As I prepare to travel to Columbus for ALIA (Authentic Leadership in Action), I find myself playing with the word “leader”.
Who are the leaders of the world? What do they look like? What makes them unique? What makes us want to follow them?
For a lot of us (especially for women), the word “leader” is a huge block. It feels like too much. Too bold. Too cocky. Too self-assured. Too “I don’t have my OWN shit together – how can I possibly lead other people?”
I’ve heard every excuse in the book. Heck – I’ve USED every excuse in the book. “I’m not smart enough. I don’t have enough knowledge in this subject area. I don’t know how to motivate people. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not confident enough. I don’t like having people depend on me. I don’t know how to fix my own problems – how can I possibly fix other people’s problems? I don’t want people to think I’m too big for my boots. I’m in too much pain.”
We let those limitations block us, because we’ve accepted the wrong paradigms for leadership. Ask any circle of people to name leaders in history or in their own lives, and they’ll talk about people like Nelson Mandela, Obama, Mother Teresa, or the executive director of the organization they work for.
Well no WONDER we get intimidated by the word leader if that’s our paradigm! Very few of us will ever be THAT kind of leader. The world only needs a few of those.
Until they’re coaxed, NOBODY in the room will mention the first grade teacher who opened the world of language for them, the guy who swept the floors in the gymnasium with a smile on his face and a kind word for everyone, the little girl in the playground who made sure everyone got a turn on the slide, the drummer in the high school band who wordlessly kept everyone on beat, or the waitress at the local coffee shop who listened to their stories and made them feel heard.
I’m on a personal mission to bust us all out of those old paradigms of leadership. I’m on a personal mission to make you see the leader in the janitor, the drummer, the waitress, and yourself.
Let’s ask ourselves some new questions.
What if the leader is the person who:
– asks the right questions, instead of knowing all the answers?
– remembers that play is the best way to learn?
– makes a lot of effort to make other people feel seen and heard?
– believes in the power of crayons and dance shoes?
– invites people to wander through possibilities instead of looking for the most direct path?
– creates a container where our feelings and ideas are safe?
– delights in the opportunities that arise out of mistakes?
– invites our bodies and souls to every gathering along with our brains?
– celebrates curiosity?
– believes that the collective wisdom in the room is greater than her own?
– intuitively understands when to say “stop” and “rest” and “walk away“.
– trusts that the most beautiful things often grow out of failure?
Sit with these questions, and then ask yourself “if I can hold this new paradigm, can I then call myself a leader?”
At ALIA, leaders of all shapes and sizes learn about leadership from jugglers, painters, aikido masters, dancers, jazz drummers, meditation teachers, dramatists, doodlers, floral arrangers, etc., etc. The incredible tribe of people who gather at ALIA believe that leadership lessons come from everywhere, and every person in the room holds some of the wisdom. It’s an awe-inspiring experience to sit in a large circle of paradigm-shifting leaders and know that your wisdom is welcome there.
Which piece of the wisdom do you bring to the circle? And what is stopping you from bringing it?
Note: If this new paradigm for leadership excites you, challenges you, or affirms you, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy How to Lead with your Paint Clothes on. The first learning circle has drawn together a fascinating group of people and I look forward to gathering the next one soon. (Dates to be announced.)
Guess what?! The KIDNEY RAFFLE has officially opened!!! There are $12k worth of prizes available from some of the coolest people on the internet. You can support a great cause AND be entered to win amazing prizes in the process. Plus your moral support will help give me the strength I need to walk 100 km. 🙂
We need your help. We want to CURE kidney disease, so that people like my friend Cath Duncan will live long healthy lives!
Check out this short video if you want to know more about why I’ll be walking 100 km. And then visit Kidney Raffle and make your donation. (Please?!)
After quitting my job last year, I was asked to teach a course in writing for public relations. Although I’d worked in senior communications/public relations roles for many years (and even won an award as Manitoba Communicator of the Year), I was a little reluctant to take on the class.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to teach (I really did). It was just that I’d grown tired of doing most of my communicating on other organizations’ behalf and I felt a burning desire to write and speak about my own stories and passions instead. I was done with writing press releases and wasn’t sure I wanted to teach others to write them either.
