Evolution is life producing and life sustaining. A system that is maladapted for survival will either die or change. For an ethical human being, money is important, but it is not the bottom line. Being a being a person of integrity, character, and values is.

As Martin Luther King stated, “If you have not yet found a cause worth dying for, you have not yet found a life worth living.”

The Occupy Movement is bigger than ” I want my job. It is, “I want my country.”  Listen to Marianne Williamson speak on why the Occupy Movement emerged.

Start a conversation today! We are here to create a life worth living. We are stewards of American Democracy.

Enough IS Enough!

Share/Bookmark

Reclaiming Conversation- The Next Frontier: Transforming A Culture of Distraction to A Culture of Engagement

The internet is still in the very early days. Not that long ago, we were trying to figure out how to keep computers busy.

Now, they keep us busy.  We are the computers’ “killer apps”  We text each other at family dinners, funerals,  and while jogging or driving. We sleep with our cell phones (and not just as an alarm clock).  When we are away from our phones, we become anxious.

Mobile connectivity allows us to bail out of the “physical real” at any time. It gives us the ability to hide from each other even as we are connected to each other.

Connectivity allows us the illusion of companionship without genuine connection. We would rather text than talk. Are we losing our ability to communicate? *

I share, therefore, I AM

One of the original intents of  social networking was to introduce a new economic model- “open source”. . and an option  to “start a movement”  by  sharing information, resources, thoughts, and feelings.

Studies now show, the more time we spend on-line, the more time we keep a lot of things to ourselves. We share what’s easiest to share- we share what makes us look good .. NOT the whole human. By not admitting failures, showing flaws and vulnerabilities, we cut off opportunity for conversation and dialog.  We cut ourselves off from our basic human needs and we truncate the needs of others.  Sadly, by NOT engaging in radically honest, compassionate communication, we are losing the skill of sharing our hearts.

So how do we change this trajectory?

1. Increase your UNCONNECTIVITY time with your phone or PC.
2. RESTART CONVERSATIONS: Replace e-mail and texting with increased  in-person and phone conversations.
3. ENGAGE in GROUPS  that meet in person: Women’s  & Men’s circles, Book Clubs, Toastmasters, NVC Groups , The World Cafe, Meet-Ups, and Personal Development Seminars (like Landmark) that encourage dialog and the sharing of our human vulnerabilities.
4. Encourage your company or organization to increase offerings in  Leadership Development & Communication Training that includes:

• Active/reflective/empathic listening
• Techniques for Giving and Receiving Feedback
• Creating a culture of Trust and Engagement

Reclaim conversation

The results will be deeper personal peace and fulfillment, more sustainable and meaningful connections leading to a culture of TRUST  in your community, organization, and workplace.

* Thank you Sherry Turkle for your influence

Share/Bookmark

Why do some projects falls short, while others soar to great success?  Why are some business relationships tainted with conflict, while others are smooth, fun, easy, and profitable?

According to Stephen N.B. Covey- it’s all about TRUST.

In his most recent book, The Speed of Trust, Covey builds a strong case for TRUST as the number one leadership competency in today’s organizations and positions TRUST as a key economic driver in the new economy.

When you choose to do business with someone, what do you base your decision on? Most likely it’s that gut feeling- your intuition, that says YES.  I trust this person.

Trust is about (1) credibility (who you are), (2) character (your behavior). True character is doing the right thing when no one is looking, and (3) competence: skills, knowledge, ability to produce results.

Building high trust requires:

• Talking straight
• Showing respect
• Keeping Commitments- Do What you Say!  Walk Your Talk!
• Having an open, transparent agenda (not a personal (WIIFM) what’s in it for me, agenda),
• Clear communication that clarifies goals and expectations.
• Motive and intent of care and service- this builds loyal customers, repeat clients, referrals and a motivated team!

In high trust environments, communicate is clear, processes are smooth, flexible, and fast; change is natural, results are extraordinary.

Seems pretty simple and straightforward. So why is it so difficult for some to build trust and credibility? Normally, it’s because one is not clear on their values and what they stand for, and thus out of alignment with their personal integrity.

So, how credible are you?

Here is a short assessment that you  can take on line, to determine your trust score (how you see/trust yourself)  and credibility score (how others see/trust you)

What was my trust score you may wonder?  88%.

How do I evaluate this?  (1)  Space to improve and grow, (2) make wrongs, right with sincere apologies and changed behaviors. Next step is to send this out to others to see how they see me. I’ll be doing this in the  September issue of Leading Visions to Action. I’m excited and looking forward to the dialogs this will create!

Let’s all give it a try and create more TRUST in the world!!

For more information go to:

Speed of Trust and Who Trusts You

Share/Bookmark

Success Principles start with taking 100% total responsibility for everything in your life. It’s mid-year, 2010.

