Welcome to the first of occasional blogs from ChoicePoint. My intention is to share ‘tidbits’ of ideas, thoughts, quotes to encourage reflection and support people’s desire to truly create meaningful results in all areas of life: work, home, community…
 
As in most of our courses, the blogs will focus on three areas of leadership development: self-awareness, social awareness (awareness of others), and team/organizational awareness. In his seminal book, Focus, The Hidden Driver of Excellence, noted author Daniel Goleman, describes three levels of attention as self, other and outer.
 
By whatever names you use, the principle remains the same. In order to create results that matter, we need to combine our usual focus on what we are doing (the outer dimension as Goleman describes it), with how we are working together (one on one and in teams) and who we are as individuals (self awareness).
 
When I first started in this field, nearly 30 years ago, the core focus was on structures of organizational life and defining the ‘work’ of leaders (i.e. here is what you do to be successful). Gradually, people became interested in the ‘how’ of leadership as phrases such as facilitative leadership, collaborative leadership, high performing teams came into vogue. More recently, with the pace of change creating higher levels of stress on organizations and their people, many have realized that ‘who’ they greatly impacts how the work gets done, which in turn, impacts what actually happens.
 
The ability to shift one’s attention from what to how to who and back again to what is not a luxury, but rather a necessity in these increasingly complex times. Without a more comprehensive sense of awareness, we may be at the whim of all the change swelling around us rather than bringing our fullest sense of self to shaping that change into beneficial action.
 
You might think of these levels as muscles to be developed. Through mindsets, tools and repeatable practice, the muscles only get stronger. Future blogs will generally focus on a specific “set of awareness muscles”. I’ll cover the mindsets, tools and practices that can enhance our awareness and hence our ability to create meaningful results.
 
And, they’ll be guest writers from time to time to share their wisdom and insights.
 
 Your thoughts, comments, reflections, questions are of course most welcome. I look forward to an on-going conversation.