Becoming – elan

How to Lead in A Complex World without Losing Yourself

elan Bailey — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 05:09:00 +0000

2020 has hit like a tsunami.

Before the pandemic, social uprising, political divisiveness and climate change impacts of this year, we were already dealing with how to:

lead our lives, work and organizations with purpose, but no playbook for guaranteed success,
struggling to adapt and grow as we go, while leading ourselves and others,
in an ever-changing and often hostile environment, without losing our authentic selves.

Whether you lead yourself, a household, team or organization, you were already swimming in a sea of complexity. But 2020 has brought unrelenting waves of it.

The official term is VUCA — which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. In this age of advanced technology and rapid change, we’re living and leading in complexity all the time. And depending on your race, gender, age, physical or neural ability or sexual orientation, you could be facing greater levels of it with far less support.

If you’re standing by waiting for the day when things go back to normal and life feels more certain you might be waiting for a long time.

I see 2020 as the great wake-up call. As leaders, we are being called to adapt, grow and lead at the speed and complexity of life.

But trying to do so without adequate support and development can:

Limit our ability as individuals to:

show up and lead as our authentic and best selves,
create and maintain healthy relationships with ourselves and each other,
sustain high levels of performance and productivity without expensive or damaging consequences in other areas of our lives, and
adapt to unforeseen circumstances and setbacks or seize new opportunities.

2. Limit our ability as organizations to:

attract, engage and keep diverse talent,
develop sustainable cultures, systems and practices that honour the values, strengths and worth of people — as people not just economic inputs,
sustain optimal economic performance without irreparable damage to our people and the planet, and
adapt to unforeseen circumstances and setbacks and create new opportunities

3. Inadvertently do more damage than good, causing a new waves of complexity down the line.

As the Boeing 737 Max investigation and the Social Dilemma documentary demonstrate, when we as leaders and organizations embrace parts of our humanness, but not the whole human being, or serve some, but not all of our stakeholders, in the pursuit of economic interests, it can be limiting to our humanity at best and outright deadly at worst.

Given the state of the world as it is, where do we go from here?

The world needs adaptive, integrative and co-creative leaders now more than ever.

Even before I made leadership coaching and organization development my business, my focus and energy has been on 1. challenging and supporting people to show up as their best authentic selves within organizations and 2. challenging and supporting people to design organizational culture, systems, and processes to better fit the people they’re here to serve (inside and outside their walls).

This is my purpose on the planet. And I’m unapologetic about it.

It recently occurred to me though, that like a person who unwittingly tries to get all of their needs met by their significant other, maybe we’ve been trying to meet all of our needs in the workplace, when what we really need and want is community.

Enter UpLevel Leadership Academy.

UpLevel is an online leadership development community of practice that helps leader-practitioners at all stages adapt, grow and lead without losing your authentic self in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world.

UpLevel Academy was born from my guiding purpose and personal experiences. As a black woman, single parent, entrepreneur and leader in male-dominated systems for over 25 years, I learned the hard way how to navigate at the intersection of age, gender, race.

In the process, I experienced and overcame gaps in my capacity to adapt, grow and lead, without losing my authentic self. Despite facing setbacks, circumstances, unconscious bias and discriminatory systems.

Always looking for ways to turn challenges into growth opportunities and help others do the same, I founded the UpLevel Leadership Academy as an online dojo of sorts for leader-practitioners at all levels.

UpLevel brings together diverse thought leaders, facilitators and coaches, holistic programming, a dialogic facilitation and coaching approach and an experiential community to challenge and support you as you adapt and grow your leadership in your life, work and the world. UpLevel provides:

Leadership development programs that:

Support your whole being (body, mind, heart and soul) and your whole life (not just the part that happens between 9 and 5)
Challenge your thinking and perspectives beyond your comfort zone
Connect you with a diverse network of other leader-practitioners
Honour the experiences, innate wisdom and authentic power of the leader-practitioner you already are, and
Expand your leadership to not just survive a VUCA world but adapt and thrive in one.

A community of practice that challenges and supports your growth over time with real-world application and accountability.

Community engagement activities, events and curated resources that develop you as a leader in mindful and holistic ways (think Karate Kid, Wax On, Wax Off).

A cost-effective approach to leadership development to suit individual and corporate budgets.

An appreciative rather than problem-centric environment free from advertising algorithms, where we accept, appreciate and celebrate your values, strengths and unique perspectives and address challenges and complexity with curiosity, creativity and respect for each human being.

