From the mailbag…

Rolands Vars writes:

 

Hi, great articles, but you know what ? There is one minus, you need to write your articles more funny

August 30th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

Roland, thank you for your comment. More funny is a good idea.

Which got me thinking about the role of humour in Visionmaking!

Humour shares the same root as humid; it literally means, “to moisten.” A sense of humour keeps us loose and flexible, able to maintain equinimity in pursuit of what has heart and meaning in our lives.

Humour uses a gift of insight to illuminate a deeper truth and communicate that truth through the medium of joy, surprise and delight.

True humour is always benign – it is a vehicle of inclusion, revelation and transformation. It supports balance through right attitude and allows the Visionmaker to put himself, others and circumstances in their proper perspective.

Humour is also the antidote to reactivity and over-identification with past disappointments and hurts.

Finally, humour helps us maintain perspective. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the ups and downs of life that we take ourselves a little too seriously, a point I think that Mr. Vars might be making in his commentary.

So, Roland, this one’s for you:

A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says: “That’s the ugliest baby that I’ve ever seen. Ugh!”

The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her: “The driver just insulted me!”

The man says: “You go right up there and tell him off – go ahead, I’ll hold your monkey for you.”

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

Harvey Schachter, of the Globe & Mail’s “Monday Morning Manager” has been very supportive of my newsletters over the years. The Globe is Canada’s national newspaper.

Today, Mr. Schachter gave my latest newsletter, Transformational Leader, a half-page spread, featured below (from the on-line edition of the paper.) The graphic they used to feature the article was arresting. If you would like to receive the newsletter on a monthly basis you can subscribe by following the link to the Extraordinary Conversations website. The newsletter is free to subscribers.

The power of words

Leaders recognize them. And consultant Patrick O’Neill says in his Extraordinary Conversations newsletter that seven words, applied with integrity and precision, can transform your relationships

Globe and Mail Update

Published on Monday, Aug. 30, 2010 7:01AM EDT
Last updated on Monday, Aug. 30, 2010 7:20AM EDT

YES

Yes sends a clear message, confirming agreement with someone else’s point of view. When we say yes, we are often accepting a request to do something (or refrain from doing something), and accepting responsibility for a certain action. “Yes is not perhaps. When we muddle the two words we make a mess,” Mr. O’Neill writes. “Perhaps is an expression of uncertainty. It is a valid response when there is a requirement for further thought, negotiation, or where we may lack the authority for agreement.”

NO

This is tougher to say, and if you don’t then you may agree to things you are half-hearted about. Being overwhelmed at work may result from an inability to say no or to negotiate better time frames. “Sometimes avoiding no and going with the flow is the worst thing you can do. It can damage relationships as quickly as a misstated yes,” he says.

PLEASE

Our workplaces are less hierarchical and less command-and-control than in the past. You won’t succeed by barking orders, as if in the military. If you want employee commitment, you must treat others with respect and master the word please.

THANKS

This recognizes the actions of others who have helped you. It should be commonplace at work but Mr. O’Neill has spent hundreds of hours in many organizations over the years listening to employees complain about the absence of this word at work and trying to rectify the damage caused by its absence. “In my experience, a little more time spent by leaders saying thanks to their people and giving credit where credit is due, goes a long way to improving morale,” he writes. “An honest, heartfelt thanks is one of the most empowering experiences you can have. This is especially true when the person delivering the appreciation is an authority figure, or is a figure of respect.”

HELP

When we need assistance, this is the word to use, but often we choke it back, spending hours or days in quiet desperation trying to figure something out or trying to cope with too much work. “Maybe we think it betrays weakness, incompetence, or we’re too proud to ask? But the request for assistance advances action. Refusal to ask for help always creates a bottleneck,” he notes.

STOP

We are all operating on hyperspeed these days, but sometimes a leader must recognize it’s time to put on the brakes rather than risk the fallout from reckless driving. “It is the appropriate word when people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, are confused about what to do, or are on a collision course with each other. Activity that is manic is a sign of panic,” he says. Stop can also signal that limits or boundaries have been crossed.

SORRY

We all make mistakes – even male leaders, Mr. O’Neill notes. When people have been hurt, you should express regret and repair the relationship.

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

Get comfortable failing.
Chance often ends with a rude thump.
Those who eventually succeed
try again, try differently, try better.
Those who give up
quit on themselves.
Failure is the occupational hazard
of invention.
It goes with the territory.

