Dr Ruben Perczek

Positively shifting our environmental, economic, and health challenges requires us to drive innovative solutions that efficiently scale. Individuals, companies, governments, or regions alone are insufficient to help us reach the results we need in a timely manner. 

"What is needed for efficient scaling? Collaborative partnership." 

To efficiently scale we need to build collaborative partnerships (cross-team, cross-industry, cross-sector, and cross-region).

Three inter-related challenges/opportunities emerge. 

ONE - INTERMEDIATE FOCUS 

Shifting our thinking from short-term to immediate focus for long-term and sustained progress. Humanity is not very good at dealing with complex problems that take longer times to get resolved or trade off short-term interests for its longer-term goals. Creating shared-understanding makes it easier to manifest incremental and scalable progress. 

TWO - METRICS FOR THE DIFFERENCES WE WANT TO MAKE 

Inspired collaboration that can be measured. We are better at collaborating when our points of view are confirmed. This is a problem because sustained progress requires inclusiveness of diverse perspectives. As a result, building near-term value for the business as well as working together to identify the values we want to translate into the systems that sustain us all help us to make consistent progress in systemic terms (economy, environment, equity, etc).

Also, motivation and shared intention are not enough. Thus, reaching agreement on the metrics and KPIs for the differences we want to make is essential. Inspired action must be matched with sound measurement of what these actions translate into in terms of impact.

Our global economy and business systems have been designed to maximize consumption with unlimited disposal. It is obvious that this practice has not inspired collaborative partnership but a win at any cost and race to the top mindset. We can't continue on this reckless path. Instead, we need an end to end strategic approach that designs goods, integrates production, and is supported by processes that prioritize making a positive and sustainable contribution to society. 

THREE - COURAGEOUS LEADERSHIP 

Growing our leadership capacity to make courageous decisions. We are all part of a complex adaptive system, so things can start to move quickly once we hit a tipping point.

What Do You Trust More - The People or The System?

When we talk about the economy, environment, climate, education, infrastructure, waste, nature, product design, etc., we are viewing arenas where we can take action that can potentially impact whole systems.

Sustaining positive shifts in the systems that we share is not possible without massive change and collaboration across the value-chain.

“Our success depends on our ability to create value for all stakeholders across the system (society, community, business across supply chain, customers, government, etc).”

How can we take people on the journey of change?

One of the layers of the answer to this question inspires another question.

What is more feasible for human beings, trust the system or trust the people in the system?

While on most cases it is easier to trust the system than the human beings in it (whether it is a car, refrigerator, bank, freeway, or the technologies we use every day like the computer and phone), the answer is that we need systems that facilitate trusting each other.

It makes sense to build systems that allow us to collaborate through a commonly shared pathway. Doing so leads us to more easily engage in desired behaviors and decreases the likelihood of people taking things personally or becoming defensive.

What Does It Mean to Be Human Today?

I posted an article on LinkedIn in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Here I am summarizing some of its key messages.

In theory, the current times we are living should be helping us become more humble. Apparently, humility can't be bought at the local market :-)

"Systemically, we have the opportunity to re-think our relationship with our planet. Individually and culturally, we have the opportunity to revisit a question that has driven much inquiry throughout history. What does it mean to be human, today?”

Has it been useful to focus most of our efforts on the pursuit of more, better, and greater?

Reflections (R) and Questions (Q) for a Sustainable Future.

R: More than high IQs, we need people with a high capacity to be generous, patient, humble, and truthful. But morality by itself is insufficient. We need people who can be all of the above while also being capable of taking measurable action in service to humanity.

R: Our essential nature shows up in our capacity to co-create, to care for our own and others' well-being, and our courage to speak our truth with strength and humility.

Q: What would it mean to collaborate with each other, not to live and die for more ego achievements, more sales and market share, but to re-generate the good in us and the space we co-inhabit?

Q: What would it be like to create products and services that increase health and peace instead of fear and divisiveness?

Q: How is global human dignity (every person's equal and inherent value) being implemented as the overarching ethical framework around, and embedded within, the SDGs?

R: Together with environmental sustainability, we need human sustainable leadership based on courageous authenticity, relational transparency, and socially conscious cross-sector strategic design to positively impact the well-being of our planet.