Join me on Thursday, Sept 24th at 12:30 pm Pacific time for a community conversation (free event) on how to reclaim your authentic self through the complexity you face today, and lead the change you want to see in the world tomorrow.

Are we feeling more connected or divided?

elan Bailey — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 22:20:00 +0000

As a 50 year black woman, single mother, entrepreneur and leader who has worked in predominantly male industries for the last 25 years, I could walk around being offended every day, all day. But I don’t.

I’ve been quietly watching as we flood our social, emotional and physical spaces with an ever-growing set of rules for how to be together as human beings, and I’m left with the experience in many ways of feeling more separate and alone than I ever did before.

Losing the ability to hug in an effort to save lives is one thing. But having to do an extensive google search on the latest terms and symbols, what they mean and who they may or may not offend by there use, can take a toll on my ability to live a heart-centered existence.

So my apologies if I’ve offended you. It’s not from laziness or lack of caring about you or what matters to you.

I stand in my desire to live a heart-centered life and to see you as the magnificent being that you are, even though I’ve been conditioned to see you as either a threat or opportunity as it relates to my own self-interest.

Like me, you are someone who has the right to self-realize and to experience love, unity and connection just by nature of being born (not because you’ve earned it, had to protest for it and demand it, or because a member of your family, community or people had to die for it).

As well, you’ve had experiences that I have not, and you have a way of interpreting your experiences that I do not. I’m curious about you. I’m willing to listen with you, to learn from you and to share my story if you’re willing to listen too.

But I’m watching as so many good people give away their power, energy and love in the minutiae of second-guessing and double-checking every word they say or write.

There is so much judgment and criticism to go around; so much emphasis on having to get it right, that many good people who were already a part of the solution are sitting on the sidelines in fear that they will inadvertently be seen as part of the problem. I have to wonder, what the long term impact will be.

During the #metoo movement, I watched many of the amazing heart-centered men that I worked with at the time start to get smaller and more self-conscious so as not to offend. And I’m watching it play out again now.

I agree we’re not so great at loving and relating to ourselves and each other. But that tendency extends far beyond race. I wonder if we’ve gone too far down the rabbit hole of judging and chastising each other.

My reality check is always, How does it makes us feel as humans, a community, a society? How does it impact the way we relate to ourselves and each other?

Do you feel more authentic, connected, powerful and loving? Or do you feel smaller, more self-conscious and separate, or more angry, afraid or exhausted?

Before we rush to judge each other, to accuse and assume, can we take the time and create the spaces to get to know each other’s intentions and values? Can we start by assuming positive intent, and if someone has really stepped in it have the courage to call them out with respect and grace, in the same way you would want to receive that feedback?

For the record, there are a lot of things I am opposed to, but I’m not interested in being anti-anything. The mind responds to the clear pictures we create in our imagination. For example, what happens, if I tell you not to think of a pink elephant?

What is the picture that you create in your mind, when you hear the word anti-racist? Does it give you an indicator of how to be a more loving human being, and to live in a way that doesn’t just take care of your own self-interest but also honors and respects all life on the planet?

Tell me, better yet, show me who you are and what you stand for. If you’ve been walking around unconscious and are just now waking up, I’ll give you the grace to know that it’s not always going to come out right. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to fail.

In the effort to fight for the rights and equality of my people, I may have given you the impression that I have a right to be righteous in pointing out the error of your ways. But I’m human just like you. I make mistakes all the time. I’m perfectly imperfect.

Failing is that part of our human experience that we don’t give enough space for or credit to. It’s not an excuse for continuing in our self-centered, unconscious march through life. But we can’t let it stop us from taking action.

More than anything I want to live in harmony with you my fellow being. I don’t have perfect answers for how to navigate this movement in a way that helps us feel more alive, powerful, loving, authentic, equal and connected. But I’m willing to learn and fail with you. Will you join me?

Feeling as a Gateway to Healing

elan Bailey — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 21:48:00 +0000

“A North Carolina police officer has been fired after being caught on camera saying he “can’t wait” to slaughter Black people and that a civil war was needed to wipe them out.”

https://www.newsweek.com/three-officers-fired-racist-comments-1513286

I thought twice about sharing this article. I don’t want to be a spreader of hate. I tried to suppress it, along with my deep deep grief.

But after about five hours of holding it in, the dam broke. All of the feelings enveloped me. And I allowed myself to cry, gasp, scream and cry some more.