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

My colleague and friend, Philip Shepherd has accomplished the impossible: he has published a fine, new book New Self, New World. I know it has been a multi-year labour of love.

I admire Philip for his unwavering commitment to making this important contribution. It’s not easy being an author, especially today. In light of the sorry state of the publishing industry, his achievement is even more remarkable.

Author and teacher Andrew Harvey, says in the foreword to the book:

“Philip Shepherd, in his profound and original masterpiece…now adds his distinctive, elegant, fierce and tender voice to those of his distinguished evolutionary predecessors. His book–written over a decade of painstaking, gruelling self-exploration, and with the highest nobility and clariety of soul–provides us all with an indispensible guide to why a radically embodied divine humanity needs to be birthed now, and birthed fast, and it shows us how to allow this bewildering and majestic destiny to be worked out in and through us through divine grace.”

New Self, New World is an important book. It is published by North Atlantic Books.

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

In that house
you were conceived.
See that room
on the second floor
to the left?
That’s it, that’s the holy place.

Later,
your mother and I
went for a walk
up the mountain,
stopping
at a clearing.

Chickadees
sang to us
from the spruce
trees,
told us your name–
the name of a girl.

We vowed
to make
a home
on the spot
where the birds
foretold your birth.

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

Take care of the children,
for they have a long way to go.
Take care of the elders,
for they have come a long way.
Take care of those in between,
for they are doing the work.

–African Proverb

Although the summer is only half over, it has been eventful.

In the space of a month three extended family members passed away. The youngest was just twenty years old; two elders, one in her late eighties and the other in his mid-nineties also departed.

There have been numerous lessons in these events, some of which I am still integrating. Here are some that I can share:

• It is sad when an elder passes. We suffer the loss of someone in our family who has meant something to us, who has contributed –for better or worse– something to our journey. They may be the last of their generation and that reminds us of our own impeding rendez-vous with death.

• The presence of death demands that we review our lives to make sure that we are living them according to what is most meaningful, what is most purposeful, what is most urgent. Death always asks us to consider: “Are you doing what you came here to do? Are you using the great gift of life to the fullest?”

• When an older person dies it is a sad event. But that death remains within the natural order of things. The tapestry of life continues to unfold as it should. When a young person dies the tapestry is irreparably torn. The loss of our children is an ordeal that no parent should ever have to experience.

• Death brings out the best and worst in people and families. It can be an agency for greater solidarity, deepening compassion, community building and generosity of spirit. It can also reveal pettiness, divisiveness, and mean-spiritedness. Death is an agent of revelation.

• The outpouring of love and support from friends, especially young people, who supported my nephew during his illness was deeply moving. Hundreds of young men and women paid tribute to him through their ongoing support before, during, and after his passing. Most of all, the loving kindness extended by his siblings and cousins touched my heart. It says a lot about my nephew. It also says a lot about the quality of people he had around him.

• Family is more important with each passing day. If the family is not close or has unreconciled differences, what is one small step that can be taken every day to bridge the differences? Such steps do not have to be transformational in themselves. Just a small step that is easy to do, and taken every day can lead to a breakthrough.

• We have a tendency to fall into magical thinking about our own mortality. No one is indestructible. We need to remember to “Live each day to the fullest.”

May all my departed relations rest in peace in the Shimmering World.

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

As someone who has been involved in the development of people and organizations over some thirty years it occurs to me that people grow for three reasons:

• They want to achieve an ambition;

• They are forced into it by crisis;

• It is a natural hunger.

Sometimes all three come together at times of transition and opportunity. Whatever the motivation, growing beyond our comfort zone demands courage, curiosity and risk-taking. We must be able to tolerate the creative tension that is only found at the edge of our learning.

In my view, few people can tolerate this “constant, therapeutic irritation” for long. Most of us prefer automatic pilot and the familar world of the status quo.

Visionmakers, those who are pursuing a journey of heart and meaning, carry a lifelong commitment to learning and growth. There’s is not the path of comfort or conformity. Visionmakers prefer to follow the dictates of the heart, the guidance of values and principles and a bias to action.

That is a rare commitment in today’s world.

Visionmakers are also vigilant about the false-self system that seeks to keep us preoccupied with our deficiencies and character flaws. Nothing puts us in the ditch faster than patterns of self-sabotage and indulgence in behaviors that undermine our personal power.

The way of the Visionmaker calls us past our vanity, laziness, pride and wilfullness to a new territory where we are asked to sacrifice our stories, reasons and excuses. These relics of an undisciplined life create inertia and keep us from growing beyond our belief systems, into our excellence.

