Leadership: According to Peter Williams

Peter Williams is recognized as one of Australia's leading thinkers in the area of innovation, technology commercialization and all things online.

Last night I heard him speaking at the RMIT Prize Giving Ceremony here in Melbourne.  He talked about leadership and according to Peter these are his three points when looking at a leader:

She/He will  -

   1.    Give you something to believe in

   2.    Be someone to believe in

   3.    Be someone who believes in you

He then went on to tell the graduates that they need to be keen to keep giving back to their profession and stated boldly to:-

 "Keep Putting In and Giving Back and you will have a good life.

The Power of Memories

This morning I was walking under the Flinders street Rail Station Tunnel on my way into the City.  It is usually crowded with thousands of people going hither and yon on their way to work, to meet people, to make life changing decisions and sometimes just because it is the shortest route for them to get to the other side of the station.   I am not a fan of the tunnel and often use an alternative route above ground where I can actually see the Yarra River and the sky.  However this morning I was using it and because I was a little bit later there were not too many people but there was a banjo player with his banjo case collecting a few coins for picking out a few notes.  I admire greatly people who are brave enough to put their talents on public display like this but there are times when their skills on the instrument are not matched by their bravery.  This morning I walked past and was content to simply look at it as a part of the colourful life of Melbourne’s city centre.

It’s a long tunnel and he was positioned in about the middle and I was about to climb the stairs when the notes seemed to strike a chord with me and I recognised the melody as the folk song that was used in Riverdance, that was made famous by Michael Flately and his Irish dance troupe a few years ago.  All of a sudden I was flooded with memories of playing in the K&N Brass Band and playing this as one of our major pieces in our concerts.  It was a difficult piece to play with strange time signature and set in unfamiliar keys, but it was just so exciting to play and I just loved playing it and being part of such a great group of musicians.  I then thought of the time that we went to see the floor show in Birmingham where it was onstage in glorious colour and I was again thrilled with the colour and enthusiasm of the whole show but just loved it more when the theme from Riverdance evolved using the traditional Irish instruments; very exciting.  Living in the UK it was easy to visit family in Amsterdam and being a market person frequented quite a few.  If we were there on a Saturday morning we always went to do some shopping at the local market in Jordaan.  We did it few times and we saw a group called 'Uzory' on a regular basis.  They were a group of muso’s from Eastern Europe who regularly did concerts in European Capital Cities and in between professional gigs did the markets as buskers.  The first time I saw them was in winter and they were all rugged up with heavy coats and hoods with just a few fingers bared to play their instruments; another time it was the middle of summer and so they were dressed in very summary clothes.  They played traditional music on traditional instruments but it was so exciting and on more than one occasion I lost the family who had moved on to do the shopping. One time I could hear them as we approached and they were playing the theme from Riverdance and as soon as I recognised it I just had to get over and listen close up.  It was amazing and although they did not recognise it as Riverdance, I gave them 10 Euro’s to repeat it and I just loved it all over again.

It all happened for me in a heartbeat and so I just had to go back and drop a few coins on the banjo bag of the guy who was picking his way through the melody; note by struggling note.  


The SBS TV channel has a by-line that says ‘Six Billion Stories and counting ....’  This is one of mine and I am looking for the next one.

Thinking

I have been thinking recently about what it means to have a big picture view of anything. It is accepted wisdom that you need to know where you are going so that 
a) you can have directions in how to get there and 
b) to know when you get there; 
        ...and this takes us to the old Ithica narrative as to whether the journey or the destination is the ultimate goal.

As a fundraiser I am constantly challenged by the need of one part or an organisation to raise funds, because that is what we are on about and the need to have an answer as to what the funds are to be used for. I sat with someone recently who refered again and again to what she called the 'Light on the Hill'.  I like the imagary of the goal as being that is where we are going and when we get there all the world will be well and we will know that we have achieved.  It is interesting to note that the Person that I was talking to was a board member of an organisation that completely folded a few months later.

However having said that, it is almost an end in itself, and there is no more need to 'do' anything. I am much more comfortable with the idea of a chain of responsibilty where we are all building on to what others have put in place and in our turn passing the fire on to others who will follow.

By all means lets look for that 'Light on the Hill' but let us also keep our eyes firmly on the task that is at hand, the things that we have to do every day so that we will eventually get to that light on the hill.

What do you do for your profession?

This morning I had contact with an exciting person by the name of Helena Steel.  She is a business coach, workplace trainer and speaker.  She is a volunteer and mentor to many people including Un Students, and also numerous new members of Toastmasters, who are overcoming their fear of public speaking.  Look her up here http://www.careerguru.com.au/

My contact with Helena is revolving around the '2' in 10 educational event that Fundraising Institute Australia is running in July here in Melbourne, but I was impressed with her take on some of the old principles of just simply 'getting on' with people.  I have been saying to fundraisers for many years that if you have five years experience under your belt, in whatever field, it is time to pass that wisdom on to other people who are new to the profession.

