Tag Archive for: Articles by David Irvine

Constancy: Success Lies In Your Habits

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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.

Inspire, Illuminate and Encourage Authenticity in Leaders

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If anyone out there is attempting to grow thier business to a new level (and who among us is not), It can often be helpful to revisit your mission statement. The passion and promise of our business is to build cultures of trust that attract, retain, inspire, and unleash greatness. Its about making this world a better place to work. Through the strength of  authentic presence, leaders can learn to connect with their authentic selves, thus amplifying their impact on the world. The path to transform cultures is ultimately to inspire, illuminate, and encourage authenticity in leaders.

Inspire is about nourishing and creating learning environments and conversations that awaken the human spirit, connect with and tap into the power of the universal life force, touch the soul, open the heart, and move people to action through significant emotional experiences. This can be achieved through the expression of our own unique gifts – the strength of identity and integrity as human beings.

Illuminate is about shining a light on the gifts and the voices – those seeds of possibility – that lie deeply hidden within every one of us as we are besieged by a world that tells us how we “should” be. Illuminating is also about making a conscious contact with a deeper life force that carries, guides, and supports us to live authentically.

Encourage – Has its root in the Latin word cor, which means “heart.” So does the word courage. To have courage means to have heart. To encourage means to give courage, to give others heart, to give of my heart so that others may more fully develop and experience their own courage and heart.

Authenticity is the dedication to living congruently between our inner and outer lives. This ongoing inquiry and commitment leads to amplifying the impact we have on the world through deeper presence.

Leaders are culture makers at all levels of organizations and in all walks of life: people who are committed to find and express their voice in the service of others.

Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. Leaders see the oak tree in the acorn, and create the environment that brings the oak to fruition. Leadership is about presence, not position. Leadership is like the sounding cavity of a violin: It takes in the sound, resonates with it, and gives back depth and fullness to another  voice. My work is built on a simple premise: great leadership cannot be reduced to technique.

Great leadership comes from the identity and the integrity of the leader. This involves making deep changes within so as to be capable of transforming others from the depth of our own experience. We lead from the inner strength of who we are. Greatness is the commitment and capacity to fulfill your natural, authentic potential. For further reading, please check out our “Authenticity and Art” blog.

Tragedy As A Gift In Disguise

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Over the years, I have learned that every life circumstance, even a tragedy, provides an opportunity to grow. A friend recently told me of how she had lost her farm and her home that she loved so much in a horrible fire. Everything she owned and collected for more than sixty years was destroyed.

“At moments like this,” she said, “you stand at a fork in the road. If you take the familiar path, you collapse, give up, and feel hopeless, resentful, and defeated. You focus on the negative and lose yourself in the ‘problem,’ pointing to your misery to rationalize your pessimism. It takes little effort to be a victim and to stay a victim. It’s the easy way out.”

“You can, however, take the other path, You can view your tragedy as an opportunity for a new beginning. If you decide to keep your perspective, you can look for growth opportunities, and find inner reserve of strength. By deciding to focus on the possibilities rather than the pain, I was able to come through the loss of every material thing I owned with more strength and contentment than I had before the fire. When I sat and reflected on the whole experience, I soon realized that the things I had collected over my lifetime were just that – things, and things that I no longer needed, things that were actually becoming an anchor to keep me on the shore of new growth. After considerable suffering from the loss, I began to realize that the important things in life are not things at all. No longer attached to my house, I moved closer to my grandchildren. This was a move I had been procrastinating for sometime.”

“As I adjusted to my new environment, I was invigorated. It felt as if I were starting the second half of my adulthood. Had I taken the path of misery, I would have remained resentful and depressed, and would have missed the opportunity to set sail to new possibilities.”

What gifts have been given to you that are disguised as tragedies? What is calling you to deepen your authentic presence? What are you waiting for?

Smart Vs. Healthy: Unlocking Your Organization’s Potential

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What would you rather be: smart or healthy? Do you know a smart person who is not reaching their potential because of poor health? You can be brilliant, but if you are depressed, sick, or suffering from low energy, chronic pain, or inflexibility, your capacity will be diminished. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, health is one of the true sources of wealth. Without it, fulfillment is not impossible, but extremely difficult.

In his superb book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, Patrick Lencioni makes an intriguing distinction between a smart organization and a healthy organization. Like people, organizations can be smart, but if they aren’t healthy, their capability will be weakened.

Smart organizations focus on:

  • Strategy
  • Expediency
  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Technology,

Healthy organizations are about:

  • Minimizing Politics
  • Trust
  • Creating clarity
  • Morale
  • Employee Engagement
  • Energy
  • Holding people accountable to high standards.

“Smart” and “healthy” are equally vital to success, both personally and organizationally. It’s just that many organizations I work with are over-focused on “smart” at the expense of health.

