Get your Twinkle Back
I know. It’s that time of year. Crazy. Chaos. Yet, we love it. But, how can we possibly find time for a much needed pause in the midst of our fast-paced multi-tasking?
When everyone is racing around and trying to be perfect Santa’s, hostesses, while finishing year end business it’s hard to remember to connect – with ourselves. To re-build our confidence. To feel just how good things are. To get our twinkle back. It’s also a really powerful time to get together with friends.
This year I held a Winter Solstice gathering. I invited a couple of friends to get together.
Here’s what I did. Use it to add depth and breadth to your gathering and to bring a bit more light into your New Year. Take a moment to spiral into the darkness of what didn’t work in 2011. Notice what is wonderful, what is growing and emerging to feel even better about your self.
Here are some of the questions and steps you can use. Adapt them into a New Years Ritual to add depth and breadth to a time that can be way too superficial.
Give it a try! I can’t wait to hear how you got your twinkle back!
Silence (3-5 minutes) – each person brings themselves into their own center, quieting into their breath
Inclusion – each person speaks their name and a virtue they brought forth in the past year
Silence – feeling our connection to each other and to our larger community
Releasing the Past – Question: “What is one behavior or pattern that you repeated over and over this past year that kept you trapped in an old place?” Speak to one person then share it with the group.
Silence – Feeling positive love and respect for yourself and the others in the group.
Creating a New Future – Question: “What is emerging in your life or work that, with a little extra attention, could gain momentum? What matters the most to you?” (BTW: This is not goal setting from your mind – it’s sensing through your body, listening to your Wise Core, and noticing what makes your heart sing.) Speak to one person then share it with the group.
Silence – Reconnect with positive regard for yourself and others. Join hands and affirm that this shall be so for you and the world.
We all got our twinkle back! We left with relaxed smiles, new-found confidence, and glowing skin. Quite a contrast to our rushed, tight, “can’t believe how much I still have to do” distress when we arrived! We stopped clutching onto the past and slipped into the magic of new possibilities.
Give it a try! I can’t wait to hear what happened. In my next blog I’ll share the story of a”turning point” that happened to me in the midst of yoga. It’s one of those times where I lost my twinkle and got it back.
Karen
Shifting with the Earth’s Axis – Are you Tilting or Turning?
Are you hitting “TILT” some days? I am, so on December 21st, in my home town of Mill Valley, I convened a small circle of women to enjoy the power of a pause – a time to sit in silence, complete some of the past and gather forces for the New Year. Why mention it now? From the Solstice to Epiphany can be a powerful a turning point in our lives. [BTW: I’ll share the 3 questions from our gathering in the next blog plus tell the story I told of one of my turning points.]
The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. But, we are actually closer to the sun than during the summer – 4 million miles closer! It seems strange. It should be hotter since we are closer! But, because the Earth’s axis is tilted away from the sun, the Northern Hemisphere is cold and dark until we start “tilting” the other way again.
The Earth reaches perihelion – the point in its orbit closest to the Sun – in early January, only about two to three weeks after the December solstice. Is this important? Yes, because this time from Dec 21 until early January is a time of change that we can use to give momentum to the things we want to shift.
If , as a wise leader, you use this time consciously, as a time of transition, you get a lift. You can work with the earth forces when you pause and pay attention. Big pay offs come when you stop repeating the past and shift into creating a new future. How do you do that?
Part of living wisely means living in sync with nature’s ways and earth’s rhythms. Use this time to really ask yourself fundamental questions about what you want to end in your life and work that keeps you repeating the past and what you want to create new in the future. FYI: I’m not talking about goal setting here – this can’t be achieved with your mind alone.
Pay close attention to your dreams, meditate, write, gather with loving community and family, spend time in nature, and listen deeply during the weeks from Solstice until around January 6th. (Why 1/6? Traditionally it’s Epiphany in Christian traditions, when the Wise Men visited the Child of Light. Epiphany also means a sudden realization of a great truth.)
To me, the veils to insight seem thinner – I experience a revelation of wisdom – a new light inside of me that is born from accepting darkness – my feelings of dissatisfaction, unfulfilled yearnings, and times I held back in 2011 from timidity or paralyzed myself with fear instead of taking the risk to grow in new ways.
Use this time well! In simple ritual and good conversation pour on the love to release a few of your more repetitive patterns and behaviors – the ones that you used to limit yourself and others. These patterns are often the ones that put you into TILT – throw you off balance, struggling to find a better way.
