Positively Powerful Insights » Featured Articles

Are You Getting What You Want Done?

DB — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000

At times many of us have this experience of ourselves — we don’t have the ability to get what we want to get done, done. What ever the “it” is isn’t accomplished or dealt with. This experience has no relationship to how complex or simple the task is, we just find ourselves frozen, numb or oblivious, stuck in a sort of silent and inexplicable fear.

Why fear?

Much of our life has become routine. We spend very little time exploring anything new on our own. We have become addicted to how we do things and being confronted with something we can’t or won’t do, creates a stop for us. If you want proof, take a look at your old “to do list”. Notice what got done vs. what was discarded. Most of the items we discard are the items, tasks, relationships, etc. that require us to change, and changing is at its least uncomfortable and at its worst, fearful. We are comfortable with who we think we are, even if we are unhappy in not getting what it is that we say we want.

Leap of Faith

The routine that we give ourselves is a boundary that we’ve set up to save us from having to change. If we look across and past this imaginary wall we’ve supposedly constructed for our identity, we will see that there is nothing dangerous over there to be afraid of and the possibility of accomplishing more can, if we let it, excite us to take a leap of faith. Dare yourself to find out more about yourself.

Diversity: You may not like it but know it.

Joel Martin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Skrillex in Concert - Photo by Vincent Mo

One of the diversity challenges many people are dealing with today are the four or five generations we have in the workplace. (If you don’t have different generations in your organization you might be missing out on a competitive advantage.) I’m one of the Baby Boomers who fit the research findings in refusing to retire quietly and ride into the sunset. I delight in learning about trends, music, art, people, cultures and the like so when I happened upon this article in the NYT I was totally engaged and listened in. Perhaps you will be too.

Manic Peter Pan Rules Dance Clubs. Consider the numbers: He’s a DJ (a title that minimizes his creativity as far as I’m concerned), nominated for five 2012 Grammy Awards. “In 18 months he has gone from being an obscure D.J. in the Los Angeles club world who played parties for 500 people to selling out 5,000-seat clubs across the country. At a show in Puerto Rico this month he drew 12,000 people.“ He’s gone viral with more than 59 million people listening to his most popular single, “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” on YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

He is a Gen Y Millennial, a generation that for the most part is tech savvy, diverse, demanding equal treatment for those who are different and unique, possessing great multitasking abilities, confident and hopeful. (Source: Global Consortium LLC).

He is Skrillex, an artist who is fantastic in producing electronic tracks. Listen for his lyric, “You don’t need to hide my friend ‘cause I’m just like you.” If that’s not a comment endorsing diversity and inclusiveness, I don’t know what is. Let’s learn more, listen to each other, appreciate our differences and dance to the music.

If you have a comment on the differences between generations. Please post. And if you would more information or I can assist you in crossing the generational divide, let me know.

Leader, is your Team In or Out of Alignment?

Joel Martin — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:41:51 +0000

You can’t create your vision by yourself. Success is created with and through others. There are three communication skills that will serve you well: Networking which involves creating relationship; enrollment, or creating partnership in the vision; and alignment, or building a harmonious synergistic team.

A few words on alignment: Consider a car’s alignment – out, it’s difficult to drive, you don’t trust it to take the hills. When a car is in alignment, you know it – it’s smoooooth driving! Likewise, any accomplishment will be easier for you to achieve with an aligned team. This business concept can be applied to your corporation, family, networks of support, co-workers, peers, spheres of influence or any other group.

I work with organizations to assist executives with building stronger teams and aligning employees to the vision, core values, mission and other imperatives. The indicators of organizations that are out of alignment include lack of personal accountability, complacency, gossiping, not keeping commitments, being afraid to give and receive feedback, the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude, being a bully, being disrespectful, telling off-color jokes, being arrogant, not listening, being non-inclusive and being a victim. Have you been noticing any of these?

Aligned companies are characterized by mutual respect, win-win attitudes, courageousness, integrity, commitment, a team spirit, trust, and personal responsibility. Importantly they have a quality of connectedness that leads them to creation of results on the bottom line. Everyone sees a clear link between their roles and their part in creating the corporate imperatives. When everything is aligned, people will more easily be able to determine whether or not they are being a contributor or an obstacle. And leaders, this is intentional!