Personal health is primarily about discipline and habits. And just as we have to take care of our personal health, we have to take care of the health of our culture, regardless of our position within the culture. Here is a list of disciplines that you can take accountability for in order to foster organizational health:

  1. Build a cohesive leadership team. Whether it’s executive leaders, a board of directors, or parents, the relationships at the senior level set the tone for a healthy culture. Like a marriage, a leadership team needs concerted effort and time – away from the operations – to get to know each other, to learn about what matters most to each person, and to foster connection.
  2. Create clarity. Have an inspiring mission for why you exist and an uplifting vision for where you are taking people. Get clear about your values, how you expect people to behave. Get clear about what you expect from people and take the time to communicate these expectations. Clarify your most important priorities – your vital few – rather than your demanding many. Clarity breeds health.
  3. Make building trust your number one leadership priority. Identify your “significant seven” stakeholders – the people who you depend on and the people who depend on you. Spend at least half your time investing in these relationships. Listen for and clarify concerns. Connect to reality. Pay attention. Be in touch. Get to know people. Make contact. Listen for concerns. Remove barriers. Spend time coaching and mentoring. Bring a “servant mindset” to your work.
  4. Hold people accountable. “Everyone on a team knows who is and who is not performing and they are looking to you as the leader to see what you are going to do about it,” said Collin Powell, former US Secretary of State. Letting bacteria grow in a culture eventually turns to poison. A healthy organization is one with high standards, the courage to have the difficult conversations, and the nerve to make the tough decisions. There are many reasons why managers don’t hold people accountable, and I’ll address these, along with strategies to overcome these reasons, in future articles.
  5. Time for reflection. Healthy people consistently make room for reflection: on their lives, their work, and their priorities. Take a moment and reflect on the current level of health in your organization. Ask yourself what disciplines you need to start incorporating into your work and your life. If you reach inside, chances are you will find your own answers as to what it takes for you to have a healthy workplace and life.
  6. Come to work healthy. A healthy organization starts with healthy people. We don’t experience the world as it is. We experience the world as we are. An organizational mission statement will have much more meaning for you when you have a sense of your own mission. Organizational values will mean much more to you when you are committed to live by your own code of conduct. When you are healthy, you naturally foster health around you. “Be the change you wish for in the world.”

Acceptance Of Our Darker Self: A Key To Leadership

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I was coaching an executive recently who was sent to work with me by her CEO. The presenting problem was an extremely low score on a recent 360 survey. The results of her feedback were that she was a competent professional but had very poor interpersonal skills. When I tried to get the executive’s perspective of herself, all I got was a positive presentation. She was, indeed, very difficult to reach to and to connect with, just as her scores indicated. Soon after this initial interview started I pointed out the discrepancy between her “polished presentation” of herself and the reality of how others were perceiving her. Her response was that she was always taught to be optimistic and positive, and with a smile on her face, she explained that she just couldn’t understand why the feedback scores were so low.

Her perceived “inauthenticity” was distancing her from those she was most interdependent upon. It’s hard to trust people that won’t be honest with themselves. In reality, she wasn’t phony; it’s just that she was only expressing a small spectrum of herself.

A lack of acceptance of the darker side of herself (e.g. insecurity, fears, resentments, worries, inadequacies) was preventing her from being perceived as “real,” and resulting in people distancing themselves from her. She was also incapable of assessing the full spectrum of what was happening in her culture because she couldn’t see it in herself.

Authenticity is compelling. It also enables you to lead with greater wisdom and resourcefulness. This is our work together: to face and accept some of the darker parts of our nature, the parts we avoid. Connecting with and accepting a fuller spectrum of oneself – especially the darker self – enables us to better connect with others.

Nurturing The Artist Within

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Picasso said that we are all artists when we are 8 years old; we have to be taught not to be artists.  Just as we suppress the artist within us, we are indoctrinated to not trust the authentic self within us – the essence of who we are. By trying to meet the expectations of a world that tells us how we “should” be, we lose touch with the authentic desires that live within us. Where can we start to claim back this lost inheritance?

My friend and renowned artist, Murray Phillips, thinks that we start with an understanding of the concept of spirituality.  The term “spirituality” is bandied about today and is one of the catch-words of the 21st century.  “Spirituality,” writes Murray, “is part of our nature – part of the essence of being human.  Spirituality is not an optional add-on.  It is not that some people are spiritual and others aren’t; anymore than some people are physical and others aren’t.  Some people may be in better physical health than others but they are not more physical.  Some people are aware of their spirituality and others may be less aware, but they are no less spiritual.  This is an important place to begin.  If we are spiritual beings we function best when we are cognizant of that.  One of the ways of increasing that awareness is to nurture the artist in you. Make time to deliberately and consistently feed the creative aspects of your being.”

While meditation, prayer, and quietness can foster authentic connection, so too can creativity. Create a sanctuary where you can get away from the expectations of the world to create and reflect.  Creativity is the language of our spiritual nature. Find an area of interest (painting, writing, poetry, woodworking, dancing, music) and become involved.  Make it a priority, remembering that urgent things always will crowd out important things.  Use it as an opportunity to feed your soul.

“If of thy earthly goods thou art bereft
And to thy meager store two loaves alone to thee are left
Sell one and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”