Inner Wisdom Emperors and executives
Courage Feedback could save your job
Strategic Plan Get the big picture first
Pay It Forward Are we giving our future away to China?

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Wisdom Thoughts to help you lead from the inside out

As we begin to move from the cold and dark inside perspective of winter into the emerging light of spring, many of us are filled with the anticipation of change. Much like the eastern wisdom of the need for the light and dark, the yin and the yang, winter serves as a time of rest and reflection. Spring signals a movement from the inner world of the yin into the outer world of yang.

What we may not appreciate or recognize is that both are equally important. Constant focus on the outer world tires us and depletes our resources until we are forced to take a break. The time of going inside is when we can recharge our batteries. Time spent in reflection bolsters our resources and gives us a base of support from which we can face, with renewed strength, the challenges of the outer world.

This issue of the Common Boundaries newsletter explores the concept that there is a time and purpose for every season. It brings some of the most recent research and information about timely topics such as: leadership, authenticity, and courage into a personal and powerful context. It explores the four concepts of leading from the inside out: inner wisdom, or building a strong sense of self-awareness; courage, or having the authenticity to bring your vision to the outer world; strategic plan, or creating a plan to get what you want in life; and paying it forward, or taking what you have learned into the community.

I hope you enjoy and learn, as I have from others who have had the courage to lead from the inside out.

Debra J. Gawrych

To every thing, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
— The Birds

Emperors and executives

The following premises are explained in more detail in the audio CD Lead From the Inside Out  (available at Common Boundaries' Web site).

Premise 1: Your level of effectiveness as a leader is expanded exponentially by your level of self-awareness. This is also true of the level of awareness of the organization as a whole.

A large well-known company was rocked by revelations of corporate misconduct. It was a surprise to the media, stockholders, and the general population, but not to its employees who had long grumbled about the excessive spending and outrageous bonuses taken by senior executives.

Fast Company Magazine(check reference, February 2003) published a fascinating article about the “Seven Habits of Highly Unsuccessful Business Executives.” These executives not only made mistakes, they made whoppers. And the extraordinary impact of their mistakes had an exponential impact on not only their employees, but on thousands and thousands of others.

What is most intriguing in this article is not the gossipy retelling of the executives’ stories, but the interesting concept that their mistakes tend to fall into similar categories — categories or “habits” that often are honored, promoted, and revered in our current corporate culture.

All of these habits depend on a certain level of ignorance or denial by the parties involved. This is the essential premise of improving the level of self-awareness, for either the individual or for the organization.

Practices that are detrimental cannot continue when someone speaks out. Much like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, when individuals or divisions within an organization cry out “He’s [She’s] naked!,” the lie is exposed and the tolerance for behavior that is not in alignment with the individual or organization’s purpose and values is over. This presents opportunities to create new systems or ways of behaving with the energy that has been created by confrontation or exposure.

Feedback could save your job

Premise 2: “Be open to feedback and be willing to change.”

Some people are unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties.
The fantastic, the unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.
— Bernice Abbott

The corporate landscape has been populated with a number of stories of companies whose leaders failed to be open to feedback and were unwilling to change, even when confronted with dire consequences for their actions. This lack of integrity has been documented in well-publicized stories about Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco. What is not as well known are the stories that go unnoticed but serve to erode the integrity of many American businesses on a daily basis.

See our Web site for more on how feedback could save your job.

Get the big picture first

Premise 3: Have a clear goal and make sure everyone understands it.

Lewis & Clark were courageous leaders who exemplified another premise of leading from the inside out: They had a strategic plan and were able to clearly communicate their plan to others. They had the courage to use their vision as a guide, even when it seemed to be easier to take a different path.

Although many know about Lewis & Clark’s epic journey, few know that Thomas Jefferson was the mastermind behind their expedition. In the book, Scenes of Visionary Enchantment: Lewis & Clark and the Journey of Discovery (permission by the University of Nebraska Press, www.nebraskapress.unl.edu; copyright Dayton Duncan), author Dayton Duncan noted:

What set this expedition apart from others was that Thomas Jefferson had tried to launch this same expedition several times before. This time, however, because of what he had learned from past failures, he was able to clearly articulate the goal. “the object of your mission,” he wrote to Lewis in his final instructions on June 20, 1803, “is to explore the Missouri river & such principle stream of it….may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce.”

With that directive, Lewis & Clark knew the broader vision of their expedition and were clear that they needed to explore the most effective and practical route for trade, which in turn would result in commercial value for them and for Jefferson.

When obstacles got in their way, or another path presented itself to them that might have been more intriguing, they were able to stay on task, because they clearly understood the end goal.

Clearly companies that are successful understand that it is important to have a strategy from which they can evaluate each opportunity. In this way, they can answer the question “Is this the best or most efficient way to go in order to reach our goal?”

Source: “Explorers As Leaders: The Lewis & Clark Expedition,” Wharton Leadership Digest, November 2003, Volume 8, Number 2, http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/digest/index.shtml .

Are we giving our future away to China?

Premise 4: Share what you’ve learned with others, not by telling, but by listening first, then supporting their questions and mistakes with the wisdom you’ve learned from the mistakes you have made yourself.

Coaching and mentoring of others is most effective when it is offered as guidance, and the message that is offered is to believe in your own inherent wisdom, rather than seeking to follow the dictates of those who are teaching you.

This may seem like a stretch, but there is a phenomenon going on in corporate American right now that involves outsourcing our manufacturing and giving away technology in hopes of short-term profits and gains. At first glance, this may seem like “paying it forward” in action, but a closer look allows us another point of view.

When American goes into a country that is less evolved from a business standpoint, such as China, and seeks to fill its own pockets with dollars from the enormous Chinese marketplace, it needs to do so with eyes open. Currently, companies such as GE, have been eyeing the vast need for power in China (with a weakening demand in the U.S. for generators), but in order to tap that marketplace, the Chinese have demanded that GE hand over proprietary and expensive technology that took GE years to develop. Overnight, China has access to advanced technology at practically no cost to them, all because of the desire for GE to expand into their market.

This move by GE and other American companies may seem prudent in the short run, but one wonders what the long-term implications may be. Will China surpass our technology at no or low-cost to them? What is the U.S. getting back in return?

The concept of paying it forward involves coaching and mentoring that believes in the inherent wisdom of the mentee (in this case China) to lead themselves and develop the technology they need over time. The question is: What will China do with this technological and business power? What will be its intent? Will it be for the long-term good for their country and for others? Or will it merely line the pockets of a few?

Meanwhile, the U.S. suffers from a lack of jobs within its own borders. Textile, apparel, furniture, now power generation are all going overseas. Perhaps we need to apply the concept of paying it forward to our own country and to our own workforce. What would our inherent wisdom tell us?

 How we can help you

Common Boundaries Consulting & Communications

Promoting powerfully authentic leadership for the organization and for the individual..

• Team-learning
• Concrete skills for respectful confrontation
• Understand the underlying motivations of others
• Programs for authenticity and integrity
• Helps unlock the creative potential within an individual or
• organization through the process of active creation.
• Coaching and mentoring for individuals and groups

To find out more about our consulting and programs, please see our Web site www.commonboundaries.com, or contact us at 954-385-8434.

Leading From the Inside Out
Women’s Professional Forum
Greensboro, NC
March 12, 2004

Lead From the Inside Out:
Real World Issues of Authenticity & Integrity
Professional Women of Winston-Salem
April 14, 2004

Thoughts to help you lead from the inside out

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes