The strongest, most well-articulated vision will have little effect on your organization if you don’t enlist allies to support your view. Allies are people who are willing to listen, who try to help you when you ask, who give you feedback and explain your cause when you’re not in the room. Allies give you inside information and explain political motivations you may have overlooked.
Allies are different from friends in that your relationship with them always serves a specific purpose. Continue reading » »
When the female vision remains untapped, both women and organizations suffer. Women are unable to translate their best observations into action. What they see remains locked within them, and their connections with others can feel shallow and inauthentic as a result. What should be a source of power becomes a source of isolation and frustration. Without the female vision, organizations also lose power. Continue reading » »
Just as what we notice determines what we value, so what we value shapes our picture of how the world should be. This ethical dimension forms the third element of our vision. Unlike noticing and valuing, both of which occur within ourselves, in our minds and our hearts, the third component of our vision is manifest in our actions.
Our daily actions have real power when they serve the purpose of our larger vision, providing a link between what we are doing now, at this present moment, and what we most profoundly want to achieve in the world. Being clear about this connection — being able to articulate how our actions serve our larger vision — gives us a sense of purpose and inspiration and provides us with a yardstick against which to measure our decisions. Continue reading » »
In researching his book, we became aware of differences in how men and women perceive value as we interviewed women who had either left high positions or were considering doing so. Some of these women were clients, others were fellow speakers or panelists at corporate and university events, still others were well-known executives whose decisions were chronicled in the business press. As we listened to their stories, we were struck by a recurring theme, a phrase that we heard time and again. When asked what specifically had brought them to their decision, the majority summed it up by saying, “I decided it just wasn’t worth it.”
What does this mean? Continue reading » »
One of Carl Jung’s favorite words was “synchronicity”, that unexplainable convergence of unplanned events that offer insights and opportunities. When I agreed to join a trekking expedition through two remote provinces of the Indian Himalayas, I had no way of knowing that this adventure would coincide with the publication of my latest book, Gifts from the Mountain- Simple Truths for Life’s Complexities. Ah, synchronicity!
One of the benefits of being a continual learner is that we are constantly overtaken by ah-hah moments that serve to not only whack us on the side of the head, but also hold lessons that can have universal application for anyone in leadership. The following are but some of the principles gleaned as our group drove along the highest roads in the world and wound up in the regions of Lahual and Spiti which are often closed to the outside world for seven frozen months. They come from trekking with tribesmen herding sheep and goats at elevations up to 16,000 feet and from crossing white water rivers on foot and encountering the Dalia Lama in a remote monastery near the China/Tibet border. Continue reading » »
