Business Coaching: Finding Your Passion
Speaking of passion, here in northern California, it’s summer! The sky is bright, the fog is rolling chill, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to be out romping in my garden with the tomatoes. Maybe that’s why I’m compelled to begin our focus today on passion….
Why is it even important to ignite the flame of passion in our business?
Many entrepreneurs I coach report that so many things get in the way of them building and growing their businesses. Our kids needs, our parent’s needs, survival needs, everything seems to come first. Some times it’s just overwhelming, and we all wonder if we will ever just be able to focus enough on creating our business to have it succeed….That’s when getting back to the tap-root of our passion is so important. It can really pull us through!
Our feminine wisdom tells us that you are the source of the best ideas about how to build your business momentum! The Tips and Traps Exercise that follows will give you a chance to make up some fresh and new next steps and strategies for your own business growth, in the vital areas of:
• Your passion (yup, let’s start there!)
• Your strengths and limitations
• Accurate priorities and
• Effective communications
In this exercise, yes, you’ll be the expert, giving your own best tips to yourself! In addition, you’ll be pointing out some of the potential traps to yourself as well. Try it, answer the questions and you’ll be amazed, it works wonders and will provide all this fodder for you to put to work for you in building your business momentum!
1. Passion Tip – What am I most passionate about in my business?
(Example: I’m passionate about helping women gain confidence, self-trust and fuller self expression in building their businesses.)
Passion Trap – When the flame of passion is diminished, what can I do to re-ignite it?
(Example: When my passion flame is dim, I can re-read some past testimonials of clients to help me remember the difference that I’m making in women’s lives.)
2. Strengths Tip – What are my strengths that are needed now to build my business momentum?
(Example: My strengths needed now in building my business
momentum are enthusiasm, generosity, willingness to learn new things.)
Strengths Trap – What are the self-imposed limits that keep me from creating business momentum?
(Example: Some limits I impose on myself are when I don’t trust my instincts and intuition and value someone else’s ideas more than my own. Or when I don’t speak up when I have something useful to contribute in a situation.)
3. Accurate Priorities Tip – What are my highest leverage, most important priorities to build my business momentum now?
(Example: My highest leverage priority is to follow up all the leads that have been given to us, and my most important priority is to make sure that our next public event is well attended.)
Accurate Priority Trap – When I’m off track with my priorities, what do I need to do to get back on track?
(Example: When I’m off track, sometimes I need to get some extra rest and sleep, or I need to spend quality time with my husband, and/or sit down and have some quiet time at my desk to sort things out.)
4. Effective Communications Tip – What do I need to communicate and to whom to build my business momentum?
(Example: I need to communicate with the upcoming event volunteers to make explicit requests and give them directions.)
Effective Communications Trap – What are some strategies I could employ when communications break down in my business?
(Example: I could ask for a sane third party’s help, and I could calm down and write an email apologizing for my outburst.)
Hooray for you, especially if you took the few minutes required to answer the questions! Go and give yourself a treat of some kind and celebrate this kind of clarity. You can have it all the time, when you make yourself the priority.
You may want to take another 5 minutes and translate your answers to the questions above into “to-do’s” on your list of actions and to-do’s in whatever system you utilize to stay organized.
I LOVE to hear ways that these business momentum exercises are making a difference for you and welcome all your comments!
Because I love seeing small business people succeed I’ve developed the Business Boost Seminar where you learn to place yourself and your business in the right level of business growth with just the right activities to boost you to the next level. The next one starts Thursday, 6/21.
Like many of us, you may sense that the world is changing and that you, your team or organization has a bigger role to play. A Next Octave Leader values and utilizes the gifts and natural authority of her feminine wisdom and power; with increased self-assurance she leverages her unique strengths and talents to be powerfully effective.
In a recent radio show hosted by Carole Sacino I explore the top 7 ways a woman’s vision and values are critical in business. Through stories of women around the world, we discussed the 4 steps that you can use to stabilize your WiseCore in any situation so that you can succeed through the uncertainties of change.
Carole and I explore what holds women back and how research points to 3 key factors: self-doubt, dismissal, and shrinking. They add up to a persistent lack of confidence. Do you experience this? Many women I speak with every day do.
Click here to listen to my interview with Carole Sacino on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel for an engaging exchange and stories about professional presence, feminine wisdom, and authentic leadership with results.
All of us who are striving to lead from wisdom can benefit from regular doses of inspiration which is one of the reasons why I have developed the Next Octave Women’s Leadership Webinar which shows women leaders, entrepreneurs and managers how to develop a more authentic and effective leadership style. You will learn how to use the 4 steps that stabilize your Wise Core and step you into your personal power.
