What I submit is that one of the core reasons that people are so tired today is that we have lost connection with the experience of “enough.”

• How much is enough service?

• How much is enough accomplishment?

• How much is enough money?

• How much is enough security?

• How much is enough success?

• How much is enough exercise or rest or food?

• How much is enough of anything?

In a world that demands that  more is better, I think it is imperative that we grapple with these questions because  the world’s standards of enough are not working. If you don’t have an inner experience of being enough, no amount of offering, success, money, or stuff in your life will ever make you feel satisfied, filled, or large enough. What is enough? If you do not know, within yourself, that you are enough, you will die of weariness, because there will always be more to do, more to have, and more to be.

Alternatively, when you know you are enough, beyond what the world tells you, then your giving, your achieving, your expanding and creating, comes from overflow, not emptiness, and the world will nourish you as you, in turn, nourish others with your presence.

My challenge for you is to ask:

• How do you come to know your worth away from your work?

• What does “enough” feel like to you?

• How do you know how much is enough?

• How do you know you are enough?

David Irvine, Author and Speaker

The ego, that mental image of yourself formed from your personal and cultural conditioning, attempts to provide you with a sense of security, safety, and worth. Your ego demands recognition and wastes energy in resentment if it doesn’t get enough attention. But the ego, by it’s very nature, is empty. It’s like a hole inside of us that is in a continual state of dissatisfaction and restlessness, constantly pursuing “more” to fill itself up. To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only the past and future are important to the ego, for these are what it depends on for its survival. While the ego is essentially dysfunctional, there are times when it can be a positive, necessary force, such as when growing into adulthood or pursuing certain goals. Then the ego can be helpful, providing you can observe it and not get attached.

There also resides in each of us, to a lesser or greater degree, an authentic self, a soul, an essence of who we really are. Your soul doesn’t care about rejection, titles, possessions, successes, failures, or how scared you are. The soul cares only about expanding and expressing itself. It is your guide, and your true source of power. This inner source of strength comes from developing your capacity to delay gratification, learning to courageously face the demands of reality without escaping, developing the capability to see the long-term effects of actions, and achieving quietness of mind. Such cultivation requires a lifetime of dedicated personal work, guided by masters. A cultivated, integrated authentic self is, in today’s world, a leader’s greatest tool. Cultivation, or becoming more fully human, is the primary leadership issue of our time and lies at the core of our work.

Deciding to embark on this arduous journey called leadership requires a decision to go inside yourself and learn to discern the impulse of the ego from the voice of the soul. If a decision comes from the ego, you’ll never be satisfied. You’ll always want more. Authentic leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great organization. It’s not that authentic leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the greater good, not themselves.

I end this blog with a wonderful poem attributed to a Chinese sage, Wu Wei Wu:

Why are you so unhappy?

Because ninety-nine percent of what you think,

And everything you do,

Is for your self,

And there isn’t one.”

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

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.

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

1) Identify the critical leadership practices required to support and achieve your organization’s strategic goals and objectives. In doing so, your high potential development process will be grounded in helping future leaders be authentic by aligning their career development goals and capability requirements with your organization’s business goals and objectives.

2) Define what “high potential leaders” means using objective, behavioral terms. This allows the organization to clearly define “high potential” in an objective and observable way that provides a benchmark from which individuals can be assessed and create a meaningful and relevant development plan.

3) Create and provide a framework your organization can use to communicate this information throughout the organization. This provides a common language and opportunity for your organization to create a “community” in which high potentials, their managers and mentors can support the development, engagement, commitment and retention of key employees in the organization.

David Irvine, Author and Speaker

Successful succession is the ultimate test of success in your organization. At its core, succession is about culture and values. What you are ultimately building and sustaining into the next generation, is your culture. Don’t leave succession planning to chance. If you are committed to sustaining your culture into the next generation and beyond, you have to be intentional about it.

Succession planning is not an event; it is a generational process, integrated deeply into your leadership culture. It is not transactional; it is transformational. To do it well, succession can take upwards of twenty years to come to fruition. It takes painstaking learning and patience.

Ten Steps To Successful Succession Planning

1)   Appoint a Succession Planning Champion – A person who is ultimately accountable for the succession success of the organization:

a.      A leader with a vision and passion for culture (a “monomaniac with a mission”)

b.     Someone who has earned respect and credibility throughout the organization

c.      A person with the positional power to make the required decisions

2)   Define your cultural vision and values. Clarify the vision and the kind of culture and leadership you are committed to build and sustain into the next generation. How do you currently hold people accountable for living the values?

3)   Build a vision for future leaders. Based on your vision and core values, assess the kind of leaders you will need to take your organization to the next level in the coming generation – well before beginning a search.

a.    What kind of leader do you want?

b.   Where are the core areas that need immediate attention?

c.    What are the key essential positions?

