The Missing Link Of Authenticity

Carl Rogers, a founder of humanistic psychology, focused much of his work on the problem of authority. Rigid power hierarchies had led to oppression in many spheres of life and he pioneered a movement that liberated individuals from these authority structures. People are naturally good, he believed, and can be trusted to do their own self-actualization.

David Brooks, in his insightful article, “How America Got Mean,” (The Atlantic, September 2023), stated that “a cluster of phenomenally successful books appeared in the decade after World War II, making the case that, as Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman wrote in Peace of Mind (1946), ‘thou shalt not be afraid of thy hidden impulses. People can trust the goodness inside.’ His book topped the New York Times best-seller list for 58 weeks. Dr. Spock’s first child-rearing manual was published the same year. That was followed by books like The Power of Positive Thinking (1952).

According to this ethos, morality is not something that we develop in communities. It’s nurtured by connecting with our authentic self and finding our true inner voice. If people are naturally good, we don’t need moral formation; we just need to let people get in touch with themselves.”

While these pioneers led the way to the opening of authenticity, there’s a missing link – a perspective that many still do not understand. I remember sitting on an airplane talking to an executive about authenticity when not long after our conversation he started flirting with the flight attendant. When she went to get his drink he turned to me and said that he likes to challenge himself to see if he can get the flight attendant into his hotel room. “It’s my authentic self,” he said with a wink.

While the early pioneers in the personal development field broke down many patriarchal, rigid, and dehumanizing authority structures and gave birth to new freedom, we know now, with our current consciousness, that they could only take us so far. We do, in fact, need to be concerned about some of those hidden impulses. Just because you have a desire doesn’t necessarily mean it’s authentic. To get to your true authentic self beneath your impulses and cravings, you need a community. And your inner child needs some good old-fashioned discipline.

To learn more about the journey to authenticity, I hope you’ll join me in one of my upcoming complimentary Authentic Leadership Academy Mini-Series: https://lnkd.in/g4M9qpWh

Boxes, Presents, and Presence…

Boxes, Presents, and Presence…

This past weekend my sister was visiting. During our time together, we went through the “boxes.” You know the “boxes.” Ones you dig out of the basement that have old “stuff“ like your parents’ grade school report cards or your junior high basketball trophies or the letters your mother wrote to you while you were at summer camp.

Amidst the boxes, one box in particular intrigued me. It was a box of cards congratulating my parents when I was born. In those days mothers stayed in the hospital long enough that the address on the envelopes was the maternity ward at the hospital.

Yes, these were real cards. Hand-written. With a return address and a stamp. Placed in the mailbox and addressed to my parents. Thirty-six of them in total. The moment I opened that box I realized I wasn’t just born into a family; I was born into a community.

Although there isn’t anything particularly unusual about a box of thirty-six hand-written cards, imagine the undertaking of each card: going to the store, carefully choosing a card, crafting a thoughtful message, buying a stamp. Then going to the post box to send them off – at least an hour for each card.

Recently, my niece had a baby and we sent a quick post on Facebook, and a text with a few emojis congratulating her. All told, it took about sixty seconds.

I’m not suggesting we discard our devices and go back to the “good old days.” They weren’t actually the “good old days,” they were simply the old days with different challenges.

What I am suggesting is that there was some goodness that came out of those old days. There was some time, attention, and presence put into the process of securing, scripting and sending those cards.

Today, we claim to be clever people, efficient and high-powered with well-organized day-timers and to-do lists. But in our zeal to get things done, have we forgotten the simple art of connecting?

Let us make a firm resolve to take time to be present to the lives we live, to stop once in a while and be thoughtful and sensitive to the people we care about. Let us be good to ourselves and to the people around us.