Take a look at the goals you set for yourself, your family, community, your business, your employees and clients at the beginning of the year. Where are you in your achievement and level of fulfillment and satisfaction?

All success starts with 100% personal responsibility and accountability.

Here is a great little exercise, that when completed, is a powerful jump start for goal refinement, redefining your direction, taking new action.

This can  be used for personal assessment,  as well as in pair and small group discussions around community building, team building, employee engagement, and more.

I
If I were to take just 10% more responsibility for my life, I would. . .(state action)
If I were to take just 10% more responsibility for my happiness,  I would. . .

If I were to take just 10% more responsibility for my health and fitness, I would. . .
If I were to take just 10% more responsibility for  the quality of my relationships, I would. . .

If I were to take just 10% more responsibility for the effectiveness of my business, I would. . .
If I were to take just 10% more responsibility for the development of my employees, I would. . .

If I were to take just 10% more responsibility for quality of life in my community, I would. . .

If I were to take just 10% more responsibility for the health of this planet, I would. . .

Just think if BP could honestly answer these questions.

Thanks to Jack Canfield for inspiring this exercise

Share/Bookmark

Tribes are everywhere,and thanks to the internet, we can find who and what we want to connect with:

Work tribes, community tribes, spiritual tribes ,Ukranian dancers. . .

According to Seth Godin, assembling tribes (not money and factories) can change the world.  You don’t need everyone. What you need is 1000 dedicated fans, true believers, supporters, doers, etc.  The hypnosis of mass-marketing no longer works. Leading and connecting people and ideas does.

What do “tribe” leaders have in common?

• They challenge the status quo- who are you upsetting?
• They are curious and build a culture- who are you connecting?
  
• They commit to leading with unrelentless focus and passion

Get inspired- watch Seth Godin’s presentation from TED :

If you are feeling  a bit stuck or in transition, get our of your comfort zone, and do something! Just by taking the action (any action!) will unleash your potential, creativity, and attract others who want to get on board with you!

Find a  group or cause that is disconnected- organize and connect them. This is what you do for a living!

Start something that matters.

Start.

Do it.

We need it (and so do you!)

Not sure where to get started?  Contact me . . . 1, 2, 3,     GO!

Share/Bookmark

I’m sure many of you are familiar with  Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, and his most recent book, Who’s Got Your Back.

Ferazzi believes leadership, at its essence, is a spiritual journey- it takes courage, motivation, discipline, and commitment. Strongly grounded in many years of Vipassana practice, Ferazzi’s weaves his spiritual practice into his leadership style, sharing life-changing strategies for anyone committed to building a lifeline team.

In order to continue to be the best we can, I believe it’s vitally important, especially in these times, to create our own Personal Board of Directors- a small committed group who are not going to let each other fail, ever!

REBUILDING TRUST in A WORLD of GREED & FEAR

According to Ferrazzi, successful networking (our abilities to “connect”) is not about the size of our “rolodex”. Rather success is more readily available to those who can pick up the phone and say, ” I need help”.

Particularly in these times, Ferazzi encourages us to focus on *Relationship Capital* by building a Personal Board of Directors or what he calls *Lifeline Relationships*- the ones that help us rebuild TRUST in a world of fear and greed.

BUILDING Your PERSONAL BOARD of DIRECTORS:

* Identify at 3 people you know who can change your life.

* Call them and share this idea about LifeLine Relationships. Ask them if they will be on board with you.

* Lifeline Relationships lead with generosity. Who bends over backwards for you?  Who do you bend over backwards for?

* Lifeline Relationships are transparent: Who can you let your guard down with and have it be okay?

* Lifeline Relationships hold each other accountable. Who can kick you in the butt when necessary? Which of your peers can you depend upon to TELL the TRUTH and help you face the brutal facts

* Lifeline relationships agree to forgive in advance when we slip up. Sparring is okay (even encouraged!).

* Lifeline relationships have a RELATIONSHIP ACTION PLAN. (R.A.P.) which is rigorous, routine, strategic, and systematic.

Your Personal Board of Directors can come in many forms: Mastermind Groups, Learning or Coaching Communities, Wisdom Councils, Women’s or Men’s circles, or Spiritual Communities.

Rather than changing who we are, enlist others to help us become the best we can be. This is where the true strength of any team, organization or initiative lies. For more information on Ferrazi’s model, check out  Greenlight Community.

How many of you have this lifeline team in place? I’ve had several “lifeline” teams over the years (work groups, learning communities, friends, spiritual sanghas, performance groups) that were extremely beneficial for their duration.

And now, I am looking at creating the strongest, most sustainable  one yet!  Will you help me?

