All of the AI Principles are evident in her story.  She opens with examples of the Constructionist Principle: how words create worlds and the role we all play in co-creating our realities and defining each other.

She advocates the need to honor the wholeness, possibility and potency of ourselves and each other.  She asks us to open ourselves up to and embrace our adversities, rather than sweep them under the carpet.

She reminds us from her own story that we live up OR down to others’ image of us, and how positive imagery leads to positive outcomes.  She is such an example of nurturing the human spirit, keeping hope, seeing the beauty, valuing curiosity … and so much more.

I highly recommend this video.

Aimee Mullen’s TED Talk on “The Opportunity of Adversity“.

Peter Drucker wrote in his 1967 classic, The Effective Executive. “To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant.”  So if, in fact, a key task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths, then imagine the possibilities of strengths connected to strengths?  What might that look like and why might that be worth striving for?

For leadership to create an alignment of strengths, it most likely means looking at organizations with new eyes.  What if we were to look at organization not as problems to be solved, but as miracles to be embraced?  What if we were consciously to look for the good and hold up the achievements and the successes; to invest generously and respectfully in inquiring into existing organizational strengths and assets?  What if we were to invite people to tell their stories of when they felt most energized, enlivened and valued at work.  And we listened.  Really listened.  What language would employees, customers, vendors, media be using?  Is it uplifting and positive?  What stories are they sharing about their experiences with the various products, services and people?  Are they focusing  on what works well, and what they want more of?  If yes, that’s great, as such language creates upward spirals, and there’s the broadening effect of noticing more acutely what works.  As a consequence, you are more likely to enact your capabilities and your potential. Performance improves, since it is more energizing and creative to have people talk about what they can do and what they aspire to than the reverse.  Two maxims come to mind:

What you focus on grows.

People support what they create.

To connect strengths to strengths and to see anew, with an appreciative eye,  and to facilitate the leadership capability so that it creates flourishing organizations is work that is meaningful, joyful, rewarding and essential.

The decade beginning 2000 was a good decade for me.  I married a wonderful human being in 2000; we have enjoyed great fun and a wide range of intensely pleasurable physical experiences; we have grown together and independently through many stimulating, engaging intellectual learnings;  and we have both experienced deeply meaningful emotional times.  We have traveled a lot and created a home we love. I am blessed in my relationship.

So, in this last decade, I have continued to change, as has the world around me.  A dominant and exciting force that is enabling this rapid growth rate of change is social media. We have new and additional ways in which we communicate and connect with people and we have many more topics and stories to share.  My sensitivity has been even more heightened as to how alike we really are across the globe.  How vulnerable we all are, and how much more we can become together.  I have been moved by so many stories shared in private and in public places – face-to-face, virtually, in books, on TV, in film.  All my senses have been sharpened.  For example, in Italy, I savored during and for months afterwards the landscape and the smells and sounds; the sensations and the tastes:  I admired the art work and architecture and imagined what it was like when armies of ancient Rome traversed the land battled against the Carthaginians and the Gauls;  I imagined the beauty of the Etruscans, even before the Romans, and then I imagined what life may have been like during the Renaissance when art and commerce flourished.  History and culture revealing how peoples continue to shape the future and leave their legacies.

I experienced similar emotions and wonderings while traveling in India and visiting Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.  My curiosity and interest is always aroused to learn how people get to where they are and what has shaped their current situation.   What are their stories?  My own birthplace, Australia, has untold stories that the land longs to share.  The more stories we can hear of all peoples on this planet, the richer we all will be.

I love to find the themes and connect dots.  What keeps coming up for me?  My filtering system is constructed to find the beauty, the goodness and what truths endure across time and space.  Horror and evil also endure across time and space. They co-exist.  History and the arts are full of co-existence. The victories of love overcoming fear, and good overcoming evil and beauty overcoming horror is the human story.