CIVILITY AMID DIVERSITY  How To Rebuild Trust in A Fractured World

As Canadians, we were collectively shocked and dismayed at the spate of divisive behavior across this country recently. And now, the crisis in the Ukraine has given our situation in Canada a new perspective. The disunity in our country appears to be indicative of the divisions in our communities, our workplaces, and even our families. It’s been said that a crisis doesn’t determine a person; a crisis reveals a person. Although I’m not sure that we are not any more divided today than we have always been, the dissection has been exposed and amplified.
We used to be able to leave our political, religious, and personal value differences at our office and front doors. But in the pandemic, policies that govern our behaviors with the intent to protect us, have inadvertently divided us.
In short, politics and personal values are now in our face. As teams are balancing a return to the office with remote work, the challenge in front of us is how to rebuild trust in a fractured world.
To rebuild trust requires deep understanding of each other without the need to correct, fix, or “straighten out.” You must get beneath the surface of opinions, positions, views and even values, and connect with the deeper emotions to begin healing what divides us. It’s critical to shift the goal from agreement to understanding. You don’t have to have the same values to value someone. What you do have to do is separate the person from the issue.
Here’s a little model I learned from teams who are debriefing and recovering from trauma. It’s called the SELF model:
Story. Everyone has a story from the pandemic. Let’s take the time to understand each other’s stories that are coming out from the past two years. We just don’t know what people have been through.
Emotions. The past two years have been a form of collective trauma. What emotions have been a part of your experience over this time? What have you had to give up? Where have feelings such as self-doubt, loneliness, fear, excitement, clarity, or anger been a part of your reality? What have you done with these emotions?
Loss. Since the beginning of the pandemic we all lost something and are going through the grief process to some degree. Here are a few losses: our health, a loved one, some of our freedoms, spontaneity, rituals in gatherings like funerals and weddings and church services. I’m not making a judgement. I’m simply stating the obvious and facing reality.
Future. The future depends on the decisions we make today. How will we rebuild? What do we need to feel safe and supported? What needs to be let go of so we can create an opening for change? What do we need to say good-bye to? What decisions need to be made? (e.g. to let go of blame and judgement and resentment; decide to be a contributor instead of a consumer, a builder rather than a destroyer)
A crisis is too significant to be wasted. Let’s embrace this time of difficulty and allow the pain to break us open so a stronger, wiser and kinder self and a better world can emerge.

Staying Connected: Making The Beast Beautiful

Learn the alchemy
True human beings know.
The moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given,
the door will open.
-Rumi
Some people break during difficult times, while others break open and lead us into a better world. As this pandemic wears on, it is time to examine how to allow the pain of it to break us open so a stronger, wiser and kinder self can emerge. If we can use the present reality as an opportunity to clarify our values and grow into better people, we can inspire others to pull out of their despair and fear and trade distraction and denial for deepening and connecting.
In other words, if we can open our hearts to ourselves, with all our shortcomings and all of our beauty, we can then open our hearts to others and do our part to create a new world.
And we can begin to do that by taking the authentic journey, which I suggest starts with the following:
Be Real
There’s something attractive about realness. We are drawn toward what is real, like sunsets, beauty, and honesty. There’s an unwritten rule in the speaking profession: Don’t give a motivational speech at a funeral. It might be a good message but the timing sucks.
Being real means we respect ourselves enough to be honest with ourselves and the people that matter to us. We have to be willing to face our fears honestly before we can call ourselves courageous. And the most courageous thing we can do is ask for help.
