An Intriguing Question and A Throughtful Answer

Learning from Starbucks

I can't help myself.  One of the main reasons I go to Starbucks is to read the quotation on the cup!  This particular cup caught my attention and I wanted to share it with my readers.  What is "it" for you?

The Way I See It #293

The way I see it

Isn't necessarily

the way you see it

Or the way it is

Or ought to be

What's more important

Is that we're all

Looking for it

And a way to see it.

Desi Di Nardo--author and poet who lives in Toronto, Canada

What is it about Susan Boyle?

I am sure by now that you have watched the YouTube clip of Susan Boyle.  If not, you must watch it since more than 40 million people have clicked on this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Boyle is the Scottish singer who surprised judges, the audience, and the more than 40 million viewers with her performance on the "Britain's Got Talent" television program similar to American Idol.  As Cal Thomas pointed out in his article for Tribune media Services, "We are the story because of our reaction to her."

What is it about Susan Boyle that makes so many people want to watch her perform and most people end up in tears? 

Why does it touch us, move us so much? 

What do our reactions say about us?

How many people do we overlook or write off as having little value?

What are we missing when we do that?

Similar to another winner on Britain's Got Talent--Paul Potts--Boyle reminds us to not judge a book by its cover.  That women should not have to rebuild themselves on the outside in order to get attention about what's on the inside.  The same was true for Paul Potts.  We were rooting for him to win.

Women across the world are rising up and defending Boyle.  They are advocating that she not succumb to a "makeover" when she becomes famous.  Listeners are loving her naturalness and authenticity.  We want to help her accomplish her dreams. 

What should we remember from her performance?  From the way she lives and looks at life? 

When we know the dreams of others, we can help them reach them.  They might reciprocate and help us reach our dreams.  I think another lesson is that as we age, people tend to overlook us.  As we become sages, we empower ourselves and actually gain value. 

What a great story. 

Listening--Essential Leadership Skill

I highly recommend Margaret Wheatley's book Turning to One Another:  Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future.  Since leadership is more about relationships than it is about position, this passage from her book is important to remember:

"We have the opportunity many times a day, everyday, to be the one who listens to others, curious rather than certain.  But the greatest benefit of all is that listening moves us closer.  When we listen with less judgment, we always develop better relationship with each other.  It's not differences that divide us.  It's our judgments about each other that do.  Curiosity and good listening bring us back together."

If we are going to change organizations and ultimately change the world for the better, we have to question our assumptions, withhold judgment, and actively work at listening to one another.  Being curious helps us to do this and makes life so much more interesting. 

Let the listening begin ...

Jann's Note:  Listening is one way to build community.  When we listen to others, they want to listen to us.  That is how we pass on our wisdom which creates our lasting legacy--an important aspect of sage-ing.

Living Beyond Halftime---On the Sage Journey

Bob Buford has written a series of books about sage-ing without using the word.  In his book, Halftime, Buford reminds us that we have more than one lifetime.  Halftime is the in-between season that is around the age of 45.  It is the season of "now what?"  Where halftime used to be the beginning of the end, now it is the beginning of a whole new beginning as life spans increase.

As Buford points out, this second phase of life or third chapter often catches us by surprise.  Peter Drucker wrote the Foreward to Buford's third book and this is what he said:

"In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, I think it is very probable that the most important event these historians will see is not technology, it is not the Internet, it is not e-commerce.  it is an unprecedented change in the human condition.  For the first time--and I mean that literally--substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices.  For the first time, they will have to manage themselves."

Drucker went on to say that most people are unprepared to do this.  Buford emphasizes that most people are searching for meaning in mid-life.  With choice comes uncertainty and responsibility.  The decisions that need to be made along the way I refer to as the sage-ing journey.  This is what I will continue to explore in future blog posts. 

What are the choices?  How should we make decisions so that we are living an engaged life? 

Jann's Note:  Learning about the sage-ing process gives us some direction ---some might even say some answers. 