Best,
Karen
Your Advice Please
On Molokai leading Women’s Retreat in May 2012
I’d love 3 minutes of your time to ask your advice. Your advice will be greatly appreciated by other women learning how to utilize and integrate their feminine wisdom into everyday work and home.
1. What is one way you use your feminine wisdom to increase success in your work, community organizing, family, or business?
2. What does your day look like when it includes feminine wisdom? How is it different?
3. From your experience, what is essential to remember about feminine wisdom?
Thanks! We are all learning to include feminine wisdom in each and every day of our work, play, and connection.
I’ll share the insights I receive, carefully attributing your name and title if you want.
In the mirror of each others’ wisdom lies a lot of self acceptance and acceptance of each other even with all our differences. When we get more comfortable with who we are – the scope and impact of our leadership grows, which is what the world needs.
Karen
P.S. All of us learning to lead from feminine wisdom can benefit from regular doses of inspiration which is one of the reasons why I have developed the Next Octave Women’s Leadership Webinar. Come share your insight and learn from other women as well.
Why Do Children Climb on Chairs?
Why do children climb on chairs? And why do adults sit on them? Guest blogger Jennifer Kenny again challenges our preconceived notions about the value of developing feminine wisdom in leadership and business.
“The prevailing thinking would tell us that children climb on chairs because they have not been trained to sit on them. However if you look carefully at how children interact with chairs you will notice that they climb on them, write on them, sit on them, play on them, ignore them and sit on the floor. It is only when they begin to distinguish chairs from other items that they begin to sit on them. A child sees a chair and they have no preconceived notion as to what a chair should be used for, so they climb on it, experiment with it, sit on it, they knock it over, they write on it, they ignore it, basically, they do whatever takes their fancy when it comes to engaging with the chair.
The interesting opportunity for us, is to look at how people engage with feminine wisdom. If they don’t know what it is, if the distinction of feminine wisdom, and the sub distinctions of feminine wisdom, don’t exist for them, then they simply, climb on it, sit on it, knock it over, write on it and ignore it, they use it for whatever purpose they think is appropriate – if they even see it in the first place. Remember children also sit on the floor quite happily and comfortably.
We are in a unique position, at this moment in history, to be able to distinguish and identify the facets of feminine wisdom and to bring forth those facets into the world in a way that they will be distinguished and in distinguishing them people will understand them, they will understand the value of them, they will understand how to engage with them, they will understand how to be able to pay for applied feminine wisdom and how to leverage feminine wisdom.
Karen Buckley has done truly foundational work in distinguishing the facets of feminine wisdom and working to bring those distinctions to a broader audience. She has distinguished nine facets of feminine wisdom and in so doing she has created the opportunity for all of us to enable humanity (masculine and feminine) understand what problems feminine wisdom can solve, what value feminine wisdom brings, why it is unique to the feminine (not just to women but to the feminine) and why that value can in turn add value for those around us and for those in our community.
Over the next few months you will see Karen articulate those distinctions in her blog and she will be publishing a book about those distinctions. She will also be looking to engage a broader audience in identifying understanding, valuing and appreciating, applied feminine wisdom and we will be working to create frameworks for bringing feminine wisdom to the world, in the same way masculine wisdom has been brought to the world.
The task ahead of us at the moment is to understand these distinctions ourselves, understand how each of us embodies one or more of the facets of feminine wisdom and help the rest of the world understand how to engage with feminine wisdom, what value it brings and how feminine wisdom can be instrumental in solving some of the enormous problems facing humanity today.
Onward!!
Sincerely, Jennifer”
Editor’s note! Jennifer, I have the biggest smile ever with your fine acknowledgment above. I too am very excited to share the distinctions we are all building every day as we become the wise feminine leaders that we are meant to be.
Jennifer Kenny is Interim CIO of SRI International. Jennifer has an extensive background in management consulting, change initiation and the design of business processes and systems strategies for Fortune 500 companies, including starting her own consulting firm BizThink in 2007.
Because I love working with women to discover these distinctions for themselves I put together the Next Octave Leadership Webinar that starts this summer where we’ll talk about the source of personal power and increased effectiveness.
Warmest regards, Karen
Predawn Chorus: Wildness and Leadership
How unfamiliar I am with stillness when first leaving the office on retreat. How carefully constructed my busyness and the insisting voices of “should’a, would’a, could’a”. As if the world will fall apart without my constant attention.
I’m on the wild and gorgeous Hawaiian island of Molokai with a land area of 260 square miles, Molokai 38 miles long and 10 miles wide. Yesterday we hiked to a point where we stood on one coast and easily saw the beach on the other cost 10 miles away!