Being real means it’s okay to not be okay, and trust that we’ll get through this and move forward together – with honesty, grace, and compassion. We have to grieve before we build.
Find a champion
An inspiring cornerstone of the Calgary Catholic School District is the commitment to every student having a champion. Every child deserves a one-on-one relationship with an adult in the school who believes in them unconditionally, who knows they have their back, and who is in their corner. In order to ensure that every child has a champion, every employee must have a champion.
The journey of transforming difficulty into an adventure that opens us to growth may be a lonely journey, but it can’t be done alone. The lone-warrior model of leadership is heroic suicide. We all need champions in our lives – confidants that hold space for us while we hold the space for others and allies that stand beside us and behind us. We all need at least one person in our life who believes in us when we can’t find it in ourselves.
Choose a growth mindset
Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor, has done extensive research on mindset.  She has found that our mindset exists on a continuum, from fixed to mixed to growth.
People with a fixed mindset are attached to the comfort of their current perception of themselves and others and to not failing. People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, don’t let their fears determine their choices. They are less attached to the opinion of others and thus are more willing to step into the possibility that comes from uncertainty. A growth mindset – a willingness to be vulnerable, learn, grow, and be up for challenges that are ahead – thrives in periods like the pandemic. When difficulty or obstacles arise, instead of, “Why is this happening to me?” a growth mindset asks, “How is this happening for me?”
Get stronger
After recovering from polio meningitis when I was four, my father took painstaking efforts to incrementally build my strength each day. He would lift me up on the parallel bars and have me practice holding myself there. We had a daily routine of 5BX exercises and time on the tumbling mat. He was a nationally ranked gymnast and he encouraged me every day to get stronger.
Even today, forty years after his passing, I can hear him say, “Don’t pray for life to get easier. Pray for you to get stronger.” Both his wisdom as well as his health habits have stayed with me through all kinds of difficult periods in my life. It’s a reminder that resilience and security don’t come from the world; they come from my capacity to access resources from within. Strengthening habits – like weight training, meditation, yoga, relaxation, rest and opening up to others – have sustained me through all the difficult times of my life.
Clarify A Compelling Vision
A friend of mine works for an organization called AAWEAR, a group of people in Alberta with a history of hard drug use. Through supporting each other, educating others, and raising awareness of health issues, AAWEAR strives for an improved quality of life for those in the drug using community.
My friend meets daily with people who live in tents and on sidewalks in the city of Edmonton. His vision is to help those who struggle with drug abuse and homelessness recognize that they deserve respect and understanding within their community. No matter how dark things get around him, Tyler is inspired by a vision to help others live a better life.
What inspires you in the difficult times? What gets you up early? What keeps you up late? What inspires you to keep walking through the rough terrains of your life to see you through to the other side? We all need a vision – beyond our own self-interest – to keep us moving forward through inevitable doldrums and disillusionments of life’s journey.
We all have the capacity to inspire and empower others. But it takes a devotion to our personal growth and development to embrace times of change and difficulty, such as this pandemic, and reach within so a better person can emerge. Hard times can motivate us to embody the hero within us. The psychologist, Carl Jung, believed that “the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” This journey is described in my book, The Other Everest: Navigating the Pathway to Authentic Leadership, and the journey we go through in our Life In Transitions course. It is the journey to the deeper aspects of our nature that awaken us to who we are meant to be. And that is how we can use this beast of a pandemic to find what is beautiful in ourselves and the world around us.

