CONFERENCES
Convergence 99
At Convergence '99, Sturner will offer a half-day session on "The Creative Impulse: Affirming Your Myth and Mission."
The Message
Excellence in leadership is not attained by being attentive to merely our outer activities, nor it is synonymous with our professional stature alone. True leadership begins and ends inside. It is a radiant force - so powerful that it permeates everything we do. Once honored, this pattern of energy both penetrates and integrates our personal, our professional and our organizational lives.
The outer always reflects the inner, specific activities giving expression to what abides deep inside. Ever notice what happens when a true leader enters a room: there is a hush, a sudden and instinctive awareness that something special, someone extra-ordinary is before you. Their presence is not fragmented or posed. It genuinely reflects the essence of their life, how they live it and what they live for. It is nothing in particular but everything in general. There need not be anything overtly religious about this person - for that is not the issue. But he or she obviously does possess what can only be described as a deep spiritual or moral capacity to live and love life to its fullest. Such a person has an aura about them that suggests a special presence, a grounding, a depth, integrity, soul.
To be a transformative leader is to radiate a way of being in the world with awareness and purpose. When such leaders transform their ideas into form, and their free-flowing energy into specific behaviors, they literally participate in the continuing birth and renewal of the universe. When they point in certain directions and invite you to join with them, they are propagating the very rhythm of life.
The transformative leader does not save his/her best energy for the organization and become an empty shell in the evenings and weekends. Whatever their title, they express the same energies at home as they do at the shop or office. They do not lead moral lives with their families and immoral ones within the organization and amoral ones in between.
Everything they do suggests value, a sense of the finest - and that is manifest wherever they go. They personify the resonance of the tuning fork, vibrating with energy and interest, pulsating from the heights to the depths, attuning themselves to inner messages and outer concerns - alive and well and looking for kinfolk.
Soulful leaders yearn to join with others in innovating the world. Their drive, their presence, their open hand and steady stride are always in search of one more comrade and one more turn of the spiral. They have developed a full inner life and seek to share that with the world. Their depth and expanse of soul goes with them wherever they roam and is freely gifted to everyone and everything they meet.
Rules for Gaining and Radiating Depth of Soul
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1. Soulful leaders are the same people at work as they are at home.
2. They are integrated, their outer activities expressing their inner values.
3. By being soulful, they (and perhaps you!) are able to activate the soulful energies of others.
4. Such people also personify the very best in the human spirit and thereby stimulate the emergence of similar aptitudes and abilities in others.
5. Soulful leaders possess integrity because they have worked and cultivated it - finally getting it all together after years of slipping and sliding like the rest of us.
6. Soulful leaders, just like soulful organizations, have earned their place in the world. They have cycled through many iterations of the spiral, revisited the same issues time and again but with greater and greater degrees of insight, and constantly seized on the opportunities to perfect what they do and how they do it. Over time that have learned how to live with full involvement and enthusiasm despite the reappearance of conditions that once blocked and discouraged them.
7. People with depth of soul seek creative and innovative goals that simultaneously help themselves, others and the universe.
8. We may live in a culture of fast food, fast service and fast information. But there is - and never will be - a way to become an overnight soulful leader. It takes time and energy and devotion and extraordinary talent to master oneself before one can accumulate the depth needed to emanate soul and the energy needed to transform the earth.
9. Soulful leaders are not made or created. They are molded, their natural instincts cooperating with the awesome energies of the universe to honor integrity through involvement, and creativity through teamwork.
10. We are all agents of creation, players in a gigantic unfolding - not just of this community or that organization but of Life itself. To become a leader is receive a commission to generate new life, to enliven people and inspire circumstances, to give birth to new developments and nourish new formations.
11. Soulful leaders participate in a much larger and deeper reality than most. They are able to infuse the depths of their souls into everyday events, honoring both the life process and their contribution to its unfolding.
12. The affirmation of their creative, innovative and transformative potential is the source of their (and our) empowerment. Once these skills are honored and developed, once they are aware of their true role and cumulative potential, they exude and manifest outwardly who and what they already are inwardly. By tapping into their inner values and calling upon the inspiration that lies just below the level of consciousness, they flow with the mystery of creation, embracing their responsibilities of leadership with essence of life, linking their innovative visions to the Center, their souls to the source of Life Itself.
Symbol
"Picture of a smiling stick-figure with radiant lines eminating from it."
This symbol depicts an otherwise ordinary person - who also possesses an extraordinary capacity to radiate the best of humankind. The descriptive words all mean the same thing but highlight the several ways in which soulful leadership is expressed: integrity, playfulness, vibrancy, a love of life, creative and innovative, in the moment, empathetic, attuned to people and situations, giving, continually open to his/her growth and development, a moral presence, a voice for the good, deeply committed, exploring and expressing every facet of themselves, concerned, loving, joyful, happy, present.
