The first step in finding your personal purpose for work and life is to look back over the experiences of your life thus far. If we rush forward, without time for reflection on what we have learned so far, we miss important lessons. Set aside time to reflect on the lessons of your life. Using the Lifeline exercise, spend some quiet time reviewing your life thus far. Life is a succession of lessons which mus ...

A couple of weeks ago I shared with you the importance of knowing WHY you work and how you can put into words your purpose of leadership. While we’ve tried to make the process simple, knowing where to begin can often be difficult. Over the next eight weeks, I’d like to share with you interviews with Popeyes leaders as well as leaders at other companies that are inspired by personal purpose. Leaders who have ...

A couple of weeks ago I shared with you the importance of knowing WHY you work and how you can put into words your purpose of leadership. While we’ve tried to make the process simple, knowing where to begin can often be difficult. Over the next eight weeks, I’d like to share with you interviews with Popeyes leaders as well as leaders at other companies that are inspired by personal purpose. Leaders who have ...

Last week I shared with you the importance of knowing WHY you work and how you can put into words your purpose of leadership. While we’ve tried to make the process simple, knowing where to begin can often be difficult. Over the next eight weeks, I’d like to share with you interviews with Popeyes leaders as well as leaders at other companies that are inspired by personal purpose. Leaders who have defined the ...

Do you know WHY you lead? What if your airplane pilot said, “Welcome aboard. You should know that I have not prepared for today’s trip. I did not bring a map, I did not go to flight training, and frankly, I do not believe that I can get you to the destination safely.” You would not want to be on this flight! The same is true of leadership. If you do not know WHY you lead, you will not be an effective leader ...

Recently, I had the opportunity of attending at the Atlanta Renaissance Dinner at the High Museum featuring wine, music, art, terrific speakers, and over 100 works of art by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The purpose of the dinner was to “advance diverse leaders in top leadership across all sectors of America” through a series of “Ted Talks” given by presenters from AT&T, Accenture, Coca-Cola, and more. ...

In this last blog post discussing the themes of Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving by James W. Sipe and Don M. Frick, we are talking about Moral Authority. This topic begs a definition if we are to have a meaningful conversation. My personal favorite is this definition of moral authority: … the alignment between a person’s convictions and his behavior that makes ...

Systems thinking has been in the leadership conversation for years, probably most notably associated with The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practicing of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge. But, I had not thought of it as a trait of servant leaders until I came across “The Systems Pyramid” in Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving by James W. Sipe and Don M. ...

In American culture, we admire and celebrate individual contributors. We hold up CEOs, celebrities, entrepreneurs, community leaders who have accomplished great things, and we attach those great things to a person, more often than a team. Even in our sporting events, we tend to celebrate the big name player, over the team. Without realizing it, we often arrive at work with this mindset of individual contrib ...

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing Ken Blanchard, author of many books including One-Minute Manager, and Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines.  The two of them sat on the conference stage in two big comfortable living room chairs and talked to the audience about their recent book, Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success.  They talked for one hour, without any not ...