary time – to create and be more present to ourselves and each other. It has the potential to bring us closer together. This is all good stuff. The problem is not with the technology but can be with us, the users, and how we interface with it.

Instead, sometimes we use technology to have little-to-no boundaries around our work/life. If not kept in-check, we can be addicted to our mobile devices – when we feel or have a fleeting thought, we express and update our social media status, with little mindful processing or editing inbetween. We can interface with ourselves and each other in ways where we want predictability, efficiency – to wrap things up fast, neat and tidy. We want to hit the delete button on our humanity function so we don’t have to deal in the ambiguous realm of what it means to be in true relationship. It can be emotional, messy and unpredictable. Technology gives us a feeling of being in control and a sense that we have a quality of communication and depth of connection that is not possible in sound bites over the air waves.

Technology has it’s place but it should not replace face-to-face human relationships or real voice-to-voice dialogue. Looking into the eyes of your neighbor or co-worker is not the same as skyping them.

We can’t truly connect with others unless we are connected to ourselves. Solitude allows one to reflect and get to know themselves. This requires a deep, quiet listening. It facilitates a processing where we come to explore, discover and understand what we really think and feel about our lives. We hear our own voice versus allowing it to be obliterated or swayed by the din of social media.

When we have this connection within ourselves, we can be more present and connect with others in deeper and more meaningful ways.  When we don’t have this reservoir to draw from within, we look for it to be filled on the outside. A void within can never permanently be filled from outside and a danger is we can end up living someone else’s life versus aligning with our own.

I’ve come across a number of blogs recently where the blogger talks about feeling alone and his/her community of readers then say, “we love you.” Having a virtual life does not replace a real life in flesh. It seems spending REAL time with people is a lost commodity amidst mobile devices and constant social media chatter.

So, I invite you, on this day in spring (in the Western Hemisphere), to go outside and feel the grass beneath your toes, smell the bursting flowers and hear the birds chirp, and have a sit down. Soak in the sun or sit under the eaves in the rain. Just take it in and reflect. When you’ve sat a spell, go down the street to your neighbor or down the hall to your co-worker and have an old fashion conversation. Look into their eyes and ask about their day. Now, how do you feel? What additional information or insight did you receive?

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

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

In 1974 Arthur C. Clarke predicted we would be communicating with each other from a computer on our desk. He said it would revolutionize the way we relate to one another. He even predicted we could work from anywhere.

Now that the internet, cell phones, apps, texting, etc. have realized his vision, what do you think the world will look like 38 years from now?

Will we have chips in our heads or our entire life history on a ring on our finger? How will technology continue to change the way we work and live?

What are the implications for our relationships?

What’s your prediction?

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

You cannot separate peak performance from passion, focus and wellbeing. This implies wellness and being-ness. Good health, presence and peace of mind are equally important to top performance as is knowledge and skill. Being interested – focused and passionate about what you do is critical to your success over time. How you attend to something says everything about you and your results.

Our culture focuses so much on over-the-top dynamic doing that we forget that we are human beings not human doings. We are not endless wells of energy but need filling up with what nourishes us to expend more energy – to be infused with a spirit not just a flat obligation.

Have you ever experienced that flow where you are totally focused, working hard on something but also completely relaxed and at ease? Is this a paradox? No. This is the way we are meant to be. Our minds complicate our expression sometimes.

I’ve had “the flow” when painting a picture, facilitating a workshop or reading to my daughter. They all take focus and a certain amount of skill, experience, knowledge or talent. I enjoy these activities but how do I know I am “really on” and performing them well?

Ultimately it’s about other’s feedback and the objective results. Does the painting evoke thought and emotion in others? Is paint skillfully applied? Do workshop participants understand and respond to my questions? Did they learn something? Did their learning effect their life or job performance? Is my daughter engaged in the story? Did the way I read the story engage her to step into another land or character’s mind?

Identify something you are good at and love to do. Can you do more of it? I guarantee this will impact all areas of your life and work.

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

Check out Mike Myatt’s 5 Leadership Tips for 2012.

He makes some wonderful points – and I agree with his areas. Yet I suggest collapsing the areas and have a concerted focus on one area that will impact the other four areas.

Many of my executive coaching clients focus on changing 3-5 areas over the course of a year. This dissipates effort and can marginalize results. I have found that consistent and concerted effort in one leverage area can give you greater results in a deep, sustained way which can be a better return on your investment of time and energy.

In my post yesterday, I made this radical suggestion – to just focus on one thing. When one more effectively manages the white space it can support being more present. Living in the now and making minute-by-minute choices within a long-term perspective will transfer to the kind of choices Myatt suggests.

If one is truly living in the present then they: don’t miss opportunities, postpone decisions or numb themselves to feeling okay about not spending time with family, they listen more, are more curious to learn beyond knowledge, are more engaged, and are aware if they do want to pick up that book.

Living in the whitespace to support mindful leadership could be a cornerstone for Myatt’s tips. What do you think?

By the way, Mike I am so impressed with the volume of reading you do – and I am an avid reader myself. I’m wondering if you read 10 less books and focused more on being versus doing, how your leadership experience might be different? Just a thought that came to me while I sat idle for a moment before finishing writing this post.

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

…Or in some cases let there be white space.

Whether you are leading your business, life or family, I suggest exercising more of just one behavior that can make all the difference: manage the white space. This means:

• Giving yourself more breathing room
• Exercising the option to say no more
• Not jam-packing your day by scheduling every minute

If you’re like me – a recovering perfectionist – I sometimes schedule down time – I block an hour or two, a day or a week.

Allow downtime where you do things to foster:

• Insight
• Integration
• Reflection
• Creativity
• Renewal and Energy

If you can’t manage yourself and your own energy, then you can’t manage or lead your constituents: whether they are your board, employees, customers, spouse or children.

Since all relationships ultimately are connected to the relationship you have with yourself, and you are all you can control – it starts and ends with you.

The white space is the seed that ultimately leads to being more present. The ability to be more present will give you all the rest: answers and support you need to manage whatever comes up this year.

If 2011 was a year of challenge and transformation, 2012 promises to be a year of possibility – integrating and solving the seemingly impossible…magic!

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