Note: As you assess your leadership needs, be sure to remain open to the kind of culture you are committed to create, rather than simply “settling” for what you currently have.

4)   Honestly identify the strengths and gaps of your organization. Take the time to rethink what kind of organizational structure you will need in the future.

5) Have open and honest conversations at every level with every employee:

a.    Every employee needs to have a say in their own aspirations and have organizational support to align their passions, unique talents, and goals with the needs of the organization (Authentic Alignment). Remember: horizontal growth can be just as valuable to an organization as vertical growth. The vital questions are: 1) Is it authentic to the employee and to the organization? and 2) Do your systems support this?

b.   Every employee should have an understanding of how they are perceived by the organization – so there are no surprises in the succession process.

c.    Every employee needs to know what the organization expects from them, as well as what they can expect in return.

d.    Every employee needs to take accountability for their own Authentic Alignment (ensuring that the expectations and needs of the organization are met and are aligned with their authentic self).

6)   Provide a fair and realistic assessment. Using your cultural values and the corresponding behavioral definitions, measure and assess people’s fit for potential successful leadership.

7)   Build your talent pool. Make your intentions clear with your positional leaders. To avoid destructive personality conflicts and “replacement planning” mentality, use an Acceleration Pool System that develops candidates for leadership positions, rather than targeting one or two hand-picked individual for each leadership role. “Pool” members are offered opportunities for learning, visibility, and accelerated individual development. Candidates are supported to find a mentor, and are offered coaching and training. After a careful assessment of the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, you develop a tailor-made plan for their capability development together.

a.    You may find it valuable to categorize the potential leaders as: i) Ready immediately; ii) 1-3 years away; and iii) 3-5 years away.

b.   Those doing the assessing will need a clear, justifiable rationale for why these individuals were chosen for the talent pool (based on organizational values), and be prepared to openly share their reasons for choosing them.

c.    Obviously, the potential leaders must have a choice about whether they accept being included in the talent pool.

d.    You need to be very explicit right from the beginning, that being chosen for the talent pool does not guarantee promotion to a new leadership position in the succession, but only a commitment to an accelerated leadership development track.

Make selections for various senior positions from the talent pool as needed.

9)   Current leaders must develop a plan for letting go. This is about making room for new growth to emerge. Just as potential leaders must plan their development to be ready to meet the challenges of a new leadership position, the current leaders must plan:

a.    What they are willing to give up/let go of.

b.   How they will let go.

c.    How to make room for new leadership to emerge. Often coaching and mentoring can be useful to support leaders with the letting go, a “making room” process.

10) Monitor your progress.

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

1. Give what you expect from others. Harlie engaged me by first being engaged himself. Leadership is about energy, and if you want energy on your team, you must bring energy to your team. Energy – whether it’s positive or negative – is contagious. Harlie was passionate about so many things. He was passionate about learning, about growing, and about life. As a former national gymnastics champion, he kept himself in great shape. He lived what he led. If you want engagement from others, you must be engaged.* We cannot give what we do not have.

2. Be motivated by love. Great leadership is largely a matter of love. If you are uncomfortable with that word, call it caring, because leadership involves caring about people, not manipulating them. Dad was tough on me when I needed it, but I never doubted his motive: he genuinely cared. He cared more about me than the results which were a means to a higher end. Harlie was motivated by love. You can’t fabricate love; people will see right through you. What you can do is decide to care about people. People don’t care how much you know until they know  how  much you care.

3. Live your passion. Our basement was filled with evidence of Dad’s passion: exercise equipment, a tumbling mat, weights. Every morning Dad would exercise at the crack of dawn. Although he couldn’t always get me engaged, especially in my early years, he lived his passion. He preached the importance of exercise without saying a word. When I was in junior high, Dad took me to the YMCA to teach me how to exercise on the parallel bars. I didn’t have the strength to lift myself up, much less do any maneuvers on them. After several disappointing attempts, Dad soon got the message: I was just not meant to be gymnast. Even though I have memories of him being disappointed that he couldn’t engage me in gymnastics, he kept his own passion alive.

4. Tune in to what drives people. When I was 14, dad was teaching me to drive our old 1954 Chev truck. When I pulled over into a farm yard a mile from our home, dad sensed that something was wrong. We sat in silence for a few moments and I opened up about an incident in physical education class. “We ran a mile  and I couldn’t finish it without walking… I came in last, but I want to be the best miler in our zone track meet next year.” Dad knew little about running, so we went to the library and found every book we could on running. Dad became my coach, and the next spring I won the mile race in our zone track meet. Everyone has a passion. Everyone is engaged about something. The key is to create the space to listen and tune in to what matters to people. When you are committed to helping people find and express their voice – their unique gifts and passion, you’ll get engagement.

