What is authentic success? It’s what the world doesn’t see.

Posted March 12, 2012 By David Irvine

The past ten days have been both sad and reflective for me and for our family. Our dear friends and neighbors lost their twenty-five year old son to suicide on March 2nd, after his lengthy battle with mental illness. This family has been so very close to us over the past sixteen years, that it felt almost like losing one of our own children.

My last conversation with Curtis was this past New Year’s Eve at a family wedding. I knew he had been battling depression and how he was trying, ever so hard, to look brave. I remember asking him what he was proud of in his life. He shyly spoke of how he was trying to get back into university, get back to the music that he loved to play, and to start getting back into his friends (which he had been withdrawing from in the face of the darkness that engulfed him). During the course of our conversation, a friend who had graduated with Curtis came up and began speaking of his accomplishments in university, graduate school, and how he was already successfully running his own business.

As Curtis listened, you could see his eyes lower and feel his spirit withdraw as he compared his perceived “minor” achievements to those of his friend.

At the funeral, we heard about attributes of real success: a beautiful character and remarkable human being who had faced unimaginable obstacles. When the beauty of a person’s character is impressed upon you, it can change your life forever. It is life-giving to be around a person who exhibits qualities such as honesty, compassion, reverence, humility, courage, integrity, wisdom, or determination. What greater success could there be than the development of these qualities, the qualities of a person with strong character? These are sustaining qualities. This is true success. This was the success that Curtis achieved. This was the difference he made in the lives of every person who was fortunate enough to know him. While the world may not reward these qualities of character like it rewards fame or fortune, strong character is ultimately what matters in life.

May we each reflect upon and come to terms with real success: not meeting the world’s standards, but meeting the benchmark of the soul. Thank you, Curtis, for your life and for reminding me of what matters. Your life was a gift to me. I’m a better person for having known you.

David Irvine, Best-Selling Author and Speaker

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12 Keys To Leadership: You Do Know When It’s Real

Posted September 25, 2011 By David Irvine

Below are 12 key messages that underlie my fundamental philosophy of leadership. Most of these messages aren’t mine. I’ve borrowed them from many of the great leaders I’ve had the privilege of working with over the years:

1) Leadership is about inspiring and engaging people to work toward a compelling vision – by seeing the gifts and potential of others more clearly than they see it in themselves and being able to communicate it in their own unique way. Martin Luther King never said, “I  have a strategic plan.”

2) There are too many consultants and speakers telling organizations how to be leaders. Leadership is contextual. The best an outside consultant can do is help you decide what kind of leadership is needed in your organization to achieve your purpose and help you get there.

3) Leadership is about presence, not position. Great leadership cannot be reduced to technique or title. Great leadership comes from the identity and the integrity of the leader. Leadership is the way you live your life. Your power as a leader comes from being an integrated and real human being. This makes every person in your organization a potential leader.

4) You don’t get promoted to being a leader. You get promoted to being a boss but you don’t get promoted to being a leader. There’s a big difference between a boss and a leader. Holding a position of leadership is like having a driver’s license. Just because you have one doesn’t make you a good one.

5) You aren’t a leader until someone decides that you are. You have to earn the right to be a be called a leader, and you aren’t one until you have earned it in the eyes of others. In the words of Margaret Thatcher, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

6) As a leader –  whether it’s in the home, your community, or in your organization – you will continuously need to balance supports with demands. You don’t help people by pushing them when they need to be supported, nor do you help them by supporting them when they need to be pushed. You never get this balance perfect, but great leaders work at it – every day.

7) Great leaders achieve organizational goals. Authentic leaders help you find your voice in the process. Authentic leaders align the interests, values, and goals of the organization with the interests, values, and goals of the employee. This is employee engagement at its finest, and it’s what attracts, retains, and inspires greatness. Authenticity is about finding your voice and inspiring others to find theirs. Authentic leaders earn their credibility by being authentic. You know when it’s real.

8) Leadership is ultimately about service. Turn your organization chart upside down. Take care of your people so they can take care of the customer. Serving, however, is different than pleasing. Serving is about meeting people’s needs so they can get their job done. Pleasing is about meeting people’s wants. Serving breeds commitment. Pleasing breeds entitlement.

