Mastermind Meditate: Continuing the Journey
That’s when I came across Mastermind Meditate, a Texas-based mental wellness firm that specializes in neuroscience-based corporate mindfulness. When I saw that Mastermind offered a twice-yearly 60-Hour Mindfulness Facilitator Certification, I was immediately intrigued. I loved the idea of taking a six-month course that would expose me to a variety of expert teachers, deepen my mindfulness practice, and grow my voice and confidence as a facilitator of mindfulness experiences.
When I met with the CEO Dorsey Standish about joining the program, I was drawn in by her scientific background as an engineer and now neuroscientist who shares mindfulness from a research-backed perspective. I could relate to her story of leaving her engineering job in the corporate world to explore and share science-based mental health practices. I wanted to engage in a similar journey of changing worlds but bringing wisdom with me.
Enrolling in Mastermind’s Fall 2021 Mindfulness Facilitator Certification was one of the best decisions I have ever made because it truly accelerated my personal practice and helped me reach a deeper level of learning. All the learning occurred live, and I was able to connect virtually with like-minded people all over the world from my home in the South of France. The course provided a good mix of neuroscience learning, didactic mindfulness teachings, meditation practice, small group interaction, and practice facilitation. In addition to learning from Dorsey, we also heard from experts with diverse backgrounds in mindfulness and science like Dr. Adrianne Bagley, Janet Solyntjes, MA, and Dr. Marty Lumpkin.
In addition to deepening my personal practice, I also learned how to curate my own mindfulness classes using the Mastermind structure and a smorgasbord of tools like poetry, art, and science. I am grateful to the course for giving me the confidence to lead groups and support individuals with mindfulness meditation techniques backed by the latest neuroscience.
Since completing the course with Mastermind, I’ve progressed to leading larger meditation groups on Zoom (up to 50 people) and enrolling in Tibetan Shiné meditation training. Maintaining a deep personal practice while serving others and seeing them overcome their blockages brings me joy. With my training from Mastermind, I am now proud to play a frontline role in bringing a broader consciousness of mindfulness to my communities and world.
Are you too on a journey toward deepening your commitment to mindfulness practice and mindful living? As Seneca said, “When we teach, we learn.” Teaching mindfulness has been my biggest challenge and my most rewarding endeavor. I’d encourage you to join me in taking your next step with Mastermind’s program! Their next cohort starts in July 2022 and enrollment is limited, so apply today.
How to Explain the Inner MBA to Your Boss
So far, we’ve found that the Inner MBA is helping us become conscious leaders—people who are committed not just to our own growth and development but also to making a positive impact on the world.
Conscious leadership is something we can all benefit from, and the more of us who are committed to it, the better off the world will be.
What are your thoughts? How have you been explaining the Inner MBA to others?
Here are my thoughts, as Inner MBA alumnus of the first cohort in 2020–2021.
1. We are constantly learning and evolving
Inner work is the act of reflecting on our thoughts, feelings, and actions. This process is not always easy, but it’s necessary for us to grow as a person.
We’re constantly learning and evolving. We can’t stop this process. But we can make it better. We’re able to learn new skills and adapt to change. We are also able to see things from different perspectives, which helps us make better decisions about our lives, for us and for others.
Making the world a better place starts with ourselves. By constantly learning and evolving, we can be more aware of how we can contribute to the betterment of our planet.
We start by acknowledging that there is a lot of inner work to be done, and that includes healing our inner wounds from our childhood and generational trauma. We have to let go of what doesn’t serve us anymore in order to make room for new positive and uplifting thoughts and stories to come in, which will allow us to become more conscious and aware of our surroundings, near and far.
Learning is a lifelong process that can be done in many different ways, and it’s important to find the right methods for ourselves.
The human brain is an amazing and complex organ that has the ability to learn anything at any age (this finding is backed by science). We are always learning new things whether we realize it or not.
Consciousness is awareness of our surroundings and ourselves, which means we’re always making changes to our inner world as well as the world around us, knowingly and unknowingly.
An Inner MBA alumnus has a much greater awareness of what is going on in his/her/their inner life to be able to interact in a positive and uplifting way for their teams, and for the planet as an extension of their being and their work.
2. We’re not just focused on making money. We want to make our work a force for good.
As Inner MBA alumni, we want to make our work a force for good. We believe that we can create abundance and prosperity for all of us, while also serving the world and the people around us. We are committed to leading with integrity. We want to be a community that the world can trust, and we will do everything in our power to make sure that the people around us are proud of who we are and what we stand for as Inner MBA students and graduates.