One of Helena's keynote speaks is called "Paying it Forward"; it was outlined in the movie of the same name a few years back and it is all about why Volunteering and Mentoring means that you will always have a successful career, because you have to give to get, its a Universal Law.

One of my other favourite characters is Jeffrey Gitomer, a sales motivational Guru from the states who makes most motivational speakers seem very tame but in his "Little Black Book of Connections" he talks about Networking.  Many people think that networking is where you get in with a group of people give away millions of little bits of card sometimes erroneously called 'business cards' and then wait until they all ring you to give you their business.  Jeffrey says Networking 101 is you have to give others something of value before they give something to you. "the question you have to ask yourself is:  How can I make people better as a result of connecting with me?"

Look him up if you are game; http://www.gitomer.com/ and if you are really brave sign up for his newsletter.

So; I ask again, What are you doing for your profession? 

JFK said it best "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country!"  We just need to change the word 'country' for profession, employer, family, friends, wife, husband, partner,  the list could go on.

Thanks Helena for your 'push to think!'.

The Golden Seed Guide to Positive Aging

For many years we have been in the grip of a fitness boom that says that the best way to approach old age is to be active and fit.  I have no doubt that fortunes have been made on the back of ‘over 50’s fitness’.  Yet so much evidence is pointing to something that life coaching has known for a long time and has changed many people’s lives in the process.  It is not so much the body that we need to keep active, but it is the strength of your personal foundation and the development of healthy attitudes that keeps one young.  ‘Young at Heart’ is not reserved for a special few but for all of us as we approach those golden years. 

There is absolutely no doubt about it you are going to age; but how are you going to do it? 

I can see four factors that seem to be significant in approaching and successfully negotiating your approach to retirement no matter what your age.

1.       Bend

The bend guide is all about flexibility, resilience, resourcefulness and adaptability.  It was Charles Darwin who said that it wasn’t the strongest or the most intelligent that survive; but those who are able to adapt to different circumstances.  When someone bowls a leg break then the batsmen has to adapt and possibly change the stroke that he was going to play.  After many years of living there can be a tendency to get stuck in a rut and think that because ‘it’ has always happened this way then it will always be so.  There are many stories of very successful people who after a lifetime of success, be it in any field when circumstances change, be it by choice or not, they find it difficult to cope and their world falls apart.  Are you Mr/Mrs/Ms adaptable? Or are you the person who rails at the world and complains that ‘it was never like this in the old days? 

2.       Stretch

The Stretching guide is all about taking things a little more lightly.  We have all worked with or know someone, for whom everything is a ‘sheep-station’; serious in the extreme to the point where someone might tell them to ‘lighten up and get a life’.  There are three parts that make up this stretching activity

a.       A Sense of Humour

There are times when approaching the Golden Years brings with it certain indignities that are sometimes trying and they can be quite troubling.  It is reported that Gina Lollibrigida when asked why she looked so good at 70 replied that she did good skin care, eat healthily and didn’t make ‘old people noises’.  Now many of us will associate with that, but there are times when it is just so important to laugh and that includes laughing at yourself.  If you haven’t got a sense of humour then go out and get one.

b.       An Attitude of Gratitude

Someone once said that they used to complain about not having any shoes until they met someone with no feet.  As the economic climate devastates so many peoples savings and so many people have genuinely suffered; it is still vitally important to focus on what you do have, not what you don’t have.  As we get older there are so many things that start to pack up and it is fairly easy to complain about what we can’t do rather than be grateful for what we can do.

c.        The Ability to Forgive

Of all the qualities of life this is one of the most important; yet expanding this ability is the one that many of us find most difficult.  Of all the things we need to approach the Golden Years this is the one that cannot be ignored.  Of course we need to forgive those who we feel have wronged us and let go of the desire for revenge.  There is a saying that indicates that by not forgiving it is like drinking a glass of poison and hoping that the other person will die.  It’s not about condoning or forgetting the past, but freeing ourselves from the power of what happened; and never forgetting the importance of forgiving yourself as well.  The ability to forgive is really about you 

3.       Live

If stretch was about taking things a little less seriously then ‘Live’ is all about embracing those qualities that make us sparkle.  It’s about having the capacity to play, love and a desire to ‘connect’ with others.  It’s the ability to be nourished by the past and celebrate what we have become, not necessarily to live in the past so that our mantra is all about ‘In my day...’ but to celebrate what we have become.  For some people it is in spite of our past rather than because of what has happened; but cause to celebrate anyway.  It’s about developing the attitude of continuous learning and curiosity about life and what it holds for us.  It’s about engaging with the world and expectation about what each new day will give us.  Without it we lose that ability to ‘Sparkle’. 