In the process I realized I was feeling embarrassed and ashamed, as if somehow I did something wrong or bad to deserve this kind of hate.

I wonder if this is how a person feels when they’ve been living in an abusive relationship for a long time and the truth comes out publicly?

I’m so glad I didn’t stay there for long; personalizing this hate as if it means something about me. Instead of trying to suppress it, what I needed was to fully express it.

Just as my grief bubbled up and over, I had to jump on zoom with one of my mentors for a previously scheduled meeting.

Fortunately this was someone who has earned the right to my hear my story. So rather than rescheduling, I showed up and let it out. We spent the first half hour sobbing and screaming our frustrations together.

For those who think people are crazy for wanting deep police reform, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the article. And just feel what it must be like to be thought of this way because of the colour of your skin.

I know this doesn’t represent all cops. But how the f*ck do we give someone like this a gun, a badge and authority over the life and freedom of others?

If you’re silently carrying this grief, I hope you have someone you can sob, scream and gasp with. And if you think you need to hide your grief, your shame, your despair from the world, I can’t tell you what a gift it was to be witnessed in my pain.

Who is the person or people in your life that you trust with your pain, your grief, your despair? People that Brene Brown would say have earned the right to hear your story.

I hope you’ll let yourself be seen, heard and known. As even rushing to find solutions too soon can be a way of checking out of the pain and discomfort.

Most of us aren’t raised to be comfortable with facing into the shadow of our humanity. But I don’t think we can truly heal until we can deeply feel.

Summon Your Authentic Power, First

elan Bailey — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 21:53:00 +0000

For those of you feeling powerless and frustrated or anxiously wondering what you can do to be a part of the solution, my request is that you go inward first.

Authentic leadership is not for the faint of heart. It’s not for those who are more worried about social status and the appearance of doing something right or avoiding doing something wrong,

To be effective in this movement and not lose yourself in the process, you need to know the authentic unshakeable loving power at your core. Without that connection to your core, you’ll second guess yourself, be ineffective at change, show up as an inauthentic actor or actually do harm.

Why? because we all have an immunity to change; survival wiring that is designed to keep us safe and close to our comfort zone. Change of this magnitude will require you to go beyond your survival instincts. It will require you to summon your authentic power and take action in the face of consequences and circumstances beyond your control.

If it wasn’t for the will and courage of Darnella Frazier none of this would be happening right now. If you don’t know, Darnella Frazier is the 17 year old young woman who defied George Floyd’s murderers to film his death.

Maybe she thought that by holding that camera up and pleading with the officers that she could save George’s life. They ignored her words and tried to intimidate her into shuttering her lens.

But Darnella summoned her authentic power, holding her ground and her camera and in the process ignited a revolution. She will live with the memory and trauma of that for the rest of her life. And I don’t wish that on anybody. But she didn’t back down.

Equally so, if it wasn’t for Tarana Burke, and the many women who summoned their courage alongside her to say metoo, many of the Hollywood elite and the countless other men–who relied on their social power and the silence of the impacted, the enablers and the bystanders–would still be free to dominate and victimize their way through life.

What you’re seeing is the ripping up of social agreements and the dismantling of institutions designed to serve some of the people all the time, while leaving others out. It’s time to create new agreements that shape a world that works for everyone.

To hold your seat at the table, you’ll need to be(come) the more authentic version of yourself. The good news is you’re already an authentic leader at your core, but you’ll need to chip away at the layers of the social agreements that cover it up.

So if you’re wondering what you can do, or what it takes to be an authentic or even transformational leader in your family, your community, your organization or across the world, it takes presence, power, love and purpose.

What I’ve learned is that the times when I really suffer and/or cause suffering in my life, are the times when:

I’m operating from the chains of the past or fear of the future and no longer present in this moment
I give my power away to someone else for personal gain and lose myself in the process
I disconnect from my humanity and my deep desire for unity and connection
I dishonor my life purpose by silencing myself or not taking action

No regrets though. Sure, I learned the hard way. But I wouldn’t be who I am today without the experiences I’ve had. Everything that I am and everything that I’ve experienced led me to the study of human development and transformational leadership and has prepared me for this moment.

I stand unmessable-with in the face of coronavirus, career transition, and the cancer that is racism pervading the cells of our global body, all against the backdrop of raising my biracial son in a world that no longer seems to make sense by old definitions. Sometimes you just have to bring it down to the studs and rebuild.