R: The real courage lives in those human beings who take responsibility (personally and professionally), to show up authentically (speak their truth even when this truth doesn't earn them recognition or power) and to live in integrity for the greater good of the whole (not just themselves).

R: The recovery of human dignity in our planet is dependent on our individual integrity. Just as we've managed to block our experts' messages during this COVID-19 crisis, we have been trained to block our own truth from ourselves.

R: We must take personal responsibility for unblocking our truth from our own selves so that we can be useful to the well-being of others. Not living in integrity with this calling means accelerating our fear-driven humanity to its ultimate auto-destruction.

R: The future of our humanity can no longer depend on the world of traditional business alone to turn this pandemic around. At the business level, we need to translate broad societal values into practical steps stakeholders can take across the value chain. At the government level, we need impact models that measure relevant matters for the communities that are impacted.

R: We have an unprecedented opportunity to make a change and build the pillars that can help us come together as a unified society.

Solving the biggest global challenges we are facing (e.g., pandemic, climate change, economic disparity) requires extraordinary partnership.

Our individual perspectives are not enough. Multi stakeholder initiatives must bring together governments, businesses, and society across sectors and across industries.

But within those initiatives, we need a leadership that invites multiple perspectives and supports the power of experimentation outside the box where failures are seen as learning opportunities and diversity of thought is invited as much as diversity of race and culture.

We need a leadership that is calls for diversity in every respect so we can discover the blind spots in our ideas.

Losing Motivation? Focus on the Desired Future

Whether we are sharing our ideas, listening to another, making a decision, or solving a problem for our people, we express our leadership every moment.

This is why it is so important to be aware, alert, and refreshed, to be in our best place to inspire our teams and the customers and communities we serve.

Taking care of our selves for mental clarity is one of our most important daily practices.

Like or not, our thinking of the future eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (whether it is thinking big, small, or not thinking at all).

Our thinking eventually translates into our decisions and the messages we share. In turn, our communication impacts the way others think and act. Collectively, we all need to support each other to think more clearly.

One key piece of our communication is the future we aspire to create.

From the majority, we hear mostly of the past, the enormous challenges we are facing, or the crisis of the day. We need to offset this balance to focus our attention at least as much on the future we desire.

"Tomorrow's #leader regularly hones and shares a picture of their organization's #desired #future.”

Not doing so fuels the crisis of the day to become the anchor that keeps everyone in fear and short-term dependent.

If you are leading an impact-driven team, it is a good idea to build clarity of the future you want to see through your tenure. You can do it through the end results you and your team are working to create.

End results are the ultimate goals you are working for, which directly speak of your strategic focus.

KEY QUESTION:

"In your tenure, what goals are you deeply inspired to achieve (in service of the customer/community your organization serves)?”

While it sounds simple, many leaders dealing with complex environments can forget to remind their teams of core priorities. Assuming people are focused is not recommended. In my work, I see plenty of examples of teams working in a silos culture, with little or no communication between divisions and departments, and the inevitable lack of motivation, exhaustion, and burnout that ensues as a result.

To Be Hopeful in Bad Times

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.

“If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.”

If we remember those times and places -- and there are so many -- where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Bringing the best of you doesn't come from a formula, but committing to your self over and over helps.

It is a practice and what closes the gap is learning to have your own back above all else, not sacrificing your voice for any reason.

We are living in a moment of history in which all of us are being called to lead. I don't mean leadership in the conventional way, one of being in a privileged position of power and influence. I mean a redefined kind of leadership in which we acknowledge our presence in the world as a choice and responsibility for global well-being. 

The reason is that in today's fast moving lives, we can no longer wait for someone else to tell us what to do. Our world doesn't have time for that. The stakes are too high for us to count on others to do it for us. We are living in urgent times, and we are facing a fork on the road. If we continue cruising with the kind of passivity that got us to where we are, we are unlikely to create the kind of positive world we ache for and aspire. 

For the future we imagine, one where our word counts, where integrity supersedes short-term gain and power, and where we rise up from consumerism and pleasure to collaboration and sustainability, we've got to shift the way we see our selves and our roles in the world. 

We've got to see each other as integral elements in turning our world around. To actually see the shift we want to see in the world, we've got to see this shift happening in our own selves as well. 

As much as it's no longer enough to place pleasure at the top of our interests, it's also no longer enough to delay our contribution until after we are done becoming self-aware (through the variety of self-development programs we can choose from). 

