Overview of Leadership Foundation

Description of the Program Format

The Leadership Foundation™ Program that creates the state of generati represents years of my own successes and failures in leadership. This odyssey has taken me into, around and through leadership. During that journey I have distilled 5 fundamental core competencies of generati:

· Attention

· Intention

· Alignment

· Capability

· Coaching

The outcome created through the effective dispensation of these competencies is a condition or state I have coined "generati." It was fashioned after literati when defined by the dictionary states:

·        Educated or evolved consciousness

·        Persons interested in literature and the arts

What followed in history was the term digerati, from: http://www.edge.org/digerati/index.html

"Who are the "digerati" and why are they "the cyber elite"? They are the doers, thinkers, and writers who have tremendous influence on the emerging communication revolution. They are not on the frontier, they are the frontier.

The digerati evangelize, connect people, adapt quickly. They like to talk with their peers because it forces them to go to the top of their form and explain their most interesting new ideas. They give each other permission to be great. That's who they want to talk to about the things they are excited about because they want to see if it plays. They ask each other the questions they are asking themselves, and that's part of what makes this cyber elite work."

[ http://www.cluetrain.com ]

If we were to craft a defining purpose for leadership it would describe the state of generati. Leadership success is about co-creating environments where people can succeed…and fail if need be, without losing their identify and being forced into illusive stage plays that suck their very authentic nature from them.

Generati is about the freedom to fail, to learn, to adapt, to grow…to be human. It is a condition where the best from each of us is called forward to the frontier of our own destiny. It is a place where we grant magnificence to our work and to our lives as human beings and doings in pursuit of happiness and our passion for expressing our individuality through collective integrity.

It is a place where peace reigns and conflict is welcomed in a spirit of well-intentioned difference. It is a place of creativity, a oasis of harmony and ambiguity where joy in found in the pursuit of challenge, growth and development to enjoin our own human and divine ambiguity.

In order to go there we need leaders, personal leaders, people who are not afraid to claim their shadow and to step into the light of others and to model purpose, integrity and competence. Lest we forget that leadership is all around in each and every action we take. That to lead, to foster generative change and the opportunity to realize and express our human and divine gifts is by the far the outcome most desired in this human experience we enjoy.

Towards that end, generati becomes a guiding value for the movement and dance of change and development. We seek beyond the effect-- to be, with ourselves and others--in a world of uncertainty and turbulence. We realize that life seeks life and that love is the conduit of life and that to be compassionately strong as well as sensitive and vulnerable is not an oxymoron but a moniker of generati. To make the difficult decisions, to consider the plight of the few versus the needs of the many and to make way with creative responses to serious threats to that divine harmony we all seek, is the creed of generati.

As others have gone before and others will continue to come, leadership provides the sight into the future as well as the plowshare of the present. To engage in personal leadership is the goal of every person in so much as they have a role to play, regardless of their stance in life. To ask for and get the contribution of people towards a worthwhile set of goals is the leadership of life. As we seek to evolve and develop our sense of being and doing, we hold the light of leadership for ourselves and others through a noble, yet humble aperture of our daily journey through life.

In this "course of action" –the Leadership Foundation™ Program (LFP), we will uncover for you the core competencies of achieving generati.  Each of them enfolds the others and are inseparable.  The movement or dance among them strikes a chord of life into our daily actions.

Attention is made up of 5 components called the I-TEAM. It is named by this acronym to reflect the personal power each of has and how the cohesiveness of our I-TEAM is essential to achieving powerful personal and organizational outcomes.

· Information

· Time

· Energy

· Action

· Motivation

They will be fully explained at a later date as we move through the attention phase of the leadership foundation. For now it is important to remember them as the acronym I-TEAM, they are identified as ways to increase and utilize your personal power.

Intention is the second component of the leadership foundation and is critical when you understand the theories of Argyris and Schon regarding espoused theory and theory in use. Intention is our espoused theory. Attention as you might imagine is what we are actually doing as result of our behavior.

Intention is a powerful concept for several reasons. It helps us to align our personal presence with the universe of potentiality that is available to us all through belief. It also helps our robot brain begin to create or manifest destiny for us through the power of actualized belief. Intention has 9 major components:

· Assumptions/Beliefs

· Values/Aspirations

· Vision – Now, Near and Far

· Guiding Principles

· Purpose

· Strategic Objectives

· Key Success Factors

· Goals

· Standards

The hierarchy is important because it forms from a belief leading to attitudes that lead to behavior that can be observed. Attitudes are more easily determined through dialogue than observation and therefore behavior is a key but not the lock.

Asking someone, or testing the strategic intention of a person or a business can pave the way for generative change and ultimate transformation in terms of development.

Alignment in relationship to anything includes, people, places and things create our experience. Alignment with self, to others, among others, in systems and systems of systems create perspective for the context of our intention. In the leadership foundation we will explore the relationship we have with ourself, the relationship between the co-creator (the programmer of our beliefs) and the creation (the manifestation of those programs and beliefs.) The awareness and understanding of self opens doors to the potential self, through discovery of the real self and the movement towards the ideal self.

· Real Self - Ideal Self - Potential Self

Upon discovering our self, we can then begin to discover and relate to others and among others. We will discuss the four types of conversation that seek alignment:

· Conversations with self

· Conversations with others

· Conversations among others

· Conversations with spirit

There is also alignment between personal, business and network effects. A alignment between espoused theory (what we say) or intention and theory in use (what we are observed doing) or attention. Relationship extends to and through people, place and things.

Capability arises from the ability to evolve and adapt to environmental conditions--internally and externally, individually and collectively.. In the beginning the competency appeared to be centered in problem solving, however problem solving is not enough, it is just a skill that is required. After testing that function for a core competency I realized that learning was essential, for our power to learn is critical to survival and prosperity but I soon realized that it was a skill and not necessary a core competence. From there I found change. It appears to be the essential competence for survival and wealth, however change is not enough.  While we we have to embrace and dance with change we have to develop in terms of our perspective in life and work.

Moving to a new "vantage point" is essential as we climb each rung of capability. Each new "perspective" helps bring us to a new understanding, a new alignment, often new attention to new intention. So the key then becomes uncovering our blind spots and moving to become coherent in form and function. This development occurs naturally and also has the ability to be synthesized through practice. Capability actualize through developmental coaching is truly a core competence of leadership.

Finally, something you are all familiar with. Coaching becomes the how of leadership. In the various competencies, we discover that we answer the questions of who, what, when, where and why and then we have to "take action." This action is correlated to and through coaching as an appreciative methodology that is reinforcing to our self and others. It creates the leverage of the other four competencies and the mechanism in which to actualize them.

Coaching is covered specifically in the COACH2 Methodology and is made up of the following constituents:

· Connection

· Clarification

· Commitment

· Openings

· Possibilities

· Plans

· Outcomes

· Action

· Observation

· Listening

· Discerning

· Modeling

· Delivering

In each of these integrated areas, the hologram of leadership is interwoven. Leadership can not be broken apart. In each fractal of the leadership hologram we find the complete representation of the 5 core competencies, it is impossible to separate them or to act without evoking them in any manner, thought, word or deed.

They are the essential components of generati. As we move through the program in order to help connect, clarify and commit you to personal leadership growth, you will learn how to surface, examine, explore and discover your own innate potential. Your gifts will become clear to you and the ability to discover your own identify at the frontier of your own destiny will empower you to take the steps necessary on your own unique and high functioning path to generati.