Socrates Cybercafé
I love challenging norms, defying logic and asking “why not” question. This past week wasn’t any different. One of the assignments we had in our Creative Leadership course was to organize a group of 5-15 people and lead a Socratic Inquiry session. [Note: This is based on Socrates Café®, as presented in http://www.philosopher.org/socrates-cafeacute.html].
While it was hard to get complete strangers to sign up and participate,
Weekly Blog Review
This past week we got to do some experiential learning and practice creative leadership in a safe and trusted group settings. We both facilitated and participated in guided exercises and we sought and provided personal feedback to our peers. Therefore the blog reviews I picked for this week reflect back on some of the questions posed and lessons learned from the group studies.
Firstly, my trusted and favorite leadership blog Seth Godin’s blog.
Wherever you go, go with all your heart. – Confucius
I haven’t traveled much in the last month. But my journey is never void of places to visit and personalities to meet, including my own. In retrospect, this creative leadership journey of self reflection and deep analysis of leadership behaviors left me with more questions than answers. Like an onion, with each new layer pealed there is a new self discovery.
Each week I learn something new about myself and I learn more about my MASD colleagues. I am inspired by their stories and journeys. Understanding their point of view better, makes me understand myself better. I don’t know them, but it feels like I do. I wrote 2 recommendations for meet ups and received two back. Learning about how others perceive me was eye opening. Call me crazy, but I would love to meet all those people sitting on the other side of words and experiences I am enlightened by.
One or two more metrics (yes, more!). More is more!
Based on what we leaned this week about I am adding 2 new metrics to my dashboard by which to measure or inform my effectiveness in the role of a creative leader.
IMPACT
One of the biggest A-HA moments I had this week was truly understanding the value and depth of IMPACT. Small gesture like introducing two acquaintances or colleagues to each other may take very little effort on our own part.
When you type too fast while trying to catch up with your flying thoughts word blog turns into word bog, and then bog become the perfect metaphor for how you feel and what you’re about to write about.
Bog the noun, means wet muddy ground too soft to support a heavy body, marsh, swamp. To bog down (bog the verb/cause) means an entity or an object to become stuck in mud or wet ground.
As part of my portfolio project on what it takes to be a creative leader, I created a NOT “TO DO” list. Normally we focus on what we should do and how we should do it. Therefore we often forget to mention things we should stop or never start doing. So here is my short and sweet list of 10 items. Ranked from 1 to 10! They were based on personal experience (I was mainly on the receiving end and as you can tell those feelings have stayed with me all this time).
LETTER FROM THE FUTURE: SELF REFLECTION, SELF LOVE & LUCKY NUMBERS (7, 19, 40)
Dear me,
Hopefully this letter from the future older and wiser version of yourself finds you well at present time. You must be busy taking the world by storm. Because you would never let the storm take the better of you. Maybe you’ll get wet in soaking rain, but you’ll enjoy the sound of thunder and the sight of lightening.
TAKING A MOMENT TO PAUSE AND SMELL THE ROSES…
As every other blog review post I start with my favorite. Seth Godin’s blog. This week I emailed my professor with one of his posts titled The thing about maps and proclaimed how coincidental and intriguing it is that Seth’s blog posts overlap and complement the lessons we are working on in class! I was delighted! Of course, the reality is I’m more in-tune with my surroundings,
Week 10! 2/3’s of my first semester already underway. Too fast and not long enough at the same time. This week we are focusing on finding the inner “leader” voice. And to do so, we ran the SWOT exercise. Here is what I came up with.