We are all being called to become more self-aware while at the same time engaging skillfully in our personal and work lives with ongoing commitments and actions to collaborate for a bigger purpose. Similarly, it is not enough to do our jobs skillfully while putting off self-development aside. Both self-development and skillful collaboration are needed right now. 

Our world can't wait for us to be comfortable enough to take a leap and live an integrated existence. We are being called to mature as human beings while we contribute efficiently and effectively through the roles we play in our lives. This is called living an integrated life, one in which both self-maturity and skillful action are consistently balanced and attended to. 

My work in the world is focused on continuing to build a world class resource for growing and putting into action a "high-performing life" (individually and collectively, personally and systemically). The point of it isn't to show off the high performance capacity of human potential, though this is inevitable to emerge along the way. Instead, the purpose of doing this is to inspire and enact a positive and sustainable planet through the growth and application of integral high performance knowledge, principles, and practices).

#Innovation #Leadership As I read Saul Kaplan's book "The business Model Innovation Factory - How to Stay Relevant when the World is Changing" the following reflection emerged.

In today's social and business contexts, we are becoming as interested in growing people  (i.e., relationships, families, cultures, etc), as we've been in growing things (technology, industries, economies, etc). This is definitely good, but despite our good intent, we are realizing that growing people is much different than growing things.

Growing people requires a very different mindset than growing things. Growing things is for the most part a linear process with a fairly distinct beginning, middle, and end. When we are growing a thing, we have a specific outcome in mind that would solve an existing problem. Let's take BMW as an example (in an overly simplified way):

Problem: a boring and forgettable driving experience. 

Desired Outcome: Make a car that's fun and memorable - "The Ultimate Driving Machine." 

Linear Process: Identify what a 'fun & quality' car consists of, make a prototype, emphasize it's distinctive feel on the road, perfect it along the way, and disrupt the auto space with this clear value proposition: The Ultimate Driving Machine.

In contrast, growing people is most definitely a non-linear process that looks more like development than growth. Development can't be manipulated like growth because it is a process dependent on currents that we are not in control of. These are internal currents  invisible such as emotions, thoughts, and more subtle energetic patterns.

The best we can do with these currents is to become aware of them so we can manage them instead of them managing us. Making the Ultimate Driving Machine is more linear than making the "Ultimate Innovating Machine."  As much as we would like to make growing people a linear process, it isn't. 

Let's not hit ourselves over the head though. As a whole, we are just beginning to learn what it means to develop ourselves as humans (distinct than machines). But for the most part, we are treating the process of human development as a project.

This isn't good or bad, but if we are not aware of it, we will most likely perpetuate the problem (the unsustainability of our world). It's important that we are aware of it because being aware can allow us to become better at it. 

Just as with business model innovation, as we (persons, teams, or organizations) continue to get interested and involved in developing models for human capacity development (i.e., leadership, creativity, innovation, high performance, etc), we've got to do two things:

Grow our understanding of what human capacity development is.  

Develop a shared story of how our own human capacity has created, delivered, and captured value. 

The understanding of the first of the above questions is the easy part. The trickier one is the developing of a shared story. For that, as individuals and collectives, we would do well in asking ourselves the following three questions: 

How do I/We create value in our lives? 

How do I/We deliver value? 

How do I/We capture value? 

Getting progressively clear on the above 3 questions can help us make great progress in matching our business/prosperity growth desires with the human capacity needed to sustain that growth. Also, it is worth to note that answering those 3 questions is a personal responsibility that's a pre-condition for collective awareness. Not taking personal responsibility leads to reactive patterns of blame and dependency which in turn leads us to our current unsustainable situation. 

With the intention of developing and empowering our shared story, 

- Ruben Perczek

The following quote comes from Frederick Johnson, accomplished vocalist, percussionist & internationally recognized as one of the world's greatest vocal jazz improvisers. Freddy has recorded and toured with jazz legends such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Corea, Aretha Franklin, Patti La Belle, George Benson, BB King, and others. 

Freddy teaches the power of creative expression as a tool for personal wellbeing & healing. Also, he utilizes the arts to empower organizational leaders & teams to explore new ways of interacting. He wrote the book "Quiet Callings." 