How to connect a mindset of abundance with a servant’s heart? By connecting with others on a heart-to-heart level, actively listening and speaking our truth, and by creating an environment of love, lightness, trust, and deep confidence that allows to go above and beyond what we have ever experienced in our relationships.
Making money while being a conscious leader making our work a force for good is so much more than a marketing trick. It’s a real transformation of how we work, how we interact, how we see and understand each other, and how we do business.
3. We’re committed to our own growth and development
The more we heal and transform our inner game, the more we can show up better than yesterday and make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others.
This is an important step in our own growth and development.
We never emphasize enough the importance of self-care, and how it can help us grow as a person, cultivating a healthy relationship with ourselves.
We’re committed to our own growth and development because we know that, in order to be the best for our bosses, customers, colleagues, and families, it is necessary for us to be the best for ourselves first.
We believe that the key to unlocking our potential is by healing and transforming from within first, and to hold space for others to heal and transform as well, to embrace change instead of fighting it, and to drive up the positivity and happiness factors.
4. We’re passionate about making a difference in the world, to support the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set up by the United Nations
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are the world’s most ambitious agenda for sustainable development. The goals were agreed to by all 193 United Nations member states in September 2015, and they are designed to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. These global goals aim at ending poverty, inequality, and climate change.
It is not possible to achieve these goals without the help of each and every one of us. If we want to make a difference in our world, we shall start with ourselves, in our daily lives, at home and at work, spreading it to our companies, our competitors, and the biggest companies that make the biggest impact in the planet’s use of resources.
5. We’re open to new ideas and ways of doing things. The Inner MBA is giving us access to some of the best thinking in the world on conscious leadership.
There are a lot of stresses that come with being in a leadership position. In order to make sure that we are helping our companies, we shall make sure that everybody has the best support system possible. This is where conscious leadership comes into play. Conscious leadership is much more than just being aware of what is happening around us but also knowing how to adapt and change as needed, as well as driving positive impactful change within our companies by applying the transformative leadership that we learned (or relearned) during our Inner MBA journey.
These last two paragraphs are about some of the best conscious leadership thinkers and what they have to say about important topics. We have many thought leaders, including Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, and Daniel Goleman, amongst many other amazing transformative leaders.
Daniel Goleman is a psychologist who was the lead author of the bestseller Emotional Intelligence. Tara Brach is a well-known American Buddhist writer and teacher. Jack Kornfield is an author, Buddhist practitioner, Spirit Rock Meditation Center founding teacher, and one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. Tami Simon is an entrepreneur and founder of Sounds True, a multimedia publishing company that creates educational programs in the areas of personal transformation, spiritual exploration, wellness, health and fitness, and relationships. She is the one person at the origin of the Inner MBA, in collaboration with Scott Shute, former director of LinkedIn Mindfulness & Compassion Programs in 2020–2021 before venturing out on his own after the end of the first cohort of the Inner MBA, as well as Soren Gordhamer, who showed up every month by himself and with Karen May to hold space for the inner growth of Inner MBA students. Karen May is the former Vice President of People Development at Google, responsible for global learning and development, leadership development, and talent management, supporting learning for over 120,000 Googlers globally.
Sharing nine months with these amazing leaders has been a truly transformative experience, at our deepest core: recognizing our inner wounds, embracing change, understanding our IMMUNITY TO CHANGE—transformation leadership experience brought to us by Dr. Lisa Lahey. She leads the Personal Mastery component of a path-breaking new doctoral program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, designed to produce the public-sector equivalent of the “turnaround specialist.” A developmental psychologist and educator, and coauthor of Change Leadership and Immunity to Change, she led the research team that created the developmental diagnostic, now used around the world, for assessing adult meaning-systems.
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This article was written by Mrs. Gemma Serenity Gorokhoff (www.gemmaserenity.com) who was part of the first cohort of the Inner MBA in 2020–2021. She led the larger learning community, bringing together students twice weekly to put into practice the skills of active listening and deep transformation to the Inner MBA experience. She continues to host monthly meetings. To stay connected with her and with other Inner MBA alumni, besides joining the LinkedIn group, you can also sign up to her larger learning community email list by following this link: gemma-sascha.aweb.page/larger-learning-community
A Framework for Authentic Human Workplaces
For me there were fireworks!
I had an immediate connection to these “story patterns” and how I could incorporate them into my work with clients. And over the next 15 years, we grew a brand agency that became a proving ground for Archetypes.