4.       Love
Add this all together and it really is about loving yourself and what you have become.  For some people it will be enough to know within themselves that they are really OK, for others it may be that it is about putting back into the community in some way; reconnecting with old friends so that you have a legitimate reason for doing the ‘.. and do you remember when..’ type of conversations.  For some it may be to remember the past and somehow record it for future generations.  Everyone has a story within them but it does not have to be written down just passed on in some way so that you are leaving something behind for the future.  One woman, who was a WWII WREN, related the story to me about her 30 year old daughter’s latest Christmas gift for her.  It was a journal and in the front cover she had written 'Dear Mum.  Give me the threads of your life and I will weave a blanket that will keep my daughter warm for the rest of her life'.

Make a commitment to develop these factors in yourself, and you'll build a solid foundation for all of the adventures you still have within you.  

"The Chicken Coop Warriors"

Yesterday I spent the day making a chicken coop for my sons family.  My son is not blessed with practicality in things of the building nature or maintenance; so brilliant in many other things and his favoirite saying is that "You major on the things that you are good at and leave others to do what they are good at", and so there I was with all of the things that you need to make a Chicken Coop.

I was ably assisited by our cousin Rick and together we turned a picture off the web, a few handwritten specifications on a scrap of paper into a chicken coop; of sorts.  We did not have all new materials but we bought a few basics and then raided their back yard where there was quite a bit of detritus from previous generations to use.

We made a frame of hardwood, and really struggled with cutting it with a saw that would have struggled with hard butter and we kept complaining that if we had known we would have brought 'The Cousin's' electric saw and it would have made it so much easier, however it gave us something to complain about and we finished up blaming as many people as we could for not having it, however next time we will remember and have it completed by lunchtime instead of late afternoon.

So! we had our frame and wire but we needed a hinged roof and so we found a piece of alluminum channeling and some roofing iron that we cut, not very straight I might add, for the roof and the sides of the shelter end of the coop.  We then found some old pailings that had been discarde and so they made up one side of the coop.  Of course we struggled with putting the staples into the hardwood, but eventually with a few bruised fingers and a bit of embarrassment as we struggled, we had it completed.

It is not perfect, and as we looked at it in its almost finished form it seems that our tape measure was different on each side, and it looked a a little out of allignment to most people, but to some it was the pinacle of creativity and ingenuity.  As we put all the tools back we could see the obvious imperfections as we compared it with the picture from the web.  However we had such a good time doing it that we both agreed that the chickens will never notice, that one side of the coop is longer than the other.  The chickens possibly would not have a great concern that most of the materials, were old and second hand, possibly with a few previous lives in some other construction, and they are unlikely to be very critical of what we have created for them so that they will simply do what chickens do in the first 'Fletcher's Family Farmyard Chicken Coop'.

Isn't it easy to want everything to be perfect when there are times we just have to do as well as we can from what we have.  There are so many people that I admire and am envious of the skills that they have, but all I have is what I have and my responsibility is to make the best use of the skills that I have.  It is true that 'there is nothing new under the sun' and our chicken coop is a prime example but so is my life, and all that I can do is pass on to others what I have recieved.  I am but a small link in a chain that spans many generations.

However I know that I can do better and be more effective in all the things that I am involved in.

Our next Chicken Coop is going to be so much better when 'The Cousin' and I do it again, because we now have experience, we will be able to improve out of sight on the one that we built.  I do not have the luxury of saying in 'my next life I will do whatever..." but I can improve what I have now and how I relate to others and support them in their journey.

The Chicken Coop Warriors will strike again

Golden Moments

It has been a puzzle for me for many years why there are times when everything is going well, you know the feeling “God’s in His Heaven, all’s well with the world” sort of stuff, and then without warning things seem to go astray and on the face of it there seems to be no rhyme or reason. A few years ago I was at a garden show with some of my family, they were very keen to see some of the vegetarian cooking demonstrations but, being a foodie philistine and a committed carnivore, this was not the highest item on my agenda and so I went and had a coffee, again, and on the back of a program for an organic vegetable steamer I started writing about these high and lows.

It was Socrates who said that the unexamined life is not worth living and I sometimes think that he went a little bit over the top for most people but he did have a point. It’s a shame that he did not put it into the positive vein by saying that the examined life if lived well can bring about a great deal of enjoyment; at the time and in the remembering and so it was for me on this Saturday afternoon at the National Arboretum in Coventry UK.

It was a great time to actually just sit, think and remember some of the parts of my life that in the everyday run of life seem to get lost and as I wrote about these perceived ‘Golden Moments’ a pattern begun to emerge that really made me sit up and start to take this quest a little more seriously than I have ever done before. Here before my eyes I saw what seemed to be the building blocks of creating a future of golden moments lasting long into the future. Could there really be a clue here for the future? Or maybe just an answer for some of those up and down experiences that I seemed to dog my life.