Tools of Soulful Leadership
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1. Be a united personality - acting the same at home as you do in
business.
2. Affirm your standards of integrity - not by preaching morality but by simply being moral in what you do and how you do it.
3. Advocate soulful living by demonstrating your capacity for soulful living.
4. Develop a deep interior life - meditative, prayerful, thankful.
5. Spend time alone - in silent reverence for the beauty and expanse of Life.
6. Encourage self-esteem by honoring your own.
7. Testify to the glories of creativity and innovation by exhibiting involvement with, a joy in and a love of Life.
8. Discover and practice ways of giving thanks - for your leadership skills (present or emerging), for whatever blessing you have attracted into your life, and for the gift of working with other creative and innovative people.
9. Share the stage, the limelight and the accolades with the many others who directly or indirectly contribute to progress and transformation.
10. Read books and magazines that celebrate the best of life, that inspire you to dig deeper and aim higher.
11. Seek out, and hang out, with the most joyous and soulful people you can find.
12. Don't just look for jobs and positions. Seek to associate and partner with people and leaders of depth, quality, integrity and innovative genius.
13. Create a culture at home and at the office that accents your values and dreams. Choose certain words and metaphors, create rituals and ceremonies, mold creative environments, give yourself and others rewards from the heart, surround yourself with symbols and artifacts that affirm and inspire the best in human nature, and keep the images of your soulful heroes ever on your mind.
Quotes
You see things, and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were,
and say "Why not?"
- George Bernard Shaw, Anglo-Irish playwright, The Serpent.
The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who
can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.
- Abigail Van Buren, Columnist
Before you advise anyone "Be yourself!" - reassess his character.
- Anonymous
If you don't have soul, it can't come out of your horn.
- Anonymous Jazz Musician
"I'm very brave generally," he went on in a low voice, "only today I
happen to have a headache."
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Grace under pressure.
- Ernest Hemingway, Novelist.
Talent is nurtured in solitude; character is formed in the stormy
billows of the world.
- Goethe, Torquato Tasso
The bird sings - not because it has a plan - but because it has a
song.
- Georgia O'Keefe, Artist.
Inventory
This inventory will complete the set of twelve. In the next and last chapter, Skills and Challenges, you will be able to total the individual skill averages into a composite score and assess your overall performance - as a leader in general as well as on that optional isuse or project you may have examined. At that time, you'll draw your conclusions, assess you progress toward becoming a superb leader, and then reaffirm and perhaps add to your list of action-commitments .
But first - you need to complete this twelfth and last inventory. You know the drill. If your response to any of these questions is Always, then score yourself a 9 or 10. If it is Usually, then score yourself a 6, 7 or 8. Often gets a 4 or 5, Sometimes either a 1, 2 or 3, and Never a 0. Total the scores, divide by 5, and record your average.
You are rating yourself in two ways: General Issue and
Skill Level Project
0-10(lo-hi)
1. I respect the depth, integrity and presence I discover in others. _____ _____
2. I want to be successful but mostly I want to be soulful. _____ _____
3. I am on the alert for biographies and stories that describe people and events of depth and integrity. _____ _____
4. I wish to radiate, above all, the characteristics of excellence, quality and conviction. _____ _____
5. I watch for and honor little acts of joy and love - that flow in and among my family, friends, and even perfect strangers. _____ _____
Total: _____ _____
Total Divided By 5 = Average _____ _____
Commitments
1. In my personal and professional affiliations and friendships, I
will associate as closely as possible with people of integrity and depth.
2. I will look for jobs that allow me to express my talents and my
soulfulness.
3. I will actively seek opportunities to work with people who live
with depth, involvement, integrity, commitment, joy - soul!
4. In my home, with community interactions, on the job, in my
organization, and in my visions of the future, I will cultivate and express
my commitment to excellence, my love of life, my respect for its depth and
meaning, my search for integrity, my trust and need of others, my capacity
for creativity and innovation, my ability to get involved in helping the
world to evolve - here, now, whatever the circumstances.
5. I will laugh at and with myself, accepting my flaws, honoring my
potential, trusting and thankful for being who I am and who I am becoming.
6. I will, above all, live life with depth, love and joy.
7. Based on the results of my Inventory, I hereby promise to take the
following specific actions to improve and perfect my capacity for
integrating professional stature with inner depth of soul:
- 1)
2)
3)
4)
- Dig deep, fly high.
Be who you are - a full human being!
Give of what you have acquired - but mostly, give of yourself.
Celebrate yourself and your connections to the universe.
Be a leading person before you try to be a person who leads.
Be a class act - in whatever you do.
Enjoy yourself, others and the universe.
Show reverence. Display respect. Give thanks. Celebrate.
Live with depth.
Exude soulfulness.
In one word: Beinlovewithlife...