We began every engagement by measuring the cultural Archetypes that existed in the organization and letting the brand story emerge from the culture. It was a powerful process that ‘unlocked the code’ of a company’s DNA, its heart and soul, and translated it into a story that leaders could build momentum around.
We got to see first-hand the way the story moves people, the way it ignites teams.
And we came to see that the framework of Archetypes – which is grounded in storytelling – could make culture ‘tangible’ and drive measurable business results.
What is it about story?
Many of the teachers we met through the Inner MBA talked about the importance of sharing our individual and collective stories as a starting place of self-awareness, positive relationship, and organizational change.
Chapter 1 of Scott Shute’s The Full Body Yes is ‘Know Your Own Story.’
Tiffany Jana said diversity and inclusion work needs to start with our own stories, “Everything that it has taken for you to arrive at this point in your life represents a really unique and personal journey, a story that is unlike anyone else’s.”
Steve Macadam invested in learning the stories of his employees, giving his time to let each person be heard and be seen.
Storytelling is as human as it gets.
In his ground-breaking work, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, the historian-philosopher Yuval Noah Harari connects story to the survival of our species.
He argues that “any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.”
“Story has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively.”
| Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens
Story also has a biological basis.
Our brains are wired for story. When we see or hear a story, the neurons in our brain fire in the same patterns as the speaker’s, a process known as neural coupling or mirroring.
And more recent discoveries show that our hearts get involved too! An astonishing scientific study published last September found that “Narrative stimuli can synchronize fluctuations of heart rates between individuals.”
Said another way: Our hearts start beating in unison when they’re captivated by the same story!
Yes, amazing things happen when human beings share stories. We begin to ‘think in sync’ and ‘feel in sync’. We survive . . . and we thrive.
A New Chapter: Human-Centric Cultures
Human thriving is a theme that’s front and center as we face a workplace that has forever been reshaped by a pandemic.
LinkedIn’s 2022 Global Talent Trends Report (The Reinvention of Corporate Culture) christens the 2020s as the ‘era of human-centered workplaces’ calling it a ‘watershed moment for company culture’ where organizations need to recognize that employees are human first.
There is a growing demand for workplaces to be more flexible, more meaningful and more diverse.
Employees are prioritizing their well-being and mental health. They are seeking opportunities to learn and grow. With the Great Reset/Resignation/Reshuffle taking place around us, many are reflecting on how their own stories align with the organizations where they work.
For their part, organizations can’t solve the challenges of the moment on a surface level.
Checking the culture box isn’t enough. Culture has taken center stage and every CEO has taken notice. But creating an organizational culture that attracts talent, drives employee engagement, and informs business strategy is challenging for even the strongest leaders.
As Steven Macadam shared in one of our first Inner MBA sessions:
“Leaders need ways to manage the ongoing challenge of human beings working together. And even more than managing operations successfully – it is cultivating the upside of human potential that helps organizations achieve their strategic objectives.”
The Three Domains of Human Possibility
As Steve set out to transform the culture at Enpro, he called it “his mission in life to crack the code and craft the method” to build an authentic workplace community that unleashed human possibility.
He knew he needed to ‘work across the board’ on the individual level, the communal level and the institutional level. These same three domains became the foundation of our Inner MBA program and it was one of the reasons I was excited to join the inaugural cohort.
Because in the years since meeting Carol Pearson, my team and I continued to expand the use of Archetypes. Through a business called CultureTalk, we now train coaches, consultants and in-house teams how to apply this simple storytelling framework to build awareness and drive change on a personal, interpersonal and organizational level.
The framework offers a ‘how to’ on building an authentic human workplace.
Individual Stories: Who am I?
Early on in our Inner MBA studies, Jeremy Hunter challenged us to see that “90% or more of our actions are on autopilot.”
“Mindfulness and the development of our inner capacities give us the space to question our default positions and to see ourselves constructing our experiences.”
Carl Jung said it this way: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
He believed awareness of our stories – the Archetypal patterns playing out in our own lives – is a path to expanding consciousness; to living and working with purpose and intention.
Archetypes are human stories – rich and colorful, but also flawed and relatable. When we uncover our personal Archetypes, we have a lens for understanding our motivations, strengths and even our opportunities for growth.
What Lisa Lahey called ‘hidden commitments’ in our Immunity to Change Maps, Jung called ‘the shadow’ – unconscious beliefs and behaviors that may be getting in the way of our growth. (I was able to do this entire exercise by reflecting on the shadows of my own Archetypes!)