So when you ask what you can do or what more you can do… Stand up and be(come) the Authentic Leader you are.

Be Present: Wake up and be present and grateful for all that you have. For those who live with white privilege, I’m not asking you to feel ashamed of it. I’m sure most days it doesn’t feel like privilege. You’re out there working hard for what you have. But recognize that you do have unique access to opportunities that others do not or have to work much harder to get. Your privilege is unique to you. So what is it that you can uniquely bring to others through this one life experience?

Use Your Authentic Power: There are two streams of power: social power, which requires agreements, structures and external validation to be held in place and authentic power, which is intrinsic. Go beyond your social power to connect to your authentic power. How well does your life and your leadership express and honor that power today?

Let Your Purpose Guide You: Use your life and your gifts for something meaningful. Stop living from the scarcity and survival mindset that devalues the precious moments and diminishes yourself and others just so you can acquire yet another trinket.

Whatever you’re feeling, now is the time to clear out the cobwebs of complacency, connect to your authentic power and channel that energy into action!

Possible Actions

You can support members of your community who have less than you or are struggling with the many upheavals that 2020 has brought. You can contribute to the GoFundMe for Darnella. Or you can take action by donating to or volunteering with the not-for-profits that can make a difference in your community.

Shore up Your Leadership: If you’re committed to developing your Authentic Leadership and would like support or a place to start, you can direct message me, visit https://bookme.name/elanbailey to book a one-on-one or learn more about my upcoming programs at https://uplevelmyleadership.com.

Finally, I’ll leave with you excerpts from the two of the leaders that have inspired my action:

Maya Angelou – Still I Rise

[…] Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise.

You can read the full poem here

Dr. Martin Luther King on Power and Love

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

A Head and Heart Approach to Navigating a Downturn

elan Bailey — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 22:04:00 +0000

Entrepreneurship is emotional.

One day you’re feeling on top of the world, bringing your craft and creativity to market.

The next month, week, day, minute, you’re down, wondering what you were thinking when you decided to be 100% responsible for your own and other people’s happiness.

As entrepreneurs, the emotional roller coaster is our day to day reality.

Most of us don’t even recognize we’re on it until someone like a business partner, coach, mentor or spouse points it out.

As such, I’ve met many entrepreneurs who make emotional decisions about how to run their business.

In a time of high uncertainty and economic contraction, emotions can help you get clear on what you care about and summon the drive and resilience you need to navigate through.

Maintaining a sense of love, connection and belonging is critical in times of uncertainty and fear.

But when it comes to making business decisions, you want to rely on data rather than pure emotion.

This is where savvy business owners make key decisions that not only help them survive a slow down but thrive beyond it.

This month, my colleagues and I at Cultivate Advisors will be leading a workshop on taking a head and heart approach to navigating a downturn.

We’ll explore:

The financial models you need to understand your current and future position and make critical decisions
The key metrics you need to be paying attention to and how often
How you can drive additional revenue or remove revenue barriers
What you can do to bring more operational efficiency and help reduce costs if your market is leaning out
How to lean into community and connection to not just survive but thrive in uncertain economic times.

We’re still working out the workshop details but DM if you’re interested.

Is Scarcity Thinking Driving Your Entrepreneurial Dreams Into A Ditch?

elan Bailey — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 22:33:00 +0000

You’ve heard the saying, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” How does this apply in running your business?

No matter how vast the opportunity around you, if you see the world as hostile, your background conversations centre on scarcity and separateness and how to survive being a victim or overcome it. In the process your decisions and actions are guided by a hidden agenda to play it small and safe or manipulate and dominate your way forward.

If you see the world as friendly, you see a world of possibility around you. Your background conversations centre on freedom and opportunity, and how to use your resources and talents to create and innovate while developing deeper connections and integration with the world around you.

For entrepreneurs that’s often how we start our businesses. We focus on our opportunities for leadership and self-determination. We see a gap in the market that aligns with our passion and competence. Despite the fear, self-doubt and risk, we take a leap. We move through our scarcity thinking and take action.

But it’s not long before the old filters kick in, and we find ourselves in the passenger seat with scarcity at the wheel about to drive our dreams into a ditch.

Mindset directly impacts how we lead ourselves, others and our business. In this Co-Creative Leadership series, I’ll do a deep dive on how shifting from a scarcity mindset to a co-creative mindset can impact our leadership effectiveness and outcomes.

