Mindfulness

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June was my 24th year as a Vistage Chair. I have been blessed to know this group of men and women who do the work I do. The people pictured above have all been doing the work of helping leaders of small and mid-sized companies develop and transform themselves professionally and personally. It is about helping them develop and own their unique contribution to their people, their communities and in the wider picture the world. What follows is my reflection on the work I do as part of my own transformation in sharing my own contribution of service, transformation and community. A Reflection on the Odyssey of Chairing: Are You Up To The Journey? Chairing is about the original definition of Competition. Competition is “seeking with another” the quality of being the best at what one is or is doing. It wasn’t about beating another with the other being the loser. It was about who was the best at a moment in time and did one push the other to do what at one time was thought humanly impossible. The Greeks call it: Arete . We’re back to the “those climb highest who lift as they go.” Chairing from my very beginning was about “seeking with.” I love the story that is often repeated. One Chair asks another chair to send them a template they’ve just heard about on Chairnet. The Chair receives it and thanks the other Chair for the great template only to have the other Chair email back that they got it from them 5 years ago. They just made some of their own embellishments to it. Chairing has always been about Kaizen : continuous improvement. That got me to thinking about our lives as Chairs. We are so much more than Chairs as proven by our lives before becoming Chairs. However the vocation of Chairing, although it may be seen by the corporate entity as: professional Business Coach, is a calling because one in so many ways has to start anew. The journey of a Chair is the unity of the contribution to the Vision, Mission and Values that were first modeled by Bob Nourse , It is also the diversity and unique contribution of each and everyone of us. We are the same in our own unique contribution. Each of us contributes in our own way as we work out our purpose and meaning in the second half of life. Each of us having succeeded in the first half as measured by the standards of our culture and society. Chairing, for me, is about our own transformation as we contribute to the transformation of those around us while still being measured by a corporate standard. Mary Oliver’s poem talks about our starting out. The leaving of a life that was home and now the odyssey of going home. It a starting out for new Chairs that in their former and/or continuing profession is successful. Like Odysseus having conquered Troy after 10 years of fighting with his Trojan Horse ploy (faking leaving and feigning defeat), we set off toward our Ithaca only to find that what worked in the past no longer works. The one-eyed Cyclops has an eye for sight but no eye for insight. Odysseus’s ego saying his name when out of harm’s way, only to realize he has blinded the son of Poseidon. His ego and it’s-about-me sealed a journey for himself that leads him on a ten year Odyssey to get Home.

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