9) Your best leadership program will be over a cup of coffee. You’ll never be able to lead by sitting at your computer. Make building trust your number one leadership priority and spend a large portion of your time connecting with the people you serve. Find out what matters to others and do all you can to meet their needs. Listen relentlessly.

10) Leadership isn’t about you. It’s not about how great you are, how noble you are, or how profound you are. Leadership is about others and what you do to give credit to others. If you are going earn the credibility to influence others – long term – you better have a strong enough ego that you can leave it at the door. Credibility comes from giving credit, not taking it. People don’t remember what you said; they remember how you made them feel.

11) Leadership is largely a matter of love. If you aren’t comfortable with the word love, call it caring, because leadership involves caring about people, not manipulating them. If you don’t care about people or about your work or about why you get out of bed in the morning, you might consider doing yourself and your organization a favor and get out of the position of leadership.

12) If you want to improve your capacity to lead, put your focus on finding ways to enjoy leading more. While I’ve met a few incompetent leaders who actually enjoy leading, generally speaking, the best leaders I know enjoy what they do. Put your efforts in finding joy in your work as a leader, and you’ll be a better leader.

What is your leadership philosophy? Have you shared it lately with the people you serve and love?

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

 

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Constancy: Success Lies In Your Habits

Posted June 15, 2011 By David Irvine

Walt Disney had four keys to success. One of them was constancy. I interpret constancy as “staying on the path whether or not you are in the mood.” However, first you have to have a path, a direction a vision. And then you have to stay with it even when you are bored, fearful, or inconvenienced. That is what will give you success and self-respect in your life. I first learned this as a nationally ranked distance runner. I had to get out and train, day after day after day, whether I felt like it or not. Of course, some days I was tired and ran more slowly or shut it down early. But developed the habit early in my life to show up and put the running shoes on.

Since my early days of running, I’ve learned to apply this principle of constancy to every aspect of my life. Whether it’s the day-to-day grind of parenting, business development, serving the customer, or staying with a spiritual practice, constancy is what brings success – and self-worth. If you can’t rely on yourself, how can you be a reliable person? And if you aren’t reliable, how can you achieve anything?

It’s good to get inspired every so often, but it’s the day-to-day work you do when you aren’t inspired that produces the results. Sometimes your heart isn’t in it. Sometimes you’re tired. Sometimes you’re afraid. Sometimes it’s just plain hard work. But you put the running shoes on and show up, not because it’s the easy thing to do, but because it the right thing to do. That’s the Law of Constancy.

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

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Integrity is the essence of everything successful.

Posted May 11, 2011 By David Irvine

The title of this blog is a Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller quote.

Working with organizational cultures, the single-most common request we get is how to build more trust and respect in the workplace. It is our experience that this is achieved through personal accountability – the ability to be counted on – which is the basis for personal integrity. Personal integrity leads to self-respect, respect for others who demonstrate integrity, and ultimately a respectful workplace. So in our view, personal integrity is the essence of building a successful culture of trust and respect.

As an engineer and inventor, Bucky understood the importance of strength within a design. Engineers are accountable for designing structures capable of handling conditions up to a certain limit. In the engineering world, the margin between safety and disaster is known as “structural integrity.” Similarly, our success as accountable people depends on our personal structural integrity. As the engineers of our own existence, our choices affect not only our own lives but also the lives of the people who rely on us.

By standing behind our promises and assuming a position of accountability, we begin to design a life of personal structural integrity. With this as our foundation, our work and service in our families, organizations, and communities will be rock solid. However, just as you could never design and build a structure to handle any condition, personal structural integrity will always have its limits. Because it is not rigid, but instead strong and flexible, and adaptable to life’s changing circumstances, it can meet almost any test.

Integrity comes from the word “integer,” which means wholeness, integration, and completeness. Being integrated is a necessary condition for self-respect, and self-respect is the basis for creating a respectful environment. Integrity means having clear, explicit principles and doing what you say you’re going to do. It’s about being honest with yourself and others. Integrity is deeply personal and therefore deeply applicable to all areas of life.

