I recently did a talk for a group of consultants, about how to be more influential as a change agent, and I spoke about a few principles that I see as the “essence” of leadership. I feel quite strongly that influential, transformational leadership is much less about your strategy and your behaviour, and much more about WHO YOU’RE BEING – although obviously your behaviour and strategy does need to align with who you’re being. So here’s some of what I shared…
Next week I’ll be re-launching the Bottom-line Bookclub in it’s much-improved format (big lesson I’ve learned: obstacles are there to help you refine your ideas and make them better!) I’ll tell you more about it soon, but for now, just imagine a way for you to filter through all the masses of information on personal development and get the best ideas and change tools in a concise, ready-to-apply format that’ll help you bridge the gap between knowing and doing. Oh, and a cool way for you to meet like-minded people too…
Last week I wrote about how the changes in the world are requiring us to become more androgynous in our thinking, and yesterday I interviewed Laurie Foley about using your intuition in your work (you can download the call over here). Following on with this theme, I found this video below, of Mae Jemison’s presentation at TEDtalks, which I wanted to share with you, because I think she has an incredibly inspiring message. And perhaps more importantly, I think she IS an incredibly inspiring message. Here’s what she’s got to say about how to be a genius:
You don’t have to have just one “thing”
One of the ways a lot of people come to develop the interest, skill and passion that evolves into their big contribution(s) in the world, is through experiences (often very difficult experiences) where they’re awakened to a need in the world, or a sense that something is broken in the world. And they become fascinated with working to satisfy that need or fix that brokenness. And it’s through the fact that they’re so attuned to this “broken-ness” that that devote many hours to understanding it and healing it… and it becomes the thing they can help other people with. Their mess becomes their message.
Have you noticed that the boundaries between “what women do and how they do it” and “what men do and how they do it” have become increasingly blurred. It’s a bit of a relief, really – women can now expect their husbands to help with the domestic chores, can become engineers, electricians and astronauts, and they can play most sports at a professional level and men can pamper themselves, say they feel sad and have actual relationships with their children. So many of the old rules and societal expectations about how men and women must behave are being broken. What I’m loving about this is how it’s giving us all permission to use our whole brains, rather than limiting us to just the half of our brain that’s society has typically allocated our gender. But let me back up a little…