Archives for July 2011
The art of helping
July 23, 2011 by · 2 Comments
This quote by Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard truly encapsulates the true art of helping:
“If One Is Truly to Succeed in Leading a Person to a Specific Place, One Must First and Foremost Take Care to Find Him Where He is and Begin There. This is the secret in the entire art of helping.
Anyone who cannot do this is himself under a delusion if he thinks he is able to help someone else. In order truly to help someone else, I must understand more than he–but certainly first and foremost understand what he understands.
If I do not do that, then my greater understanding does not help him at all. If I nevertheless want to assert my greater understanding, then it is because I am vain or proud, then basically instead of benefiting him I really want to be admired by him.
But all true helping begins with a humbling.
The helper must first humble himself under the person he wants to help and thereby understand that to help is not to dominate but to serve, that to help is a not to be the most dominating but the most patient, that to help is a willingness for the time being to put up with being in the wrong and not understanding what the other understands.”
Trust your instinct
July 21, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
I used to think success was all about goal-setting and alignment. If I didn’t achieve my goals, I was off-path, I needed to be re-directed again.
But a conversation with leadership researcher Marcos Salazar changed this for me. Marcos described how alignment is not always what is needed. Sometimes it is the creative things we do where we wander that allow us to come back to something profound when we connect the dots later. Sometimes we have to follow our instinct, rather than just follow what we wrote in a goals statement. There is an important balance between these two.
When did you trust your instinct, fall ‘off-path’ and only later connect the dots?
How to start a movement
July 3, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Dance is a powerful metaphor to leadership. Check out this TEDtalk “How to start a movement” on the potential we have to effect the change we want and start something that attracts attention and gets followed.
[ted id=”814″ lang=”eng”]Breathing
July 2, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Breathing is like leadership. We take in different air and then breathe out our own air. Leadership is about breathing out our own air while taking in other air first. It is also about never stopping but not rushing, staying synchronized with the body as it is to stay synchronized with a system.