Embracing Death as a Leadership Skill

This may sound like a strange assignment, but I have my leadership students write their own eulogies to be read out loud to the class.  This was the assignment for last week and it was a moving experience.  In advance, we talk about the difference between an obituary (focus on doing) and an eulogy (focus on being).  The purpose of this assignment is to have them focus on how they want to be remembered and the kind of legacy they would want to leave behind.

In order for this assignment to be realistic and meaningful, I emphasized how we had created a sacred space during the semester.  We have worked hard to trust one another by focusing on listening rather than talking.  With most discussions in class, the goal was to share and listen without judging or even commenting. 

As the students shared their personal eulogies, there was laughter, tears, and solitude.  It was a moving experience for students who are 19-21 to anticipate what someone might say at their funeral.  If leadership is learning to be the best people we can be, this exercise drives home that we need to be mindful of how we are living our lives.

Embracing death is part of the legacy work that is critical in sage-ing and I believe the younger someone understands this the better.  As Morrie reminds us in Tuesdays with Morrie, "When we learn how to die, we learn how to live." 

Jann's Note:  Learning to embrace one's mortality is one of the essential components of sage-ing.  Only then can we live life to its fullest. 

Jim Kouzes says it this way, "The legacy you leave is the life you lead." 

Embracing death is a leadership skill. 

Does anyone else use this kind of exercise in a leadership class? 

Do you have other ideas of how this might be done? 

I would be interested in hearing what others do to help people embrace death as a leadership skill.

Sage-ing: Socially productive Aging

What is sage-ing?  There are a variety of terms being used to reflect what it means to grow in wisdom such as positively aging, intentionally aging, and consciously aging.  Bob Buford calls it socially productive aging where people are deeply engaged in contributing to the lives of others because that is where the legacy of their lives will live on. 

Buford interviewed more than 120 people who were making a meaningful difference in the lives of others and living with passion and contagious enthusiasm.  His conclusion was that these people intentionally repositioned themselves for full effectiveness and fulfillment in life's second half.  He found that there was a period in mid-life where they asked the key question about "What now? What next?"  This was usually followed by a period of experimentation so that they could decide how to proceed in the next phase of life. 

What Buford found is that these people were determined to continue to live in productive ways just as they had done in the first half of life.  But the key is that they were intentional about making life decisions.  They were willing to devote time and energy into figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives that would give them meaning..

This is what sage-ing is all about.  Living life on purpose and with passion and realizing that for most people this does not just happen to them.  But they make something happen by being on the sage-ing journey.  It sounds so simple, yet we need to be informed if we are going to make good decisions given all of the choices which we now face. 

So how do we get on the journey? 

How do we become informed? 

These are the ideas I am going to continue to explore.  Any ideas are welcome.

Jann's Note:  For many people, sage-ing does not happen naturally.  It takes setting an intention and making conscious decisions.  It mean taking control of your destiny rather than just drifting through life.

Lessons from Living

The journey of a sage is about learning from life's experiences.  So it caught my attention when I read an article by Charles Handy about his memoir called Myself and Other More Important Matters.  He talks about how his wife said, "You are seventy-five years old.  What have you learned from all that living?"  This was a wake-up call that started Handy reflecting on his life.  As he said, "If we don't know what we have learned, we won't be able to capitalize on it, to use it to its best advantage."

Handy emphasies that leaders in particular need to "devote time and intellectual energy to reflecting on their experiences in order to crystallize what they have learned and can now add to their stack of knowledge." 

The more Handy reflected on his life, the questions and the learning got more fundamental as he found himself struggling with life's big dilemmas such as:

• What am I trying to achieve in life?
• What does success mean?
• What is Enough in terms of money or achievement?

Handy believes that business and leadership development programs should allow the space and allocate the time for leaders to be reflective.  He went as far as saying that "allocating time to this type of reflection and creating a procedure to make it happen" is essential. 

The process of writing the book was invaluable for Handy and he wished he had done it earlier.  As he points out, "writing is a way of talking out loud to oneself" which is consistent with the old Irish saying, "How do I know what I think until I hear what I say?"