At CultureTalk, we offer an assessment for individuals that measures personal values, perceptions and behaviors through Archetypes. Unlike other personality assessments, it doesn’t put people in a box. Rather, results bring to life each person’s multidimensional story. Through authentic reflection individuals create their profile highlighting motivations, strengths, blind spots, and biases.
A personal profile can be activated across the talent lifecycle – to recruit and hire, onboard, engage and retain, build personal purpose and brand, and to develop leaders.
Team Stories: Who are we?
As the Inner MBA moved from Mindful Leaders to Exceptional Teams, I loved this one-liner from Tami Simon, “Our state of being is contagious.”
And from Richard Strozzi: “Conflict generates energy. It’s the energy that allows us to work together.”
Both of these ideas get at the complexity of collaboration and teamwork.
Trust is fundamental to high performing teams. It requires a workplace where psychological safety and conflict resolution are prioritized.
Some of the most important ways team cultures need to evolve – including new ideas about diversity and inclusion, new generations in the workplace, and integrating remote teams – rely on new ways of thinking and working together.
Archetypes help teams build trust quickly. These human stories allow people to show up fully, safely and uniquely. They help team members understand how they interact, where their motivations intersect and how they are wired differently.
Through a common language, teams get to know each other better and faster. They appreciate both the similarities of their storylines and their diversity. They have a shortcut to successful collaborations and productive conflict.
Organizational Stories: How do we all come together?
Jung believed that Archetypes show up as ‘personality’ in individuals and as ‘culture’ in groups. So now I am back to where my own journey with Archetypes began!
Measuring Archetypes gave our clients a way to name, define and operationalize their culture; to turn it into a tangible asset and use it to align strategy, brand and experience.
At CultureTalk we offer an organizational culture assessment that measures shared experiences, underlying beliefs and observed behaviors through Archetypes.
Unlike other culture assessments, results do not pass judgment on a culture as ‘good ‘or ‘bad’ – ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ Instead, profiles identify which Archetype patterns are predominant, and shine light on the gaps between what we say we ‘expect’ and what we actually ‘tolerate.’
A unique cultural profile helps teams define purpose-driven missions, articulate authentic corporate and talent brands, and execute change and growth initiatives, including M&As.
Authentic Human Workplaces
Our Inner MBA Program moved from ‘me’ to ‘we’ and culminated with the challenge of ‘Making Work a Force for Good.’ It emphasized that we can not change the world for good without first changing ourselves and our organizations.
The framework of Archetypes offers a new opportunity for leaders who are playing the long game. These simple human storylines help us connect and align, lift and shift.
They can become a red thread that ties individuals, teams and organizations together.
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About the author
Cynthia Forstmann is a cofounder of CultureTalk, a training and development company that turns ‘culture’ into a business asset through the framework of human story.
Connect with her on LinkedIn or at Cynthia@CultureTalk.com.
The Emergence of a New Forest
And such is the case with the pandemic. We’ve all experienced personal loss and trauma that, while we may not have been aware of it at the time, and maybe still aren’t, ends up resulting in positive change. I can’t help but see this evidenced in what is happening globally now with the pandemic. Amidst the loss, destruction and trauma a new way of being in the world is emerging. Can you feel it? The way we work is perhaps the most obvious shift. Dramatic calls for change expressed in The Great Resignation and the r/antiwork subreddit movement. Our environment too is expressing its own frustration with unprecedented weather events happening globally.
Prior to the pandemic, I’d been keenly aware of a need for dramatic change in my life. I was coming off of a 5-year run of devastating loss and trauma; a gut-wrenching divorce (as if there is any other kind), the loss of both of my parents, the death of the father of my children and 2 cross-country relocations in 3 years. I was actively trying to manifest more peace, patience and purpose in my life. When the pandemic hit and the entire world immediately hit the brakes, I couldn’t help but think I wasn’t the only one trying to manifest change. Conspiracy theories aside, an abrupt halt of this magnitude leads one to posit that there has to be something deeper at play here. Perhaps a collective desire for change that, like a tsunami, gathers momentum far and wide until it finally breaks on the shoreline, forever changing the landscape.
