What I learned from Bono

U2 playing Canad Inns Stadium in Winnipeg (photo courtesy of Winnipeg Free Press)

If you follow my Twitter or Facebook streams, you probably know by now that I went to the U2 concert last night. That would explain why I’m wandering around the house a little like a zombie this afternoon, on a bit of a U2 hangover. Too much adrenalin and not enough sleep makes Heather a dull girl.

The concert was beyond amazing. The music was amazing, the stage was amazing, the light show was amazing, the planes flying over in formation before U2 took to the stage were amazing… all-in-all, an amazing night.

Watching Bono prance around on the circular walkway and bridges extending beyond the stage, I felt a big ol’ teenage swoon coming on. That man is sexy! Wow!

I was so inspired, I came up with this list of lessons we can all learn from Bono about how to be a rock star and have a significant influence in the world.

1. Confidence is sexy! Carry yourself with confidence, believe in the words that emerge from your deepest heart, express yourself in the way that feels truest to you, and you will attract people in a big way.

2. Don’t be afraid to live fully in your body. That man knows how to fully inhabit his body! Wow! He’s never afraid to make big gestures, swing from a cable over the stage, throw his body on the floor – you name it. And people EAT. IT. UP. We are drawn to people who radiate energy from a body fully inhabited.

3. Be passionate for your causes and do not apologize. Part of my swooning had to do with the fact that I just LOVE the social justice causes Bono gives his heart to. He is FEARLESS when it comes to believing in love and justice and compassion. Not only does he sing about it, but he lives it. At the concert, we sang Happy Birthday for Amnesty International’s 50th birthday, and listened to a special broadcast of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was just released from 15 years of house arrest in Burma after daring to win an election and stand up for democracy.

4. Being yourself is much more attractive than trying to be anyone else. This one’s pretty self-explanatory. U2 got where they are today not by trying to copy anyone else’s style but by daring to live by their own.

5. Dare to be BIG. I have never been to such a big, extravagant concert. There were even jets flying by in formation before U2 came on stage. Part of my social justice brain says “isn’t that crazy for a band that preaches about climate change”, but at the same time, I know that their big-ness is what attracts people to them and gives them a global voice for justice and positive change. 50,000 people heard some pretty important messages last night, mixed in with the music, and they wouldn’t have heard those if U2 didn’t dare to be big.

6. Don’t hide your faith, but don’t flaunt it either. Bono has this remarkable capacity to write deeply spiritual lyrics that are still accessible to crowds of 50,000. He never apologizes for his faith, but he doesn’t proselytize either. Sometimes people (myself included) hide their faith so as not to be offensive to people who don’t believe the same way. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can be honest about our faith while still being respectful of others.

Change the words, change the culture

best friends

Maddy and her best friend being goofy in the tunnel

I’m on a personal mission to change the culture by changing the language.

As I mentioned in How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on, most of the language we’re used to using in leadership and corporate culture (and, to be frank, even in communities, churches, etc.) is based on old paradigms. Because these cultures were formed by men in a patriarchal society, we adopted language that was comfortable for them. That language is the language of sports, warfare, and the industrial revolution. (Some of you have heard me on this soap box before, I’m sure.)

Even if our work has nothing to do with these three things, and we’d be much better off building communities than teams, we still talk about competitive advantages, officers-in-charge, high performance, and targets. I’ve worked in government and non-profits where competition and production are not important, and yet we still use the same language. Even in the softer side of leadership where we’re working on personal development, we still hire “coaches” to help us. Language gets so embedded in our culture we don’t even recognize how it shapes what we do.

Last week, the university where I teach asked if I’d want to teach a social media workshop called “Using Social Media to Gain Competitive Advantage”. Well yes, I responded, I’d be happy to teach a social media workshop, BUT I’m not interested in one with that title. If I teach it, the words “competitive advantage” won’t be part of it.

In my experience, social media is about relationships and COLLABORATION, not competition. You get an advantage not by competing with other people but by building relationships with them. That’s the only way I’d know how to teach the course.