This week I convened a Women’s Leadership Retreat at The Hui Ho’olana Retreat center. A diverse group, we hailed from corporate, nonprofit, and community leadership positions and learned together about the ways feminine wisdom flourishes in a caring circle of women peers.
This morning, sitting in the predawn chorus of raucous birds, I am spiraling into silence. Never dropping straight into silence, like a stone falling from the top of the well into the dark waters below, I spiral round and round into myself. I guess it’s to be expected. Letting go means first receiving rush after rush of unfelt, unloved, wobbly voices lurking below the daily press of doing. Mixed memories confuse things, intermix ancient and recent times when I felt cut off, shut down, dismissed or even stretched into more happiness than I could easily digest. Part of me wants to run back into busyness.
Welcoming these wild strangers of memory takes courage. Yet, only by embracing them do they relax their stubborn grip. My heart yearns to soften. My belly hungers to fill with the richness of my creative soul. My desire to more completely own my place in the world grows more powerful than my fear.
Quiet surrender arises in the dawn. The good news is that below the excess really does lie authentic essence.
Gray light opens my view of Koa, palm, red earth, water, far off Lanai island. Wildness fills my soul.
Alive, I retrieve memories of this week, knowing only the moment when our eyes meet in mutual recognition, only the moment when you break open and speak your deepest fear, only the moment when you gasp to accept the joy, and only the moment when you become funny again.
All of us who are striving to lead from wisdom can benefit from regular doses of inspiration which is one of the reasons why I have developed the Next Octave Women’s Leadership Webinar. This proven 9Facet method shows women leaders, entrepreneurs and managers how to develop a more authentic and effective leadership style. We’ll also cover 4 steps into personal power that naturally overcome the 3 biggies: self-doubt, shrinking into smallness, or self-dismissal.
Looking for a expert in personal empowerment or organizational change? Contact Karen directly or see a video of Karen speaking directly to women leaders.
An Award for Wise Feminine Leadership
I must admit. Many of my clients are my “favorite” – they inspire me to no end. I learn from them every day we work together. Over the past 3 years I’ve been privileged to work with Deb Hubsmith the founder and Director of the Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership as she tripled the size of her budget, staff, and the range of her work. Please join me in congratulating Deb, and The Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership, for receiving the Game Changer Award from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention this week.
Deb is passionate and strategic, smart and visionary, intuitive and precise on details, scrappy and wise. With an interactive leadership style Deb builds consensus up front and all along the way, shares power and information to avert a crisis before it happens. She is comfortable with ambiguity, watching issues unfold, ready to respond when the time is right. She keeps her focus on what matters, while scanning with broad spectrum vision. She pays attention to the texture of the workplace as she develops and inspires her nationally based staff. A communicator – her verbal agility and capacity to read subtle cues mean that she moves teams and causes through obstacles that seem insurmountable. A wise feminine leader!
Why is “safe routes” a critical issue? Think thriving self-reliant kids riding bikes and walking to school instead of being dependent on their parents to drive. Think liveable communities, less pollution, decreased obesity, and the kind of future we want to pass on to our children.
Deb Hubsmith, Director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, first started her game changing efforts 15 years ago by working to improve bicycle and pedestrian routes to schools in Marin County, California. As awareness of childhood obesity grew, she took her local successes, passion and pioneering spirit to the national level and worked with Congress to create the federal Safe Routes to School program which is now established within the Departments of Transportation of all 50 states. More than 5 million children and 12,000 schools are already benefiting from more pedestrian and bicycle pathways as well as education programs.
Through her tireless efforts, Deb and The Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership ignited a national movement to make streets safer for kids to walk and bicycle to school and in daily life. Deb, her staff, and their more than 500 organizational partners, continue to show how Safe Routes to School can be a catalyst for bringing about system-wide built environment changes that increase physical activity and safety, building a healthier future for children and everyone.
Throughout developing a strategic plan that included input from almost a thousand stakeholders, evolving staffing structures, learning new leadership skills, strengthening teams, and strategic responses to complex changes, Deb is one of those clients motivated to make changes in herself and her organization. She turns on a dime when shown a better way to do something and is always ready to learn along with her talented Staff Director Team.
Thank you Deb for your fine work and dedication. It’s an honor to work with you.