If the IMBA program inspired anything within us, it was to be agents of change; specifically, conscious change. We all went into the program with a desire to transform ourselves so we could transform our businesses and our businesses could transform the world. We now have a deeper knowing of our inner selves as well as our capacity to lead positive change. I’m not sure Tami and Soren could have predicted how relevant and timely this program would be. If waking up the world is the mission of Sounds True, well the pandemic surely helped by stripping off the covers, dragging us out of bed and onto the floor. Perhaps it is that we, as IMBA alumni, are like the forest saplings, charged with guiding the transformation of our world towards more consciousness. Like the new forest fertilized with rich minerals from the old, we too bring the wisdom of our own unique experiences combined with our shared learning and understanding to help ignite and enrich new growth and transformation in our world. It feels just shy of a responsibility to take what we’ve learned and inform a higher order of being within ourselves, at work and on the planet. We can’t unknow what we now know and we can’t turn away from our responsibility to help build a new forest.
And so what does that really look like? For me, it looks like walking away from my corporate job to pursue what I know deeply is not only my divine purpose but also a grave need in the world; inspiring people to believe in and pursue the highest version of themselves, starting with myself. I feel called to contribute to the collective leveling up of humanity. I sense that calling in many of you as well. I suppose that is what brought us together in the IMBA program. Certainly, we don’t all need to quit our jobs to affect the evolution of conscious change. In fact, the workplace is arguably the best place to ignite positive change. Like the purveyors of love that my late mother-in-law inspired in my husband and his siblings, we too are called to bring the goodness that we’ve been taught into the world. Bringing our authentic selves to work, checking our armor at the door, agreeing to see and be seen fully, being open to and innovating from a place of deep connection with others; these are the fruits of our IMBA training. This is bold, courageous work. But like the forest saplings, we are nourished and fortified with the support of not only the content of the program but also our connection with each other. This is the growth of a new forest.
The time is ripe to take our newly fortified constitutions, our newly inspired ‘knowing’ and, like the bright green saplings dotting across hundreds of miles of Northern California hillsides, be the new change. Also like the saplings, we are scattered across the globe. We have the opportunity to impart our conscious wisdom far and wide. We have the opportunity to illustrate the new; the new way of working, living and being across our entire planet. Of course, we are a tiny fraction of the overall population of the world, but our power resides in our collective level of consciousness, not the denseness of our physical presence. And therein lies the hope! I believe in our collective ability to inform changes that will turn this massive ship towards calmer waters. I believe that the seeds of change have been planted with us for a specific reason and I believe in our ability to nurture those seeds. I believe we have a unique opportunity to be the watershed. I believe there is great hope for positive changes in how we respect each other, our differences and our planet. I believe in our ability to grow a better forest. Do you? Of course, you do. It’s why you’re here. It’s why we’re all here. It’s why we stay connected and why many of us signed up for a second round of IMBA. It’s why we continue to seek out opportunities for personal growth and transformation. It’s why we believe that hope is not something that is sought but rather inspired. And there are few images more hope-inspiring than new forest growth.
From Burnout to Bliss
To be clear, I am on this journey with you. I’m a “cautionary tale” of how to do it wrong but am mostly on the other side of it now. I don’t always get it right, but am delighted to share what I’ve learned as a founder who bootstrapped at first, but is now virtually obsolete in my own organization thanks to a great team and infrastructure.
What drove me to burnout in the past are edges I still work on, but once I brought them out of the shadows, they became gentler companions. Here are some of those edges.
- I’m afraid I’ll let people down if I don’t meet their needs – personally and professionally.
- This work is a bodysnatcher – most of us in the global space know this is one of our soul assignments. The stakes are high and there’s always much more to do.
- I’m afraid that if I’m not on top of everything, people will “find out” I’m not that smart. Imposter Syndrome has driven me to some extent.
- I came up in the 1980s “do more, be more, have more” culture; workaholism was a badge of honor.
- That same culture took the feminist message of “you can be anything” and hijacked it into “you have to be everything.” (For example, the Enjoli commercial – “The 8-hour perfume for the 24-hour woman”.)
- Lastly, if I slow down I’ll feel the deep pain of my former marriage.
I unearthed these edges while completing my Inner MBA via the work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. They believe that change often fails because people focus solely on behavior, but most efforts require changes to a person’s skill set and mindset. They posit: “Mindset transformation requires overcoming blind spots, unearthing our competing commitments, and freeing ourselves of limiting assumptions.”
In the course, I mapped out ways that block progress – why we don’t change despite the strong desire to change.
This was never meant to be public-facing, but we believe in radical transparency at Black Fox Philanthropy. I’m bringing that into the blogosphere.
This ‘Immunity to Change’ map shows how mindset, fear, and false beliefs kept me doing vs. being. My competing commitments and assumptions drove undesirable outcomes, contributing to burnout.