And yet, I knew that it would be good experience learning to teach at the university level, and it was steady income, and so I took the job.
Fortunately, the curriculum was flexible and the administration was supportive of my ideas, so I made a few commitments to myself before I started.
– I would teach people to be good writers FIRST and then good PR writers second.
– I would teach people to write from their own voices rather than simply trying to replicate the voices around them.
– I would teach people to be PR professionals with integrity and values and would NEVER teach them to be spin-doctors.
– I would encourage students to follow their hearts into work that they felt passionate about.
– I would teach from the heart and encourage students to be open to the world and to each other.
That meant that we started every day with journal exercises that were all about exploring their own voices instead of writing for PR, we created vision boards during the first class of the new year, we invited speakers with integrity and passion to speak to the class (including Pam Slim, who encouraged them to imagine their careers outside the box of traditional employment), we used a Tibetan singing bowl to ring us into and out of class, and we shared some pretty personal stories and fears with each other.
It wasn’t always easy bucking the trend. I don’t know how many times I heard “you teach SO differently from anyone else in this program!” I was an edge-walker, never quite sure I was living up to the expectations of the administration when they created the classes I taught. But I kept on, believing what I was doing was the right thing and what the students needed.
I often said to my students “if I only teach you the mechanics of writing a press release and don’t teach you to write with passion, personality, and integrity, then I believe I am doing you a disservice.”
This week, I received my reward. One of the students (who is a bright and talented communicator) submitted the following letter to the administration and sent me a copy.
“Heather has added great value to the Public Relations and Marketing Management Diploma Program by not only educating her students about Public Relations fundamentals, but by encouraging us and giving us the tools to be great communicators. Her rapport building abilities allowed us to go beyond communicating – she gave us the ability to communicate effectively and to connect.
“Heather’s superior verbal and written communication skills were definite assets that helped to build our knowledge about Public Relations; however, I believe that her strength was in imparting integrity and honesty to her students.“
You know what? It pays to buck the trend!
Live with your whole heart, teach with your whole heart, and break a few rules if you need to! The world needs change, the education system needs change, and you can be a part of making that change happen!
It’s about the many benefits of walking. Check it out and then go for a walk!
If you’re visiting from that post, welcome! If you’re looking for the Kidney Raffle, click the image to find your way there.
We’d love to have you help us spread the word about the Kidney Raffle. Click here to find out how just one tweet or FB status in honour of the Kidney Raffle will get you 17 author interviews FREE!
photo taken by my talented sister, at thousandwordsphotography.ca
A few posts ago, I mentioned the winding path that one must take up the side of the mountain when the ascent is too steep for the ordinary wanderer.
That metaphor has been ringing so true for me recently, especially in this self-employment journey. Each time I think I’m on the right path, I hit a curve and find myself going in a different direction entirely, never really sure that the path will get me to the top.
When I left my job and started this journey, I was quite convinced that Sophia Leadership was the right path and that feminine wisdom and leadership were the passions that would drive my business. There were so many signposts pointing me along the path – whether it was a horse named Sophia, a fortuitous statue with the word “Sophia” engraved in it, or the amazing experience I had in a circle of women gathered by the lake for our Listening Well retreat.
But then the year ended and a new one began and I found myself feeling restless, knowing something was trying to be born. As it turned out, it was a memoir stretching the walls of my figurative womb, trying to push itself into the light of day. Without totally abandoning Sophia Leadership, I stepped away from some of the passion that drove it to give space for the book to emerge. The book is about my stillborn son and the way that he has been my spiritual guide in my life as I learned and relearned many lessons of surrender.
When the book was in the birth canal, and my primary focus was the labour pains of bringing it to life, I just didn’t feel much like writing about feminine wisdom or leadership and I no longer knew whether Sophia Leadership was the space I belonged. “All I want to do is write,” I thought. “And I don’t want to be restricted by these boxes. Not everything is about Sophia or about leadership.”