Karen
Learn more about the Safe Routes to School National Partnership and Deb Hubsmith at http://www.saferoutespartnership.org
http://www.communicore.biz & http://www.thewisdomconnection.com
“The capabilities that made leaders successful in the past are unlikely to lead to success in the future. Leaders need to embrace new behaviors – but to do this they must first understand how the world has changed and how old ways can lead to business and personal obsolescence!” Annie McKee, Founder of Teleosleadership; Co-Author “Primal Leadership, “Resonant Leadership”
Business Coaching: Increasing Income Flow
Are you looking for a way to generate a little or a lot more income? Most everyone I coach is asking for new ideas in this domain. First question I ask them – how much do you want to bring in? How much is minimum? How much do you really need to thrive? If you don’t know this, you limit your ability to earn.
Increasing income is not like rolling off a log. Setting the right target and then consistently generating income takes something! First it takes inner confidence – claiming your self as a competent, strong, businesswoman. (easy, right? ) Second it takes agreements – with your business partners or spouse. Finally, lots of focused action while you stay in flow. Let your wise feminine power guide you for more ease and less effort.
Setting an income target:
Set your target so that it is interesting enough to get you up in the morning but not so big that you can’t see yourself achieving it. Set it somewhere in between easy/predictable and blue sky wishes. Be sure to ask your significant others for their input.
Here’s one of our favorite coaching exercises for you – schedule some time in your calendar to answer these questions. This is the place to begin increasing your income stream.
1. What is your goal for your total gross income for one year? (Gross is everything that comes into your business checking account before expenses). If you don’t know how to start setting a total – add up how many jobs you’d like to do based on your time and see how much income that would be.
2. What is your goal for average monthly gross income? (Divide by 12 to get your monthly average, based on your yearly goal.) It’s good to know if it’s an average of $500 or $5,000/month that you are aiming for!
3. What is your income goal for each season? Since photography work can be seasonal, set a goal for each quarter so that you end up with your desired yearly total. What is your goal for:
- Q1 January – March
- Q2 April – June
- Q3 July – September
- Q4 October – December
Once it’s defined? Act in consistent flow: Approach it like a game that you are out to play and win. If you know that you played the income generation game 100%, you will stand tall no matter what the result. If you set a $5000 target and you ended up with $4500 – how sad will you be?
Meeting your income target is all about placing it in the center of your attention. When my kids were little, I really looked at them each morning. When I noticed a runny nose or red eyes I acted immediately to keep them healthy. “Yes, you do need to wear a hat today and drink your OJ!”
The same is true of your income stream. Stay on top of it. When you lovingly assess the health and vitality of your income you’ll know the next step and the next. That’s the road to more income. Take the steps. Each day. Make the call. Send the email. Take the plunge. Enjoy the swim!
Love the little girl in you: Do you feel unsure or uncomfortable? Too small to do this? Do you stop yourself before you even set a goal cause you worry you’ll fall short? Do you feel embarrassed about asking for what you are worth so you ask for so little that they don’t trust that you know what you are doing? Does it feel like you stop yourself before you really get some momentum going?
When that happens to any of us we lose focus and income streams dry up! Of course it does! When we shrink, when we feel 6 instead of 36, we are not very compelling to prospective clients. Where is our creativity? Inner confidence? Our passion and commitment? Ability to move for ourselves?
Money is all about the flow of your creative ideas put into action. Engage your creativity! Find your core passion and follow it up with practical step–by-step daily actions to generate a generous stream of money. This kind of momentum will feel so good! 🙂
It’s time to ignite the flame of your inner fires and create the kind of income stream that makes you smile, a contented, right-sized smile. Remember, people are waiting for your fine work!
Because I love seeing small business people succeed I’ve developed the Business Boost Seminar where you learn to place yourself and your business in the right level of business growth with just the right activities to boost you to the next level. The next one starts Thursday, 6/21.
Abundance in the Face of Aggression?
When faced with an aggressive negotiation do you shift into protection or more connection? Does the pie get smaller or bigger? Can you access a fundamental trust in abundance at those moments?
Lenedra Carroll, businesswoman, Jewel’s mom, and author of The Architecture of All Abundance: Seven Foundations to Prosperity, embraces her feminine wisdom and power in the face of aggressive negotiations and unsettling moments of not knowing. Each step of the way taking responsibility for creating the life and work that matches her core values.
It’s not always an easy journey. Through barriers most of us would find insurmountable, she builds success in the material world, in relationship with her famous daughter singer/songwriter Jewel, and with her vital inner self. She is willing to ask the tough questions, confront preconceived notions about corporate mentalities and aggressive business, and personal accountability.
While not the best written book – the writing is informal and moves along. Our Feminine Wisdom Book Club ended up reading this for an additional month as we enjoyed good conversations about how it applied to our lives and work.