Finding ways to integrate reflection into our lives is an important part of the sage-ing journey.  Reflective learning can take many form--diary, journal, personal case studies--any form that can be revisited later to synthesize lessons learned.  Writing it down can remind us of our assumptions, priorities that might have been unexamined and unquestioned.  Handy concluded that "life will be more successful if some regular reflection is built into it."

What are the ways you reflect on life experiences?  Do you think about how to pass on what you have learned? 

Jann's Note:  Sage-ing is based on reflecting on life's experiences and learning from it so that we can pass on the wisdom to others. 

What Should I Do With My Life Now?

In 2003, Po Bronson wrote a book titled  What Should I Do With My Life? The book was extremely popular as it was written right after the tech bubble had burst, the economy had stalled, and 9/11 had changed the mood of the country.  Now, six years later Bronson is thinking about what he would add to his conclusions now that every other bubble has burst too and the economy is in a larger crisis. 

Bronson's conclusion in his first book was that "the way to get business going again was for the workers to do something they cared about.  They would work extra hard and innovate their way out of this black hole." 

Six years later, Bronson realized that the question "What should I do with my life?" still triggers some major misunderstandings.  In the April issue of Fast Company, Bronson identifies and dispels six myths:

Myth 1:  People are the architects of their own change.  Most people are pushed into change that they did not plan or desire.

Myth 2:  All it takes is passion.  Bronson's book was not a fantasy selling passion.  It was based on the examining the lives of a thousand real people and told the stories of 50.

Myth 3:  Your dream job has no sucky parts.  All jobs have things you don't like about them.  But some people feel fulfilled enough by the overall purpose that the crummy parts are worth it.

Myth 4:  You'll love the job for the job.  Doing something for the sheer love of it is not what most people mean when they say their work provides a sense of purpose.

Myth 5:  There is "the one."  There is no one perfect thing that each of us is meant to do on this planet.  For most people, a "calling" is not something you just know the moment you see it.  It's something you grow into by having an impact on your organization and your community.

Myth 6:  You don't know what you want.  You know what you want:  fulfillment, connection, responsibility ... excitement.  The problem is figuring out how to get it and that is not easy. 

Thinking about what we are going with our lives is an important part of sage-ing and living life on purpose.  We need to realize that intentional aging is about intentional living and not just drifting through life and going in the direction that the wind is blowing.  It is about being deliberate and making choices.  We can influence our destiny and we can choose our reactions and responses. 

Bronson concludes by saying that only by embracing these realities will we be able to answer the question:  "What should I do with my life now?"

The Soloist -- Lessons in Leading and Living

As usual, one of the segments on CBS 60 Minutes caught my attention.  It was about how Mr. Ayers meets Mr. Lopez.  The story is about Mr. Ayers, a newpaper columnist for the Los Angeles Times, meets Mr. Lopez, a troubled man with a brillant past.  In fact, this story resulted in a book, movie script, and movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx to be released soon called The Soloist.  The story is moving in many ways:

 

When I watched and listened to this story, several questions went through my mind for both people.  For Mr. Ayers: 

• What if he had not been "awake" enough to hear the beautiful music?

• What if he had just walked on by?

• Why did this catch his attention?

• What moved him to start a conversation?

• What made him keep coming back? 

• What was he learning from Mr. Lopez?

For Mr. Lopez:

• What made him trust Mr. Ayers?
• What did he gain from the relationship?
• What did he learn from Mr. Ayers?

To me, this segment is all about leading and living quality life:

• Life has more meaning if we mentor and teach others and we can learn from everyone.
• If we are present, we are less likely to miss these opportunities.
• We don't know where the future will go, but we need to follow our hearts and intuition.
• Creativity really does make the world go around and much more interesting.
• Giving is more important than receiving and yet we receive so much more.
• Meaning is more important than money. 
• Significance is more important than success.

Mr. Ayers said this is "the most meaningful relationship in my life."  He did not become friends with Mr. Lopez with the goal of writing a book that would become a movie.  I believe Mr. Ayers was so awake and curious that he knew this was a special person and he was willing to take the time and a risk in getting to know him.

What a beautiful story from which we can learn so much.  If this story moves you, please tell me why.