With family, colleagues, and friends, celebrate all that you are becoming and love the gentle soul in each of you who cares so deeply about the world. Honor your willingness to risk and your dedication to creating a more loving future. People around the world gather during this time, and have throughout history, to participate in the cycle of constant change – the ebb and flow, death and birth, weakness and strength, melancholy and elation.
In our fast paced relentless lives, turning points matter. Without them, we are stuck in the past. Drop into the shifts ready to happen in your life in order to substantively do what is yours to do to contribute to a sustainable, positive future in 2012. It’s a good time to have friends around, and to be a good friend. It’s a time to give of your heart and warm your soul.
And, along the way, take good care of your self,
Karen
Meanings of the Words:
The word solstice comes from Latin and means “the standing still of the sun.” (Sol means sun and sistere means to stand still).
Wikipedia defines the perihelion “as the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid or comet where it is nearest to the sun. The word perihelion stems from the Greek words “peri” (meaning “near”) and “helios” (meaning “sun”). All planets, comets and asteroids in our solar system have elliptical (non-circular) orbits. Thus, they all have a closest and a farthest point from the sun: a perihelion and an aphelion.”
The 3 D’s of Leading Successful Change
When you need to lead others through a change, what are the absolute 3 things you should do? What works for other wise leaders? And, what should you never do?
Here are 3 strategies that help you plan for and guide change that work across all industries. You’ll be surprised how prospective changes can become successful changes if you use these 3 D’s.
Since change is inevitable and most of us lead change in living system versus machines (think people and teams and all their complex feelings, thoughts, inclinations) it’s useful to continually refine our strategies for introducing and managing change. Plus, it improves your leadership resilience when you work in concert with the nature of change rather than acting like change is linear and you can simply exchange one part for another.
The First D: Degree – What is the Extent of the Change?
Like Captain Pickard in Star Trek, the first priority is to assess the Degree of unknowns. How much change do you want to make? Is it a Minor change with minimum differences or a Major change, involving multiple layers of intersecting people and systems? Or is it a Transformative level of change that involves a fundamental shift in the way business is done involving beliefs and ways of thinking as well as actions and systems?
Changes get stalled, even the best ideas ignite illogical resistance and end up with unintended and sometimes damaging consequences if you act like it’s a simple minor change but the change feels major to those involved. When you assess the Degree of change ahead of time, even ask a few people who will be affected to give you their assessment– you cultivate readiness, develop acceptance for the need for change and improve the willingness of key people to go through the chaos that inevitably follows.
The Second D: Developmental Phases – Change is a Journey
Whether you are planning change that involves an entire corporation or just your closet, there is a transition from the present state to an altered future state. During this transition, the way you have always done things can be profoundly challenged or superficially rearranged. It is a journey. Things develop, grow, expand, arise, fall apart and work out as you go through the common stages of the transition passage.
William Bridges [http://www.wmbridges.com/] brought the three-stage roadmap of transitions to mainstream culture with his book, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, in 1980. Be proactive. Notice who is in which stage – who is still Ending the past, or unaware that change is needed/ who is in the Middle passage of making change/ who is in the final stage, the New Beginning, working within the new structures and behaviors. Design your change strategies to speak to those people in each stage.
The Third D: Dimensions of Change
A change is incomplete without shifts in the three dimensions of behavior, structure and consciousness. These shifts involve both people and the organization. When any one of the three is missing, the system easily reverts to old ways of doing things.
It takes web-like awareness to understand how a change ripples out to affect others. You know that anyone can offer a “good idea” for change, but real change does not happen until the whole system, or web of relationships, agrees to change.
You understand that change unfolds in dynamic, nonlinear, non-rational and intuitive ways and that any system needs to build readiness before a change can take hold. Employing the 3-D framework — Degrees, Developmental Stages, and Dimensions— increases leadership resilience.
Join Leaders in multi-national corporations, small firms and partnerships use them to anticipate the emotional, dynamic and irregular progression of change. They come with powerful tips you can immediately apply in business and in life.
P.S. This is an element of the curriculum of the Next Octave Women’s Leadership Program where you’ll learn to proactively identify emergent changes (before they become a crisis) and guide those changes for positive outcomes for everyone. Applications are now available.