5. Have a vision of greatness. Greatness wasn’t an external thing for my father. His life was about making a difference, not making a buck. He never had a mission statement. But he had a mission and it was expressed in how he lived his life. When you have a vision, whether it’s expressed explicitly or implicitly by your actions, it inspires people. In his “I have dream speech,” Martin Luther King did not say, “I have a strategic plan.” While plans may be necessary, it is dreams that inspire, uplift, and engage us. “If you want to build a ship,” writes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, don’t herd people together to collect wood, and don’t assign them to tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Whatever your vision, live it well and you will inspire others to engage with you.

6.  Be a good gardener. Dad was a good gardener and he taught me a lot about leadership by the way he gardened. No plants ever grow better because you demand that they do so or because you threaten them. Plants grow only when they have the right conditions and are given proper care. Creating the space and providing the proper nourishment for plants – and people as well – is a matter of continual investigation and vigilance. But another reality about gardening is that you really don’t have much control over the harvest. Despite your best efforts, for a myriad of reasons, some plants simply won’t make it. You can’t engage everyone. It’s a reality we all live with.

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

Following are seven conditions for success management. The goal is to turn these conditions into instinctive behaviors in your culture. But until they become established habits, written agreements can be helpful to ensure clarity, focus, and energy.

1. Connection. I learned years ago, in my first career as a family therapist, that the secret to parenting is not what a parent does but rather who the parent is to a child. Great leaders and teachers understand that when others are drawn to seek contact with you as a trusted advisor rather than simply as “boss,” you have earned the credibility to influence – with or without a title. All the leadership skills in the world will never compensate for a lack of connection.

2. Self-Assessment. Before attempting to “evaluate” others and their performance, it is important to ask people to assess themselves. “How do you feel about the results you are achieving?” “What do you need to do raise the bar for yourself?” These are questions about working with people, rather than over people. You will only want to “evaluate” others and their performance as a last resort.

3. Authentic Expression. What engages people is a connection to their passion, purpose, and values: authentic expression. When you are given the chance to express your unique talents in the service of others, you lose track of time and create abundance in your life and the lives of others. If work doesn’t provide both personal and financial growth, you’re wasting far too much of your life on it.

4. Accountabilities. Results are the name of the game, both in organizations and in life. Mutually negotiated accountabilities are a statement of quantifiable promises to the people who depend on you and the fulfillment of those promises. Accountabilities create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished and what will be accomplished: from activities to results.

5. Support Requirements. Support requirements are the accountabilities you require from others to ensure that you can fulfill your promises. These include the human, financial, technical, or organizational resources one can negotiate for and draw upon to deliver the expected results. Support requirements lock people into an accountable relationship.

6. Consequences. Consequences specify what will happen – both positive and negative – when you fulfill your promises. This could include financial or psychological rewards, different job assignments, and natural consequences tied into the overall mission of an organization. Consequences are a statement of what is important to you, considering what is reasonable and respectable in your current environment.

7. Follow-Up. How will your agreements to each other be maintained as significant, relevant, flexible, meaningful, and engaging over time? How will you hold yourself and others accountable? How often will you review it, and with whom? Far too many performance review programs are make-work projects that become “shelf-development” instead of self-development.” Take a brief inventory of where you stand on these conditions for success management. They can be applied to a business partner, direct reports, colleagues, clients or customers, or even yourself.

I’d love to hear about your conditions for success in building a more engaged and focused success management system or how you have used these conditions in an authentic and powerful way.

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

The passion and promise in our work is to build cultures of trust that attract, inspire, and unleash greatness. What we have learned about culture includes:

1.     While goals give you direction, culture gives you the energy to get there.

2.     You already have a culture, even though you may not be aware of it or able to clearly articulate it. Culture answers these questions: What is my experience of being here? What is our way of doing things? What do we value? You are going to have a culture anyway, so why not have a great one.

3.     If you are committed to attract and retain the best talent, culture will be the most important investment of your time and resources. This is because your best people have a low tolerance for compliance and insist on engagement. The talent pool is not only shrinking, those within it are educated, connected, and grounded in the idea of personal choice. They want to be appreciated, acknowledged and loved. They want opportunity. They want to work with people who are non-judgmental, willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, willing to listen and mentor, willing to trust and willing to stand for their success. A tall order but that’s the new reality.

4.     Culture is not what people say, but how they behave. It is shaped one person at a time, usually starting at the top. People are watching all the time and if it is perceived that there is more reward for delivering organizational results than there is for how those results are achieved, then people will either disengage or disembark.

5.     You can either create your culture by default or design. If you are committed to create your culture by design, somebody has to make the decision about the kind of culture you are going build, and everybody needs to understand the process you are using to build it.