So I began to contemplate switching my blog to my heatherplett.com site and making it a more general space about personal growth and transformation and stillborn babies and surrender and LIFE.
But then I hit another switchback on the path. The first draft of the book got done and I started sharing it with a few trusted readers. And as I shared it, I started to realize that it really IS about feminine wisdom AND about leadership, and I really hadn’t switched paths after all.
A few other signs showed up as well. I facilitated an in-person leadership workshop and sat in a circle of people hungry for a new paradigm for leadership, eager to make a difference in the world, and uncertain they have the right to call themselves leaders. They were leaders in search of a guide to point them to the right path.
And then I facilitated an online leadership learning circle for How to Live with your Paint Clothes on, and the same thing happened. An incredible circle of women bravely voiced their calling to leadership of some kind and admitted they were unsure of how to do it and how to work outside the old paradigms of leadership we’re all surrounded with. More leaders in search of a guide.
And then I had an amazing conversation with Bridget Pilloud, and she pushed me kind of hard when I said I was thinking of giving up Sophia Leadership and told me that there is a huge need among women in leadership (including herself in a previous career) for someone to help them see their paths clear to a place where feminine wisdom is honoured and accepted.
Last but not least, Sophia spoke to me in a bookstore. It was one of those restless days when I couldn’t find a book to settle the angst that had taken up residence in my heart. I was wrestling with my wandering tendencies, and the winding path and wondering WHY OH WHY I couldn’t just settle into an ordinary easy path like other people. There were relationship things going on as well that reminded me of my tendency to be an outsider, always on the edge of the circle when others are smack dab in the middle having all the “easy” fun.
Flipping through an art magazine, I heard Sophia whisper “you are called to the edge.” Bam. Just like that. A proclamation that answered so much of my angst and unsettled feelings. “You are CALLED to the edge. This is not an accident.” I’m not SUPPOSED to be in the centre of the circle having easy fun. I’m not SUPPOSED to be one of the people who get called to seemingly easy and straight paths. I’m meant to be out here on the edge.
I am an edge-walker. I am most myself when I am at the edge of the circle where I can serve as witness both to the things going on inside the circle and those happening outside. I am a leader whose vision of what’s ahead on the path helps direct the people at the centre who have less clarity. I help people feel safe because they have a sentry at the edge. I serve as scribe, witness, and facilitator for the people in the centre because I am less attached to the gravity and ideas that pull everyone to the centre. I watch for dangers and I help people avoid them. I follow new ideas and new paths because I know the people in the circle need them.
The particular edge I am called to live on is the edge called Sophia Leadership. I feel more and more certain of that. Bringing feminine wisdom into leadership is edgy, difficult, and not always popular work, but the people in the centre NEED this work. Everywhere I look I see more and more leaders in search of a guide/mentor.
When I walked out of the bookstore, I felt simultaneously like a great burden (of unknowing, doubt, uneasiness) had been lifted off my shoulders, while a whole new burden of responsibility and calling had been added. But the burden was not mine to carry alone – Sophia God was there carrying it for me.
The clarity has carried me through to today. The top of the mountain is becoming a little more visible as I round this latest switchback. I’m not sure how “edge-walker” would play on a business card, but I know what it means to me, and that’s what matters.
In the spirit of being an edge-walker and guide, I am offering new services and clarifying some old ones. Thanks to the roadsigns, there’s more clarity to them than anything I had on this website before. Perhaps one of them will resonate with you. If you need guidance, or if you feel a similar call to the edge, I would love to work with you and serve as your guide.
You can find the buttons for these services on the right-hand side of this blog. Or click on the one that appeals to you below.
(By the way, I am totally in love with the photo my sister took at the top of this page. On my face you can see that perfect mix of seriousness with a hint of a smile, angst with a hint of devil-may-care, and strength with a hint of softness that makes me who I am, standing out here on the edge.)
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.