As a consultant who specializes in alignment, leadership and diversity I’ve got plenty of evidence that being and staying in alignment is not always easy but it is possible and imperative with solid working partners and top-down, bottom-up commitment and communication. Walking the talk and empowering others to do the same even when one doesn’t feel like it – easier said than done. However, consider the alternative.

To Learn More

Must Leaders Have Original Thoughts?

Joel Martin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:43:25 +0000

In our last Conversation On Leadership, we had a dialog about Original Thought, what it was and how it impacted our lives and effectiveness as Leaders. Rather than having something happen with newscasters giving us their editorial opinions,tweets stating the trends and face book friends that we liked and gave a thumbs up, we spoke about the power of making up our own minds and being intentional about it; creating the new and different even when the mechanisms from here to there were unknown.

Dr.Joseph Riggio

In that spirit I offer you a a very entertaining and short video from TEDx Greece “Stepping Forward, A Hero’s Journey”. Dr. Joseph Riggio, the speaker, says we are only using 5% of our brains. He gives counsel on dealing with change. And, he talks about how we were educated and educate our young.

I suggest that leaders create miracles through their original thoughts. Other wise there is no difference made, rather sameness and business as usual. What do you think? View the video and make up your own mind. Don’t take my word for it.

“If you don’t shape the story you are living you will live someone else’s story.” Dr. Joseph Riggio

Corporate Comfort Zone vs Leadership

Joel Martin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:37:01 +0000

Organizations have as their goal becoming mature, well managed companies delivering consistently on the service or products for which they are or wish to become known. They use branding and taglines to assist them with that figuring that customers will come back time and time again for the what these lines advertise. Consider the following as a few examples:

“All the News that’s Fit to Print” , (New York Times)
“ It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” (Timex)
“Where vision gets built”. (Lehman Brothers)

Wait! Time and time again? Times have changed. You can now read the NY Times online, “print” hmmm not. Our watches are digital or on our phone. “Ticking” if you have the app. And Lehman Brothers is gone having declared bankruptcy.

If a company has an entrenched hierarchy, an HR director without vision and a passion for their people (Only “20% of workers are passionate about their jobs”… The Deloitte Center for the Edge: The Shift Index”), you can bet in time they’ll be experiencing high turnover of good management talent, a loss of intellectual capital a loss in consumer/client trust and a brand image that is passe.

In the past it took fifty years or more to get to this point in an organization’s life cycle, now it is taking less then ten years for companies to find out that they are no longer relevant, that their products or services are not answering the needs of the public, and that their brand slogans no longer create the progressive images intended.

Somewhere along the road to becoming a less innovative customer adverse organization, companies stuck with their top down directives rather than adapt “interactive communication” as pointed out by Stephen Denning in “Radical Management. Often the answer to how an organization can manage the future and changing times is an employee “sitting in the room”, not being listen to and asked about what they see. Why? Generational differences, non-inclusive staid corporate culture, lack of engagement, lack of leadership and vision. And maybe the complaint “I just don’t have the time.”

In today’s environment buying in to the plan falls well short of owning plan. Owning the plan can only occur when there is totally openness and everyone has the opportunity to contribute.

Older Organizations, Big Challenges Ahead

Joel Martin — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:11:27 +0000

In my work with several mature organizations, I have found that challenges exist that unless tackled, have the potential to create gridlock, stagnation, lose of intellectual capital, employee disengagement and insufficient personnel to run them in the future. These challenges put an organization at risk. Now is the time to be proactive and yield to change. These companies have been the bedrock of industry. In speaking to some of the leaders within them, many are ready for change. Employees are either dug in, ready to take the leaders’ “hot seat”, or breathing a sigh of relief that maybe now their ideas, their brilliance, will create the legacy they see as they consider retirement.

The opportunities I advocate to and with leaders include creating an aligned, engaged and empowered workforce for current and future generations, welcoming diversity and inclusion, mastering new technologies, being a mentor and accepting reverse-mentoring.