I learned at Christmas time, a dear colleague, whom I haven’t communicated with since 2002 has Stage 4 cancer in her brain and has very little time left in her present form.   Going about my business (busy-ness), I thought about her a lot, but didn’t call.   After Christmas, I learnt her condition had worsened.  I felt remorseful that I had not acted on my best intuition to call her when I wanted to.  I actually feared I had missed my opportunity to let her know I cared for her.  I had weak excuses, like a 14 hours time difference, Christmas was an awkward time, etc. etc.  Finally, I did call and our conversation was truly meaningful.  I also send the flowers I had been thinking about sending for four days.  I decided that moving beyond thought to action would be my commitment to myself in 2010.  To move beyond dreaming and thinking into action – action that serves others, and in doing so, serves me.

All plans can change.  So when the world changes around you, what constants provide you with a sense of safety or equanimity that enables you to go on?  The tiniest belief in oneself helps; some hope for a future; the support of others.  I have been in that state, when I had no self-confidence, despaired of any future and indifferent to the support and love of others.  How I’ve pulled myself out of such low points is my story and some parts of the dark story I am not proud of and some parts I am.  I realize the parts I am proud of are when I found the inner strength to shift my perspective enough to make a different choice.  Through the tears and the pain (both physical and emotional) I could sense a faint awareness that I wanted to feel/do something different.  In such times, I open up enough find an inner resource that offers a glimmer of hope and possibility that I am willing to admit there is a different way and I will do something about it.  I also believe that having experienced the intense discomfort of chemotherapy and radiation, that in the future, and if in a conscious state, when faced with death I can have the same experience.  I will find an inner resource that offers a glimmer of hope and possibility that I am willing to admit there is a different way and I can find it.  I know I will seek peace and love over fear.

What is your story?  What victories, celebrations and joys have you experienced in the past decade?  In telling your story, what have been highpoints of your first ten years in the 21^st century?  What will you remember with a smile on your face, a warmth in your gut, a tenderness in your heart?  What are you most grateful for or even a little bit grateful for – personally and professionally?  Who have you met in the past 10 years that has influenced your life in a good way?  What have you done for others that you know has been of service to them?  What thoughts may inspire you for action in 2010?

Doing the best you can with the resources you have is an invitation to connect with your reflective self.  It is an invitation to think about the quality and the content of your thinking.  Have you ever kicked yourself or felt anger or annoyance at yourself because of something you did or thought that you knew was not worthy of yourself.  After the event, you judged yourself very harshly and felt remorse.  That is usually an unpleasant experience.

You have the capacity to turn that unpleasant experience about your own thinking and behavior into a pleasing experience.  How?  Acknowledge that you exercised your reflective self to know the difference.   And make that your reflective best self.  Actions, conversations, thoughts that are judging, critical, non-valuing of self and others are not helpful.  If you see leaders in your organizations and your colleagues as doing the best they can with the resources they have, it’s a more helpful way seeing what’s going on through a valuing lens.  You tap into your own inner resources of love and peace and truth and power to see a situation for what it is, not what your inner judge expects it to be.   When we become more conscious and do the reflective work, we clean our lens and see more clearly that we are all in the same  boat, doing the best we can with the resources we have. These include the inner resources of compassion, forgiveness and respect.

We are offering some great presentations and workshops online using iCohere collaborative platform and we are seeking a number of volunteer online hosts who will be able to participate in the conference and perform some support activities.   This is a great opportunity for those who want to participate, but for a variety of reason can’t make it to Nepal in November.  Colleague, Sue James is co-ordinating the online hosting activities.

What are the benefits of volunteering?

• Receive support and training in the virtual conference environment, prior to the conference itself;
• Become part of a global network of volunteers, all of whom share your interest in Appreciative Inquiry;
• Gain personal and professional recognition across the AI community; and
• If you can act as an online host for six (6) hours or more over the four days of the conference, you will receive a 50% discount on virtual conference registration!
• (These hours will not have to be contributed in one block, but can be spread out in two-hour time slots over the four days)

For all the details and to register, please go to http://suejames.com/aihosts2009/

I am fortunate to be able to travel to Nepal for the Conference and will also co-facilitating an online workshop, “Flourishing Destinies: How to Sustain Positive Change.”  I will be happy to answer any questions and request that you use the contact form on this site to reach me.

