What Myth Are You Living?
Carl Jung, the father of analytical psychology, wrote that the most important question anyone can ask is “What myth am I living?” Notice that he doesn’t suggest we may be living a myth; his comment infers that we already are. We wrote about that in our book Thriving in Business and Life, in fact our first chapter is entitled The Power of Story. And we’ve refined this further in the on-line course we are developing into 12 thriving practices. We call the first practice Owning
9 Principles of Empowerment We're Seldom Taught
We wrote about empowerment last post and hopefully cleared up some of the confusion about what empowerment is and isn’t. This week, we’d like to continue exploring empowerment by presenting 9 principles well worth remembering. 1. While empowerment is a personal decision and cannot be bestowed on others, we can encourage, stimulate, provide adequate support, and model empowerment within a culture of accountability. 2. As we presented in our post last week, the three key elemen
How to Implement Empowerment Effectively
In our experience, the word “empowerment” is widely misunderstood in both corporate, political, and public life. To get a better understanding of this well-intended term, let’s first talk about what empowerment is not. For example, someone in a news conference or corporate meeting may utter the phrase, “I empower you to . . .” and then they’ll list the job or initiative they want carried out. What exactly do they mean when they say, "I empower you?" When we’ve interviewed a v
Three Secrets to Maximizing Your Power
In coaching and consulting in a variety of companies around the world, we find that there is often confusion about the terms responsibility and accountability. When we’re looking to help a team or department work through a challenge we’ll hear things like, “Well he’s responsible, but not accountable.” Or, “In a matrixed organization, responsibility and accountability or not so clear.” And then there’s, “Well, Jane’s 60% responsible, because she’s the manager, but Arturo and E
Waking Up From the Trance of Disempowerment
Dr. Milton Erickson said, “Most people walk through the world in a trance of disempowerment.” Erickson, considered to be the father of clinical hypnotherapy, succinctly stated the obvious. Personal disempowerment is chronic, with legions of individuals feeling they simply aren’t in control of their lives. If they’re not, their logic tells them, someone else is. That leads to what we call “The Blame Game.” I (Chris) recall creating a comedic game show pilot by that name in an
When Good Intentions Are Not Enough
You may remember the story about a rich man and a robber sharing a train compartment. As the rich man slept, the robber searched for the money he knew was hidden nearby. Come morning, he confessed his failed plan and the rich man chuckled. “I knew you were a robber,” he said, “so I hid my money in the one place I knew you would never look… under your own pillow!” The robber didn’t think to look close to home and neither do we. In fact, we often miss out on the incredible valu
How to Gain Perspective When Challenges Arise
In our book on Thriving in Business and Life we mention the story about villagers discovering a baby floating by. They rescued her… then noticed another, and another. The villagers were caring folk so they took care of these babies. More came. Eventually, they had to build a school and new homes to house them. Finally, someone asked, “I wonder where all these babies are coming from?” And one wise community member said, “Let’s look upstream.” This introduces a powerful strateg
How Slowing Down, Can Actually Makes Things Go Faster
Sometimes following that adage: “Don’t just sit there, do something.” is the right strategy. At other times, we’d be better off reversing the advice and following the Zen saying: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” In our book Thriving in Business and Life we reference the Titanic disaster and detail five practical strategies for avoiding disasters in life and at work. First, slow down. Yes, there are times when we need to act fast. But, overall, most of our decision making
How Hard Work Can Thwart Your Vision
Thriving is a state of mind and a way of living. Ironically, what most often interferes with thriving is our obsessive efforts to survive. Many people—both in their personal lives and at work—often feel like success means being able to keep their heads above water. That’s staying alive, but it’s not much fun and it doesn’t really seem like success, it’s more like not drowning. So, how do we do both? How do we take care of our day-to-day responsibilities plus develop a thrivin
How to Make an Even Mundane Project Irresistible
Einstein believed that imagination is more important than knowledge. We agree, because not only can imagination be used to apply knowledge it can, also be used to inspire others into joining with you in pursuit of your vision or idea. Some say the best leaders are those who inspire followership. There’s certainly some truth to that, but we see it a little differently. We believe the most effective leaders are those who can create stakeholders—people who feel they are co-owner