On diversity – all leaders know The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A newer rule that I include in trainings is The Platinum Rule, “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them”. With cultural competency, communication assessments and plain old “mother wit” comes the recognition that everyone does not think alike. Older companies that aren’t diverse and if they are diverse aren’t inclusive, stand to lose some valuable opportunities. Like failing to attract the best of the best candidates who are women and people of color. And if they attract them as employees, have the challenge of retaining them.

Top-down and bottom-up communication and strategic thinking on the future. Assure a continuance of the company. Protect your assets and intellectual capital. Use technology to face the challenges. We either meet the challenges or are beaten by them.

What Is Social Media?

Joel Martin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:25:17 +0000

At our most recent “Conversation on Leadership” breakfast workshop, there was the beginning of a lively discussion on “Social Media” and the question of whether we were we losing human contact by spending so much time “liking”, “texting” and connecting online etc.

When many new technologies are introduced, many of us want to believe that they will take us away from the things that we love and dissolve the relationships with the people we want to connect with.

1040AD Movable Type - China

For instance, we bemoan no longer receiving letters in the mail and cry that the art of penmanship has suffered, yet we are gleeful that we no longer need to suffer trying to find something quickly in the yellow or white pages. We rejoice openly that we are beginning to save tress by getting our news from Twitter (especially since that is where it seems CNN and other media are getting their news). Progress and change are always challenging and inevitable, plus we never want to go backwards.

Social Media has given rise to a revolution that has us rethink how our institutions work. Kirsten Winkler‘s recent post on “The Big Think, Disrupt Education” highlights how school teachers have found numerous ways to use Social Media and the Internet to improve on what it is that they love to do, and that is to teach. They have formed communities over the web and coached each other, created best teaching practices, learned how to incorporate video and continue to refine how they learn and teach, all without the heavy hand of non-teachers, politicians , administrators etc.

Social Media gives everyone a voice. Admittedly, not all of us have pleasing voices yet there is enormous amount of “good stuff” out there that results in the forming of new and dynamic communities that we can graciously live in with those whose voices we find a bit unsettling. Social Media give us a set of tools that help to make better what we have always done and have yet to do.

Community Leadership – COL

DB — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:09:45 +0000

We have been on a mission about having a better understanding of leadership and its relationship to building vibrant communities. Recently we’ve begun doing small breakfast workshop with the broad objectives of building

photo by Mark-Kurtz

communities that are up to taking on a positive, responsible and leadership role in having our communities work for everyone. This effort is a continuation of “Conversation on Leadership” workship that followed the “Positively Powerful Women Awards Luncheon” this past May. Our next workshop is Dec. 12th at ASU Mercado Phoenix

In looking at the positive things happening in the world, we came across this article in the New York Times about the people of Saranac Lake, New York, a small recreational community with about five thousand residents who went about starting their own department store after Ames Department Store chain closed in a bankruptcy process.

“take control of our future and help our community,”

What stood out for us about this story was that they did not take the easiest way out or seek a short term solution, rather what they are attempting to do is something difficult and when they succeed, it just may be the best thing they ever that could have happened to this small town.

The lesson that Saranac Lake teaches us about community is that we are far more powerful cooperating with each other then we could ever be hiding behind our superficial distinctions that serve a singular purpose of dividing us.

What it Means to Be a Leader.

Joel Martin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:17:42 +0000

This week I am attending the “Leading Age 50th Anniversary International Conference” (IAHSA) as part of my duties as a board member of American Baptist Homes of the West (ABHOW). One of the speakers, Michael Kumer spoke on “Governing Essentials for the High Performing Board” which resonated with my beliefs on leadership.

Michael began with Henry David Thoreau’s quote, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” That, for me, is the essence of leadership. Rather than rhapsodize on my take on leadership, I offer Michael’s take on various related concepts as I heard them:

Nonprofit should be barred from our vocabulary. It implies not making a profit, yet without a profit our “nonprofit” organizations will be out of business and cease to exist. Further, by using this language we are describing ourselves by what we are not rather than what we are. His example, “I am holding something behind my back, it is not the convention center, what is it?” Instead of that term we should call ourselves Community Benefit Organizations (CBO) which is truer to our destination – a key point for Michael in that our dream articulates the destination we seek in getting from here to there.
A vital question: how can we prove conclusively that we can change lives.
The number one responsibility of any board member is to move the organization towards the dream. Where are we going? What’s the dream? (Sounds like leadership to me for sure.) Once you decide on the destination then you fill in the gaps.
Michael’s cool way of defining the difference between mission and vision…add ary to the words. Then they become visionary and missionary. The former external to the Community; the latter, internal.