Integrity has everything to do with your success as a leader. Leadership – the capacity to illicit the commitment of others, is about presence, not position. Now more than ever, power, purpose, and privilege no longer reside at the top of an organization. They potentially live at every level. Great leadership cannot be reduced to techniques or tools or titles. While you may promoted to being a boss, you don’t get promoted to being a leader. You have to earn the right to be called a leader. Great leadership comes from the identity and integrity of the leader. Authentic leadership is achieved through the power of presence, which comes from being an integrated human being, a person of integrity. Integrity is, indeed, the essence of everything successful.

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

 

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Jumping Out Of Bed: Creating An Inspired Workplace

Posted March 29, 2011 By David Irvine

“Going to work is a chore. It’s just a job. A necessary evil. A prison sentence. Doing time. Collecting a paycheque. I hate it.” How often have you heard someone talk about his or her work in these terms? Perhaps you have spoken this way yourself on occasion. Perhaps you speak this way more often than you’d like.

While we all may feel this way at times, what if most of your life was spent hardly waiting to get to the office? What if your workplace inspired you rather than depleted you? What if you jumped out of bed to get to work because you were so excited about getting there?

My passion is to make this world a better place to work. Work is so vitally important to our well-being, and life is far too short to spend these  hours in misery. We will all spend thousands of hours at work so why not have a great workplace culture?

So whose responsibility is it to make your workplace great? It is my notion that organizational culture starts with you, not your boss or your boss’s boss. While bosses set the tone, create the environment, and establish the culture, you are the one who actually creates the culture. Every employee is responsible for the culture within and around them. You make the difference.

And just how can you create a great culture in your workplace?

1. Be authentic. Engagement comes from being who you are. Bringing your values, your aspirations, your passion, and your unique talents to work lights a fire inside you. Work is a tool to create and express what matters most. When you have a purpose for coming to work and clear values with a commitment to serve others through your role at work,your energy will soar.

2. Build trust. Trust is the foundation of every relationship. Without trust, work will be a miserable place. And trust starts with you. Start by identifying your “Significant Seven,” the top people or groups of people you depend on or who depend on you, and make trust your number one priority with them.

3. Be accountable. Accountability is the ability to be counted on. Being dependable with others starts with being dependable to yourself. Do you keep commitments to yourself? Do you see yourself as a person who is accountable?

What is your way of ensuring that  you jump out of bed in the morning to get to work? How do you create an inspiring workplace for yourself and others you work with?

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Tyrants are not leaders – but what can they teach us?

Posted March 6, 2011 By David Irvine

Moammar Gadhafi, a man obsessed with hanging on to power, has released inconceivable brutality against his own people. After over four decades in power, I hope we can learn something from this malicious madman.

Here are some the lessons I propose can be learned from tyrants:

1.    Just because you are in power, it doesn’t make you a leader. Leadership is about presence, not position. You can’t assume leadership or get promoted to leadership. You have to earn it.

2.    Be aware of what power does. Ultimate power, without conscience or accountability, corrupts. Beware of the dark side of power within and around us.

3.    True leadership requires strong conscience and character and an ability to look within and work toward the betterment of all constituents. In the movie “Gladiator,” Caesar told his general, Maximus, that he would be the next leader of Rome. Maximus genuinely questioned this decision, asking Caesar why he was being chosen rather than Caesar’s own son, Comitus. Caesar summed up the importance of character and conscience perfectly when he looked Maximus in the eyes and responded, “Comitus cannot rule. Comitus must not rule. For Comitus is not a moral man.”

4.    Have a healthy respect for the power of darkness – both within you and around you. Having the courage to face the darker side of my own nature – my insecurities, addictions, depression – has made me a better person and I think a better leader. By embracing the full spectrum of our humanness we avoid seeing people as objects and using them for our own self-serving needs, and instead see them as humans, with needs, concerns, values, and dreams. Looking at tyrants such as Gadhafi can help shed light on this darker side of ourselves.

If you are interested in leadership, study leaders: both great ones and corrupt ones. We can learn from having terrible people around us in positions of power – not just how we don’t want to be, but how we have the potential to be.