3 questions we used to stimulate conversation:
1. Where do you naturally know and live abundance?
2. Where do you feel restricted in or abandon your trust in abundance?
3. How does this affect the choices you make?
I anticipate this book will be a favorite, becoming dog-eared over the years as I dive back into the simple wisdom, stillness, and invitation to be. Amazon Book Review – let me know what you think! (Plus, I love votes… 🙂
If you too realize that you have a responsibility to humankind and have made a commitment to develop your own leadership – you’ll find here the kind of knowledge of the soul required to grapple with the vast changes underway in the world today. (BTW – Savvy Leadership Strategies for Women: Top Experts Share How To Take the Lead and Achieve is another great resource.)
Am I willing to step into aggressive situations with a fundamental trust in abundance? It’s a practice – day by day. How about you?
Warmest regards,
Karen
http://www.thewisdomconnection.com
Upcoming Radio Show – Next Octave Leadership: Discover the Gifts and Natural Authority of Feminine Power
Upcoming Radio Interview on The AWE Factor – Advancing Women Everywhere: Leading the New Economy
April 24, 2012, 7:00am PT/10:00am ET Hosted by Carole Sacino
In this interview I share some just developed insights that really make a difference.
Like many of us, you may sense that the world is changing and that you, your team or organization has a bigger role to play.
A woman leader who becomes a Next Octave Leader values and utilizes the gifts and natural authority of feminine wisdom and power. With increased self-assurance she leverages her unique strengths and talents to be powerfully effective.
In this show I’ll share the top 7 ways a woman’s vision and values are critical in business. Through stories of women around the world, you will learn 4 steps to stabilize your WiseCore in any situation and succeed throughout the uncertainties of change.
What holds women back? Research shows doubt, lack of confidence. How do we get past these internal glass ceilings?
I’ll tell you about other women who incorporate feminine wisdom, even in tough work environments, to develop a leadership, organization and life full of courage, focus, and confidence.
Blessings,
Karen
Women Matter – Who knew?
Today Guest blogger Jennifer Kenny provocatively challenges assumptions about a national women’s initiative. She asks great questions. Do you agree with her answers?
Since 2007 one of the world’s leading business strategy consulting firms had led an initiative called ‘Women Matter’. This initiative is focused on conducting research about gender diversity in top management and corporate performance. While I am absolutely certain that this initiative has the very best intentions, ‘Women Matter’ is a very sad as a way of looking at this issue.
How would men feel if the world’s leading business strategy consulting firm had a research initiative called ‘Men Matter’! The whole concept is utterly ridiculous and completely the wrong common sense for a starting point.
This initiative is actually led by women! These women appear very sincere and authentic – but they seem to have no ability to see how trapped they are in the pervasive common sense, the unspoken, unobserved frame of all reference from which we operate, interpret the world, learn, and engage with each other and with our customers.
This common sense is what I call the ‘Me Too’ common sense. It is women appearing to want to be the same as men. I for one do not want to be the same as any man I know – much as I love you all. Nor do I want to do or work or produce the same as men. I don’t want the world to be just faster, bigger, richer because I join men and be the same as men.
For men the ‘Me Too’ shows up as women wanting to be the same as them, join the same clubs, have the same things, compete for the same jobs and resources, and be the same.
We need to educate both men and women to recognize that the world will be better – a lot better – for all of us when we are able to listen to each other; when men matter as much as women do and when women matter as much as men do. When we are both able to really appreciate what the other brings then the world will be more fun, more balanced, happier for all of us.
That is the promise of equality – not similarity – because we are not the same. Women don’t want what man have, what men have accomplished without us. They don’t want the C suite – it is simply not worth it- it is too disconnected from what women really value. Women don’t value hierarchy; winner takes all, besting others, bigger, faster, ‘better’. Women value, relationship, fairness, equality, sharing, happiness.
And now let me take that beyond ‘women’ to say that people value wisdom beyond all – and they don’t care where that wisdom comes from. They value wisdom that will make life more than just about survival, competition, war and work, wisdom that will make life about fun, creativity, possibility, joy, appreciation, sharing, peace – this wisdom can come from both men and women.
I think that it is time to turn all this – ‘Me Too’ – gender diversity on its head – and talk about leveraging women and men in the world, at work and at play, for the good of humanity.
Jennifer Kenny is Interim CIO of SRI International. Jennifer has an extensive background in management consulting, change initiation and the design of business processes and systems strategies for Fortune 500 companies, including starting her own consulting firm BizThink in 2007.
What are you questioning in your own life? Are you willing to take the risk?
Karen
Karen Wilhelm Buckley 