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Patience, Faith, and My Professional Journey

by on November 24, 2004 in Career, Work

I am not, by nature, a patient person. However, I am finding this to be an essential quality as an entrepreneur building a coaching practice.

It takes patience to develop solid networking business relationships. It takes patience to allow folks to find their way to your blog and website. It takes patience to gather enough people to create a tele-class. It takes patience to build a strong foundation. All of this goes against an assumption I held when I first started my practice – the work you put into business development will be met with some kind of correlating result in the near future. Kind of like: if you do this, you’ll get that. Yes, it was kind of naive, but I came from a non-profit world where I could measure project results in real-time and make conclusions as to whether the project was successful or not.

Now, I realize that developing my practice involves a kind of patience that emphasizes faithfulness. The actions that I am taking now to attract clients may only begin to yield results further in the future. It’s not the easiest lesson for me to learn, but it is proving to be one of the most valuable.

So, as you build your professional network, develop your own influence and reputation, or find your true career purpose, remember it all takes time. Regardless of how hard it is, letting go of the NOW mentality can make a huge difference in how you approach your career development. It can keep you from giving up or giving in to the notion that your work doesn’t have to be something you love.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Guess It’s Time To Get In Shape

by on November 11, 2004 in Work

A new perk for employees could be a week-long European corporate bicycling trip. DuVine Adventures is wooing Fortune 500 companies to dump the staid old corporate retreat in favor of a luxurious biking trek through Europe.

The press release continues:

Traveling Europe by bicycle is the most exciting of all corporate incentives. Earning a deluxe bike trip based on performance is a visible symbol of achievement, prestige, and recognition. Corporate trips are also a great way to create powerful alliances between top employees, and help foster cooperation while breaking a sweat.

Sounds interesting, but I have a hard enough time peddling my bike a few miles around my home. Not that I would knock a trip through Europe. I just hope the companies give their employees at least 6 months of prep time in order to train for their “reward.”

from FC blog…Leadership Lessons from a Greyhound Bus Trip

by on November 10, 2004 in Work

Lucas Conley at Fast Company posted an entry chronicling his recent experience of getting lost on a greyhound bus somewhere around NYC. When the driver finally admitted to his passengers that he was lost, a number of suggestions came from the backseats that helped the group find their way into Manhattan. As a man who has a difficult time admitting that I’m lost, I’m highly impressed with the driver’s lack of ego in that circumstance. For leaders, it’s a trap to believe that it’s weak to let others know we’re lost and unsure which direction to go and then allow others to help make decisions.

Lucas concludes with: "Teamwork, a common mission, a flexible leader who’s willing to listen, a sense of humor… all from a Greyhound lost in Queens." Just goes to show that lessons in life and the workplace can be gained almost everywhere.

Categories: c.Leadership

There Is More Between Heaven and Earth

by on October 12, 2004 in Work

It’s a little off of what I would normally post here, but I keep coming back to this story and find myself amazed by what happened. It’s the recent story about the 17 year old girl who drove over her car into a ravine in Washington state. Two things are absolutely miraculous: one, that she survived (we learned today that dehydration may have saved her from dying of a blood clot in her brain); two, and the point of my post, is how she was found.

A volunteer searcher who said she had had several vivid dreams of a wooded area found the wrecked car in the trees Sunday…Hatch’s parents organized a volunteer search Saturday, and that night Sha Nohr, the mother of Hatch’s friend, said she had dreams of a wooded area and heard the message, “Keep going, keep going.”

This absolutely amazes me, as well as inspires me because there is so much that we still do not understand about ourselves as humans and our capabilities. What would you call Sha Nohr’s experience? To me, it relates to a second conception of “intuition.” There is a more rational view of intuition which is the mind’s ability to take various bits of information and fill in the blanks on a subconscious level. But this goes beyond rational. Another view of intuition is that it is an act of receiving information from a deeper level of reality. Deepak Chopra might say that it is communicating with the quantum level, that space which exists between physical reality and the spiritual reality of God.

Now, for the wild leap…how does this alternative view of intuition fit into how leaders operate within organizations? Is it possible for companies to entertain the spiritual dimension of intuition and use it to energize their cultures? What are the thoughts out there?

Dream Teams: Do They Actually Work In Organizations?

by on September 18, 2004 in Work

We all know how the United States basketball team fared at the 2004 Olympics and a similar thing seems to be happening with the U.S. Ryder Cup golf team. Both groups, filled with exceptionally talented individuals and seemingly dominant on paper compared to the competition, provide a stark reminder of one of the pitfalls of team-building. The pursuit to fill a work team with the best individual talent may actually lead to poor results. Instead, first consider the mission of your team (what’s your central purpose for existing as a group) and then build based on the answer. Need a strong marketing focus? Are you weak in bringing new ideas to the table? The best individuals to help with these needs may not be one of the “office all-stars.”

In the movie Miracle, Herb Brooks (played by Kurt Russell) tells his assistant, “I’m not looking for the best players, I’m looking for the right ones.” What he wanted was a team that shined together, not individual all-stars trying to shine on their own. Do you have the right ones on your team?