To listen to the whole interview, please join executive coach and founder of Alexsa, Cheryl Esposito,  at http://goo.gl/kbgn8

"(my mentors)...they took what I knew technically and moved it from my head to my heart; what they taught me was the understanding that as musicians, as artists, or even as leaders, we have an amazing opportunity to create a sense of community.

Whether you are the leader of a company and you are standing in front of the members of your company, or you are a conductor standing before the symphony, or a parent standing with your family, we have a great opportunity to be conduits for people to connect first to the energy of themselves and then to each other...the opportunity to connect to each other is a really powerful thing. 

...at some point I shifted from the mindset of Freddy Johnson the entertainer to Freddy Johnson the conduit for entrainment, for connecting people to their joy, to their higher self, to that community sense of being together, feeling safe, understanding that your voice is perfect for you.

What's important is that with that common purpose of creating that energy, you can bring a feeling joy, of connectedness, a feeling wholeness. 

...I was invited by those teachers to a deeper surrender, to empower my gifts to be of service to others, and by helping and serving others with my greater talents, together we feel this sense fo wholeness.

...we got to come to a greater place for the greater good of everybody..."    

It's so easy to be entertained by the content of our lives, and even believe that this content is the core of our existence. I would go father to say that it isn't just that we become entertained. For many, the content in our lives becomes the main determinant of the quality of our lives. We become hypnotized by it, dismissing most other matters as secondary (e.g., connection with self and others, relationships, fun, the non-conceptual life). 

In the process, we disconnect from ourselves, each other, getting stuck in a non-creative feedback loop. This is one aspect of what Freddy is talking about here. 

As is often the case with stuckness, the answer can be right in front of our nose. Getting unstuck out of routine, repetition, and frustration into creativity, innovation, and fun collaboration starts with the connection we have of our thoughts, breath, and voice. Yes, if it seems stupid to you and another crazy idea that we can simply dismiss, you might want to pay attention.  

The way out of our lives' most entrenched struggles might be found in the most simple ways - connecting 3 things: thoughts, breath, and voice. 

How can we go from entertainment to entrainment? 

Throughout the geographical transition our family has been going through in these last 3 months, my wife and I have been having ongoing crucial conversations. By crucial, I mean they have the power to change the quality and direction of our lives altogether (both internally and externally). 

So this morning, my wife and I had one of those crucial conversations. She mentioned to me she was feeling anxious. Her eyes were wet. We stopped for a moment (before exercising as we do almost every morning) and gave each other the space to hear what she was experiencing. 

Now, a couple hours later, she is asking me to write about this and share it with people. Usually, these blog postings are shorter so please excuse me for the length. It's going to take you somewhere around 5 minutes to read this. 

Through our listening, Susana realized she was grasping for external circumstances to line up her way. She is seeking a job and the world is not moving fast enough according to her expectations and desires (e.g., people are not responding fast enough). So she was saying that it's very hard for her to live in the unknown. 

My offering went something like this. 

When we seek the external world to ease our internal struggle (in her case was her anxiety this morning), we are perpetuating our struggle. It's a paradox because we've lived in this paradigm most of our lives. 

What paradigm? The one that says that when we get what we want in our lives (be it money, jobs, relationships, weight, clothes, food, drugs, alcohol, sex, cars, etc), we are going to be fulfilled. 

I shared with Susana that I've also lived under that false belief for a long time. It created a lot of suffering for me. I used to think that tennis championships, fame, PhD's, etc were going to bring me the fulfillment I so desired. But no matter what or how high I achieved, the internal un-ease was still there. There was only a short-lasting feeling of relief. 

The seeking of our internal ease through outside relief can deepen our struggle. This has been true in my case. I became obsessed with achievement, thinking that if I could achieve one more thing or reach a bit higher, this fulfillment would come. 

It is like a dog trying to bite its own tail. It never happens no matter how much or hard I tried. My obsession with achievement resulted in something even worse. 

I got disconnected from my own self. As I tried to achieve at ever higher levels, I disconnected form my own voice, my natural rhythms, my natural self. This disconnection has caused me more pain than anything else in my life. To me, there hasn't been anything more painful than the loss of my self. 

Fortunately, I am now living my life fully aware of my addiction to achievement. This helps me because I have learned to recognize when I am distancing myself from me so that I can recover and re-integrate my actions with my nature. 