This was first published as an article as a Linkage Leader Article – 9/2011
Business and the Feminine Principle highlights questions that we ask ourselves as we become women leaders. Carol Frenier’s lovely vulnerability, and her own challenges, invite us to take a step and perhaps even a risk to express feminine wisdom in our businesses and life. A good storyteller, she makes the principles and approaches of the feminine accessible. She celebrates the naturalness and extraordinary power of our feminine ways while pointing to the challenges of speaking about it coherently and using it in all situations.
Women connecting with their wisdom and leading in feminine ways is essential for the survival and evolution of humankind. This book can help you to find your way into your own very personal and quietly or boldly passionate leadership.
See all my reviews on Amazon! Buy your own copy today!
Communicating Feminine Wisdom- even in a tough work environment
When female wisdom remains untapped, women, men, families and organizations suffer. As leaders are unable to translate our best ideas into action. We give our competency, but not our authentic contribution. I call this the competency trap. For too many years I restricted my deepest passions because of my attachment to my competency. Rolling it out day after day – making a difference through my work I added to my competencies, learning & growing within the framework of my past “safe” competencies.
Although organizations need to change to value and invite feminine wisdom it’s also up to us to be as clear as we can about what we see and value and communicate it in a way that our organizations can understand and value.
“Without the female vision [wisdom] organizations lost power. They undermine the full potential of their talent base. They diminish the capacity of their people to make balanced decisions. They undermine creativity and reduce the potential for real collaboration. They remain one dimensional in a multi-dimensional world.” Sally Helgesen, The Female Vision
There are 3 Steps to take to begin to change:
1. Discover what you value: What do you care about so much that when you speak about it it brings tears to your eyes?
2. Develop your understanding: Write it down, speak about what matters the most to you to a trusted colleague or friend until you’ve integrated the power behind the words
3. Design an action: What is it that you can do to act on this? Who do you need to speak with? Where do these words belong?
How about you? How do you get yourself ready to communicate in such a way that others can understand and value your vision?
In appreciation for your beautiful wise voice,
Karen
A Path to Wise Feminine Leadership
What kind of wise leadership is needed to lead us away from repeating the past into building a new future? Our global economy runs on principles familiar to women: collaboration, cyclic change and respect for subjective realities as well as objective realities. It makes good business sense to build wise feminine leadership, within ourselves, in teams and in our organizations.
Feminine wisdom is a mature wisdom that is based in a high level of interest in others, and blends the cognitive, emotional, physical, intuitive, and pragmatic aspects of leadership with self-mastery. When women, and men, claim, honor, and develop the feminine principle in the workplace they develop women leaders who are competent and confident in their feminine approaches.
Women leaders who integrate their feminine wisdom lead with a natural authority. They expand their sphere of influence and increase their impact with far less effort. They gain confidence and step away from self-doubt. They develop a personal brand of leadership, rather than trying to be someone else. It’s a proven leadership strategy!
Many women achieved success because of well-developed masculine qualities, but sensed that something was missing. They barely knew that they were only using half of themselves, the more visible masculine half. The dismissal of the feminine in relation to intensive business matters is painful. It is also a waste of talent. A recent study showed that 44 percent of women surveyed in Fortune 50 companies felt that their full capacities were not utilized in work.
Women leaders who embrace and use the wisdom and skills of their feminine report that they no longer abandon themselves when they walk into a difficult meeting. They feel more effective and are increasingly recognized for their different perspectives and the contribution of their web-based thinking and emotional intelligence. They speak of a fierce resolve on moral values as the core of their lasting personal and business success. They say the bottom line to their success is how well they cultivate trust-based relationships with customers, employees, investors, and the community.
What is the path to wise feminine leadership? Here are four steps to use in developing your own or mentoring another woman:
1. Amplify the strengths in your current approach. Figure out what is working and build on it. Identify your feminine approaches, not as “weird” or unique to you, but as a source of power and capacity.
2. Identify self-imposed limits or acquired systems that no longer serve you. What’s standing in the way of fully expressing and utilizing feminine approaches in your leadership? Where do you give your power away? Find your courage. Look at the influence of socialization and media images: What are your imprinted assumptions about the efficacy of masculine approaches? What are your unconscious beliefs about the limits of the feminine?
3. Discover the basis for your own natural authority. Get to know your feminine wisdom. Be curious. What really matters to you? What do you care about? What is your personal bottom line? Go to lunch with other women and share stories.
4. Identify what conditions support you. When are you your best? When do you contribute your knowledge, skill, and experience in a way that is worthy of respect? What setting, people, or agreements strengthen you? Develop two strategies to create more of those situations.