Leading Yourself (From a Scarcity Mindset to a Co-Creative Mindset)

Impostor syndrome is a background conversation that has become a foreground conversation of late. But it’s interesting to me that it’s often characterized as something only women experience. I disagree. Having coached people of all genders at different stages of their careers or business, this is something that most people feel from time to time.

The difference between you and someone you see as more successful than you, is that they’ve disciplined themselves to take action in alignment with their greater commitment, regardless of what they’re feeling. And they surround themselves with people who hold them bigger and accountable to their commitments.

This is the essence of a co-creative mindset and leadership — being able to align our actions with our commitments, which are stable and future-based rather than our feelings and thoughts, which are fleeting and past-based.

Here are some healthy habits to focus on in developing a co-creative mindset:

Purpose — What is your why for running your business? Strategies and tactics will change over time but purpose is enduring. If you don’t know your purpose, or haven’t connected to it in a while you can use an Ikigai exercise to get to the source.

Ikigai is the intersection of what you love to do, what you’re good at, what the world needs and is willing to pay for.

Commitments — What is your greater commitment for your business? For most people, it’s not enough to say you want to make a certain amount of money. Your commitment should be bigger than you, and include the people and things you care most about. Think your family, your team, your clients, your community and your planet.

Morning intention — Start your day with intentionality. What are you out to accomplish or contribute today in line with your greater commitment? Have your intention rather than your reaction to email, news or social media be at the forefront of how you start your day.

Acceptance — This is a big one. The results you’re getting or the challenges you’re facing are just feedback — data points that you can use to adjust and align. Many of us waste a ton of mental energy, fighting against what is instead of accepting it. This is where I used to get tripped up, confusing acceptance with agreement.

Accepting what is doesn’t mean you agree with it. It means you are standing in your full power and poised to renegotiate or take effective action on something that isn’t working for you. Mental resistance, is an indicator that you’re not connected to your power and/or you’re not connected to others around you. Restore power and connection by:

reconnecting to your purpose and commitment
accepting what is and taking responsibility for it
surfacing your intention and gratitude and
taking action in line with your commitment.

Gratitude — I like to make gratitude my go to for life. When I’m going through a rough patch or not seeing the results I want, I use gratitude as an immediate way to shift my perspective. It costs me nothing and profits me everything.

While you’re developing muscle in this area, at the very least, end your day with gratitude. Ask yourself, “What about your current role, business, challenges and opportunities, your health, your team, your family, your community and being alive at this moment in time — are you grateful for?”

Self Care — Are you getting exercise? When you stop working are you able to relax, unwind and make time for yourself and your loved ones? Are you able to be fully present with them without worrying about your work, your business or the 10,000 things on your to do list?

When we operate with a scarcity or survival mindset, it limits our potential and our connection with others and can lead to burnout or breakdown. When we operate from a co-creative mindset, it becomes the foundation for our greater fulfillment, contribution and connection with the world around us.

In Part 2 and 3, I’ll explore how a limiting mindset impacts your effectiveness in leading others and running a business and what you can do about it.

___________

elan Bailey helps entrepreneurs grow and scale by aligning your mindset and actions, values and habits with your culture, systems and strategy to create high-performing teams and an advantage in the market that can’t easily be replicated.

As an objective third party she challenges and supports you in developing your personal mastery and leadership by helping you see your blind spots and gaps and provide a reality check for those areas where you’re downplaying your potential based on untested assumptions. Ask me about how shifting mindset can help grow your business.

New Year’s Message 2018

elan Bailey — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 22:46:00 +0000

Every year around this time, I make a point to be still and listen to the heartbeat of my life. I’m listening for what wants to be born and what needs to die. I’m feeling into what wants to be celebrated and what needs to be forgiven.

I’m listening for the things I cannot not do that somehow keep getting pushed off my “becoming” list in the pace of the everyday. I’m listening for the intention of my life.

My intention for this year is love, which bears defining so as to distinguish it from its many overused forms.

Love for me is connection even as it pulls me out my comfort zone and into the high-intensity light of being fully seen and known by others in my life and my work.

It’s consciously choosing gratitude over griping about my first world problems.

It’s living the question by knowing when to let go of the need for concrete answers.

It’s head thrown back, wide-open laughter that takes my breath away, and with it the illusion that I’m in control.

It’s acceptance that I will f**k it up, things will go sideways, I will unintentionally hurt you and feel hurt by you while having the grace to know even in our moments of misery how deserving I am, how worthy we all are.