HOW TO BUILD COMMUNITY IN A TIME OF ISOLATION

A research project from the 1980s, documented in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that male heart attack survivors who were socially isolated had more than four times the risk of death than men with strong social connections. And a study of more than four thousand men of Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii found that social networks guarded against coronary artery disease (independent of known health hazards such as high blood pressure and cigarette smoking).
Over the past four decades, there has been a sizable body of evidence documenting that being socially isolated significantly increases a person’s risk of premature death from all causes, a risk equal to that of smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity.
Simply put, people are nourished by other people. Research suggests that belonging to a tightly knit community is a significant predictor of health and mental well-being. Living beings yearn for the proximity of other living beings. Humans are happiest and healthiest when around other people, working together and helping each other. For much of history, humans have banded together as a matter of survival.
Even with pandemic fatigue, where we are weary of social distancing and isolating for the sake of our community’s health, our need for community has not changed – we desire to be heard, to be connected, to belong. Social distancing is not the same as social disconnecting. Isolating is not the same as detaching. Working together for the good of the whole is not the same as living in fear and withdrawing from each other. In our current conditions, we are called to develop a renewed connection to ourselves, to learn to enjoy solitude, to appreciate smaller spaces, and to be creative and intentional about sustaining our relationships with each other – thus finding innovative ways of sustaining community.
Living with a propensity for depression and having walked through some very dark periods in the course of my lifetime, I can suggest five strategies for fostering community during this pandemic that have worked for me:
1) Develop self-awareness. When a Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council was asked to recommend the most important capability for leaders to develop, their answer was almost unanimous: self-awareness. But how do you develop self-awareness? Self-awareness starts with checking in on yourself in the present moment. Are you afraid? Stressed? Inspired? Exhausted? Angry? Renewed? All of the above? Self-awareness comes from introspection and feedback from others. It takes time and intention but is a journey worth taking. You can only connect with others to the degree you connect with yourself.
2) Find a confidant. A confidant is a person with whom you can be real and honest. Confidants provide a space for those who are busy holding a space for everybody else. At this point in the pandemic, as fatigue is settling in for so many of us, we all need at least one confidant who can put us back together at the end of the day. Confidants are friends, spouses, coaches, lovers, or trusted colleagues that provide support, perspective, and accountability in the midst of our frustrations and challenges.
3) Practice kindness wherever you go. We are all doing the best we can to get through these challenging times. Let’s make it a point to grant each other a little grace. Even while wearing a mask we can smile with our eyes, offer encouragement with a hand gesture, and practice patience with our tone of voice. We’ve never been more alone, but we have also never been more together, sharing this experience with eight billion people on this planet. Community is developed one kind act at a time.
4) Find a reason to get out of bed in the morning. In a world preoccupied with problems, community is about discovering our gifts and finding ways to bring them into focus. Community is ultimately about being needed, belonging to something beyond yourself, being inspired with a reason to face the day. It is the task of leaders, indeed the task of every citizen, to shine a light on the gifts of those in the periphery and bring them into the centre. Especially in the midst of a pandemic, we need to find a reason to put our feet on the floor each morning.
5) Get comfortable being alone. Loneliness and being alone are distinct. A desire for solitude is a defining characteristic of an authentic person. A quest for community can be one more form of manic activity if it is not rooted in a continual practice of silence and time for reflection. If you work on creating a balance between reaching out to others and enjoying what the Finns call hiljaisuus, or solitude in one’s being, you’ll strengthen your sense of self-worth and find more meaning in your life.
Our intention, in our upcoming Authentic Leadership Masterclass is to do our part to help build communities with like-minded authentic difference makers. While we show how authentic leadership presence can be applied to the leadership practices of fostering trust, building accountability, navigating change, and engaging talent, a major part of the program is to connect leaders with each other to sustain their growth, connections, and sense of community. We work with accountability partners between sessions to support each other’s growth, help each other stay on track, and sustain the insights you glean from the class experience.
We still have a few seats available for our January and February programs for those of you committed to renewed leadership development this year in a community of incredible like-minded difference makers. I hope you will join us.
To mark the passage into the promise and hope for a safe and prosperous new year, I want to borrow from history and visualize an ancient and meaningful ritual. For 2,500 years, the Japanese have been making and drinking sake, a type of rice wine brewed from fermented rice. Throughout all that time, sake has been used to mark special occasions with the people that matter most. In most celebrations involving sake, a glass is placed inside a masu cup and the host pours sake until it overflows like a waterfall. The overflowing is an act of kindness and generosity to show appreciation for the people around them. It also works as a little act of celebration, to lift the spirits and to enjoy the present state of life. Watching the sake overflow and not knowing whether it will tip over presents a beautiful moment of suspense, when time seems to slow down. By introducing a moment of suspense, the ceremony keeps your mind in the present moment, focused only on the beautiful waterfall of sake.
As a message of appreciation to all my readers over the years, I’m taking the liberty to borrow from this little Japanese ritual and overflow some sake with you. My hope is that the image of this overflow will remind us all to bring presence and generosity into this new year. May we all experience the overflow of kindness through our actions as we build community together and navigate into 2021.