So I shared all this with Susana and then I invited her to honor herself. What does this mean, to honor her self? 

It means to notice that there is a part of her that is grasping for external circumstances to reduce her inner anxiety. It means to notice her grasping within the context of the much larger being that she is. I said to her that she is not only her external circumstances. 

In fact, much of the external circumstances she is seeking are out of her control (people returning her calls and emails; timing of job interviews). 

The more she tries to control others or control the situations in her life, the less likely she will manifest the results she is seeking. 

The reason is that the more controlling we become, the less available we are to listen to our selves and others. We can become so controlling that we stop being partners with life. Instead, we become entitled, demanding it gives us what we want. This entitlement prevents us from re-membering that we are co-creating with external forces as life unfolds. Re-membering means becoming members (partners) with life again, as we once were. 

I know the above pattern quite well.. specially as an athlete. In the past, I've been so focused on what I want to manifest that I've forgotten that it is not totally up to me. I've forgotten that my best "results" have come when I have been in flow with myself first, and then relating with others and situations from this grounded inner place within me. 

Honoring our selves is like cleaning our house. We feel good when the spaces where we live are clean and organized. My wife can really relate to that one because she is such a great organizer. Our house always looks so good and the credit goes almost completely to Susana (almost completely means the kids and I do about 5% of it and she does the rest - I d help by taking care of my own mess and not making matters more complicated). 

We would do well in cleaning our inner house as well. We do this through sleep, exercise, food, and meditation (in any form you desire). Meditation, for me, is as important or more important than any one of the others. 

The reason is that through meditation, we can learn to expand our awareness to such a level that the usual debris that can unbalance us, becomes much easier to manage. This is like a drop of tinted water inside a glass. It is very noticeable because the size of the glass is rather small. But if we put the same drop of tinted water inside a bathtub or a pool , it quickly dilutes and becomes unnoticeable.  

Honoring ourselves involves learning to be with ourselves as we are. The magic is that when we open space to be with our selves as we are, we can recover from our temporary loss of self much more quickly (like the water inside the bathtub or the pool).  When we are with our selves as we are, we become much more spacious, being able to rebound from adversity with agility and resilience. 

Notice here that I am not saying to get rid off the parts of us that are grasping for outer circumstances to fulfill you. This takes too long and would solidify the erroneous belief that we are not enough. 

Instead, I am suggesting to honor our selves by learning to expand our awareness. When we expand our awareness, we build the capacity for being resilient and recover more quickly from the inevitable moments when we lose our selves (these moments are part of life and we are better off accepting this about life and our selves than trying to get rid off them as if we were deficient in some way). 

We are not deficient. We are complete as we are. The issue is that we hardly give our selves the chance to get to know and "be" our selves. When we honor our selves, learn to be with the awesomeness of our natural being, we enter the world, our lives, with a dignity and integrity that no one and no circumstances can ever take away from us. 

Susana and I listened to our conversation this morning and just 35 minutes later, Susana said to me that she was grateful, that her inner anxiety was no longer present. 

She asked me to share this with you. It is worth to share our humanity. Honoring our selves means honoring our humanity. We are all in this together. Let's help each other by being who we are, not trying to appear as better or worse than we are. 

Being who we are, not only what others want us to be, can bring to us the much needed ground to make this world more sustainable and fun to live in. 

We also learn lots from being reflected so we can be nourished in community. It's not possible to grow alone.

Who here feels like they are honoring themselves in this phase of their lives, and how are you doing it?  

I look forward to sharing more with you (and hopefully see you post here as well). 

Here is a picture of Susana and me at Stella Pastry and Cafe in San Francisco (part of the my b-day's tour de force just yesterday!). Being at ease with our selves, with who we are. It is a process to say the least :-) 

- Ruben 

The following article, written by Linda Buzzell-Saltzman (ForThe Future.org), lists 17 sectors to work with toward becoming more sustainable (you can find the full article here - http://ow.ly/dpOGP):

Environment (e.g., pesticide free) 

Food (e.g., promote local produce) 

Water (e.g., reduce waste)

Air (e.g., use bike or public transport when possible)

Shelter (e.g., green housing) 

Clothing (e.g., encourage local artisans)

Commerce (e.g., tripple bottom line of People, Profits, and Planet)

Travel (e.g., use alternative transportation)

Security (e.g., collaborate locally to prevent chaos in emergencies) 

Technology (e.g., develop and use safe technologies)

Energy (e.g., use wind and solar)

Community (e.g., build, maintain, and promote local community)

Health Care (e.g., emphasize preventive and not just repair medicine)

Dependent Care (e.g., encourage cooperative living arrangements) 

Education (e.g., nurture the best in each individual to benefit the whole)

Communication (e.g., support arts and global communication without travel)

Spirit (e.g., support compassionate listening and non-violent communication) 

Of special interest to my work is #17 as my perspective is that the structure of listening (our capacity to effectively listen to self and others) is at the root of our current unsustainable epidemic. 