It is being generous with my gifts, my expression, my contributions in a way that honours all that I’ve been given and have created and affirms the life in you and around us at the same time.

It’s celebrating the joy, messiness and magic of womanhood — body, mind, heart and soul — not as a way to separate myself from the wonderful men in my life but as a way to bring me closer to myself and as a result closer to each one of you.

My One and Only Resolution for 2019

elan Bailey — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 22:41:00 +0000

Being 100% Responsible for My Life

2018 was a phenomenal year of transformation for me by all measures.

I started the year struggling with burnout, no longer being at my best in a job I had so deeply loved. And went on to fulfill on some of my greatest accomplishments including:

completing a 25 year transition to a career/business in people development,
starting a relationship with the love of my life after being single for over a decade,
learning just what it takes to live love as a practice in all areas of my life (which was my intention for 2018), and
discovering my deepest source of personal power.

I consider myself a lifelong learner and have invested heavily in my own personal and leadership development over the last 30 years.

But what I discovered in 2018 is just how important it is to take responsibility not just for my actions but for the soundtrack that is running in the background of my life.

As I worked through some of my biggest challenges of 2018 and got clearer on my deepest aspirations, I started paying closer attention to the soundtrack of scarcity, separation and self-doubt that would get louder and more all consuming as I moved towards my vision.

I noticed that often times rather than deal with the dissonance, I would resort to my comfort zone, where the soundtrack would quiet down — at least for a little while. Once I noticed this pattern, I made it my number one job to take responsibility for restoring my power anytime the soundtrack started to play.

Developing Your Own Creative Soundtrack

When facing a goal or challenge, it’s natural to experience self-doubt, fear and thoughts of scarcity. This is part of our drive for self-preservation and survival. Doubt and fear aren’t a problem.

Personal power, though, is about seeing yourself as responsible for, rather than at the effect of your life. It’s about creating your life in every moment — no matter what challenges arise — as opposed to reacting your way through it.

Here are some essential practices that I use to take responsibility for my life and switch my soundtrack from problem to possibility, scarcity to sufficiency, lack to love:

Put a stake in the ground for something that excites and scares you. I saw a coffee mug in the office this week that said “You didn’t wake up to be mediocre.” Do things that stretch you. When I put a stake in the ground for something bigger, it doesn’t just bring me closer to my aspirations, it challenges and disrupts me in ways I’m never prepared for. I’ve learned that that’s a good thing. This helps us uncover our blind spots and all the hidden ways that we’ve been holding ourselves back.
Start your day with a soundtrack of possibility. We have a tendency to live each day as a continuation of the one before, as if we’re an extra in someone else’s movie, waiting to see how the plot will unfold. The truth is you are the director. You have the power to recreate your life in any moment. First thing in the morning, before your feet hit the ground is an ideal time to declare a new possibility for the day ahead. In particular, address the areas where the soundtrack of scarcity and separation have been playing the loudest. What would be possible if you let go of your assumptions and fears from the past?
Get out of your head and into your body. We’ve been conditioned to rely on our thoughts and feelings as decision-making tools. But I’ve noticed that most of my thoughts and feelings are based on my skewed interpretations of the past and therefore not an accurate barometer of future outcomes. Am I feeling fear and avoiding a particular action because it’s not aligned with my purpose and values, or am I unconsciously trying to stay in my comfort zone to avoid the risk of looking bad or failing? It’s not always obvious. I use a Kundalini Yoga practice to quiet the mind, open my heart and awaken my creativity and will, which creates a strong foundation for the next practice.
Take bold action. Are you in the arena grappling with life or spending time on the sidelines trying to strategize and plan your way through it? Living life on the sidelines, shouting your opinions, thoughts and judgments at the other “players” may reduce your sense of risk and vulnerability, but it also keeps you playing small and robs you of the richness of your experiences. There’s no right, or even wrong way to do life. Experiment often. Take creative risks. Get comfortable with being in the arena, falling down and learning how to pick yourself up in any circumstance. You’ll come to know and grow yourself as fully empowered and resilient, and even surprise yourself with results that were previously in the realm of the impossible for you.
Be a learner above all else. If you’re not learning as much from your pursuits and failures as you are from your accomplishments, you may not have enough stretch in your life. Disrupt yourself for continual learning and growth.
Get comfortable with vulnerability. It didn’t take me 25 years to transition to people development because I was lacking the skills and experience. It took me that long because I set it up in my mind that if I failed at the work I was most passionate about it would be worse than death. Now that I’m in the arena full-time, I realize that I’d rather be in action doing the thing I love, even if I fail sometimes, than sitting on the sidelines trying to get it right before entering the arena at all.
Hold your point of view as one possibility rather than the truth. We’re experts at spinning our own soundtrack of scarcity and separation as though it were reality and then feeling like we need to defend ourselves against people or situations that threaten our way of being and thinking. Notice when you’re making yourself or others wrong. When you’re more committed to being right than being in relationship, you avoid being responsible for your life and block the flow of love and learning.
Make space in your life for disruptive differences. Can you be with people whose thoughts, ideas and ways of being differ from yours? Notice the difference it makes when you’re able to listen and be with the differences of others without feeling threatened by them.
End your day with gratitude and acceptance. Take stock of the victories and achievements, the missteps and failures with an orientation of acceptance and responsibility. This is how we learn and grow. If there are upsets and unsaids from the day before that need to be addressed, plan to address them asap from a place of responsibility and possibility rather than from the fear of how you think it’s going to go based on experiences of the past.

