Archive for April, 2008

How to feel blissful, without losing your mind

April 21st, 2008

Have you seen that film going around about the neurologist who had a stroke? Jill Bolte Taylor vividly describes her experiences as her left brain gradually stops working. See it here.

It's amazing and inspiring. The experiences she has when her left, logical, language-using, linear brain fails are like spiritual experiences. She feels expansive, connected and at one with everything in the universe. She feels incredible bliss as she revels in the present moment.

She is so moved by these experiences that she is motivated to share them with the world for one primary purpose: so that all of us can also experience that blissful place that is available to us all through the perception of our right brains.

Afterall, she realizes that the way the right brain sees the world is just as
valid as the left brain's perspective. Both viewpoints are required to
have a full experience of life. And yet most of us are completely immersed in the left brain's practical view of past and future, specifics, and separation. That right brain perspective is just what the world needs more of now, in order to fully understand how we are all inter-connected, inter-dependent and safe.

Her description of this other way of viewing the world is certainly inspiring. But she gives very little insight into how to actually do this …short of having a stroke ourselves which I'm sure she does NOT recommend.

So how do you reduce the activity of your left brain so that you can benefit from the holistic perspective of your right brain?

Of course, meditation is one proven way and the benefits are well-documented. I highly recommend it. But nonetheless it is difficult for busy people to find time to be completely quiet and undisturbed in order to meditate.

So I recommend instead another simple trick you can do in any spare moments when you are walking around, traveling or briefly at rest. This method comes from yoga and is also explained in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP).

Start with 'soft eyes'. In other words, look at an object and soften your focus so that your gaze is broader. You will be able to see things far to both sides of your field of vision without moving your eyes or your head. Next, practice shifting your attention from the object in the centre, to the periphery of your vision. Notice that you can shift your attention back and forth, from the centre, to the periphery, without moving your eyes at all. You can even shift your attention to areas that you cannot see. Can you evenly distribute your attention to all directions around you?

As you practice this, notice how it feels. You may feel that the quality of your attention is very different when it is spread out around you than when it is focused, as in our usual every-day experiences. Can you feel the difference? That is the right side of your brain.

Studies in NLP have shown that the eyes and the mind are interconnected so that eye movements can be used to predict and control mind activities. So use your eyes to help you broaden your focus. Practice broadening your attention. You will learn new ways to see the world. You will feel bliss.

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Posted in Loving your work, Success tips

Women Make Better Leaders, If They Want to

April 21st, 2008

This was one of the 'aha's that came to me at the Conversations Among Masters conference in North Carolina last week. Anthony Smith, author of The Taboos of Leadership, explained that women make better leaders.

An analysis of 45 leadership studies found that the best
bosses use a leadership style that is more reliant on high EQ than on high IQ. They act as inspirational mentors who encourage their staff to develop
their abilities and creatively change their organizations.  Women, on
average, have higher EQs and are more likely than men to enact this transformational
style.

But if women are such great leaders, why are there so few of them in the top echelons of corporate leadership? Only 2% of Fortune 1000 CEOs are women. Smith argues that the reason is that fewer women choose the single-focus-on-work lifestyle that top leadership requires. Women are more concerned with work-life balance as they tend to take more responsibility for their family lives. Therefore women tend to be satisfied at lower levels of management. They don't have as much ambition and will to advance, choosing instead roles that allow for more flexibility.

In contrast, only 1% of pre-school teachers are men. Does this mean that men are not capable of doing these jobs, or just that they prefer not to?

This issue strikes a cord with me because I think society is losing the point by focusing on comparisons of how much men and women earn and how equal they are in terms of hierarchical leadership. Of course I strongly believe that women and men should be paid equally for work of equal value. I also believe that society will benefit when women have much more influence than they currently do. But wouldn't it be more relevant to focus on how much freedom and opportunity men and women have to express themselves through their work? Men and women may one day contribute equally, but in very different ways.

Money and position power are no longer the only measures we have for success. I think using money alone as a measure of success is an inherently masculine point of view and as the feminine aspects of humanity gain more influence, we will accept more complex measures for our success. In fact this trend can already be seen in initiatives to use triple bottom line accounting.

I certainly don't judge my own success solely by the measures of position and income. Do you?

Read more here from Anthony Smith on whether women make better leaders than men.

Here's another article with more information on transactional versus transformational leadership.

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Posted in Leader as coach, Leadership, Women in Leadership