6.     While it is always easier to build than it is to change one, changing a culture is always possible.

Ten Steps To Building An Aligned Culture

Leaders of a culture or subculture live at any level of an organization. They are what we call “culture makers.” Culture makers are people within a culture who are committed to building a better environment around them, and thus are deciding to be leaders (with or without a title). These could be entrepreneurs, divisional leaders, department heads, non-profit or team leaders, committed employees at any level, or even parents. It is these culture makers that we focus on to build an aligned culture. So here, in abridged form, is our process for building an aligned culture.

Step 1. Define your culture. Decide on the scope of the culture that you are committed to build – that lays within your sphere of influence. Is it your company, department, division, community association, team, family?

Step 2. Define your leadership team. Identify your 5-6 key leaders – allies that you will depend on to build your culture. These will be people who have the positional power, capacity, and commitment to make it happen. Be sure you have a Chief Emotional Officer on your team: a person with the positional power as well as the passion (a monomaniac with a mission) to take accountability for the culture.

Step 3. Get alignment at the top. Identify your core values that you, as a leadership team, are committed to living. Have an “offsite” leadership meeting to ensure that you are all committed to living the values, first with each other and then with your entire culture. If you are a “subculture” – a culture within a larger system, you will want to take the larger organizational cultural value statements and make them real for your culture.

Step 4. Develop a team “code of conduct” with your leadership team. Once you have decided upon your core values, you will need to develop a process that outlines your promises to each other: how you will hold yourself and each other accountable for living these values. This is about turning values into specific expected behaviors.

Step 5. Assess Alignment – And Connect to Reality. Decide on a process for assessing your current alignment between your “vision,” your “claim,” and your “reality” as an entire culture. In order to do this you will need to pay attention to the “visible” culture and the “real” culture – your current reality. You may need to take the time to get into the hallways, the coffee conversations, etc. to get to the grapevine and current reality.

Step 6. “Roll out” your values with your entire culture. Once you are clear about the current alignment, meet with your entire culture. With your leadership team at the front of the room, outline your vision for this culture, your core values, your assessment of the current reality and the degree of alignment you see between your vision, your claim, your reality, and your leadership code of conduct. Explain how you expect to be held accountable for living these values as positional leaders – your promised actions as a leadership team.

Step 7. Have each of your leadership team members define – and build – their own leadership teams. Meet with each member of your leadership team and help them define their own leadership teams and go through the same process with their respective teams. This will continue throughout the culture until, ideally, every person is eventually assigned to a “leadership team” or at least closely affiliated with a leadership team.

Step 8. Engage your employees – at every level. Begin and sustain the process – and build trust – through the power of courageous conversations. Create conversations around your values. Turn conversations about values into mutually agreed upon actions and promises. Tell the story. Shine the light. Acknowledge when and where individuals lived one or more of your values. Repeat the message.

Step 9. Define how you will convey to stakeholders outside the culture how you will live your values. How will you convey your values to your customers? What needs to be written in your marketing materials/web site, etc.?

Step 10. Get your values into every system. Bring values into your hiring processes, your performance management system and HR practices. Only promote leaders who are living the values. Make it tough to not live the values.

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

What would your answer be if someone asked you for a two minute summary of your philosophy on leadership?

Here’s my response:

1.      Leadership is the capacity of human beings to shape and create a new future – by inspiring and engaging others.

2.      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 a potential leader.

3.      You aren’t a leader until someone says you are. You have to earn the right to be called a leader. While you may get promoted to being a boss, you don’t get promoted to leadership. You have to earn the right to be a leader.

In this high tech world, leadership needs to be about high touch (thanks John Nesbitt). Leadership, in today’s world, is ultimately about connection. Connection to: (1) Your authentic self: your values, your unique talents, your aspirations, your dreams, your passion. Take time for reflection, for clarity about what matters most in your life, to listen to the voice inside of you.  Connection to: (2) Those you serve, your stakeholders: those who depend on you and those to whom you depend. Get out of your office, away from your computers, and make contact with people. Find out what inspires the people you serve, what matters to them, how you can support them. Leadership can probably be summed up with one word: conversation. You can assess the level of impact you are having by the depth and honesty of the conversations you are creating.

David Irvine, Speaker and Author

This quote doesn’t just relate to our education system. This quote extends to all forms of learning. Be sure you are developing yourself in a way that pushes you to expand beyond your established, conditioned way of thinking.

When is the last time you hung out in situations, environments, and in relationships where you were uncomfortable? When is the last time you exposed yourself to something that broke a particular pattern within you and around you? What does it really mean to learn?

I share Krishnamurti’s words not to be critical, in any way, of our education system, but to remind you that there is another education waiting for you, and that the teacher will be your authentic self, your own voice, your heart.

David Irvine, Speaker and Author