Whatever your vision or resolutions for 2019, when you hold yourself as 100% responsible, you’ll realize that you’re already fully empowered and have everything you need to create the life you truly desire.

The World Needs Your Leadership

elan Bailey — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 22:49:00 +0000

You are the leader you’ve been waiting for.

Imbalances of power and love, show up in the way we listen, speak, act and relate to ourselves and each other.

Many of us have it that we can’t fully be ourselves at work because of our role, our boss, our co-workers or the culture. I don’t discount that some people are facing dangerous or threatening dynamics at work. But for most of us, the fear is self-generated based on experiences of the past.

The moment we relate to our work from the stance that we can’t be at our best unless something or someone else in our environment changes, we become separated from ourselves and give our power away to circumstances. We are no longer in the driver’s seat of our lives.

We then perpetuate and reinforce this way of communicating and relating throughout our careers. We make many seemingly harmless choices in the moment to be self-preserved rather than fully-expressed in our communication, and at the effect of rather than at the source of in our relationships.

And out of those minute-by-minute micro-choices, multiplied across billions of interactions, between millions of people each day, we create the kinds of unworkable relationships, families, organizations, communities and societies that we have today.

What are you a stand for?

Answering the call to integrative leadership is an invitation to be responsible and accountable for what you are generating in the way that you listen, speak, act and relate to yourself and others. It’s an opportunity to reintegrate power and love in your life and work, and to choose in each moment how you show up and what you’ll co-create going forward.

When you’re invested in and called to lead from a place of full accountability and responsibility, you’re no longer on the sidelines waiting on power, permission or circumstances to line up and pave the way forward. You become a natural catalyst of change. Your quality of being, communicating and relating becomes the context for the way in which the work of the organization unfolds.

In whole, thriving organizations, we’re not dependent on policies, penalties or payouts to curb unwanted behavior. Each one of us is a demonstration of what we’re committed to, what we stand for and what is unworkable in every moment of our shared experience.

In order to restore wholeness and foster cultures that generate a deep sense of relatedness and connection among all people regardless of ability, race, gender, sexuality or otherwise, we need bold leaders and courageous change agents to step forward at all levels within the organization.

Up until now, we haven’t had a lot of support in this area. It’s understandable that our integrative leadership muscles are under-developed from lack of use. What we need are shared competencies and practices that challenge and champion us as we reintegrate power and love and redefine how we work with, lead and create together as whole human beings.

As we do, we will bring a new quality of wholeness and vitality to our lives and organizations and generate new levels of performance, profits and shared prosperity in the process.

Reserve your copy of the free Power to Performance guide and get access to our integrative leadership self-assessment tool.

Getting to the heart of the matter

We are relational beings, who over time have become increasingly disconnected from ourselves and each other. Now more than ever, as we navigate the increasing complexities of our work and our world, the question becomes, “How do we relate to ourselves and each other in a way that unleashes our greatness, enriches our work and creates environments, cultures and communities where people thrive, not just survive?”

Author and social change agent, Adam Kahane, writes that “To co-create new social realities, we have to work with two distinct fundamental forces that are in tension: power and love.” He goes on to share a definition of power and love offered by Paul Tillich, a theologian and philosopher who has done extensive studies on the nature of these dynamic forces. Tillich defines power as the drive to realize our greater potential, and love as the drive to unite the separated.