For all the above to take place, we have one important ingredient that is so easy to forget: our capacity to listen to our selves. If we don't know and practice it on a regular basis, we have little or no chance to build and sustain much in our lives. Maybe this is a reason why our personal (health, friendships, marriage) and professional lives (collaboration, innovation, leadership) as a whole take so long to make progress.  

What is your listening practice (individual, family, organizational, and community)? 

In this article on Inc. this month, Kevin Daum suggests that the main reasons people and companies fall short of their expectations are poor planning and execution.

He asks if we are working on our life or just in it. In other words, are we blaming outside factors for the lack of our accomplishment or unhappiness or taking the time to work on life rather than in it? 

To plan and execute the life and career worthy of our potential, he suggests the following: 

Plan a preferred future - be specific and measurable when planning  

Be pragmatic - exploit the assets you already have to avoid seeking the unachievable 

Decide the who, not the what - determine who you want to be to detail what to do and the time and resources required.

Be honest - challenge yourself to get to the truth, allow discovery process to be intimate and create accountability for living who you are (rather than living in the rationalized stories).

Consider the tools around you, old and new -  no resources are off the table to achieve the desired future (books, web-based platforms, etc). 

Ignore the naysayers - identify and put aside destructive distractors, engage those who get it.

Don't settle for mediocrity - be ready to be pushed to the edge of your potential. Don't settle for what's easy but be willing to engage your energy on what's meaningful, even if it's uncomfortable. 

If you take a reactive approach to growth and development, whether you are an individual, team, or company, your competitors will determine your destiny. Be agressive in leveraging your energy, smarts, and creativity to determine your life. 

"Good and bad luck come to all; it's how you plan and execute that determines your return on luck." - Jim Collins in Great by Choice. 

Here is the link to the original article on Inc. http://ow.ly/diqqm 

Much thanks to Kevin for this opportunity to expand on his wisdom at roaringvideo.com

Here is my short commentary: 

From my view, the most important point on this article is point # 4 above (be honest). The reason is that if we are not fully owning who we are, we can do all the planning and execution we want and still fall short of both creating the future we desire and are fulfilled by. 

I say that the main reasons we as people and companies fall short of our expectations is that we don't know what our expectations are to begin with. In other words, we may have beautiful visions and missions statements, great plans to get there, even execute effectively and efficiently, but if we don't know who we are and grow our expectations from this inner knowing, any results as a whole will always be somewhat off (no matter how great these results are). 

Knowing who we are is the foundation of the destiny we want. And knowing who we are is not the same as knowing who others want us to be. Many times, we confuse the two and convince ourselves that who we are is what others or the market-place has determined us to be.

I've seen this in my own life and in my work with high achievers. Doing the uncomfortable but highly important work of knowing who we are and owning it applies to both individuals and companies. The how of this work, in my own learning, is another question that deserves its own posting. More on that to come.   

This is my comment to a recent article in Forbes titled "Three (Incredibly Simple) Questions The Most Successful People Use To Change The World," by contributor Mike Maddock. To read the article, please go to http://ow.ly/dbVzv 

"Mike, thank you for the article. Starting off with the outcome in mind and then seeing where we are relative to that outcome is a powerful way to go from reactivity to creativity. I know it in my own journey as well as in my work with high performing people. 

Despite not being the norm, the work of guiding and supporting another to perform at their optimal potential is sacred. Perhaps, it is the highest form of service we can experience in a lifetime.

In it, the coach is implicitly saying to the athlete that they believe in the athlete's own capacity to create extraordinary levels of achievement. When we stand for someones else's optimal potential, we are inviting that individual (team) to honor themselves in a way that perhaps they've never experienced before.