9 Questions ... Question 1, Week 1 (day 2)

“I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.” ~ Octavia E. Butler

Resources for Question 1: INSPIRATION (Downs and Doyle)

Introduction

What do we mean by inspiration here? We are thinking about the wide range of things that form people's primary motivations and energizers. Some people work with purpose, some with mission, some with vision, some with goals, some with values, some with dreams, some with metaphors. Some people are motivated by an image, a piece of music, a performance, a sensory experience, a felt sense. We observe that what inspires people takes different forms. For us, all forms of inspiration are welcome. We love to create space for all of them all and to welcome all.

It seems to us that in modern life, we too rarely reflect on and claim inspiration, in what form is right for us. As one of our nine key questions for developing personal and collective leadership, inspiration often seems to be the foundation of everything else we do. It articulates and crystalizes our personal "why."

Our invitation to our ourselves, our clients and our students, -- and you -- is to open space for inspiration. The practices and exercises in this book are intended to provide ideas for how we might do that.

We suggest avoiding making inspiration a "pressure question," one to which we have to have a compelling , attractive and watertight answer, or need to defend, but rather an ongoing inquiry, gently held, that many very well take a lifetime to work itself out, even while yielding rich fruits as a foundation for life along the way.

Our overview volume, 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, shares all of the nine questions, some quotations and some resources that have inspired us and helped us to explore each one.

This volume seeks to dive a bit deeper into the first question: how to discover and bring to life inspiration, adding some additional questions and offering 22 focused practices and exercises. We hope that these offerings help to give shape and form to the inquiry.

The Exercise for Question 1 (there are 5 exercises for you to review; I've selected one to share with you)

For me, ... as mentioned above, we've included 22 focused practices and exercises. For this weekend, and the week ahead, I've selected:

Communities and ecosystems

• Are you energized by being a member of or belonging to a group of some kind, a group that has a defined identity? Communities could be defined by your place or organization of work, your school, your university community, your ethnicity, your identity, your nationality, your gender, your sexual orientation, your neighborhood or sense of belong to a place, your political, social, professional or avocational affiliations, your devotion to a particular cause. Your sense of community could be defined around a connection to nature and to the environment, or a larger or narrower field. Companies, entrepreneurial ventures, non-profits and other work environments are an important form of community.
• What sorts of communities have you loved and felt a home in? What sorts do you long for but have not yet found or created? What sorts have repelled you and called you to initiate change? What sorts of communities can you imagine that you want to found, lead or call forward?

For me, ... one of the lessons that I've learned from Scott Downs, my longtime friend and colleague of some 45+ years, is that sometimes you must "hold a set of questions" and "lean into them" and be "patient with them" and resist the need for an immediate response. And so, for the next week, and 10 Weeks, I'm going to "live with this question" offering and sharing what I learn along the way.

For me, ... I would invite you to review the resources and 22 practices and exercises found in the volume, Resources for Question 1: INSPIRATION, and select one (or several) to live with in the weeks ahead -- or perhaps another practice and exercise that speaks to you.

Good luck with this exploration into your Inspiration.

Much peace and blessings for the journey ahead.

Gerald Doyle

Accompanying Resources for the 10 Week Course:

9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work?(you are welcome to download this book)

Resources for Question 1: Inspiration?(you are welcome to download this book)

Linkedin?(read an early reflection published on 29 June 2020 which reflected and drew inspiration from a quote by Maya Angelou)

• Question 1:?How can I discover my personal inspiration and bring it to life?

"You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive."??~ Maya Angelou

Weekend (re)Reading:?Two Works

• Parable of the Talents, by Octavia E. Butler
• Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer (note: I've linked to a meaningful review David Towell, here)

"In summary [Towell writes], I think we can draw at least seven main lessons from this important book:

1. We all need to find opportunities to open our eyes to the extent of the disjunction between our values and everyday experience.
2. We also need opportunities to create together new ways of thinking and acting in the world which replace dysfunctional and disjointed economic and social processes with a new eco-system awareness, understanding the whole as inter-related elements in everyone’s well-being.
3. We can express the goals in this new vision in terms of three harmonies: living in harmony with our best selves, other people and our environment.
4. Real change towards this vision must start from each of us and the inner selves from which we engage with others.
5. Theory U and its associated practices, which foster this self-reflection and an orientation to future opportunities, offer valuable new tools for co-producing a better future.
6. Change on a large scale through these methods requires us to create spaces for engaging all relevant stakeholders in an eco-system and working across organisational and other boundaries to bring new possibilities into being.
7. All this points to the need to invest in a new kind of widely dispersed leadership, in which people learn to listen deeply and act from their highest purposes, so as to encourage and facilitate this co-production."

Tri Cosain: Weaving inspiration, learning and career

Gerald and Scott are co-founders of?Tri Cosain, a practice which weaves inspiration, learning and career coaching for leadership in life and work; they are the?co-authors of?9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work,?Conversations of Inquiry?(a workbook and an invitation to explore),?Reflections on Careers?(an interactive workbook). All of these publications are freely available for you to download.

Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, accessibility and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.

Gerald Doyle serves on the faculty of?Wolcott College Preparatory High School, provides Ministry Placement Research/Consulting for Career Formation Services at the?Catholic Theological Union, advises several edtech companies including?Upkey?and?GetSet?and works as a Higher Education Consultant at?TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc.

Scott Downs, an Agile and Design Thinking Coach, calls forward great Agile delivery teams, with leaders in every chair.