To be continued…

Michael Kumer is the Executive Director of Duquesne University’s Nonprofit Leadership Institute (NLI) and Associate Dean of the University’s School of Leadership and Professional Advancement.

10 Things I Learned From People Who Survive Cancer

Joel Martin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:18:19 +0000

This content was originally published on www.OwningPink.com. Being a breast cancer conqueror myself (I rebel against the term “survivor”), I thought it was awesome, not just for “us” but for anyone who wants to be outrageously alive. I got it from Judy Greene, MD who I know from the Coalition of Blacks Against Breast Cancer. The author is Lissa Rankin, MD: Founder of OwningPink.com, Pink Medicine Revolutionary, motivational speaker, and author of What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend and Encaustic Art: The Complete Guide To Creating Fine Art With Wax. Smooches Lissa, you rock!

___________________________________________

When I interviewed women who had survived breast cancer for my art project The Woman Inside, I noticed that they all shared one remarkable thing in common.

They had all faced down death and decided to live every day like it might be their last. And then they all beat cancer.

The more interviews I did, the more I noticed that these women were living differently than most of the people I knew who had not been diagnosed with cancer. Here’s what I learned from those survivor women. Learning these lessons changed my life, and I hope they’ll change yours.

1. Be unapologetically YOU. People who survive cancer get feisty. They walk around bald in shopping malls and roll their eyes if people look at them funny. They say what they think. They laugh often. They don’t make excuses. They wear purple muumuus when they want to.

2. Don’t take shit from people. People who survive cancer stop trying to please everybody. They give up caring what everybody else thinks. If you might die in a year anyway (and every single one of us could), who gives a flip if your Great Aunt Gertrude is going to cut you out of her will unless you kiss her ass?

3. Learn to say no. People with cancer say no when they don’t feel like going to the gala. They avoid gatherings when they’d prefer to be alone. They don’t let themselves get pressured into doing things they really don’t want to do.

4. Get angry. Then get over it. People who survive cancer get in your face. They question you. They feel their anger. They refuse to be doormats. They demand respect. They feel it. Then they forgive. They let go. They surrender. They don’t stay pissed. They release resentment.

5. Don’t obsess about beauty. People who survive cancer no longer worry about whether they have perfect hair, whether their makeup looks spotless, or whether their boobs are perky enough. They’re happy just to have boobs (if they still do). They’re happy to be alive in their skin, even if it’s wrinkled.

6. Do it now. Stop deferring happiness. People who survive cancer realize that you can’t wait until you kick the bucket to do what you’re dying to do. Quit that soul-sucking job now. Leave that deadbeat husband. Prioritize joy. They live like they mean it.

7. Say “I love you” often. People who survive cancer leave no words left unspoken. You never know when your time is up. Don’t risk having someone you love not know it.

8. Take care of your body. People who survive cancer have a whole new appreciation for health. Those who haven’t been there may take it for granted. So stop smoking. Eat healthy. Drink in moderation. Maintain a healthy weight. Avoid putting toxic poisons in your God Pod. Get enough sleep.

9. Prioritize freedom. People who survive cancer know that being a workaholic isn’t the answer. Money can’t buy health. Security doesn’t matter if you’re six feet under. Sixteen hours a day of being a stress monster is only going to make you sick. As Tim Ferriss writes in The 4-Hour Workweek, “Gold is getting old. The New Rich are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.”

10.Take risks. People who survive cancer have faced their fear and told it to go to hell. They know life is for living. Fear is powerless. And joy lies in taking risks. So go sky diving if you want. Bungee jump. Hang glide. Spend your savings. Live like you might die tomorrow.

Are you doing these things? Or are you waiting for cancer to test out how much you want to live?

Don’t wait for cancer, my love. Don’t tempt the Universe that way.

Be brave enough to live NOW.

Unapologetically and fearlessly living for today,

Lissa