Fortunately, I work with good administration who are open to my ideas, and so they changed the title to “Tools for Social Media Visibility”. I can live with that.

It might seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but we have to start somewhere. If we want to see more feminine wisdom in our leadership, we have to walk the talk and talk the walk. Changing language CAN change culture.

 

 

Lead like Rosa Parks

Yesterday was my first call with the delightful tribe of people who signed up for the learning circle of How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on. What a great call it was! My only complaint is that it was much too short. AND that I didn’t get to watch people’s faces when they had their a-ha moments.

At the end of the call, when I asked the participants what nugget of learning they would take with them into the week and might find themselves journaling about a few days later, more than one of them shared that it was our conversation about the leadership of Rosa Parks.

Rosa Parks is one of my greatest models for leadership.

As I mentioned in my blurry vision post, I used to hold unrealistic models in front of me of what leadership and vision should be. Even in my teaching, I’d get people to deconstruct the leadership of people like Martin Luther King Jr. in order to learn what visionary leadership is all about.

But not any more. Only a handful of people will attain the level of leadership of MLK (or Oprah, for that matter), so I don’t suggest you try to model yourself after him. If you do, there’s a good chance you’ll fail.

Instead, model your leadership after Rosa Parks.

Rosa was a seamstress. She probably never used the word leader to define herself in her whole life. She was just a seamstress… and yet, she had a passion for justice. She had a vision for change. She knew that it was time for the world.

And so she took her seat on the bus. And she refused to get up when the bus driver told her to give it up for a white man. That action may seem insignificant, and yet it changed the world.

You don’t have to have a grand audience. You don’t have to have a hundred people looking to you for leadership. You just have to take your seat on the bus.

Taking your seat on the bus might mean that you clean up your neighbourhood. It might mean that you provide a safe space for marginalized people. It might mean that you give your whole heart to teaching yoga. It might mean that you model integrity and justice to your kids. It might mean that you say no to the bullies on the committee you volunteer for.

Like the participants on the call yesterday, many of us feel uneasy about calling ourselves leaders because the word carries so much baggage and seems like an unattainable mark. That’s because we’re trying to model ourselves off the wrong kinds of leaders.

DON’T lead like Martin Luther King Jr.

Lead like Rosa Parks. Take your seat on the bus. And don’t get up when the bullies and conformists tell you to move.

Do you know how to bless yourself?

Receiving a Hindu blessing in India

I was running on my favourite path by the river, listening to a podcast interview with Sylvia Boorstein, when she said something that nearly stopped me dead in my tracks. As part of a guided meditation, she said “Now offer yourself a blessing.”

Offer myself a blessing? Really? I had no idea how to do that! What would I bless myself with?

I love offering blessings. I do it often for friends, writing a list of things I wish for them as they enter a new phase of their life, celebrate a birthday, go through struggles, etc. If I can’t come up with something myself, I’ll offer them one of my favourites from John O’Donohue‘s book To Bless the Space Between Us. I even offer my students a blessing at the end of almost every session or workshop I teach.

Blessing people I care about? Easy-peasy. Because I love them and want the best for them. There was a time, in fact, when I offered people Twitter blessings – a wish for your day in 140 characters or less.

I also love being blessed by others. I feel fortunate that I have received, for example, a Hindu blessing from a woman in a tiny village in India, and an Orthodox blessing from a priest in an ancient church in Ethiopia. Blessings are powerful things that can carry us a long way.

But offering a blessing for myself? Honestly – I didn’t have a clue how to do that. AND it had never occurred to me that I should. And yet… I love myself don’t I? And doesn’t the Bible teach us to “love our neighbours as ourselves”? To love them (and to bless them), I first have to love myself.

As soon as I heard Sylvia Boorstein say it though, I knew that it was something I needed to learn how to do. I need to bless myself.

I need to believe that I am worthy of being blessed just like I believe my friends and family are worthy. I need to offer myself the same compassion and kindness that I am willing to offer those I love.

Sylvia suggested the following blessing, and I’m trying to offer it to myself at least once a day. I may even print it and hang it by my bed so I see it first thing in the morning.

