A Mile High
So where am I?I am away, at a leadership conference, in Colorado, sequestered somewhere in between Denver and Boulder, with all 240 of my partners from across the country. I am getting filled up on a year's worth of motivational speeches and core values and metrics, and tax stuff, and lots of desserts (it's true, the calories don't count when you're away from home). Three days of this stuff. Then we're free to go back home and put all that we have learned into practice. Here are some of the "soft" tasks before us:
Task #1 - Build a Mental Front Porch. Make a strategic plan for reflection. Check. I've got this down to a science. :-) Much as I complain about being too busy, I have no problem setting aside time for reflection. We spent a great deal of time talking about how important this is and how we regretted that people don't have front porches anymore, or if they do, they don't use them. Too true! Remember how DarkoV described blogging as being much like a front porch, onto which we invite others to ponder life? Blogging then, is a critical part of my strategic plan.
Task #2 - State, in writing, your core values. An alarming 90% of the general population cannot do this and yet, it is the foundation of everything that we do. (1)
Task #3 - Develop A Vision For Your Life. Make a list of your heroes and what you say about them. What do your heroes say about you (assuming they know you)? More important than what you do, is WHO you are. What will be your legacy? (2)
Task #4 - List your various roles in life and build out the action steps to become who you want to be; review this plan once a month and share it with someone who will hold you accountable. (3) Again, harder than it sounds. Here's the list of my various roles:
Family servant (wife, mother, sister, daughter, aunt)
Community servant
Professional servant
Spiritual servant
Now I need to build out the steps.
Task #5 - Develop a true and joyful spirit of service. Again, harder than it sounds at times, right? (4)
Much as I sometimes balk at having to do this "touchy-feely" kind of stuff, I will credit my company with truly caring about its people and its clients, and understanding that without quality people, who do in fact care about all of the above, there would be no need to entertain a discussion about the more measurable goal of growing revenues.
And if I'm going to follow through on this stuff, I challenge you to give it a shot too. What can it hurt?
A sampling of quotes from today's materials:
(1) "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything." Steve Bartkowski
(2) "Worse than being blind is being able to see but having no vision." Helen Keller
(3) "What lies behind us and, what lies before us are small things compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
(4) "Master the complexity of simplicity." (unknown) This could be my theme song. :-)
posted by Gwynne @ 12:14 AM
4 Comments:
In teacher training, we were taught to be reflective too. I am probably too reflective thus your theme song could be mine too! haha.
Gwynne,
The thing to keep in mind is that there is no better combination than dessert and high altitude.
Why?
1) Things weigh less up higher, so that means that extra portion you were contemplating as another prezzzzzzzzzzzenatation of Sarbanes-Oxley was coming? Go for it!
2) Drugs work "better" up high. Since sugar is a prime ingredient of the topic mentioned in #1 (and NO! I'm not referring to Sarbanes-Oxley), you'll notice that extra ingestion of dessert will give you a quicker jolt.
3) Re. #2, same thing goes for coffee.
Hope you learn a lot and yearn a lot.
Re. the quotes.
If I remember correctly, Mr. Bartkowski was a NFL quarterback who was sacked on more than a few occassions, thus posing the problem of grogginess of thought. I think the "falling for anything" may apply to his later reputation of being a bit gun shy in the pocket and being an easy sack.
Hey, if your head was banged around a lot, you'd fall at anything as well.
Rach, it just figures we'd have the same theme song...we always seem to pick the same things. ;-)
Darko, I've managed to overdose on the sugar and caffeine up here, true enough...but still managed to sleep through the SOX prezzzzentation and the Circular 230 ethics presentation by this guy.
I'm sure Steve Bartkowski was not the first to say that (I just report as I'm told...there is no verification of facts around this joint), but you offer a plausible explanation for why he should be credited with it. ;-)
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