We are human “doings” – we’re wired for action – but at our core, we’re human BEINGS. It’s been my slow, decades-long learning to trust just “BEING”. Doing so has enabled me to be more effective on many levels as a visionary and one who leads vs. being in trenches where I don’t belong.
Let’s get tactical on how to bring more bliss into your lives while still caring for your mission and those around you. First, we don’t get to effectively play in the vision space without an infrastructure that supports us in successful work.
As a social entrepreneur, the visionary “app” is always running in the background. That’s a good thing – I can solve problems or connect dots effortlessly while “off duty”. But I have to have “off duty” time for this to happen. This harkens back to an article I read years ago: “Darwin Was a Slacker and You Should Be Too”. The piece highlighted how he and other giants worked just four hours per day. While I cannot turn off my entrepreneur brain except in meditation, or absorbing activities like skiing really fast or sleeping, the GOAL is to work four hours per day maximum, including meetings.
His post isn’t about having it all figured out, but to share hacks I’ve discovered along the way. Here are some of my hacks that can fit any situation.
- Mindset Shift | My company isn’t about me; it’s about the Mission. The North Star question became: What does Black Fox Philanthropy need? My key question: What does Black Fox Philanthropy need from me?
- The Firm needs me to be grounded and supported, my wellbeing a priority.
- The Firm doesn’t need me to take care of everyone, to put others’ needs above my own at the expense of the Mission.
This new lens enabled me to make hard decisions that resulted in greater overall health, sustainability, and boundaries for myself. It set me free from feeling I needed to hold up the sky alone. It was a false belief that ultimately limited our impact.
- Part-time Virtual Assistant | My virtual assistant has supported me and the company 10 – 20 hours per week for over three years. That would be time I would have spent on areas that weren’t my zone of genius and would’ve resulted in working 50+ hours per week, with diminishing returns per hour.
- Fractional COO | In 2019, we weren’t able to keep up with the demand for our services. We didn’t have a solid infrastructure and team in place to smoothly onboard and serve new clients at the pace at which they needed our support. The result was a waiting list, so I sought a fractional COO with Executive-level talent who had systems and operations as their main zones of genius. This was game-changing. While the COO was 15-20 hours per week for the first 90 days, after a Project Manager was hired, she scaled back on the number of hours to more of a strategic advisor role. She’s a vital thought partner on all things Black Fox Philanthropy, helping to optimize operations.
- Daily Mindfulness Practice | Centered around abundance, gratitude, and calling in more light to my energy for the highest potential of Black Fox Philanthropy. I know that leading this firm is one of my soul assignments. I humbly and delightedly carry out that assignment with as much support as the Universe provides – which is significant. I also set my intention for the day saying a prayer of gratitude that I get to do this work in a community with giants. My prayer at convenings includes, “May I go where I’m needed most today”.
- Granular Hacks | This post is not about having it all figured out; I don’t. But we all have discovered hacks along the way. I’ve shared some higher-level hacks, now here are some more granular hacks.
- Ruthless with EMAIL: Do, delegate, delete. If it’s mine to do and takes two minutes or less – DO IT – I don’t look at it twice.
- To streamline, I ask that team members put in the email subject line: “3 minutes or less – response needed by X date/time.
- SOS Score, Scale from 1 – 10. I’d do this in my weekly meeting with our COO and during crunch times – I would give her my SOS score, and we would talk about what needed to happen to lower it.
- “Do It Ugly” but get it done. (Internal company FAQ: What’s up with all of Natalie’s typos? I type 100 wmp, going for speed and moving something forward if it is an internal communication.)
- “The ugly first draft” – curate the content, but have someone else do the ugly first draft, like Fancy Hands. With that ugly first draft, I can craft it into my own voice and perspective. For example, I sent my outline for the Skoll webinar to a team member who then created the first draft of this blog.
- If someone can do something 80% as well as I can, delegate it. Good enough is good enough.
- Litmus test: Does doing this map accomplish my priorities? Does this move X forward? (My current lens: Does this help move $1B in new funding into the hands of proximate leaders in the Global South?). If it doesn’t map to my priorities, is it FUN? It’s always fun, it’s always an honor to teach – I say yes to things that bring me joy.
- Giving myself permission to slow down, enjoy the success and relationships – seek a depth of connection in my work with colleagues and clients. I give myself permission to take a walk if needed. Write yourself a “Permission Slip” if that helps. Take the work seriously, but not yourself. Enjoy yourself!
May you find the bliss you seek so that you can be a more effective leader and human the world needs all of us to be!