What are your thoughts about bad leaders, corrupt power, and greed? What is to be learned about the darker side of human nature, and how looking inside can help you in your life?

 

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The Value Of Temperance

Posted February 6, 2011 By David Irvine

Temperance – the willingness to give up what we want in order to have what we need –  gets a bad rap in our culture. Most of us associate moderation with repression. My parents grew up with the mindset of sacrifice, duty, and restraint for the greater good. However, in an age of consumerism, debt, and instant gratification, we are out of balance. Knowing what you can, and need, to live without can be liberating. Learning to set limits on our desires is the beginning of freedom.

You can’t always get what you want. I am learning that in my life – the  hard way. You can’t get to your heart’s true desires until you set limits on your hungers. The chaos of indulgence brings pain and anguish, while calm, clear moderation actually affords us the opportunity to realize our dreams. I have found that unbridled wants block me from realizing my potential.

What have you found to be the value of temperance in your life? From the amount and kind of food you eat, to the amount of money you spend, to how you spend your time and with whom, to making sure your “to-do list” has a corresponding “don’t-do list,” intelligent temperance will change your life and the world around you.

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New Year’s Resolutions – or New Year’s Revolutions

Posted January 2, 2011 By David Irvine

It’s that time of year when people make all kinds of resolutions: lose weight, spend less, quit smoking, improve a relationship, etc. But so often these resolutions turn into clubs to hit ourselves with come February when we are already off track. Here are some suggestions for turning resolutions into revolutions: lasting change in your life.

  1. Be honest with yourself. If you don’t really want or need change your life, relax. After all, you don’t have to make a new year’s resolution just because everyone else is. Either let go of this “resolution” thing or have some fun with it. If you are serious about making some changes in your life, read further.
  2. Think carefully before you make a promise to yourself. The Law of Integrity means that making promises will affect your self-respect. Whether you make a promise to your banker, your son, or yourself, honoring or dishonoring that promise will have an impact on your self-worth. So… only make promises you know you will keep.
  3. Take a careful inventory. Evaluate your intentions to change: Have you clearly identified what you want in your life and set a date when you expect to manifest it? Have you identified the obstacles you must overcome in order to manifest it? Have you identified the groups, people, organizations and what it is you need to know in order to get there? Have you written all this down? Have you clearly stated why the goals are important to you? (When your “why” gets stronger, the “how” gets easier; purpose is always stronger then the objective.)
  4. Turn goals into habits. Get out your day-timer and schedule in the promises you have made to yourself and others. Change one small habit at a time. Success comes through small consistent habits, not big inconsistent splashes. The universe rewards action. And when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, it’s the tortoise who wins the race.
  5. Stay focused. Write your goals down and carry them with you. Read them in the morning and in the evening before you go to bed. Visualize. Mediate on them. 
  6. Get support. You will never change your life alone. Ask for help. Get an accountability partner to hold you to your promises. Get involved with a support group. Find a coach or therapist to help you. Learn about the changes you want to make in your life. Study the art and science of success. I recommend two books: Deepak Chopra’s, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success; and Jack Canfield’s, The Success Principles.
  7. Enjoy your life now. If you aren’t happy now, don’t expect it to get any better when you achieve your goals. Joy in life has to do with your relationship with the present moment. Fulfillment comes from enjoying the process of discovering and expressing yourself more fully in the service of others. What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now. Relax. The universe is designed to help you out. The purpose of life is to grow and evolve your soul and find joy on the journey, so you can bring joy to others.
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Making An Investment In Your Character

Posted November 5, 2010 By David Irvine

“We never know what’s wrong without the pain. Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.” Isaac Edward Slade, from The Fray

I heard a very interesting story a while ago, told by Gary Kuzyk, Director of Labour Relations with the City of Hamilton. It so happens that when he started his first job as a young eager lawyer, with a significant student debt, he had dutifully arranged for the student loan repayments to be debited from his bank account. When he observed, however, that the first three payments had not been withdrawn, he called the loan office. After making him wait an interminable length of time on the phone, the clerk came back on the line and sternly announced that his file had been sent to storage and his loan was shown as having been paid in full. She seemed annoyed that he would have put her to the trouble of having to verify something that he must already have known.