Make a commitment to yourself as a wise feminine leader and to mentoring the wise feminine in other women. Take the time to identify and leverage your unique talents and gifts of leadership. Give active help, encouragement, and support to other women. Point to the positive results of their wise feminine behaviors, approaches, and ways of thinking.
It is a business imperative as well as a personal imperative in today’s fast changing world.
Accessing, expressing, and fully utilizing feminine wisdom in leadership is a leading edge of the new business paradigm and the path to the kind of leadership that can make a difference in what really matter—the success of our businesses as well as the health and safety of many generations of children and ecosystems around the world.
With some regional exceptions, social turmoil and personal distress are increasing while studies by the World Resources Institute show that every life support system on the planet is in decline. We need leadership that is exceptionally competent in formulating appropriate responses and feasible judgments in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity, and irreconcilable dilemmas.
Potentially, feminine wisdom is an indispensable element in guiding the necessary changes.
Whether driving innovative technology, organizing human affairs, developing business strategy or pioneering sustainable economics, we are faced with a timely opportunity to more effectively organize human society so that it is sustainable and truly prosperous. It is time to embrace the power and wisdom of our feminine selves and discover what that can mean for business, the world, and each of our lives.
What might it mean for you?
Karen
This article was coauthored with Fay Freed and first published in the Linkage Leader in 2009 http://www.linkageinc.com
Falling into Self-Judgment
Something happened the other day that triggered old fears and I fell head long into the little, tight, strangling circle of self judgment and degradation. It happened so fast! It took a couple of hours for me to climb back out and once again hold a bigger view of my life where I could see the richness of my experience and expertise, and all the goodness I am grateful for. (does that ever happen to you?)
My own inner work as well as my work with coaching clients these days centers around simultaneously holding the dichotomy – feeling, owning, and honoring just how wise, smart, and ready we are to lead while also being aware of and including those parts of us that lack confidence, feel afraid to take a risk, and hold back. This is a core capacity of women who are wise!
The image I’m using is a BIG circle – that I am not the little circle of my fears and timidity, nor the little circle of my judgments and concerns. Instead I view myself as a big circle that includes all my experience, gifts, talents, and essential self – and that includes the little circle. If I drop into the little circle, I can acknowledge her tenderness and concerns while keeping one foot in my wholeness. (rather than jumping head first and getting lost in the morass of the little circle.)
Does that make sense? This is my first time writing this up so I’d love your thoughts. This is a key skill of small business owners – it seems that everyday something happens that they can use to question their capacity if they let it happen.
Of course, this applies to organizations as well – the most powerful strategy for effecting change focuses everyone on all that is working so that any change builds on that and then finds the resources to address the small area of issues or problems.
How do you stay centered in the big circle that is really you? What do you do to get back there when something happens that lands you smack in the middle of the little circle and it’s about to swallow you whole?
Love,
Karen
P.S. I’m so excited about the upcoming Next Octave Women’s Leadership Program that starts in January where we’ll absolutely “get” this Big circle and Little circle process down. Does one of the places in this small circle belong to you? Contact us for an application today.
The Girl Who Silenced the World
Tears filled my eyes as I listened again to the girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes speak to the UN. Her name is Severn Cullis-Suzuki, and her speech was given at a U.N. assembly in Brazil when she was twelve years old.
She is a wise woman leader who cares and found the courage to speak from her heart. Powerful! Even though I watched this before – a year or two ago – today I found myself moved in a new way. After the video ended, I asked myself, what is mine to say and am I expressing it? Suddenly I am curious – where do I lack the courage to speak with this kind of forthright honesty and care? Where do I hold back what I know to be true? What uncomfortable questions do I keep myself from asking?
In my desire to keep things “nice” and peaceful I know that sometimes I do all of these. While I believe in right timing and right dosage for any communication I also want to be sure that I am speaking up and saying what needs to be said in my life and work. And, I want to say it in such a way that they hear me and it begins a dialogue that helps us make a change or take the next step.
One time a colleague gave me a great suggestion, “speak in such a way that the other person will be thrilled to hear what you have to say.” That’s a hard assignment! To blend what needs and wants to be said with saying in a way that is caring, compassionate, in connection, and moving us forward instead of inciting a reaction. whew. I have some learning to do.
I appreciate the authentic communication from this young girl. What do you most want to say? Are you saying it?
Karen
Karen Wilhelm Buckley 