May I feel safe.
May I feel happy.
May I feel strong.
May I live with ease.

Just now, laying on the couch in the middle of the night because I woke up with a stress ball in my stomach, I put my hand on my heart and said it aloud. It feels kind of powerful.

What the young feminists taught me

Before and after the leadership workshop that made me cry (and laugh) I got to hang out with a bunch of young feminists this past weekend. I was too old to participate in the ReBelles gathering, but I could at least volunteer and be inspired by their energy and passion.  I worked at the registration desk and the merch table and I served some delicious vegetarian chilli to a bunch of hungry (and wet) feminists who’d come out of the rain after marching on the streets.

I was there for three reasons.

1. I wanted to be inspired by their passion and commitment and was hoping that some of their energy would rub off on me. I think we all have a lot to learn from those younger than us and I was open to the learning.

2. I feel a calling to be a mentor and supporter of young women leaders in the next generation and I want to do what I can to encourage them as they step into their own leadership and power.

3. I know some of the organizers and I am quite fond of them.

Though I wasn’t allowed in the workshops or plenary sessions (they were quite intentional about maintaining the space for women under 35 and I respect that choice), I got what I wanted out of the experience and I’m glad I went.

The truth is, I’ve been discouraged lately by what our generation is doing with feminism and I think it’s time to turn things around again.

As I said when I created Sophia Leadership, on my “About Sophia Leadership” page, the feminist revolution opened doors for women – doors that lead us into the houses of power. We became leaders and politicians and educators and business owners, but to do that, we had to learn to think and lead like men.

The post-feminist movement helped women tap into our sources of power – our spirituality, our creativity, and our intuition – but we didn’t take those things into the houses of power with us. We were mostly busy making the connection between our heads, hearts, and bodies in our own spaces for our own benefits.

We so enjoyed the freedom that the feminist revolution earned for us that we started spending most of our time focused on ourselves, buying all the self-help books we could find, going to all the yoga and spiritual retreats we could afford, and justifying all the choices we made to pamper ourselves instead of being in positions of servitude as our mothers had been.

What we forgot, however, is that along with freedom comes great responsibility.

I firmly believe that it’s time for the next step in the women’s movement. Now it’s time to merge what we learned in both the feminist and post-feminist eras and make some BIG changes. I suspect that it might be the next generation who will do the bulk of the work of ushering in a new era of feminine wisdom, and so I want to support it where I can.

That doesn’t mean, though, that we – the over 40 crowd – have an excuse to go back to our insular world of self-care and self-focused spirituality. Our young leaders may be the ones with energy and they may be the ones to do the turning, but they need us, their mentors, wise women, sages, and crones.

They need us and we need them. I was so glad to be part of a mutual benefit society this weekend.

And here are a few of the things the young feminists taught me:

1. Make your work, retreats, and gatherings accessible to everyone. Instead of gathering with only the elite who can afford spiritual retreat centres, find ways to prepare simple meals, host people in homes, charge on a sliding scale, and make sure the emerging leaders from poor and marginalized groups can afford to participate.

2. Be intentional about including only ethically produced and purchased food and products – things that are gentle on the earth and that weren’t produced by under-paid labourers in faraway factories.

3. Combine art and body movement workshops with political/advocacy workshops. Find ways of blending them in ways that are uniquely feminine.

4. Dare to be passionate. March in the streets. Write manifestos. If things need to be shaken up, SHAKE THEM AND DON’T APOLOGIZE!

5. Be intentional about creating spaces for those you’ve gathered, and don’t apologize to those you’ve excluded. But then honour those who support you from outside that circle and hold a feast for all to celebrate together.

6. Bring in wise women as elders, honour them and let them advise you, but do not let them run the show if you have people in your group quite capable of organizing gatherings.

7. Make the space as safe as you can for emerging leaders, by doing small things like asking the rental facility to ensure the guards on duty while you gather are all women.

8. Don’t leave until you have some clear action items and then follow up to make sure there is MOVEMENT. Don’t let people simply go back to their homes with warm fuzzies forgetting their commitments to positive change.

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