What’s in this issue:
💭 Thought: Leadership is a choice
📚 Read: The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling (and what to do instead during conflict)
😆 Today’s Laugh
In honor of Valentine’s Day next week:
💭 Today’s Thought
Today I’m sharing one of my favorite perspectives on leadership from the book Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead; it’s a perspective that directly drives how I choose to lead both myself and others.
Give it a read and then notice for yourself (or take notes!):
What do you experience after reading this?
What words or phrases stand out?
What (if any) engrained thoughts or beliefs does this challenge for you?
What possibilities (if any) does this perspective hold for you?
Everyone has within them the capacity to lead, and any organization or community is most dynamic, most alive, and most productive when there is a commitment to leadership at every level. We all share full responsibility for the experience we generate, and our sense of personal power and fulfillment is directly commensurate with the level of ownership we are able to take for what happens to and around us.
We don’t have much to say about the challenges, hardships, and disasters (natural and otherwise) that befall us. This is the stuff that our lives are made of. However, we do have everything to say about how we engage and who we are in the events of our lives, about whether we offer ourselves or put our heads in the sand, about whether we seek to serve or give way to blame. We get to choose whether we will take responsibility for the world we are creating.
In this way, we have a kind of power that cannot be given to us and therefore cannot be taken away. Life is no longer just happening to us–we are co-creators and we share in the challenge and joy of shaping our world to reflect our own values and purpose.
We Create Our World.
Together.
Every Day.
Everyone has the capacity to contribute and to choose responsibility. Everyone has the capacity to lead. Leadership is a choice, and it begins with one’s willingness to be responsible for what is happening in one’s world.
- Karen and Henry Kimsey-House
🖊️ Today’s Reflection
If you’re new to journaling, I highly encourage you to read Nancy Adler’s article: Want to be an outstanding leader? Keep a journal.
This week, find a quiet place and gift yourself 10 minutes to reflect on any of these prompts (or invent your own!):
In what areas of your life are you presently willing and able to take responsibility?
In what areas of your life are you presently unwilling or unable to take responsibility (and which of the two is it?)?
What does leadership mean and look like to you?
📚 Today’s Read
The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling
Relationship researcher Dr. John Gottman pinpointed four behaviors that negatively impact relationships in a big way. Conflict will arise in our lives, but if we can learn to navigate it skillfully, we can preserve and even enhance the quality of our relationships. Click here to learn about the behaviors, and their antidotes. Which of these do you exhibit in your relationships (with your partner, kids, team, colleagues, etc.)? What need(s) are those behaviors satisfying for you, and how might you satisfy it/them in a healthier way?
See you next week!
xo,
Anne