What would Obama do?’ we took to asking each other in moments when his heart flagged. How do you handle yourself on the way out, regardless of whether you were given the respect you deserved?
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Keep opening. Stand still. Keep opening and stand still. Open up, get curious, and inquire within.
We ask: How, indeed, have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want? More to the point, what am I willing to give up to stop being complicit?
What would it feel like, in that body of yours,’ I continued, ‘if incremental progress that was directionally correct were enough? What would it feel like to tack across the surface of that lake instead of heading out for the other side, fully intending to make it in the shortest time possible?
Here are your spades, questions to ask yourself so that you might reboot your leadership and move forward on your journey of growing up.
- How would I act were I to remember who I am?
- What choices would I make, what actions would I take, if I regularly said the things that needed to be said?
- Who would I become were I to be fully, completely, and wholly heard?
- What is it that I wish the people in my life understood about me?
- Who would I be without the myths I’ve told about myself; the stories that took hold when I was yearning to feel love, safety, and belonging?
So often I’m called in to help lead conversations about mission, value, and purpose. When, really, the only questions that matter are those that tell us who we are and wish to be.
- How would our organization respond were we to hear all the things that are being said, regardless if they are being said with words or deeds?
- What does it mean to be a leader at our organization?
- What does it mean to be grown, a fully actualized adult?
- How would we feel if our children were to work for the company we’ve created or the team we lead?
- How has the unsorted baggage of what has happened to us shaped who we are as leaders?
- When our employees and colleagues leave our sides and our company, what do we want them to say about our time together?
- What do we believe to be true about the world?
- What do we, as a community of people working toward a common goal, believe the world needs?