I am eager to partner with an organizational leadership team that needs a powerful provocateur, collaborator, and communications maven/ director to weave it all together: vision, strategy, marketing, communications, engagement, and human capital. Let’s start the conversation!

Share/Bookmark

Equinox-A Moment to Pause & Reflect
by Shera Sever (first posted in Spiral Muse , Sept. 2009)

Feel your inherent balance with a gentle pause between the inhale & the exhale.

Equinox is a time to pause, honoring the perfect balance between light and dark within you and beyond you. It’s a time of reflection and balance, a time for reassessing motivations, intentions, and actions. It’s a time to cleanse, release habits, to surrender, let go, and TRUST in the unknown.

Equinox is a time to honor and recognize the divine in everyone, and experience all beings as your mirror, as your teacher, as your family. Equinox is a time to sit in circle among our friends and peers,  speaking our truth, sharing our joys, our fears and vulnerability, asking for help, offering help, and trusting that our circle will not let us fall, nor fail us.

In the Babemba tribe in Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he/she is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the “accused” individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy is recounted. All his/her positive attributes, good deeds, strengths and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. The tribal ceremony often lasts several days.

The tribe recognizes that the correction for non-integral behavior is not punishment, but love and the remembrance of identity. They believe a friend, coach, or teacher, is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. They are not fooled by the mistakes you have made or the dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.

One of the most important lessons we can learn from evolution is that we are related to all that lives. Consider the fact that your personal DNA is 99.99 % identical to the DNA of every other human being, and to all that has ever lived. Once we begin to include ourselves in the story that we are no longer on an individual journey, we have joined the grand caravan of “endless forms -most beautiful and wonderful”. This is cooperation and collaboration at it’s core essence

So, I encourage all to offer some time to BE with your fellow travelers (friends and “strangers” alike) this week, reminding each other that we are one beautiful family on an unprecedented journey back home.

Share/Bookmark

I have been a member of the Center for Creative Leadership community for over 10 years. With their permission, I am reposting a recent article by David Hurst from the CCL Leading Effectively e-Newsletter.

The recession isn’t over and, even if it is, the recovery won’t be pretty.

That’s the general consensus, so even if you are starting to breathe easy, you could benefit from some fresh thinking about how to survive and succeed in tough times.

If you’ve managed not to panic, you’ve already taken David Hurst‘s first lesson on surviving economic crisis. Hurst, a writer and consultant who spent 25 years in the corporate world, shared his ideas with the CCL community earlier this year. His thoughts for finding opportunity in adversity include:

It’s for real. A sense of urgency is the most important ingredient for personal and organizational change — now we’ve got it!

Fear can be useful. The relationship between reason and emotion is like that between a jockey and a powerful horse. Fear can be harnessed if it can be focused on coordinated action.

The unthinkable is possible. In times like these, you can do things that were unthinkable before because people are listening and conventional wisdom no longer supplies the answers.

Don’t look for stability. There is no choice between stability and change: It’s change on your scale and timetable versus change on someone else’s schedule.

Don’t rely on current success. The seeds of destruction are in the fruits of success: Large scale and homogeneity lead to a lack of resilience. Be small and mobile for quick experimentation and rapid prototyping where feedback is specific and fast.

Seek out edges and open patches. Change takes place on the edges of systems and in open patches where variety and diversity can flourish. Look for opportunities on disturbed ground, such as in turbulent markets where information is poor.

Control and release. The management/leadership challenge during a recession is to execute a simultaneous centralization of everything to do with cash and spending, while decentralizing responsibility for focused innovation and learning.

Say “no” to turf protectors. If they can’t play on the team, then they can’t stay on the team.Understand what’s going on.

A storyteller is essential to every team: We need narratives to make sense of what’s happening.

Learn more about Hurst and his Seven Pointers to Finding Opportunity in Adversity at www.davidkhurst.com.

Share/Bookmark

It’s everywhere- on Guy Kawasaki’s  AllTop portal, in the New York Times new Happy Days Blog,  Psychology Today,  Inc. and many more on-line and print publications.

Human potential seminar leaders like Tony Robbins and T. Harv Eker have adjusted their content delivery in recent months to address the Upside of the Downturn.  It’s a strategic approach, and  it’s more than positive thinking.  (Hope alone is not a strategy).

The Value of Volunteering

One strategy that continues to emerge in various forms when examining the Upside of the Downturn is the increased focus given to the VALUE  of volunteering.

Like many of you, I started volunteering when I was 14.  I worked at one of the first recycling centers in the USA in a small community in northern Illinois 4 nights a week. The proceeds from our efforts helped fund our high school’s symphonic band’s performance at an International Youth Music Festival in Vienna, Austria. Since then I have volunteer with over 25 community organizations and businesses and have served on several boards of directors.

