Human to Human

My friend Glen has become a trusted and often depended-upon colleague. For he and I it was first a casual meeting (2009) that quite quickly became a regular colleagueship, that has been supported by a deep and lasting friendship. Glen and I have regular calls these days. To learn. To listen. To dream. To discover.

In a recent conversation, I was asking Glen about the kind of leadership he is trying to create. Glen himself is the most senior HR position within his organization that now employs 400 ish people and lots of layers of middle management. It’s a conversation that helps Glen and I create and host a leadership cohort program.

“What we need is leaders who can think differently,” Glen said. He was speaking reflectively. With wonder. “We need a group of leaders that can imagine. We need to think what we don’t know how to think.”

Glen was speaking to a rapidly changing industry of which his organization is a part. “We need to feel what we don’t know how to feel. We need to dream what we don’t know how to dream.”

Well said. Thx Glen.

When I return from adventure, and when I’m integrating experience, I often start with images. They offer path to words to speak and some not to speak.

I love these images from the last five days on Sointula, celebrating friends in wedding ceremony.

The forest teaches. It reminds me of connection. It reminds me to pay attention to how and where I step. It impresses with its age. And with its generosity of life growing and greening.

The figures in the forest also teach. Of art. Of mystery. Of pointers and guides. Of projection. Of longing. Of wonder.

The shoreline with distant vista teaches. Of edges. Of what lives far away. Of distant dream that compels. Of things seen and unseen.

What a gift to adventure. To learn and to integrate. To form and remember community. And self in community.

There is something about being clear,
with self and with others,
what a human (sometimes a cat)
can and can’t do.

Of this, I love being a student.

There is something about offerings
that come from love of circumstance and people —
from that clarity
that makes for a really good day.

This one has been with me these last few days. Thx John O’Donohue, Irish poet that died in 2008. Beloved.

May you have the grace and wisdom
To act kindly, learning
To distinguish between what is
Personal and what is not.

May you be hospitable to criticism.

May you never put yourself at the center of things.

May you act not from arrogance but out of service.

May you work on yourself,
Building up and refining the ways of your mind.

May those who work for you know
You see and respect them.

May you learn to cultivate the art of presence
In order to engage with those who meet you.

When someone fails or disappoints you,
May the graciousness with which you engage
Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.

May you treasure the fits of the mind
Through reading and creative thinking
So that you continue as a servant of the frontier
Where the new will draw ts enrichment from the old,
And you never become a functionary.

May you know the wisdom of deep listening,
The healing of wholesome words,
The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,
The decorum of old dignity,
The springtimes edge of the bleak question.

May you have a mind that loves frontiers
So that you can evoke the bright fields
That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.

May you have good friends
To mirror your blind spots.

May leadership be for you
A true adventure of growth.