The environment – nature in this case – provided feedback which supported my experience in the following ways: the embrace of the gentle sea breeze blowing my hair and cooling my skin; the sound of the waves roaring up onto the sand, and being sucked back again, and the noises and sights of the gulls squawking and swooping, and the tiny piping plovers scurrying a constant few feet ahead of me.  This tactile, auditory and visual feedback from nature contributed significantly to my feelings of well-being and my most satisfying performance. I felt supported by the environment.  Furthermore,  I overheard one woman say to another as I passed them, “this is so great.”  I smiled.  A couple of days later, when walking, a man wearing only bathing trunks walked toward me with arms outstretched with a huge grin on his face.  “This is beautiful.  This is the first time I have ever walked to the most north part of Sandy Hook.  It is just so beautiful.”  I congratulated him,  laughing with him as he exuberantly needed to share his feelings of elation and achievement.

Psychologically, I felt light and powerful, and in tune with nature all around.  I felt positive and supported by the environment.   I drew deep breaths to take it all in appreciatively.  I felt the blood pumping in my heart as my pulse intensified with my effort.  My breath quickened and the heat was rising in my body in proportion to the energy I was expending.   I felt fortunate to be in such a place at that moment with an increased sense of well-being just as the other people had expressed.

Then there were the electronic devices that provided me feedback.  I was wearing a heart rate monitor strap around my chest and a watch on my wrist.  I knew exactly my heart rate as I walked, my “lap” time, and the calories I was consuming.  The feedback from these tools helped me track my performance.  Not only was the HR monitor providing me valuable feedback,  I also had my iPhone with an app called MotionX-GPS, in my short’s pocket.   This app tracked my walk. I could see where I was going on the map, the GPS co-0rdinates, my pace, if I chose to look at it in the moment.  My pace was 3.9 miles per hour and if I wanted to get to 4.00 mph, I knew what I had to do!  At the same time, I was listening to music, that inspired me and helped me find a rhythm that worked with my pace.  I also took this photograph with my iPhone.

Would I have enjoyed my walk without my feedback tools – the environment, my psyche and electronic devices.  Yes, and I think the feedback these tools provided me in the moment enhanced my enjoyment and my performance.   Moreover, I can now make choices about my next walks – the conditions of the environment and how they impact my psyche, and the data that I later downloaded from my heart rate monitor and iPhone app, MotionX-GPS to my computer.

Being conscious of my performance helps because it’s in my nature to want feedback – to know how I am doing , how I am serving myself and others, how I am in nature, and in the world at large.   It helps my performance to know how I relate to the context itself and to others.  I learn more about what supports me;  what I value;  how I can evaluate and improve and take corrective action.   I can make choices about the feedback.  It is all information and I can chose to ignore it or use it as a benchmark for something different.

It seems to me that our participation in, and contribution to this world is hugely dependent on the quality of feedback we get from a variety of sources.  We don’t live in isolation; there are feedback loops that that continually inform us.  How much attention we pay to all the feedback that is available to us and what we do with it, is our choice.

That there is good passion and bad passion is not new.  But appreciating the psychological impacts of good and bad passion is of interest. Of even greater interest is how to cultivate more good passion and why does that matter?

Robert J. Vallerand, Professor of Psychology at Universite du Quebec a Montreal defines passion “as a strong inclination toward an activity that people like, find important, and in which they invest time and energy.”

Vallerand’s model posits the existence of two types of passion – harmonious passion and obsessive passion – each associated with different outcomes and experiences.

