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Arthur Samuel Joseph, the Loving Breath, and Vocal Awareness

By on January 18, 2010 in Leadership Books, Perspectives, Trust, Values

I spent Friday evening and Saturday in the presence of a great man with a valuable message, in a program called “Claim Your Voice, Claim Your Life,” with Arthur and sponsored by The Abundance Network.

Arthur asserts, and lives, that vocal awareness gives us presence, and power, and authenticity.  After my short experience I concur and I saw it evolve in the room.

As Malcolm Gladwell points out in Outliers, 10,000 hours of practice are required for true, complete, in-your-bones mastery to occur.  That is so with Vocal Awareness as well.  Arthur’s work requires daily practice — seven minutes a day, to be exact.

If this concept is interesting to you and you want to know more, go to http://www.theabundancenetwork.com.   These several follow-up events with Arthur are occasional, spread out over time to allow practice.  It is not too late for you to join us!  Whether this is your path or you have another, and you are interested in mastery, I recommend the book Mastery, the Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfillment by George Leonard.  It is small and mighty.  And, I recommend Arthur’s book, Vocal Power, Harnessing the Power Within and other products that can help you along that path.  Life is a journey, not a destination.

For me, I am on a journey to generate a conversation about trusting leaders, and leaders earning that trust.  That passion fires me up every day, and I am highly motivated to become more of myself, if that makes sense, so that I can illuminate the crying need, empassion and embolden leaders to be principled and to make choices that are not completely self-serving, but serve the whole of humanity and the earth as well.  That vision will take all I’ve got for the rest of my life, to make the difference I was put on this planet to make.  Not being a spring chicken, I’m in a bit of a hurry — but as Arthur pointed out, yocannot hurry the loving breath, which sources vocal awareness which sources authenticity.  The opportunity lies in the paradox — slowing down to accomplish more.  Oh, and by the way, being accountable for those choices!  Accountability pays!


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Always go back to the mission (and vision).

By on December 1, 2009 in Business, business planning, Leadership Books, Perspectives, strategic planning, strategy, Trust, Uncategorized, Values

We have a new friend, Kim DeMotte, whom we met at a fabulous conference last month for people who want to build on their success to expand the good they can bring to the world. At a dinner, Larry and Kim struck up a conversation about corporate governance, and Kim said some things that resonated with Larry and myself.

First, you have to trust people to do a good job, and in this instance we were speaking of someone holding the job of CEO. When a CEO reports to a board, how do you govern that CEO such that they are responsible AND allow them to do their job, their way.

In this video with Kim, you can get it straight from “the horse’s mouth,” (sorry Kim, not a literal translation)… Kim is an advisor to the corporate world. He lives in St. Louis. What you should know about Kim, in addition to his comments here on corporate governance, is that he authored a book called “The Power of No” in which Kim (and contributors) illustrate just that! Get the book, it’s excellent!  I particularly appreciate Kim’s straight talk.  No muss, no fuss, just straight talk.  We could use more of that today, with a sagging low in trust of leaders in this country (and elsewhere, we don’t on the corner on that malady).

In the name of mission (and I would say some think mission is vision, so I’m including vision here also), do the right thing. Clear communication enables a whole host of positive effects. Too many wus’s won’t take a hard stand, set a clear boundary, say no. Amazingly enough, some of the most mature, noble looking men fall into the trap of being too nice, and mucking it up for everyone from the top of an organization down to the last person to feel the effects of poor leadership.

To that I say, “Cut it out!” Get Kim’s book, read Susan Scott’s “Fierce Conversations,” and go back to the mission. Whatever doesn’t fit the vision and the mission, do not tolerate.


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Trust and Leadership Should be Synonymous

By on November 7, 2009 in Business, Leadership Books, Social Media, strategic planning, Trust, Values

Principles of Collaborative TrustI recently had a fast-paced hour-long conversation with Robert Porter Lynch, author, teacher, speaker, champion of increasing the experience of trusting leaders.  He observed that if trust in our leaders isn’t repaired in the United States, we as a nation are threatened to our very core.   Here are the LynchPrinciples — please download the PDF file.

Robert is writing a book on trust and leadership — he is Building a System of Trust.  He spends his life on airplanes in academic and business contexts, talking about what causes trust, conversely what causes distrust, and the impacts on business and life.

I then attended a conference on social media where I learned a term, “crowd sourcing,” revolving around our need to go to our friends for advice, people, resources because authority as we have known it cannot be trusted.

Decisions are made based on assumptions, and sometimes those assumptions prove false.  Consider these recent, faulty assumptions.   Real estate values always go up.  Financial institutions hold your money safely while you don’t need it. Retirement funds are managed to out-maneuver real risks.

These  eight principles of collaborative trust from Robert’s book that is coming out in the fall of 2010 provides reminders of what is important.  We are all leaders of our own lives, and we could choose not only to embrace them, but speak about them, remind others about them — in other words, Share them!  Encourage them!


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