If there is ever a place where, from my perspective and experience, a need for a colossal reformation, it needs to be within our educational venues. Both in the graduate and collegiate level, but probably more so as you start thinking of pre-emptive strikes in K-12. When you look at some of the data that came out in the book, The World is Flat, Freidman suggests that there are more genius level kids in India and China than the total enrollment of the US school system. Our kids are going to be competing for the same jobs. Our bulls eye better be more than “we satisfy the state standardized tests.”

Education needs to be the place where we are giving our kids tools to be successful in life. They may become 18 and graduate from their high schools, but they better be familiar with some core tools that they can take in to their life. Tools like collaboration and being in community with others. Not just circling the group and calling it a team arbitrarily, but being able to say we can call ourselves a team by way of how we perform and practice with each other. These are essential practices that teachers and administrators need to be instilling with our kids.

Learning how to be a learning community is very much about innovation and the innovative process. Being a self-starter and activator in your own learning experience, but not being somebody that once you learn it, poisons the water so that you have the advantage over the next person.

Sharing the conviction that it is not about your own personal achievement that makes for a great world or a great life, but it is about the synergy that can take place by way of sharing.  These are basic sandbox 101 rules - advocating for the best interests of the other while building high levels of trust within a social network.

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One of the core things we believe at Courageous Leadership is that the best things are done in life with others. It’s in the quality and the consistency of coming together that we are able to actualize ourselves and optimize our impact on those around us. More importantly we can participate in things that are truly worth investing in - things that we can call good.

Let’s look at a model that is helpful for us in our thinking. There are many examples of how groups come together and how they prove to be either unproductive in their play together or highly productive. Look at sports teams with all the right talent, but there is something in how they share the ball, how they move, how they cooperate with each other, how they make sacrifices for one another that changes when somebody comes in with a different ideology or play. Because of their confidence in that model, ideology, or play they go from being a highly talented and fairly good team to being champions.

In the corporate context it may not be an issue so much with talent, however, I would emphasize the importance of having the right people. How does this group of highly talented and competent individuals engage with one another that produce a greater value for the organization?

It’s iterative, its robust innovation and it produces competitive advantage for both their organization and for the people that they are trying to have impact or serve. Corporate, from my perspective and experience, does not understand this very issue of coming together. They want it, but the definitions out there as to what is a good team scratch at the surface versus getting to the real core.

Going Deeper
I think there are deeper issues that need to be teed up in a dialogue with your group. It translates not into intellectual gymnastics, but into practices and performance that are sustainable.

Corporate is having a difficult time coming together with the magnitude and the volume of rifts, lay-offs, downsizing, rightsizing, or whatever word you want to call it. The morale and satisfaction is having a huge effect on people’s willingness to come together, trust each other, and begin to engage collaboratively. Few have confidence that something better can occur in this environment but it’s necessary as you think about getting on top of the competitive wave as it relates to global competition and participate in the creative class.

If you look at just the individual as you think about what creates a life that is worth living, very much the things that should be in front and center on that radar screen should be how we come together with our families, core relationships, spouses, and other deep relationships in our life. It is not just association, it is not just safety and security needs being satisfied, but it is beyond even belonging and moving towards actualization.

These are critical things. I have been a part of so many different experiences where people have good intentions and they go flat. I always feel a loss when I observe this. We have great hopes and ambitions for the success of a marriage, an institution, even a sports team, and it does not gel. What we are talking about is not easy but it is good, it is right. It does bring a high level of value to our lives and those around us. My encouragement to you today is stay in the fire, and there is never a time that you should not be in the fire. Stay in that fire where it is maybe difficult, it may be very hard, but it is still the right thing to do and it is the best thing to do, for you both personally and professionally.

When we are defining best practices for our clients, there are two foundational principals we need to attend to. How do we see and know what is true and important to act on, and then, how do we join and be a part of a good, that is greater than ourselves and has greater return on investment than what we alone could ever catalyze? Then how does that counsel us and govern us in our practice with the social networks that we belong to? The fancy terms of the historic philosophers would be matters of epistemology, which is how do we know and recognize truth, and then ethics, which is speaking of how do we know what is good and then what is appropriate as it relates to the horizontal relationships that we have in our lives.

At Courageous Leadership we have done a lot of thinking about the core territories that we have to attend to in the making of ourselves and the catalyzing of good. We have identified foundational factors that have to exist for that to be successful.

• What is the intelligence factor or quotient that is at play when dealing with ideas and the rational thought and processes therein?
• What is the emotional intelligence wrestling with the intrapersonal territories of our lives? How do we self-soothe, how do we regulate in volatile or dull situations to promote good outcomes and the level of courage that is at play in our lives?
• Another would be the spiritual or the values territory which is speaking of what is it that sets our direction, what is the North Star for our lives? What is the outcome or the final goal that we are trying to achieve and then how does that govern our lives?
• The fourth would be looking at the Jungian concept of shadow that says there are things about us that are true that for whatever reason, we do not recognize hopes, aspirations, orientations, thought processes that maybe have not worked historically in the light of day and we pushed down into the basement and forget about them, but they are still alive, they still surface.

As we try to be successful in using our intellect, our emotions, our values, and managing the shadow territory of our lives, there is a whole array of things that needs to happen to make sure that it comes together with intelligence. The application needs to be directed and targeted to things that really matter in our lives. That is where we believe the fifth factor of our life, the community quotient, is needed to achieve our personal goals. In an organization you need great talent and you need them to be emotionally healthy. You can identify solid values, manage your shadow, but to pull all those things together in life, you need to have others that can think with you - not for you. They collaborate with you around ideas, opportunities, and challenges to enable you to produce very robust outcomes.

The intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual, the shadow, all being affected and governed by the play of a select group of people strategically selected because of their advocacy for your best interest, their subject matter expertise and talent, that there is a conversation and dialogue in our lives that takes place for us to manage those factors to produce the greatest outcomes. That from our experience, study, and conviction are critical core things that take you from having the intent to do good, to being able to produce the good that you say matters to you.

Takeaway
Our encouragement right now is for you to think about what could be significantly affected if there was a better play with the group that you are working with, whether professional or personal. As you think about the opportunity, we want you to actually feel the burn of that intellectual dissonance that becomes dissatisfied with your status quo and the norm of what you are currently practicing and let that fester a bit. It will create an opening of where you will be more pliable and open to transformation.