Life Balance is Abundance

What secret does this sophisticated lady know that keeps her vibrantly elegant well into her nineties? It may not be the secret of youth. Yet it certainly could be the secret of how to live long and prosper.

Clearly, she enjoys and celebrate life. You can too...with ease, grace and balance. In a recent presentation I delivered at the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp you will discover simple practices that help you build a balanced life in a workaholic world.

Typically, the human side of the business equation is viewed as a cost - not an investment. Desks, chairs, computers, and other equipment or facilities are hard costs. People in companies are much more valuable human assets - too often under-utilized human capital.

When businesses invest in the natural leadership of executives and their teams, highly collaborative environments result. This empowers leaders and their teams to fully engage in collaboration and innovation - creating sustainable solutions that increase profitability.

Get your business on the right track to better and better results. Leverage the natural leadership strengths of your executives and their teams to invest wisely in your company's current and future success.

Innovation at the speed of sound and light...that is what social media affords you. Are you or your business riding the tail of the social media comet or advancing with the leading edge of sustainable socialnomics success?

Word of Mouth to World of Mouth Leadership

On Ukraine's Got Talent competition a young woman recreated in sand the aerial bombings of Kiev in World World 2. This powerful expression of her human spirit is a captivating show stopper. And yes, she won the competition.

What an inspiring example of imagination and innovation! Where do opportunities to innovate exist in your work or life? Imagine...and play with what's possible.

Leading Change, Leading Teams

Recently I was asked during a Leading Change Team Assessment what to do if you are not a born leader. My answer was this.

Whether you're a born leader or not, learn to listen -  deeply and without judgment to those whom you want to lead, influence, or inspire. Leadership is about shaping and shifting how teams pay attention and respond to challenges and opportunities.

Highly effective leaders listen to their teams at four different levels. Each level deepens their awareness of how they can lead collaboratively - fully tapping into the collective capacity of their teams.

Which level describes your dominant leadership listening mode?

1. Listening Level 1 - Downloading: What you hear confirms what you already know.
2. Listening Level 2 - Factual: You pay attention to facts and novel or disconfirming data.
3. Listening Level 3 - Empathic: You hear another person's point of view and know how they feel.
4. Listening Level 4 - Generative: You are quiet and present - connected to something larger than yourself - and hear possibilities as they emerge.

When you listen at level 4, you are comfortable not knowing what to think or say next. Your mind, heart and will are open to sensing what is possible. This is what Einstein was talking about when he said we can not solve the problem at the level of the problem.

Solution thinking naturally occurs during level 4 listening. Deep listening frees you and your team to imagine and discover what's possible. When you lead from the future as it emerges, you empower team collaboration and innovation that results in more sustainable business solutions.

Travel Insights Shared with Client via Email

For more perspective, this next photo of an Andes glacier was taken from ground level. While the glacier looks like it's only a day or two hike away, it (like the analogy of your Everest base camp) is much further than you think - an arduous altitude challenging climb to higher ground. Just another reason why a foundation of 'practice' is so essential to building the stamina required for the ascent to inspired leadership that you want to make. Oh, and whether you know the terrain or not, a guide who is always looking out for your best interests, is an invaluable asset for getting to the top (couldn't resist including that...).

Enjoy this food for thought regarding the leadership perspectives we discussed on your coaching call. When you return, we'll look at how your leadership 'practices' - tailored to deal more effectively with your most critical challenges - are working for you. In the interim, have a fruitful business trip.

Safe Travels,

 Sylvia

Harvard Professor Linda A. Hill shares where we will find tomorrow's leaders and why leading from behind makes great leadership sense. For businesses to meet diverse challenges, leaders need to unleash and harness slices of genius in an inclusive collaborative approach that results in a collective  contribution of execution and innovation.

Thanks to each and every one of you for following my leadership, business, inspirational and personal tweets on Twitter. You are "Simply the Best!"

 Get your twitter mosaic here.

A Kinder, Gentler Sense of Success & Failure

Are you letting success define you? Or is your work and life a clear reflection of what success means to you?

Philosopher and founder of the School of Life in London, Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure. With witty humor he questions the assumptions underlying these two often harsh judgments.

In this TED 2009 video Alain invites us to experience more satisfying success. The first step in doing that is: "Make sure that your ideas of success are truly your own."

Are You Zooming Through Work & Life?

• You have difficulty getting focused.
• You are not paying enough attention to critical priorities.
• You are not getting enough of the right things done.
• You have no time to think strategically about your decisive actions.
• You work nights and weekends, yet never get your 'to do' list done.
• You are not sure what you've accomplished this week or this month.
• You hardly have any time or energy to enjoy the life you work so much to have.

