Leadership lessons from........Care Bears?

Are you familiar with the Care Bears? It was a children’s cartoon which showed coloured bears with images on their furry tummies. The Care Bears' ultimate weapon was the " Care Bear Stare” in which the Bears stood together and beamed a ray of light from their tummy’. These combine to form a ray of love and good cheer which could bring care and joy into anyone’s heart.)


Well I was reminded of this when I recently attended the Association of Executive Coaching annual conference. Among the sessions that I attended was one called Connectivity in Coaching run by two blonde bombshells dressed in black called Sue and Penny from Connectiveness Ltd. Full of energy and stillness at the same time, they gave us a whistle stop tour of what they described as the new paradigm of leadership, which is organic, sustainable and concerned about social justice. Much has been written on this see Avery, Boyatsis and Western to name a few.

Follwoing this, they asked us to take off our shoes, so I took off my killer heels and began to enjoy the feel of the manmade fibres between my toes. Sue and Penny proceeded to get us breathing deeply, walking around, all to the backdrop of what sounded like the music of Native American Indians.

I know for some of you reading this, it probably sounds like a load of new age hippy nonsense and for others I am not doing the session justice with enough detail. However, for me what was important and impactful was that they asked us to breathe deeply, feel the ball of energy deep within us and then project it out, out through the room, out through England, out through the earth and through the universe. Our very own Care Bear stare! my words not theirs.

I found engaging in this exercise deeply moving. During the exercise my eyes were closed but when I opened them my eyes were moist. There was something re aligning about the activity, which highlighted for me a profound connection to others and everything. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by this connection, as I sometimes do, I felt accepting of it, which had a nurturing and energising rather than draining effect. They should start Parliament, or any major political talks, in fact all business meetings with this activity. There was something harmonising that can’t be explained and what’s interesting is that I feel that I can bring that feeling anytime that I want to.

This has helped me to start to think about a vision of promoting this harmony and acceptance that I am feeling. I believe that what we embody we can create. I felt like an outsider at the AoEC conference as I had not attended any of their programmes, but felt a real connection with all in the room by the end of the session without talking to or touching any of them.

Why am I sharing this with you? I suppose it’s the What If?

• What If you felt connected with what is immediately around you and beyond?
• What if you weren’t disconnected or desensitised to what is going on in the world?
• What if you could turn on your care bear stare, what would it mean for your behaviour and relationships?
• What if you felt this deep connection to the universe, how much more difference could you make?
• What if you brought this harmony to your workplace and to your approach to leadership?
  

I am personally trying to realise the What If, with small tentative steps. My first is that from now on each month I will be offering a complimentary forty five minute coaching session (via telephone or Skype) to the person who posts the most interesting, inspiring, reflective or thought provoking comments on this blog. I want to open up a two way dialogue with you, so that this blog will combine the thoughts of you and me to create something unexpected and special. My intention is to give something back, so there will be no obligation or underlying agenda of further coaching sessions being booked.

I really look forward to connecting with you.

Jenny



http://www.reflexion-uk.co.uk/

enabling illumiation through reflexion

Wordle.net Word Cloud of my latest blog

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Above is a word cloud of my latest blog, what do you think?

To use wordle yourself, go to http://www.wordle.net/

Let me know how you get on.

Jenny

www.reflexion-uk.co.uk
enabling illumiation through reflexion

What is your relationship with Time?

Do you work in an office, counting down the hours minutes and seconds until the end of the day?
Are you self employed and wish you were busier?
Does time pass you by and you can’t even recall what you did five minutes ago?

I ask this question because I am trying to improve my relationship with Time. My mantra until recently was "there are not enough hours in the day", but there must be mustn't there? Is it about the number of hours or how I choose to use them?

Time and I started showing cracks in our relationship towards the end of July. We were going away for a three week holiday..what was I thinking, people who are running their own business and have a Masters dissertation to submit don't go away on three week jaunts.

Anyway, some might say foolishly, I decided to try and SQUEEZE my usual workload plus the work I would have done in the coming three weeks in before I went away.

You guessed it, Time wasn’t having it, he dug his heels in and after tantrums, tears, threats and drama he finally sabotaged my laptop (oh yes, paranoia had also set in by this point) I was fuming, frustrated and starting to step on the wrong side of Sanity Street.

"I wanted to have everything done so that I could have a wonderful relaxing holiday" I screeched, but by now Time was just giving me the silent treatment. Sent to Coventry (I must look up where that saying come from), I slowly began to realise that he was right, it was an impossible task. It was like trying to fit my size ten body into a pair of size six jeans, they couldn't give any more even if I resorted to firm hold pants.

So for the sake of our relationship, I let go of work and other pressures and I remembered what it was like to have a fabulous relationship with Time. While on holiday, we woke, up, ate and slept as and when we wanted to, bliss. Did I use him wisely? Probably not, but it’s OK to be frivolous sometimes isn't it?

I did have a slight relapse when we got back, panic stricken ten hour days in the library trying to craft my dissertation fleetingly pass through my mind, but Time understood that this was only temporary.

I thought that I would be my own worst enemy when it came to sustaining my relationship with Time, but it was others that didn’t appreciate it. Clients frowned disapprovingly when I said that I was going home at 2pm instead of scheduling in further appointments. Colleagues appeared disappointed at what they perceived as a lack of ambition when I decided not to join meetings that started at 6.30pm.
"Don’t they want our relationship to work?" I asked time. "Perhaps they are just jealous" he replied.

I had thought that the issue was my relationship with time, but it was bigger than that, having a relationship with Time is definitely not the norm. It seems that society values: busyness, full days of doing and striving to do more with less. All the things that I was trying to get away from.

Don’t get me wrong, a relationship with Time needs nurturing like any other, it’s not all velvet petaled red roses, good red wine and delightful milk chocolates with strawberry centres you know.

Julia Cameron in the Artists Way recommends weekly dates with yourself as a way of nurturing your relationship with Time. This could be as simple as visiting a coffee shop and spending twenty minutes with you and Time staring into each other’s eyes to a full blown date at the theatre or an art gallery perhaps. It can just be waking up thirty minutes earlier so that you and Time can sit peacefully together on the sofa.

Time and I are working on it, it’s easy to fall into old habits or succumb to the habits that others want you to keep, but I realise that by nurturing my relationship with Time; ideas, creativity, fun, laughter and peace will come.

So I'd say that it’s worth the work. Do you think you'll try it? I am willing to share him if you want to give it a try.


www.reflexion-uk.co.uk
Enabling illumination through reflexion

The youth of today

Just a note to say that I am amazed at the resourcefulness of young people.
I was asked to provide an opening workshop to a group of student governors about 2 weeks ago now and I wasn't sure what I would encounter.
I was postively surprised to find a group of around fifty 18-20 year olds who were inspiring role models to others, who wanted to put themselves out and were ambitious for their futures.
The political spin in the media would have us all believe that young people are just interested in hurting themselves and others, that groups of young people should be seen as threatening and that inner city youth is past caring about.
I am delighted to say that my opinion differs, there is a body
(probably the majority) of young people who provide me with a bright image of the future, I just hope that they are supported to find their way through to it.
As we get older unless we have children this age, it becomes easy to see them as "the other" so different to ourselves, this is a mistake... take an opportunity to connect with a young person today, you'll be surprised, perhaps inspired, defintely challenged and ultimately I believe you will come away feeling better about the world.

Jenny

enabling illumiation through reflexion
www.reflexion-uk.co.uk