When power and love are separated or out of balance they become degenerative. When they are integrated and working in harmony they are generative. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

We have only to look at the persistent people and culture issues in our organizations today — from sexual misconduct to disengagement, high burnout and stress, low morale and performance and a lack of diversity and inclusion — to see that the dynamic forces of power and love are woefully out of balance.

The work of reintegrating power and love in our lives and work is critical to creating healthy and thriving organizations. But since we can’t point to power and love — only to the experiences they create and the results they produce — it can be challenging to know exactly where to start.

This is where your leadership comes in.

You are the leader you’ve been waiting for.

Imbalances of power and love, show up in the way we listen, speak, act and relate to ourselves and each other.

What are you a stand for?

As we do, we will bring a new quality of wholeness and vitality to our lives and organizations and generate new levels of performance, profits and shared prosperity in the process.

Reserve your copy of the free Power to Performance guide and get access to our integrative leadership self-assessment tool.

Google’s recent firing of 48 employees for sexual misconduct is just the latest report in a year-long uprising against unacceptable and dysfunctional behaviour in the workplace. Behind the scenes many intelligent and well-intentioned people are working hard to find solutions. But one thing is increasingly clear, throwing more money or policies at the problem isn’t working.

As Peter Senge shared in the Fifth Discipline, the most obvious answer isn’t always the best. When we treat complex problems with quick-fix solutions, rather than addressing them at the source, we tend to create new problems elsewhere in our organizations or lives.

Getting to the heart of the matter

This is where your leadership comes in.

You are the leader you’ve been waiting for.

Imbalances of power and love, show up in the way we listen, speak, act and relate to ourselves and each other.

What are you a stand for?

As we do, we will bring a new quality of wholeness and vitality to our lives and organizations and generate new levels of performance, profits and shared prosperity in the process.

Reserve your copy of the free Power to Performance guide and get access to our integrative leadership self-assessment tool.

Change as the Gateway to Greatness

elan Bailey — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 23:06:00 +0000

Change at work, whether by choice or by circumstance, can be unsettling at best and traumatic at worst. When we’re jolted out of our comfort zone we may end up feeling disengaged, disempowered and stuck. Or stressed and burnt out as we grapple with increasing uncertainty about our future.

At first blush, it may feel like circumstances are happening to you. But in many respects, they’re actually happening through you, since you always experience change through the filters of your current way of being and doing. In that way, change is nature’s way of helping you see what was previously hidden in your blind spots.

When we find ourselves confronted by change or our reactions to it, it’s an opportunity to discover areas of our work or business where we’ve previously been operating from a loss of authentic power, freedom and self-expression.

It points to the places in our life where we’ve made small trade-offs to stay safe and survive while compromising our vitality and diminishing our greatness. Places where our previous ways of being, thinking and doing may have kept us comfortable, but also playing small and settling for less than in our resources, relationships and results.

That might be hard to hear, but it’s actually good news. It means that you have the power to shift how you navigate through change to create something that is better aligned with who you really are, instead of who you’ve unintentionally become.

But transformational change rarely happens on it’s own without investment. Even though change offers one of our best opportunities for personal growth, professional development and organizational evolution, it can also trigger our survival response, causing us to dig our heels in even further taking on positions, roles, or transactional approaches that protect us from risk and theoretically help us avoid failure or looking bad.

Constant change within the tech industry is par for the course. But when we try to navigate change as a series of tasks and transactions and ignore the transformational aspects that it stirs up in ourselves, our employees and our leaders, we suffer huge losses and waste in terms of time, money, effort, relationships, communications and our greater potential.

It also lowers morale, engagement and confidence in leadership, while increasing resistance, entropy and the likelihood of failed implementations down the line. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

For individuals and organizations who are in the midst of ongoing change or who have big, hairy, audacious goals ahead, three things are vital to fostering change as the gateway to greatness in yourself and your organization:

a fertile environment and commitment to learning and growth in the midst of complexity and change,
the systems and support to explore and disrupt the unconscious limits and habitual tendencies that keep people (including your leaders) playing small, and
recognizing yourself (and everyone in your organization) as a powerful co-creator in the process.

That’s why this fall, I’ll be hosting Owning Your Power at Work 2.0, revised and updated to support individuals who work in or lead tech companies in the midst of ongoing organizational change or who have big, hairy, audacious goals in this area.

Owning Your Power at Work 2.0 is available as a public program for Individuals (starts the week of Sept 17th) or as a private customizable program for Teams/Organizations of 12 or more.

DM me to learn more or use the links above to register.