This site is dedicated to you, and the commitment you are making to create personal meaning for your work that impacts a community in a beneficial way while creating joy for you and those around you.
The resources provided through this site result from the work of many clients and friends who provided us with the experience of being part of the meaningful impact your work is making in the world. It’s through collaborative work that we learn and grow. Great work is a source of inspiration for the people it touches and a shared commitment to team performance is an inspiration to all.
You have the capacity to be a Courageous Leader no matter your title or role. Courageous Leadership does not depend on degrees or certifications. It is a way of being, contributing to personal and professional excellence. A Courageous Leader lives with intention and consistency. Intentionally spend each day stepping into who you truly are and how you serve others in a way that sets you apart from the next leader.
Core Strengths
You are unique! You, your strengths and gifts, have the power to contribute to the world around you in a way that not only brings you joy but in collaboration with others’ gifts and strengths creates something even more powerful benefiting others. We all have core strengths, or gifts, that we naturally can bring to our families, friends, colleagues, and communities. Too often these strengths remain dormant, conditioned out of us by times in the past when these strengths were discouraged. This discouragement may have been well intended, considered benign, or out of hostility. It doesn’t matter. In certain situations, we have on an unconscious level learned to not express these strengths robbing us and others of a more complete outcome.
An example is the core strength of innate curiosity. Some people are especially curious about the world around them. If this curiosity is discouraged, by a parent wishing to not be interrupted, or a manager who does not feel the question posed is their report’s business, a person learns that curiosity is not valued by others. They stop asking questions. Asking questions is not safe.
In a truly collaborative environment this person is no longer contributing as they are able. Curiosity is a valuable strength that contributes to any collaborative effort. Curiosity raises issues that a team should explore, possibilities that lead to breakthrough solutions, and challenges that stretch others to grow.
It is the same with other core strengths. These may be the ability to comfort others, orchestrate plans, lighten the mood in stressful situations, and other very human strengths outside our professional skills.
A key to successful collaboration is to make it safe for people to express and use their core strengths. A challenge is that many people have learned to hide their strengths, even from themselves. We all must rediscover these strengths and gifts, and team conversations about these gifts provide value to the team’s work. As Peter Block writes in Community: The Structure of Belonging, “The focus on gifts confronts people with their essential core, that which has the potential to make the difference and change lives for good.”
Below are a few exercises to help you think about your strengths. It’s unclear if these are innate or developed and change over time. Regardless, it is important to take time to reflect on your strengths. The following exercises will help. Ideally you do these exercises with other people you work with. If that is not possible, family or friends are a possibility. If necessary, do them on your own but check in with others later. It is worthwhile to do these several times a year.
As you explore your core gifts, be aware that you have more than one. Most people can identify three to four core strengths. That is why repeating the exercises occasionally is helpful. You are strongly encouraged to do these exercises with other people, and ideally with your colleagues. This not only provides an enjoyable experience, but it also builds the relationships between team members.
Superhero
We are drawn to certain superheroes – characters in comic books and movies for whom we feel a natural affinity. Yes, it might be nice to fly, swim the depths of the oceans, or be able to be invisible. But what draws us to superheroes is more so their human qualities, both strengths and flaws that allows us to identify with them as people, even when they are aliens from Krypton.
What superheroes are you drawn to? Is there one or two with whom you identify? What is it about them that you find appealing? If you detect a human quality, as opposed to a superhuman ability, in that person you find appealing that same quality may be a core strength you possess. You find it appealing in the superhero because it exists within you.
Stranded
Pretend for a while you are stranded on an island with a group of people. You are assured of being rescued within a week, and the island has enough natural resources to keep your group alive and healthy until you are rescued. What will you contribute to the group?
The answer to this question draws upon your human core strengths. It takes you out of your professional setting, placing you in a situation that is about mutual survival. Because survival is assured for all you are given the luxury of deciding how you most want to help this group of people. This frees you to draw upon your natural inclination to help others, which is your core strength.
Art
In the Courageous Leadership workshops, we use LEGO® bricks and the LEGO® Serious Play® methodology to help people reflect on their core strengths. You can emulate this process, using LEGO® brick, Popsicle® sticks, magazine image collages, drawings, clay, sand, and other media to explore your core strengths. The process of working artistically with your hands draws upon your unconscious thinking which in turn reveals hidden aspects of yourself.
You may choose to combine the work with different media with the Superhero or Stranded exercises. This can be a powerful way to tap your unconscious awareness of the strengths you bring to others.
Team Identity
A team’s shared identity is different from the core strength of an individual. A shared identity draws upon specific individual strengths of the people who work together. This is why it is important to start with understanding your core strengths, along with intentionally understanding the strengths of the people working with you.
Shared identities are designed by a team, constructed through negotiation, leading to agreement on the elements of the shared identity, and the story that helps people remember it and what it seeks to accomplish.
A view of our individual identity is that it comes from our mind, which is a function of our brain. A contrary view, known as dualism, is that our mind is distinct from our body with our mind giving us our identity. Dr. Dan Siegel offers a third perspective, taking a systems view of the dynamic of human thinking and interaction. His proposal is that mind happens as much between people as from within people.