As I sat and scribbled I came up with some ‘Golden Moments’ in my life that I look back to and really enjoy the memories. This was not an extensive list and there were times that did not get a jersey although I remembered with a great deal of satisfaction and emotion. Sometimes they were brief moments but there were some that lasted over a number of years like bringing up my family with my wife, the years as a Salvation Army Officer, different places that I served, and a number of events in my ‘new life’.

So why did these times stand out for me? What made me remember them over all the other things that have happened? What was it that always makes me look back and feel that warm comfortable feeling, sometimes of loss, sometimes of pain but always cherished and good memories that I sometimes feel that I just cannot lose. Without them I would be the poorer and just a spectator in life rather than a participant.

As I searched for words the building blocks became quite evident for me and off the page leapt some common denominators that marked these 'Golden Moments'. There is nothing really new about all this but sometimes we forget to look at the big picture of our lives and simply focus on the negative and so the negative takes over and that is what it becomes. Many successful people have always promoted the fact that ‘you get what you focus on’ and how true it is for so many of us. Three common denominators came to the fore for me in this little reverie in Coventry. I do not propose that this is an extensive list for everyone but we will all, if we go through this simple exercise come up with different denominators but there will be common denominators for your Golden Moments.

For me as I expanded on these good memories there were three criteria that seemed to stand out among all the others. There were other things that happened but it seemed for me that these three helped me to create my own future. I am fortunate that there is good alliteration to help me remember them but they were
Competence
Community
Commitment
Are they easy to remember or what? So when I look to the future; ease of remembering these is very important to me when I get a serious attack of ‘CRAFT’.

Now when I talk about Competence; it is all about my perception not what other people thought of me. I have never claimed to be above a sparse average but I felt that I did a good job and performed all the functions that were required of me. Having said that there would have been some who would have despaired of me and I remember someone telling me ‘you will never get on because you are an agitator’. But despite this comment and others I felt competent at what I was doing; possibly because I was a ‘good’ agitator.

Community was a vital component in all of these Golden moments and what I learned in my home Church from age 11 to when I went off into the big world was the importance of Community. Even though I could be a bit of a larrikin, this Church family wrapped my in love and acceptance. I was a larikin, and I was good at it but the Church loved me through it. As I have gone through life I have seen the importance and healing of sad individuals when they find the acceptance of a community that they can be part of. It has for me become one of the most important words in our language and wherever I have been I have tried within the responsibilities I have had to create it in the people around me. It is something that we all crave whether we know it or not.

And finally, Commitment. This is something that could be talked about for a long time and it is a big subject that in some instances has possibly legal ramifications for both sides but in the way I perceive it, it revolves around a commitment to a future ‘something’ that is so much larger than we are. This came to the fore when I thought about the Golden Moment of raising my family, that in a sense goes on to this day, even though there is now another generation, but I am committed to them no matter what that future may hold.

So what does all this memory, good memories, have for my future? In an age when it is really easy to look at mistakes and errors and correct them, or not, as the case maybe, it does seem easier to focus on the negative. One of the reasons so many organisations are stuck in a rut is that they keep trying to get people on the same page so that progress can be made 'together' and much valuable time, energy and resource is spent on trying to correct the negative, whereas other progressive organisations ‘Move with the Movers’.

What has all this self introspective navel gazing meant? For me it has identified why these Golden Moments were golden and in the future I simply need to put these three things in place and I can have more Golden Moments, almost by default.

I want desperately to be ‘Competent’ in all of the things that I am involved in, be it my employment, my voluntary involvement and in my life, that also means personal issues as well. I simply have to be a competent human being.

I want to be in a ‘Community’ that I love and respect and who also love and respect me as well. That is not all that hard as long as I love and respect them first. Networking 101 has taught me that you should never expect anything unless you have given something first.

I want to be ‘Committed’ to something. Not just for a salary, or an easy life but really committed to making a difference in the world. This can be through a cause, ‘save the whale or the planet’, the future of a relationship, or simply to live a life that will make a difference to the people I have contact with on a daily basis. For many of us this could simply be rekindling a previous committment in a new place, a new setting, with new people; possibly who need us more than ever.

What does all this mean for me?

Like most of us I have had the ups and downs of life but this exercise has allowed me to look back at the Golden Moments and have possibly developed a tool to make more golden moments in the future, for me and those around me. I could reverse all this and reproduce all those really bad times, but I am quite sure that the Golden Moments are a better option for me.

What does this mean for you?

I have absolutely no idea. Cyberspace is a great place to hide but when you look at your life in the bathroom mirror every morning that really counts. You might like to tell me all about it so that we can all celebrate together.