Zooming out of control in the fast lane challenges you to the max. You wonder how you're going to cope with it all. As the song goes, it just takes your breath away.

1-Minute Life Balance Practice #1: Stop Waiting to Exhale

(If you take blood pressure medicine, please consult your physician before doing this exercise.)

Use this simple practice to bring you back into balance.

• Scan your breathing.
  • Is it shallow or deep?
  • Shallow breathing starves the body of oxygen.
• The key is exhalation, not inhalation.
  • When exhalation is twice as long as inhalation, the body moves into a state of relaxation and balance.
  • Changing the rate of breathing changes the body's rhythms.
    • Heart rate slows down.
    • Blood pressure lowers.
    • Brain waves slow down.
• Breathe in deeply through your nose.
• Exhale twice as slowly through your pursed lips.
• Notice if you feel any resistance to breathing out twice as slowly through your mouth.
  • If you do, allow yourself to breathe into the resistance.
• Breathing like this for 1 minute sends a congruent message of relaxation and balance to your entire body.

When you're zooming in the fast lane, you can still be in calm control of your life.

"Perfection is reached not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing more to subtract." ~Zen Saying

 Resilient Leaders Are...

1. Learners

2. Listeners

3. Seekers of Clarity

4. Navigators of Uncertainty

5. Explorers of Possibilities - beyond obvious obstacles

6. Discoverers of Opportunities - hidden & new

7. Facilitators & Highly Effective Communicators of Change

Which one of these 7 characteristics can you practice today to give you greater leadership resilience?

Balance is a state of being. That is why it seems to be in conflict with the way we live our lives - constantly doing. Too often we forget we are human beings - not human doings.

Take a moment to remember... In this short video 3 life balance secrets help you reclaim your love of life and work. Each secret reveals a simple strategy to get and keep you in balance. Discover how in just a minute you can BE more focused, effective, and with ease get done what is most important.

...for Smart Women Leaders

If you want to be more effective as a leader, take a close look at your inner leadership game. 

"To be effective leaders, we must first understand the field, or inner space, from which we are operating." ~Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges 

Be candid with yourself and identify what really gets in your way. For smart business women it is often one of these hidden culprits.

1. The feeling that while you deserve what you want, it would be unfair to others if you had it.
2. The need to deliver on your expectation that only perfection is enough.
3. A sinking feeling that you do not have what it takes to lead your team or business to the success you envision.
4. The belief that to be smart, engaged, energetic, happy, and enlightened you have to be 'superwoman'.

5. Deep-seated reluctance to ask for and accept the help you need to achieve your ambitious goals.

Leadership Limitations

Unexamined beliefs, feelings and frustrations only have power if you give it to them. So take back your inner leadership power with this simple exercise.

• What belief, feeling or frustration gets in your leadership way?
• If you were free of that belief, feeling or frustration, what would be better for you as a leader?
• What do you gain - if anything - by not letting go of it?
• Who would you be as a leader without it?
• What 3 small steps could you take - starting now - to release your leadership limitation?

Decide to take immediate action. With each step consciously let go of the limitations lurking in your leadership blind spot. Your awareness of new possibilities will increase. This creates more space for you to play a bigger inner leadership game.

"Successful leadership depends on the quality of attention and intention that the leader brings to any situation." ~Otto Scharmer, MIT - Action Researcher in Innovative Learning & Leadership

Several weeks ago I shared with you that I was using my blog to write an ebook. The irony is when I searched my 1 year worth of blog posts, I already had a surprising amount of content. Naturally, this inspired me to complete what I thought would be a short ebook. 36 pages later, my ebook is now ready for prime time.

I was able to write Reclaim Your Love for Life & Work: 10 1-Minute Life Balance Practices in just two weeks. The writing was painless and effortless because the ebook I felt compelled to write already existed within me. Given that this is my first ebook, clearly it wanted to be written.

That is why this is only the third blog post about my ebook. It is also why you can read a preview of the introduction and first two chapters at: 1 Minute Life Balance.

Be sure to let me know what you think. And remember, the success you seek is also seeking you.

When it comes to sustainable success, business owners who have built and run thriving enterprises share these 10 entrepreneurial characteristics.

1. Set and play by their own rules
2. Easily and seemingly effortlessly overcome obstacles
3. Turn negatives into positives
4. Persistence, focus, and unstoppable drive
5. Strong values of integrity and ethics
6. Belief and commitment
7. Risk taking
8. Fearlessness
9. Listen to their intuition
10. Seek mastery

Benchmark your entrepreneurial spirit using a scale of 1 to 5 - with 5 being the highest - and see where you net out as a savvy business owner.