Regardless of which of these models is closest to being correct, Siegel’s recognition that shared experiences between people shape ideas and therefore actions is important for group work. It is valuable to answer the questions, “Who are we as a team, what do we want to accomplish, and how are we going to do this?”
We encourage you to think about some group of people who influence you on a regular basis and complete one of the two following exercises. If you are uncertain, make your best guess at their core strengths and how they regularly influence you.
Team Identity Exercise 1
The first exercise is for people who used LEGO® bricks to model core strengths. Each person examines their model, selecting a portion of it that represents a core part of yourself that needs to be a part of this group’s shared identity. Occasionally someone may need to include their entire model, though usually some piece of the model is recognizably important and can be pulled off the model as a single smaller model.
Now the group takes these pieces and begins to arrange them on a table. If you can obtain a 12-inch by 12-inch or large LEGO® plate this will make the act of arranging easier. The arrangement you are building should represent how the strengths of the people in the group support and reinforce the work you are doing together. If you have string available, using it to help visualize important connections can be helpful.
Finally, create a story about how these qualities interrelate, naming each quality in this story. These qualities now belong to the group, so avoid naming any of them as belonging to a person. Use the word “we” a lot to reinforce that together these qualities belong to all of you.
Team Identity Exercise 2
The second exercise is similar. Using magazines filled with images, or printing images found on the internet, each person cuts out an image that represents the core strength they are bringing to the group. It helps if people agree to use images that are approximately the same size, with dimensions ranging from two to four inches recommended.
On a large sheet of paper arrange the images to represent how the strengths of the people in the group support and reinforce the work you are doing together. Once you are satisfied with the arrangement, glue the images to the paper. If it helps to between images, use a marker or tape string to the paper to show important connections.
Now you are ready to create your story about how these qualities interrelate. Remember to use the “we” when describing them, as they represent your shared identity.
Write that story on a page. Print a photo of your shared identity model or collage and tape it on the page below the story.
Your Meaningful Impact
People seek to make a difference in the lives of other people. These other people can be as close as family members or unknown members of some community. When the difference we make impacts others positively it makes us feel good. Professionally, this impact also communicates that we are creating value.
It is both motivating and gratifying to reflect on this value. To help you with this reflection we have an exercise that supports your development of a Meaningful Impact Statement. This statement is simply a few sentences or phrases that articulate how your work makes a beneficial difference for other people and why that is personally meaningful to you.
For this journal you can work with a statement that is specific to you, or a statement that you develop with a work team, social group, or family. The statement development process is the same for both. If you have an opportunity to develop a Meaningful Impact Statement with others you will find the practice brings people together in a way that is rewarding.
You start by generating ideas about the purpose of your work, how you do your work, and who benefits from your work. Even if the answers to each of those areas appear obvious, keep brainstorming ideas. Even if working alone, write each idea on a sticky note. Now put all those ideas on a wall, arranging similar ideas together to create an affinity map. Read the idea aloud and then describe the relationship of the idea to the others on the wall. If you are working with a team, you may want to add only the three or four ideas that best contribute to the conversation.
These ideas are your raw materials for your statement. By arranging them on the wall you can start to see and select themes that are important to you. You may also see missing ideas. Go ahead and add any ideas that need to be on the wall.
As you start to think about which ideas will be included in your Meaningful Impact Statement, be mindful that the statement needs to be aspirational. Watch out for functional ideas, such as delivering a project on budget. The budget probably is very important and one of your responsibilities, and yet being on budget isn’t going to enthuse a lot of people. Changing the lives of the people your work helps in a positive way is exciting.
To help you, here are some examples of Meaningful Impact Statements.
“Because we are entrusted with the work we MUST create a cohesive environment that will inspire, provide guidance, and empower the great team.”
“This team is making our contribution to a healthier, safer world for today and tomorrow by building a high quality facility for the production of a life-saving product. Together we are making the impossible possible, improving the quality of life for our loved ones.”
“This Courthouse project shall serve the People and the Court in the administration of justice with integrity and excellence. This team will modernize the building infrastructure to improve the safety and efficiency of Court operations.”
“As a united and compassionate team we create a beacon of hope and healing that is welcoming, safe, and adaptable for all, remembering that our true north is the children.”
From Courageous Leadership Experience workshop participants
Each of these statements are aspirations for the work people are performing. They address what the work is in ideal terms, identifying themselves and the people who benefit from their work. The statements address why the work is personally important to the people that crafted these statements.
Each of these statements underwent several iterations before people were satisfied. Expect to rewrite your statement four to eight times before you have words that resonate with you.
It helps to follow the statement with a list of core strengths that contribute to the work. If this is a personal Meaningful Impact Statement, those are your core strengths. When the Meaningful Impact Statement is crafted by a team this will be a list of those core strengths people see themselves contributing to the team. For example, one team listed the following.
Listening, Resilience, Accountability, Challenging Each Other, Transparency, Holistic Safety, Flexibility, Adaptability, Planning, Learning, and Teamwork.