DON’T WASTE THIS CRISIS Let’s Not Get Back to Normal

A crisis is really a terrible thing to waste.  – Paul Romer, Stanford economist

In college, while on the track team, I was inspired by the university’s volleyball coach. He had a mantra that guided all his practices. Every time the ball came on your side of the net he would say, “use it.”
“The ball is not your enemy,” he would continually remind his team. “Don’t be in a hurry to get rid of it. Use it as a way of developing your capacity.”
The ball of COVID-19 has been served to our side of the net and just as in volleyball where you have three touches before you return it, three leadership opportunities arise today. Our response to these opportunities enables us to develop new capacity so we won’t waste this time afforded to us.
1.    Community. Being thrown into chaos has elicited a response of community. We see this all over the planet as people open their hearts to each other in the midst of separateness. This is a time for leaders to build community by reaching out and connecting (even if it is virtual and imperfect). It is a tremendously important time to stay together while being apart. Forgiveness and patience are called for as we stumble forward through this uncertain and unfamiliar terrain. Many employees are juggling trying to homeschool their children while managing the demands of their work. We are dealing with economic uncertainty and layoffs. If there was ever a time for compassion and grace, it is now.
Don’t compromise accountability, but don’t push for productivity; it will emerge naturally from your best people. Extend trust. Most importantly, find any way you can to express appreciation. Of course, our health care professionals and grocery store clerks need our gratitude. But all those who are working tirelessly to provide essential services in the background – electricity, gas, water, and internet, waste removal, to name a few – also need our appreciation right now. Let’s be a little more kind to ourselves and everyone around us. Remember that just because we are expected to have social distance, doesn’t mean we have to be socially disconnected. It’s a time to deepen our community.
2.    Creativity. The second authentic response to crisis and accompanying chaos is creativity. While productivity will surely wain at this time, what is spreading as fast as the fear and the virus is human creativity. From John Krasinski’s Good News Stories to the myriad creative responses to isolation, to the writing of poetry and performance of music, celebrating and expressing the human experience helps keep us entertained and enlightened, and brings light into such potentially dark times.
In a recent coaching call, I was speaking with an owner of a feedlot who is in the middle of reforming her business model. Ordinarily she would be sitting with her team to get their input. And she can’t do it virtually. Only two of her entire team even have computers. So she gave each of them a piece of paper with an initial vision sketched out, along with a request to provide input. What she is getting back is remarkable creativity and innovation. Most importantly, the introverts on the team who ordinarily would be quiet in a group setting have risen to the occasion and are shining brightly for the first time.
In times of crisis, authentic leadership opportunities emerge. How can we help our teams and our families access their creative side amidst the challenge of uncertainty? It’s all there if we simply step aside and allow it to come forth.
3.    Contemplation. There is a third equally important response required in this time of chaos and uncertainty: contemplation. There is a huge difference between surviving this crisis and actually allowing it to change us. To change we must allow ourselves to really s-l-o-w d-o-w-n, get our bearings and allow ourselves to be fully impacted by what is happening.
We live in a time of profound disruption – when something is ending and dying and something else is wanting to be born. How we have been living and working has not been working. It is becoming evident that it is not sustainable. What is dying is a civilization built on a mind-set of excess, of bigger is better, of confusing standard of living with quality of life, and of organized irresponsibility.
What is being born is less clear. It is a future that requires us to connect with a deeper level of our humanity and discover who we really are and how we want to be as a society. We are already seeing changes emerge – both within ourselves and in the environment.
People in the northern Indian state of Punjab are reacting with awe at the sight of the Himalayan mountain range, which is now visible from more than 100 miles away due to the reduction in air pollution as a result of the Coronavirus lockdown. Indians in the city of Jalandhar haven’t seen the peaks of the Himalayas for decades.
There might be a few extra endangered sea turtles in the ocean thanks to the Coronavirus after lockdowns in Brazil left nearly 100 new hatchlings with a clear path across the beach and into the waves. Wildlife officials were the only humans on the beach in the town of Paulista last week when 97 endangered hawksbill sea turtles hatched in front of their eyes.
In Italy, the lockdown is giving the outdoors — which is typically flooded with tourists — a chance to recharge. In Venice, the city’s canals are clearer because there is less boat traffic, allowing the sediment to stay at the bottom. And, with fewer water taxis and boats ferrying tourists and residents along the canals, the air has also become cleaner.
What are we allowing to see more clearly and cleanly in our own lives? All social change – from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. – began with a connection to a deeper essence of what our life and our work is about. Nelson Mandela’s capacity to influence came, in large part, from the contemplation amid years of being unjustly imprisoned and emerging with the power of forgiveness. Such movements share an understanding that creating sustained change in the world requires us to connect with an inner authentic self.
If we stop, reflect, and make room for contemplation in order to connect with a deeper side of our nature, the world will change. While it is important to connect with each other and connect with our creative side, it is also vitally important to connect with our inner, most authentic self, to reset the inner compass, and be guided by a life that may well have been buried in the busyness and tyranny of the urgent.
Like the ball that has come to our side of the net, this COVID crisis is not our enemy. Let’s use it. While distraction is, at times, part of the journey, let’s be careful not to distract ourselves to the point that we waste this huge opportunity before us. Authenticity asks us to embrace what is in front of us so it will change what lies ahead of us. This crisis truly is a terrible thing to waste.