SAGE Forum

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After thirty years of requests from people who want to go deeper with my teachings and find support in an authentic community, I have helped to co-create the SAGE Forums. These Forums go beyond the benefits gained from a presentation or Academy.

A SAGE Forum creates a community to support authentic difference makers and help hold them accountable to stay authentic. Their purpose is to ensure individuals stay true to their passion and purpose, be deeply connected to the people they care about, and live lives of meaning and significance.

Pruning: Growth Depends on Letting Go Of The Unwanted Or Unessential

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We have a thirty-foot rubber tree growing in the middle of our living room. About every six months we have to get up on the ladder and cut back the branches that push into the ceiling and the window.

Leading is akin to gardening, where we co-create an environment around us that enables the flourishing of life. Any gardener knows that pruning is a part of tending to a garden. A plant that is overgrown, gangly, or unhealthy needs to be thinned, cut back, or dug up. In its exuberance to grow, it seems to be the nature of growing things to get overgrown at times. In our case, we prune in order to manage the size of this tree. When it’s overgrown, it will crowd out the very light of the window it’s reaching for.

Like pruning a garden, our lives periodically need some cutting back.

What, in your life or your leadership, needs pruning?

  • What relationships that you have outgrown need to end?
  • What habits need to be re-evaluated and discarded?
  • What clutter in your life needs to be let go of?
  • What needs to end in order to allow for new growth?
  • What people on your team are holding you back and need support to move on?
  • What difficult conversations are needed now?

The Law Of The Echo

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Years ago, when I was first teaching about accountability, a young, enthused leader approached me.
“Your philosophy of bringing an ownership, self-responsible mindset to work reminds me of the Law of the Echo.”
“What’s the Law of the Echo?” I asked her.

“It means that whatever you bring to the world will come back to you – ten-fold. It’s like what Gandhi meant when he said, ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ If you want more accountability in your organization, don’t wait for others to step up to the plate. Instead, be more accountable. If you want more love in a relationship, be more loving. If you want more appreciation at work, get so busy appreciating others that you won’t have time to feel sorry for yourself for not getting enough acknowledgement.”

This conversation and explanation of the Law of the Echo has stayed with me for years. It’s worked for me on my team, in my volunteer work, and in my family. It’s a great formula for having a better marriage. It’s a great reminder when I find myself frustrated, blaming, or waiting for someone else to change.

My father likely would have said it this way: “It isn’t greener on the other side of the fence. It’s greener where you water it. “Grow where you are planted,”

How to Fix an Accountability Problem

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“We need more accountability on our team!”

It’s easy to turn to this all-too-common refrain when numbers are down or team members aren’t meeting expectations. But when you announce, “we need more accountability,” your team actually hears, “We’re failing, and it’s your fault.”
No one is inspired by being blamed. While there may be times when your team could put in more effort, a lack of accountability is rarely intentional.

A lack of accountability is a downstream problem that requires upstream action. It’s always better to prevent pollution than to clean it up. Leaders who default to a plea for accountability will inevitably become frustrated.

Further, verbalizing that there is “a lack of accountability” on your team can come off as condescending to people on the receiving end. This is hardly productive when you are trying to inspire change, and more importantly, it doesn’t help get to the root of the problem.

Rarely is an accountability problem actually an accountability problem. It’s an agreement problem and you fix it through a better agreement process:

  1. Clarify your expectations. Ambiguity breeds mediocrity.
  2. Create a compelling shared WHY. Purpose fuels commitment.
  3. Assess fit. Passion proceeds accountability.
  4. Aim high. No one takes pride in doing something easy.
  5. Get an agreement. A request is not an agreement.
  6. Clarify support requirements. We all need people in our corner.
  7. Identify consequences. Start with positive consequences.
  8. Follow-up plan. How will we keep our agreements to each other alive?

CREATING A PLACE WHERE PEOPLE BELONG

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The need to create a place where people belong grows out of the isolated nature of our lives, our workplaces, and our communities. The absence of belonging and the realization of its importance in re-engaging our workforce has been especially amplified in the past two years.
I believe that creating a place where people belong is a key driver of engagement, fulfillment, and success. So… what is belonging, and how do you create a place where people belong?
When we think of belonging, memories of high school often come to mind where belonging was about popularity, appearance, and fitting in. But through a more mature lens, belonging is about being valued for our unique contributions, knowing that we make a difference, being connected to our co-workers, supported and encouraged in our daily work and career development, and being proud of our work.
From my research and experience, belonging is rooted in five key elements:
1. Personal Responsibility: From our high school experience, many of us learned that it was up to someone else to make us feel we belong. While those around us undoubtedly impact our sense of belonging, belonging starts with a decision that “if it is to be, it starts with me.”
2.  Heartfulness: Heartfulness, according to author Elizabeth Lesser, is “knowing what you love, and having the guts and grace to go for it.” The goal of our Authentic Leadership programs is to dig deep into your self and discover the essence of who you are. Until you can belong to yourself, you will never quite feel that you belong in the world.
3.  Contribution: I learned from raising children that there is a difference between chores and contribution. We all must roll up our sleeves at times and get the chores done. But contribution is about knowing, deep within us, that our unique gifts, talents, and strengths are truly valued and make a difference to the organization and those the organization serves.
4.  Care: People around you at work – peers and senior leaders alike – genuinely care. They are sincerely committed to helping you find the resources, support, and encouragement you need to succeed in your daily work and live a full life. With caring comes a sense that we are safe and among friends, that silos are being replaced by a genuine community, strangers are welcomed, diversity is celebrated, leaders are committed to creating systems and structures that support belonging, and problems are being exchanged for possibilities. When it comes to belonging, caring is everything.
5.  Pride: While visions, plans, mission statements, and committed leadership are important, even essential, they cannot be successful without the engagement of every person in the organization. Pride is a genuine alignment with your organization’s purpose, vision, and values. Pride is what shows when you excitedly tell your six year old where you work, what you do, and why what you do matters.

The Secret Life: Getting To The Core Of Self Awareness And Great Leadership

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The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, The Secret Garden, is the story of young girl whose parents die of cholera in India. She is sent to live with her uncle in a large British manor and when exploring the grounds of the estate, she discovers the entrance to a magical secret garden where anything is possible. Initially, the garden appears dead. But through her caring presence, she plants seeds, cultivates the soil, and eventually brings about a dramatic transformation of the entire garden within one season.

Stephen R. Covey used to say that we live three lives: public, private, and secret. In our public lives, we are seen and heard by the people around us. In our private lives, we interact more intimately with loved ones, family members, and close friends. The secret life is where our heart is and where our true motives and ultimate desires are revealed; it is where our authentic self resides.

Many leaders never visit the secret life. Their public and private lives are essentially scripted by everything around them and the pressures of their world. And so, they never find the key to the secret life: self-awareness. It takes courage to connect with our secret life. If we continually distract ourselves rather than seek the uncomfortable journey to the secret life, we distance ourselves from our true identity and the roots of meaning and purpose.

Leaders who attend our Authentic Leadership Academies have said, “This is the first time I’ve ever done any soul searching…” “This experience is the first time I’ve ever slowed down long enough to truly see myself…”

Most of us spend our busy days in our public and private lives, never pausing long enough to enter the secret life, the secret garden, where masterpieces are created, great truths are discovered, and every aspect of our existence is enhanced.