How wisdom and compassion/love balancing each other, keeping each other healthy and effective.

The power of Both/And over Either/Or (most of the time) 

How both the short-term and long-term together is more powerful than either separately.

The power of seeing a bigger picture to better understanding local behavior 

Learning from each other

The power of meeting people where they are and going from there

Curiosity and knowing

Mindfulness over reactivity/mindlessness

That we know that we know more than we can say

Emotions. They matter in human relationships. Don’t ignore them. 

Learning from mistakes

The imperfect 

Context because it matters. IT frames all of our choices. 

Leadership because it matters

Iteration that refines

How not knowing at times is ok

That cause and effect are always at work 

The journey as much as ends and outcomes

Leaders who are honest, open, courageous enough to admit some aspect of themselves that doesn’t align with who they think they are or who they want to be. 

Doing good in the world, for myself and others 

I value expanding my own consciousness, learning.

Others approaches to learning and pace, even if different from mine.  

That people may not be ready to name and address something. They get to choose when.

That I’m not perfect. Nobody is. I respect that we all make mistakes deserve an opportunity to correct those mistakes. 

The variety of ways that leadership can emerge and succeed. No one way is the answer. Any one way is at best a partial answer. All we can ever know is partial. 

I respect the hard work of leadership. I respect the hard work of so-called followers.  No “followers,” no leadership. Following may be a temporary state that does not mean one can’t also lead at times. Followers can and do generate leadership outcomes.

The way complexity can overwhelm us. I respect the limited capability of the mind to take in information and process it. 

I respect the fallibility of the decisions we make. 

I respect the potency of complex adaptive systems to generate outcomes that nobody saw coming. 

The human condition

The interdependencies that exist among us (tangible and intangible) and their power.  

The workings of cause and effect as much in the mind realm as in the physical realm.

The capacity of people to rise in to situations that they would not think they could, or others thought they could, but they, nonetheless, do. An unknown capacity that lies dormant, yet potentially powerful, activated by some mix of conditions and causes that allows it to rise. 

I respect that things are rarely what they seem at first blush or on the surface. Mind isn’t what it seems. Self isn’t what it seems. You can’t judge a book by its cover.  

We know more than we can say. Sometimes what we know doesn’t come to the forefront. With the right conditions, with a seed planted in our mind by someone, something they said that took great courage on their part, that we recognize as true that begins t shift us in some way. This is a beautiful aspect of influence. Sometimes influence isn’t somebody saying something that influence on the spot. Sometimes it is someone planting seeds in our minds that we aren’t ready to hear at that time, or they hear and know it’s right, but they just can’t act on at that time due to some resistance in them from somewhere. Something is blocking it. Like me catching/seeing myself behave in a way with Karen that I know is not good, but I know what I need to do but just can’t do it then in the moment. I need to wait for some amount of time to settle down and get to space when I can do what I know is needed. Waiting for some vulnerability me to calm down, not feel so raw, and come back later and do what I knew I should have done when it first occurred. 9:40 It just some time to come around to doing it. 

I respect that humans are very complicated and a mixture of light and dark. Both exist in each of us. We can partition the two. We can and do hold both. We can all behave in dark ways that don’t match up to our stated values. We are capable of holding paradox.  

I respect the subtlety of the wisdom that comes from deep intuition informing us to do something versus actions and ideas that come from a more ego-centered place, the small mind. Learning to distinguish those two is no easy thing, but so useful and powerful.

I respect the power of an open uncluttered mind to generate useful wise options and solutions.