Latest Twitter – a commercial but a good reminder of the value of our relationships.

@tonyrobbins Hey Tony I thought you may like this comercial from Coca Cola Spain!!! http://tinyurl.com/dgx3n7

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“Your image is the concept that others form about you as a result of the impressions you make on them.

Your effectiveness as a leader is tied to your image.

Your ability to project a leadership presence in the eyes of employees, customers, other important constituencies, and the general public is closely related to your ability to do your job well.”(Read the rest of the article)

For more please email me at tim@drtimothydukes.com

Photo: Tdukes, Paris, 2009

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“What can this aging warrior tell you about creative leadership? Honestly, I am not sure. For I am, like each of you, a peculiar balance of contradictions: a large ego and a deep humility; a decent intelligence (no more than that), albeit with periodic blind spots and stupidities; a strong presence along with a profound insecurity; an astonishing confidence, but one that is often punctuated with doubt; an intellectual bent that lacks an academic depth; an aspiring, passionate leader, but without the skills-or, for that matter, the interests-of a manager. I mention this litany to suggest that I’m no more, nor less than each one of you: just another human being.”

by John C. Bogle, Chairman and Founder The Vanguard Group of Investment Companies
Address at the 176th Commencement of Widener University
Chester, Pennsylvania
May 17, 1997

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Leadership requires the capacity to open to and allow change. To accommodate change in the external world, the leader needs the “tools” to open to change internally. “Allowing Presence” is one of these tools. Rooted in Mindfulness, this ability to open to the life-that-is-seeking to reveal itself, requires the allowance of complex feelings and thoughts while externally settling into a place of equanimity and peace. Peter Senge, in his book Presence explains:

“When this happens, the field shifts, and the forces shaping a situation can move from re-creating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future. . . . In esoteric Christian traditions such shifts are associated with ‘grace’ or ‘revelation’ or the Holey Spirit.’ Taoist theory speaks of the transformation of vital energy (qing, pronounced ‘ching’) into subtle life force (qi, pronounced ‘chi’), and into spiritual energy (shin). This process involves an essential quieting of the mind that Buddhists call ‘cessation,’ wherein the normal flow of thoughts ceases and the normal boundaries between self and world dissolve. In Hindu traditions, this shift is called wholeness or oneness. In the mystic traditions of Islam, such as Sufism, it is known simply as ‘opening the heart.’ Each tradition describes this shift a little differently, but all recognize it as being central to personal cultivation or maturation.” (Senge, p. 14)

Effective leadership requires the capacity to access as much information as possible about the changes that are occurring in our life. However, this information is not limited to what goes on around us in our organizations, industry and the world. Managing change may very well require us to have equal presence in our internal environment where a quiet mind allows for insights and understanding that simply are not available when there is too much internal activity.

Senge, Peter, Scharmer, C. Otto, Jaworski, Joseph, Flowers, Betty Sue. (2004). Presence: An exploration of profound change in people, organizations, and society. New York: Currency, Doubleday.

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These times call for leadership and clarity of mind. While most managers, employees and staff are struggling with fear, a leader steps forward and remains focused on opportunities and a way through the doubts.

I am reminded of a story:

 ”When I was a little boy growing up in Ohio, I would spend my weekends alone with my sister playing on the dusty stacks of packing boxes in my father’s factory. The four story WWII factory was empty and cold but for the whispers of two small children as we constructed our fantasies. We would make castles out of these boxes, grab snacks from the vending machines in the grimy break rooms of the employees, and wait for endless hours as my father worked in his office.

We would leave this exhaustive play, tired and hungry and nestle in the back of his Buick while we listened to Drag Net on the radio. I remember this one line from virtually every show. . . . But first, imagine two tired, hungry and dirty children on a bone-braking cold night . . . . in the plains of Ohio, just outside of Detroit and its sprawling auto-industry plants. . . . a lone car driving through the frigged snow covered corn fields on a dark and moonless night.

The line we would hear on the radio was something like: “Just the facts Ma’am, just the facts.” As a boy, I found this strangely comforting. That steady voice of whoever that actor was comforted me. I felt, perhaps, that somebody would be unaffected by the mystery and the drama of the story. He would sort it out and find a way to solve the problems.”

If you are a leader during these troubling times, who, better than you, is there to face the challenges in your life and find solutions? Can you use all of your resources to sort through the mystery and confusion and get to the “facts?” And as always, I encourage you to turn to your relationships as a primary resources for support, insight and the immediate value found in human connection.

© Tdukes, November, 2008

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Two Twitter feeds I find particulary insightful today:

eaglesflite  “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”  – Henry Ford

tonyrobbins: “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” –Bill Cosby

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This is a time when many of us will be faced with the challenge of “doing more with less.” How we face that challenge provides an opportunity for choice. We may not be able to determine which challenges we face – but we may have choice as to how we face them. NPR’s Chana Joffe-Walt explains: (Audio)

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I had a great time at the BIF open house last night as we celebrated their Nursing Home of the Future Project. Viewing Stephanie’s photos documenting the life of the elders was both inspiring and humbling. (more photos)  As I understand it, her work not only documents the project but helped shape the process. This is a good example of what we call “co-determination:” success based on clear intention and the relational processes that actualize that intention.

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So many of my clients find themselves in a perpetual state  of physical and mental activity. I too am guilty of this “gerbil-like” mentality that keeps the wheel of the cage spinning. Dr. Lloyd J. Thomas, in The Value of Stillness, sheds some light:

“The Chinese word for “busy” is made of two characters.  The first is
“heart,” and the second is “killing.”  For the Chinese, to be busy is to kill the heart.
Children raised by insecure parents often learn that the faster they
talk, the faster they move, the faster [they] think, the safer they feel.  A
moving target is harder to hit.  Such children seek safety in the
speed of their activity and speech.  They take refuge in relentless
action.  When they feel insecure about what they know, they produce
more words and share them in rapid-fire, to hide their perceived
ignorance.  Constant motion keeps them from being caught.  Relentless,
busy activity distracts them from experiencing their fear.  They are
often misdiagnosed as “hyperactive” or having “attention deficit
disorder” when they are actually trying only to protect themselves
from a frightening environment.  Their constant motion of mouth and
body, kills their heart.

Read the rest of this page »

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Gary Kinder wrote a book about a team of adventurers who recover tons of gold from a sunken ship resting in the deepest part of the sea. The success, he recounts, is due to one man’s willingness to open to his dream and move through all of the associated obstacles:

“You just had to shed old ways of thinking and reexamine old assumptions and do it smart from the beginning. You had to keep diverging, even beyond the point where it all became difficult and confusing. That’s where [he] lives, and he made those around him live there, too, some for far longer than is comfortable for most people. Yet just on the other side of that juncture is where impossibility sometimes vanishes and the world can be seen in a new way. . . if you do that . . .  all kinds of things can blossom.” (Speaking of Tommy Thompson, pp. 506-507)

Do you have a dream? What will you do today to recover and embrace the “possibilities” that await you?

Kinder, Gary. (1998). Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea  . New York: Random House.

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