By shaking up our own status quo, we liberate ourselves from the oppression of the past, the limits of our preconceptions. This allows us to see clearly and act impeccably. Such liberation is necessary to the Visionmaker’s journey and to the rendez-vous with Destiny.

When our hunger for meaning becomes greater than our addiction to comfort and predictability, a new journey of the heart begins.

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

He’s coming to dinner.
All the women
fussing over this and that.
Irritating.
I sit in my chair
pretending
to read my paper,
eavesdropping.
I feel them
glancing
in my general direction
nervous.
Has a good job
they say.
Comes from a good family.
We’ll see.
He arrives
awkward,
searching for signs
he won’t get from me.
Sit over there, boy.
I can see the terror in his eyes,
hear the tremor in his voice.
Good. Let him squirm.
Doesn’t he know
no one
is just going
to waltz in here
and take
my daughter?

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

Let us be silent so we may hear the whisper of the gods. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

The natural home of the Visionmaker is the realm of silence. Turning from the noise and the haste of the world, the Visionmaker returns each day to periods of silence for sustenance and guidance.

 

Today, most people cannot tolerate extended silence. Life is carefully constructed to keep silence at bay. We attempt to vanquish silence through diversion –computers, television, radio and endless chat.

 

Silence is the domain of the unseen world. As Emerson reminds us, it is the place that one encounters “the whisper of the gods.” It is here that we recover our equanimity, find solace, encounter the stillness that allows us to remember who we are.

 

The world around us batters our senses. How can we hope to see our heart’s desire and understand what is most meaningful apart from silence? It is in this “world behind the world” that we can assemble ourselves for our rendez-vous with Destiny.

 

When I worked as a hard-rock miner, I had a unique opportunity to spend significant time in silence, alone in the underground darkness with my thoughts. Something happens to you a mile under the earth. Your vision of reality changes dramatically.

 

When you turn your headlamp off, there is a darkness unlike anything you have ever experienced. Usually darkness is no more than a reduction of light. Even night has some visual definition – the moon, stars, streetlights, a light in the hallway. Underground, without a headlamp for illumination, you can’t see your fingers an inch from your eyes.

 

That kind of darkness amplifies both the silence and the sounds: water dripping down the rock face, the whoosh of air concussing from a blast somewhere else in the mine, the sound of your own breathing.

 

Although your eyes have stopped apprehending the outer world altogether, sensory deprivation brings new awareness. Your eyes turn inward, and the blackness serves as a screen for other visions. Here you see your life projected in flashes backward and forward, glimpses of what you have been, done, thought, haven’t done; and imaginings and fantasies of life yet to be lived.

 

Death is native to this realm. You feel it in the air, knowing that this dark is not the darkness of sleep. They took a young man, your age, to the surface in his lunch bucket because he made a fatal error. To go to sleep in such a place for even a moment would be to totally surrender to Death, to relinquish any right to return to the surface where the world awaits you and life can be lived with the new clarity that comes from being temporarily entombed.

 

Every Visionmaker knows that silence is a mentor of purpose. It is always calling us back to the heart, back to meaning. Silence is the crucible that allows us to hear that primal question that lies beneath our self-talk: “How are you using the great gift of life?”

 

 

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved

Last night I had the great pleasure of spending some time over dinner with John McKnight, Professor of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University. John has made a major contribution to neighborhood and community development by turning conventional thinking on it’s head.

He explained that traditional thinking about communities is based on deficit identification. In other words, let’s see what’s wrong with the community and begin from there. What John and his colleagues concluded was not only was the approach wrong, it reinforced a condition of dysfunction and the psychology of scarcity in the communities it attempted to “fix.”

Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) “considers local assets as the primary building blocks of sustainable community development. Building on the skills of local residents, the power of local associations, and the supportive functions of local institutions, asset-based community development draws upon existing community strengths to build stronger, more sustainable communities for the future.”

What a concept. As McKnight explained “we tend to see the glass as half empty. We decided to look at it as half-full.”

Part of the work of capacity-building is to engage the disenfranchised and marginalized. McKnight informed me that when you approach someone as a potential contributor –despite their circumstances– with requisite gifts and talents, you open up an entirely different relationship.

Asset-Based Community Development has spread world-wide. Thanks to John McKnight and his colleagues, our vision of what is possible in community has grown exponentially.

For more information on this important work please visit:www.abcdinstitute.org.

© Patrick O’Neill 2010. All rights reserved