World Day of Interconnectedness 090909
Just imagine ..... a shift from illness to wellness.
On 9 September 09, in every country at 9 AM in every time zone (starting inNew Zealand), all people who are aware of interconnectedness and who are committed to translate that awareness into action are invited to practice interconnectedness as much as possible throughout that day.
Click
here for more about WDI 090909.
Leaders Cafe Foundation will celebrate World Day of Interconnectedness with a 24 hour webathon. The webathon will be kicking off at 00.00 USA/Canada time or 17.00 Australian Eastern Standard Time, or 12.30 in India, 08.00 in UK, etc.
There will be a webinar starting every hour with a great line up of presenters from 6 countries. These webinars will coincide with Jane's inaugural Leaders Cafe Foundation live event at Neighborhood Grinds cafe, North Redondo Beach California.
Click here for the probable program
Knowing. Doing. Winning.
This is Leaders Cafe Foundation's motto. Globally, we spend $100 billions every year giving knowledge to people. People end up knowing a lot.
KNOWING doesn't get you success. Success starts by DOING and that takes courage. DOING doesn't guarantee you will win (success). WINNING needs resilience.
Leaders Cafe Foundation's vision is to provide the best leadership resources free to the global community. We do this through the eigh learning modules shown in the right hand panel here. In so doing, we help people to understand what it takes to go from KNOWING to DOING to WINNING.
The eight qualities that legitimise leadership
Everybody can lead. We have business leaders, community leaders, public office leaders, tribal leaders, clan leaders. What this tells us is that you don't need status, position, wealth or education to lead. Leaders are all around us (from
Ben Law to Bill Gates).
However, you can't lead others unless you can lead yourself. So personal leadership must come before the leadership of people. In this context,
Leaders Cafe Foundation believe there are 8 personal qualities and attributes that legitimise and elevate someone to become a leader. These are listed in the panel on the right.
Clicking on each learning module on the right will take you to the Leaders Cafe Foundation learning centre. All the learning material are provided free of charge (click
here to find out why). They can be used for personal leadership and people leadership. Most of all, it is designed to stretch your thinking and take your mind to uncomfortable places.
If you were discontented before exploring the material, and still find yourself feeling discontented after exploring some or all of the material - it means you didn't get it. If you find yourself "creatively discontented and constructively dissatisfied" - then you have begun a potentially rewarding journey that needs courage and resilience to keep going.
To appreciate how the 8 qualities legitimises leadership. Go through the slideshow below. The slideshow below will test your honesty. Here's your first taste of what I mean about "taking control of choosing" -
you can choose to be honest with yourself ; or not?
Click here to register for this masterclass This event is IN THE PRESSFind out what others have said about this masterclass - click hereClick HERE to see how ex-Woolworth's staff are helping each other through the redundancy guided by Paul Seaton's leadership. Paul worked for Woolworths for 25 years. His final position was heading up the IT function at the company's Head Office in London, with responsibility for stores, the website (turnover £100m) and new business initiatives. We salute you Paul for taking a lead.Why have we allowed Google Ads? Click here.
Today, we have a one-world economy. Leaders and individuals face the dilemmas of balancing the needs of stakeholders, customers and employees, leaders. Winning and success are about facing these dilemmas and making choices. Whether that "winning" is about your personal life or your work life.
My personal experience and in my research into leadership and personal leadership, I noticed some basic recurring themes that appear to influence winning and success. That is, winning/success is essentially dependent on our ability, capacity and capability to think (or not) and to choose (or not) when confronted with the following.
- Ideal. This is about identifying and understanding the ingredients that will make you feel successful. What is your definition of success? What are your choices of ingredients?
- Passion. Nobody grows old by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our real passion. What passion(s) have you chosen to desert that could make you feel like a winner?
- Hope. Hope isn't just about being optimistic. It's more than that. But being optimistic is a good start. Are you an optimist or a pessimist? To win and succeed, you must first believe you can. If you think you can, you can. If you think can't, you will be right. It's a choice between wanting to succeed or wanting to be right.
- Curiosity. Are you willing to reveal who you are and share your experience with others in order to get greater success? It's a choice between anonymity and disclosure.
- Growth. Creative discontent and constructive dissatisfaction may feel uncomfortable, but if you have the resilience to deal with both then growth, freedom and success will follow. It's a choice between short-term comfort over long-term success?