1. “Harmonious passion originates from an autonomous internalisation of the activity in the individual and leads people to choose to engage in the activity that they love. It is expected to lead mainly to more adaptive outcomes”, such as improved psychological well-being, health, relationships and performance. “An autonomous internalisation is driven by one’s own chosing;  it’s important to pursue the activity without any contingencies attached to it.  Motivation is intrinsic; it satisfies the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.” These activities come to be so self-defining that they represent “who you are” in the world.  The harmoniously passionate person has a natural, authentic congruency.  Think of some people you know personally or  well-known athletes, artists, professionals and business people, who exhibit harmonious passion.
2. “Obsessive passion originates from a controlled internalisation in the individual’s identity and leads people to experience an uncontrollable urge to engage in the activity. It is hypothesised to predict less adaptive outcomes”, which could be conflict with self, others, competing activities, thus leading to possible disatisfaction, stress and burnout. “Obsessive passion may be displayed as a rigid persistence toward the activity”, as with such passion, one cannot NOT engage in the acivity. This happens because “ego-invested rather than integrative self processes are at play with obsessive passion leading the person to eventually becoming dependent on the activity. While such persistence may lead to some benefits (e.g., improved performance at the activity), it may also come at a cost for the individual, potentially leading to less than optimal functioning within the confines of the passionate activity because of the lack of flexibility that it entails.”

What role does competition play in the cultivation of obsessive passion?

There are too many examples of the negative consequences of obsessive passion spanning the history of our human species and in all areas of human endeavor – from politics, to business, to sports.  If you think about athletes (and others) who feel the need to take performance enhancing drugs, you’d have to ask which type of passion is internalized in them – autonomous or controlled?  And if not them, their managers, coaches or promoters?  What role does competition play in the cultivation of obsessive passion?  How does such obsessive passion play out in our personal well-being, long term success, health, relationships and performance?

How to cultivate harmonious passion and why does it matter?

• Love what you do, persist and practice. People who love what they do generally use a blend of their talents, gifts, strengths with a big shot of harmonious passion that keeps them doing what they love to do – even against all odds.  They get better at it, through persistence and practice and society benefits.   Think of the legacies left by painters and musicians, writers and scientists.  Van Gogh, Beethoven, Shakespeare and Marie Curie come to mind.  By the way there are no age, race, gender, culture barriers to loving what you do.   How many septuagenarian rock stars, or seven year old poets are out there?

• Take responsiblity to make it happen. If it’s you, then recognize which activities play to your talents and strengths and matter very deeply to you, not because something or somebody outside you tells you to, but because the activity or actitivies make you feel alive: they are instrinsic to your identity.   Take responsibility to cultivate and nurture them.  If you are a parent or boss, notice which activities enliven your child or staff member when they are at one with the activity.  Encourage their deliberate practice.

• Notice the impact your good (harmonious) passion generates in relation to:  your own well-being – your sense of vitality, aliveness and purpose in the world; your relationship with others – what and how you relate to others;  your physical health and energy levels;  your performance and outputs – the quality and quantity and your satisfaction levels.

When you pursue your passion, is it harmoniously integrated, creating a kind of peace within?  And how does that matter?  Your comments are welcome.

So when life happens, it can mean we are thrown off life’s course as we have designed it.   Barriers and challenges get in the way of what we dreamed our life to be.  The vision we held becomes blurred, cloudy or even blacks out.  It can happen when we get very sick, lose family members, our jobs, our homes and businesses.  There are so many stories out there in our current climate that seem to suggest life doesn’t always go according to plan.

Right in your face steps the aliveness of life – with its fullest passion urging you to take personal responsibility for what you really care about.   History shows us repeatedly that  human resiliency and adaptability triumphs.  In times such as these, we reconnect to our universal human values and feel that which makes us alive.

So whether you are protesting to have your vote counted in Iran, for medical reform in the US,  for a fair living wage in developing countries , or in support of your own personal challenges whereever you are,  let passion be your power!

Is Democracy emerging naturally?

Mainstream anything is old paradigm.  Mainstream media is struggling, similarly mainstream politics, mainstream economics, entertainment, education and corporations – innovation is happening at the edges and the new connections are strengthening and making a difference – both positive and negative.