Last week I was invited again to deliver my High-Impact Volunteer Management™ seminar as part of the Performance- Focused Leadership Seminar series for Board Presidents, Directors and Committee Chairs for the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce  (42 chambers total).

Businesses and social-profits alike benefit from volunteer capital. One of the re-occurring challenges most organizations encounter is keeping good volunteers (including board members and committee chairs).

Keeping the Good Ones

As in the private industry, the best way to insure volunteer retention is to adopt a strategic approach with a Volunteer Recruitment and Development Plan in place in your organization or business. This includes targeted recruitment, a solid orientation program, low-cost, no-cost recognition, and a performance management/professional development plan in place that includes on-going feedback and performance reviews.

So what is the best way to develop on-going communication and feedback with volunteers?

It’s the  R.A.P. method:

REVIEW the PAST: Take a look at the performance objectives mutually created during the first 30 days of the volunteer’s on-boarding.

ANALYZE the PRESENT: Ask your volunteer what she feels are her major accomplishments in the past (X) months  (particularly as they relate to over-arching organizational goals).

PLAN the FUTURE: Ask your volunteer what changes/support she would like to see in the future.

If you are wanting to enhance volunteer performance and retention in your organization, be sure you can meet the following needs* of your volunteers:

• I need a sense of belonging.
• I need to be part of the organizational planning of our objectives.
• I need organizational goals and objectives that are clear and obtainable.
• I need to feel that what I am doing has real purpose and contributes to welfare of the organization and community at large.
• I need autonomy and collaboration in setting standards for performance.
• I need to know what is expected of me (not a laundry list of “duties”.)
• I need to have challenging responsibilities within my range of interests and abilities.
• I need feedback about my performance and our progress.
• I need to be kept informed.
• I need to have good rapport with and confidence in the leadership of the organization.
• I need recognition, as it is due.

(The Volunteer Creed, adapted from The Effective Management of Volunteer Programs, Marlene Wilson)

Performance Management is an on-going year-round communication process undertaken in collaboration with a volunteer and her organizational leader(s).  With mutual goal setting, on -going communication, individual recognition, and the R.A.P method, your volunteers can become your organization’s  greatest evangelists.

Need help developing a High-Impact Volunteer Management Plan for your business, organization, or upcoming event? Please contact me for a complimentary (20- minute) consultation.

Share/Bookmark

Thus, I am delighted to be  one of 20+ contributing writers to the just released publication,

42 Rules for Successful Collaboration

What do Cisco, Disney, Toyota, Mindjet, Adminstaff, Joire De Vivre have in common?

RULE #29   Use Leaders as Collaborative Strategists

2009, ©Shera R. Sever & SuperStar Press

Get the right people on the bus and in the right seats, with a commitment to building a best-in-class collaborative culture.

Focus on internal-facing collaboration that encourages collective intelligence (simple yet intentional engagement).

Recognize those within the organization who consistently share information, resources, responsibilities, while engaged in and committed to organizational and personal excellence.

Start with Talent Management

• Get the right people on the bus. Build a superior team by recruiting those who have a track record of working and playing well with others, and communicating with transparency, while confronting brutal facts.

• Make collaboration a core competency for any position. Define the specific functions and expectations in the professional development plan.  When collaboration is a core value, employees are able to see the results of their work and the impact it has on company, clients, and colleagues. This in and of itself is the reward.

• Create a Collaboration Manager/ Coordinator position to promote, coordinate and manage your internal systems for knowledge sharing, skill and learning development. Look beyond HR, Marketing or Corporate Communications for this collaboration evangelist. Design the position around competencies and overarching organizational goals and objectives.

• Engage all your people in “big picture” solutions. Interestingly enough, a 2008 study available through the Society of Organizational Learning shows that fewer than 35 percent of employees from 100 companies surveyed, know or are clear about how their role fits into the bigger picture—the overall business objectives and strategic plan. Best leaders motivate with questions, not initiatives.

• Focus on “internal facing” online communities. Awareness Networks released their 2008 white paper, revealing that 82 percent of over 162 leaders surveyed have seen that Web 2.0 technologies (particularly “company branded” Wikis) increase knowledge sharing, employee collaboration, and improved internal communications, and help employees “find” each other.

• Continue to make Learning & Development a top priority. Optimum learning and development occur in systems where there is a rich web of interactions—and this is collaboration. As organizational leaders, ask where collaborative learning communities could be built or expanded upon?*

What new leadership and communication skills are needed cross-functionally to allow for full collaborative engagement in your organization?

*Note:  Some of the most impressive learning communities are being birthed in the non-profit sector. Paul Hawken’s WiserEarth.org site encompasses shared knowledge and learning communities from more than 13,000 organizations worldwide.

Share/Bookmark