- Talent. Developing others can take a long time but the results are always much more than anticipated. It's a choice between developing others to help you to succeed or to do it alone.
- Courage. Doing your job as if you were the business owner is hard, but it is a better guarantee of success than just doing your job. It's a choice between taking personal control and ownership over all that you do or having others controlling you.
- Resilience. You have the ability to change the world around you, but it's easier doing it if you are driving a tank named RESILIENT. It's a choice between finding your own "tank" or constantly seeking a hiding place as you journey towards your success?
There is no right or wrong choice. It's a matter of how quickly you want to get to the success and the future that you've dreamt of. Choices and decision only ever take you closer or further away from your future.
If you feel discontented right now but don't know why, chances are you are struggling to deal with these themes that are your foundations. You are either:
- unable to think through one of the eight themes; or
- unable to make a choice in one of the eight themes
In the weeks/months ahead, I will share my thoughts on these eight themes that underpin personal leadership and people leadership and to help you to make your choices.
In the meantime, I will leave you with the following great quotation about making choices (also under "are you in control" panel on the right).
"Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of you life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself". Winning and success come easier when you are in charge of yourself.
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With a 2008 estimated personal fortune of US$9 billion, why did Adolf Merckle, the German Tycoon committed suicide? By any measure, he would be consider successful and a winner.
Yes, he probably lost a significant part of his personal fortune because of the credit crunch. Even if he had lost 99% of his personal fortune, he would still be left with US$90 million. And 99% of the world's population would say "that would do for me."
“He plainly could not come to terms with losing even part of his empire,” Frank Seidlitz, a business commentator, said. There lies, I think, the answer.
If Adolf Merckle's measure of success is focused on the size of his empire, then his self-esteem would have taken a severe knocking and begun to spiral out of control.
William James' (The 19th century psychologist) view of self-esteem is very apt for the 21st Century. James saw self-esteem as the dynamics between expectations of success and fulfillment of those expectations. In short, he believed that as society raises expectations about individual success, this will create the psychological problem of self-esteem. As we go towards a more materialistic society, the measure of self-esteem becomes a simple division equation between 2 things; self-esteem becomes the result of the number of things we are successful at divided by the number of things we are expected to be successful at.
In the 21st Century, society's expectations of individual success is high (own home, luxury car, private education, modern kitchen, holidays abroad, flat-screen TVs, X-box, PS3, Wii and so on). On top of this, because the NET-generation of young people are brought up with mobile phones and the internet, instant access is taken for granted with some believing "instant gratification" is a normal part of their belief system. No wonder we have more people being less happy even though, materialistically speaking, we are much better off than our grandparents. Once young people enter the world of work, they quickly become disillusioned, develop a sense of meaningless to what they are doing and low self-esteem.
This combination of social expectations and "instant gratification" belief is a deadly mix when it comes to self-esteem - this can lead to a psychological condition that Alain De Botton calls "Status Anxiety". Status anxiety is relative and not absolute. That is to say, we compare our status in society to those that are like us. For example, a lorry driver would not compare his status with a CEO and get anxious about their difference. He would compare his status with his fellow lorry drivers or his circle of friends.
You will find a link to view a video about Status Anxiety in the "Learning Bites" panel on the right (IDEAL: Status Anxiety Video)
You can purchase the book by clicking: Status Anxiety: Alain de Botton ISBN 0241142385
The Antidote to Status Anxiety
The antidote to status anxiety isn't about giving up your worldly goods and go away to a Tibetian retreat. Human beings have an innate desire to understand, improve and grow. We can't stop that. Capitalism and market forces are what keep global economies and businesses running. And the global economy needs captains of industries to understand how to make best use of the world's resources; improve utilisation through efficiency, effectiveness and technology; and grow businesses.
Rather the antidote is in examining and re-framing your expectation of success and in your capability to withstand the pressures of "instant gratification". Is your success too narrowly defined - i.e. confined to just one or two things like material wealth? By broadening out your expectation of success into other parts of your life - you are more likely to increase your self-esteem and find happiness from your new expectations of success.
We may never know the real reasons for Adolf Merckle's suicide, but it is my guess that his mind crossed the fine line between success and Status Anxiety.
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