Tools help Us Evolve to Another Level

Through our increased use of digital tools, as with any other tool, we are evolving to another level.  We’ve come from rubbing stones together to settling in communities and tilling the soil, to building machines that both enhance and damage our existence, to designing computers that automate most manual processes leaving us now ready to move to the next stage of evolution and apply all our prior knowledge  – in the words of Ken Wilber,  we “transcend and include” as we evolve to new stages of development.  We are waking up to what can and cannot sustain life as we know it on this planet.   We can pass on this knowledge and at the same time co-create new hypotheses about what it is we can become.  We are entering an era of massive innovation that has the potential for us to actively participate and collaborate in ways of unknowable scale – and if we are truly wise – it could be at the scale of the whole.

How Can We Apply these Tools Wisely?

Digital, social media tools will facilitate such a reality, that’s what tools do, but will we apply them wisely?   What are the mindsets and cultures that will turn these tools into “wisdom” tools?   It takes participatory, collaborative mindsets and cultures to apply our tools wisely so we make meaning and sense of complex and rapidly changing situations.  It’s the software between our ears, the pulsating life force under our rib cage and our evolving consciousness that determine our destinies.  Technologies are mere enablers.

Wise application is knowing how to use digital media in a way that serves humanity.  As human beings, it is in our DNA  to communicate, to participate, to contribute, to inquire, to learn, to grow.   Digital tools are enabling such experiences at unprecedented rates, unconstrained by politics, ideologies, geography, ethnicity, income, gender, age or any of the traditional barriers to entry.

The values of openness, trust, transparency, integrity and authenticity that we experience as active participants using technology enabled social media in our personal and private interactions during our play time is infiltrating our work time.   These same values are prerequistes for the successful and wise application of digtial tools in our workplaces.  We have the tools, let’s focus on strengthening and valuing participatory, collaborative mindsets and cultures.

What participatory values and behaviors are you seeing in the application of these tools, socially or at work?

Punters at the racetrack don’t place their hard-earned money on the weakest horse in the race.  They bet on the best and the strongest.  Owners and trainers of racehorses invest in nurturing and developing the strengths of each individual horse.  It’s not to say, they discount or ignore their weak areas.  They work on the principle, that the return on investment will come from developing what is already a natural strength in each horse.

When training for a triathlon, cycling was my strength, running was in the middle and swimming was my weakest stage.  To perform at my best, it was the cycling I needed to excel at.  I could get into the zone when I cycled.  I was at one with the bike, torso parallel to the road, legs dancing on the pedals, feeling the exhilaration of my rhythmic cadence, the wind flowing over me as I challenging myself to go faster and faster.  It was hard work and it was pure joy.  I trained in running, but it took much more effort to feel pleasure above pain.  No matter how much I trained, I would never bring my running up to a standard that would exceed my performance on the bike.  When it came to swimming, I trained just to be able to compete, damage control as it’s known as.   Had I invested all my time in my weakest stage, I would have jeopardized my overall performance and would have certainly dampened the pleasure and reward I got out of participating in a triathlon.

Similarly, if you were the coach of a successful swimming team, you’d know the strengths and weaknesses of all you team members.  In order to get the best out of the team, you’d invest greater effort on developing the strengths of each team member to optimize their performance.  You would also work with them to overcome their weaknesses for necessary damage control.  The biggest investment of your time, effort and money, however, would be in building the strengths of each team member.   You would not do it the other way round – focus on individuals’ weaknesses, at the cost of their natural talents and strengths.

It seems we know this in the sports arena.  Yet, when it comes to organizational contexts, don’t we do it the other way round?  A vast majority of leaders still think we need to eliminate weaknesses in order to get optimal performance.  Peter Drucker, (1919-2005), one of the most influential thinkers on leadership and management, stressed that the role of leadership is to build on organizational strengths so that weaknesses seem irrelevant.  Weaknesses cannot be ignored.  But to develop and improve performance, it is more resourceful to focus on what already works well.  Recently, I was contracted to coach a number of highly talented women in a professional services firm.  All six came to their first coaching session with their 360 performance review reports.  The first gesture of each person was to go the end of the document and point to the feedback of their manager with the comments, “these are my weaknesses.  These are the areas my manager wants me to work on.”

How does this resonate with you?  What do you and your organizations invest in?  It would be terrific to have your comments.