Gary then described his reaction in this moment as envisioning himself as the classic cartoon character with an angel on the one shoulder and a devil on the other, each advocating opposite responses. He listened to the angel, and told the clerk that there must have been a mistake, that his loan was indeed not paid. She only grudgingly agreed to pull the file from storage. The bank eventually fixed the mistake, and it took him four years to pay off the loan.

I’ve told this story in a variety of settings since I first heard it. There is always at least one person in every group who tells me that Gary should have thanked the clerk, quickly got off the phone, and been grateful for his good fortune. Gary actually goes on to say that he was indeed grateful for his good fortune because of the incident, not because of its outcome. Paying that debt may well have been the best investment Gary ever made, because it was an investment, not in his chequing account, but in his character account.

In our society is a great vault filled with an inheritance left by those before us – many who died for our freedom. That vault is the bank of opportunity. The men and women who have paved the way to our freedom have given us a promissory note. But without character, we cannot access the account, and the cheque we expect from society will eventually come back marked “insufficient funds” because there is nothing to draw from within ourselves.

Regardless of our economic status, at the end of the day we all must look at ourselves in the mirror. What we see is the result of the decisions we have made. Character – the courage and capacity to meet the demands of reality – is required to make a withdrawal from the account of opportunity. Without character, we become spiritually and psychologically bankrupt, unable to access the resources required to meet the demands of existence.

What is your experience of investing in your character? What are the results?

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The RCMP: A Culture Of Trust – Getting The Whole Story…

Posted September 26, 2010 By David Irvine

I just came back this week from working with a group of commissioned RCMP officers on the east coast. Some of the finest leaders you’ll find anywhere. While there are certainly areas that need work in the RCMP culture, it is a culture that is far from broken. When these guys put their lives on the line with each other and for the citizens of Canada, there is a level of trust, respect, and camaraderie between them that you won’t find in many organizations. They have rich values: Integrity, Honesty, Professionalism, Compassion, Respect, and Accountability – and work hard to get these values off the wall and into the hearts of their members. The culture of the RCMP is not in Ottawa. That’s only a very small part of the RCMP story. The real culture is in the detachments and the districts across the country. And, like any great organization, there are great commanding officers and bad ones.

Like any organization that is in the public eye, the challenge facing the RCMP is that we live in a “CNN” world, where thirty-second sound bites and headlines create a distortion of the whole picture. This age of technology creates a false impression of reality, where what’s “rare” is perceived as reality, and what’s reality is rare. You don’t know what is going on in Afghanistan by watching a thirty-second news report on the evening news. You learn what’s going on in Afghanistan by spending hours talking with a soldier who came home without his legs, or you spend time people who live and work there, committing their lives to rebuilding a shredded country.

You don’t know what’s going on in the RCMP by watching the sensationalism of a cell-block story in Kamloops or a YouTube video of a tragedy in the Vancouver airport. There is no denying that these events have taken place and the media serves a purpose in holding the organization to account for these catastrophes. There is an element of truth in all news stories. But let’s not forget that these “rarities” are but a small fraction of the reality of the RCMP. If you want to really know what goes on in the RCMP, spend hours on ride-alongs and witness first hand the amazing work these men and women do everyday in this country. Or take the time to visit with staff commanders, corporals, and constables and get their picture of reality, and learn how hard they are working at the detachment level to develop leadership capacity and the development of a culture aligned with their values.

I have nothing but admiration for so many of the leaders I have met in the RCMP. In recent years, I have become associated with some of the men and women who helped organize and run the SwissAir crash recovery, who had to face the aftermath of their colleagues’ deaths in the bloodbath of Mayerthorpe, who organized the security at the Olympics, and who put their lives on the line in daily undercover operations and “routine” policing. We still have a world-class national police force of professionals, many of whom literally give up decades of their lives to make this a safer, more civil society for all of us. Before we pass judgment, let’s be sure we’re viewing the picture from a broad enough lens to give us an accurate representation of reality.

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