Creative Leadership Coaching

In Western culture, we tend to be inclined to believe in and aim towards static and desireable future. In myths and fairy tailes, our heroes’ and heroines’ journies end in a static, experientially eternal state of bliss or pain. This is also a theme of monotheistic religions, which have shaped our worldview over the past [...]

One of my mentor-coaches, Lou D’Alo www.powerupcoaching.com signs his emails with the phrase, “To your fulfilling success.” I really appreciate this phrase, because it expresses a Partnership approach to success that encompasses both our qualititative experience — happiness and fulfillment  — and our quantitiative results. It feels richer and more complete. An activity or state of [...]

“Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively. I hear them all at once. What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively, dream.” –Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Good morning, readers! It’s been a very intense time for me on the career coaching side of my practice, [...]

Especially given the turmoil in the markets in recent days, it seems to be good timing to return to the subject of how we can leap off the “hamster wheel of fear” — a self-perpetuating negative cycle — and onto our wheel of creative freedom.  Recently, I had the privilege to watch a presentation by certified hypnotherapist, Monica [...]

In earlier posts, we talked about how our “wheel of fear” (Britten 2001) can lead us to take actions that perpetuate the very conditions we are trying to alleviate with our reflexive actions and the wheel of being (Christie 2008) which shows how both our “wheel of fear” and “wheel of freedom” (Britten 2001) are driven [...]

In Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, Margaret Wheatley discusses the metaphor of the organization as self-organizing system.  From a biological perspective, we can see that successful systems dynamically both help shape and adapt to changing environmental conditions: the successful organization and environment evolve together.  Conversely, the unsuccessful organization might be seen as one [...]

Executive coach Robert Hargrove (1995) asks, “Why do so few chief executives succeed at making their vision statements come alive, even when people agree with them intellectually and emotionally? Why are so many managers and employees frustrated, skeptical, and even cynical aobut their own ability to make something happen?” (107) Hargrove interviewed Dr. Peter Scott-Morgan, an [...]

Theories of leadership are informed by our understanding of the world, including our understanding of others.  This post will consider the worldview out of which the bureaucratic organization arose, including its understanding of creativity and intelligence, and then examine the nature and role of leadership in light of that understanding.  This is valuable to us because [...]

One of the purposes of this blog is to encourage fresh thinking with respect to how we can most effectively collaborate to achieve worthy goals.  According to leadership gurus, James Kouzes and Barry Posner, getting extraordinary things done in organizations in the current age (often called the “innovation age”) requires leaders who can: Articulate a vision of [...]

In the spirit of the New Year, this week’s post relates to our visions for a better future. Vision is central to leadership. As leaders, we perceive possible desirable futures and take actions to co-create them. A great vision can both suggest the actions needed to achieve it, and unify and inspire organization members to take [...]