Take a Few Deep Breaths

berdusco — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:47:44 +0000

Breathe consiously. There are so many benefits.Take a few deep breaths, simply breathe in and breathe out. Stop for a moment to collect and gather yourself as separate from the many moments and experiences of your day. You have already moved a step closer to self awareness. Beginning is that simple.

Do you feel a little calmer, more centered and have a better sense of well being? Just breathe in and breathe out. Being aware, through creating a brief interlude of consciousness, or a pause to gather yourself, is a respite in what for many people has become highly active and extremely interactive lives. The know yourself component of self awareness is more readily available to you when take time to pause your thinking and become your authentic self. This is a very different you than the stretched and multidirectional person who may be continually pulled and overextended.

Daniel Goleman, renowned for his groundbreaking research on emotional intelligence, and its application in the workplace, concluded that people with high self awareness understand their emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and drives. Additionally, people with strong self awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically hopeful, but are honest with themselves and others. Goleman also indicated that those who are self aware know their values and goals, and know where they are headed and why. They can be recognized by their confidence, and have a firm grasp of their capabilities. They are also less likely to set themselves up to fail and they play to their strengths.

Self awareness and breathing go hand in hand. Breathe consciously.

Posted in Leadership

We Love Birthdays…

berdusco — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:55:30 +0000

And Celebrations! Celebrate successes as you achieve them. Celebrate summer on its way after a long, cold winter. Get outside and breathe deeply into the new day.
Albert Einstein said that there are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle, and the other is as though everything is a miracle. This is the ‘half-full or half-empty’ approach to looking at a glass of water, and at the world. This may remind you of the power of your choices, and your imperative to manage your thoughts, not having thoughts manage you. Einstein understood the influence of gratitude. He had a full appreciation of the scholars that had previously laid the groundwork and set the stage for his own discoveries and breakthroughs, when he noted:
A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Gratitude can help you to have appreciation for all that you are, do, have, and perceive. Like Einstein, it may spur you to a response of action, but it can also make obstacles in your path much less difficult. By having a sense of appreciating what is working, you are less likely to be pulled down by that which isn’t. By focusing on gratefulness for how far you have come, and what you have accomplished, it becomes easier to take steps and embark on the remaining portions of your journey and tasks. This allows you to take necessary initiatives for achieving your goals. Being grateful also serves to immediately make you feel a charge of goodwill and confidence.
Another birthday, another year, and another reason celebrate life.

Posted in Leadership

Meaningful Conversations

berdusco — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:52:17 +0000

Meaningful conversations change lives, and even a single dialogue can sometimes lead to a lifelong quest. So it was for my student, years ago in the African savannah, but also for me, as we shifted back and forth from learner to teacher, and back yet again, as both of us searched to understand what lay at the heart of leadership, if in fact leadership was the key to making a difference in the world.
Leadership, it turns out, can be best defined as influencing change through a vision. It is ensuring the realization of an envisioned future. Much has been written about leadership in the annals of academia, by great historians, politicians, entrepreneurs, and by those whose leadership practices we truly aspire to. I have been working on summarizing the essentials for transformational leadership, a daunting task. It is coming together as a convergence of cognition and competencies, thinking and acting, and is ultimately about doing. After my personal quest into leadership began so many years ago, it continually begged expression. Time and again in my life, I felt the challenge arise to paint a current picture of effective leadership through the lens of thoughts, why thoughts matter, and how they impact our lives. It has taken me decades of searching to understand leadership with some depth, and find the courage to write it down. A single, meaningful conversation changed my life because it set me on the path of deciphering leadership, and simultaneously finding my passion.

Posted in Leadership

The Leader in You

berdusco — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:50:15 +0000

Why write a book? Everyone has a book in them because everyone lives a life full of rich experiences, lessons, learning and stories that need to be told. I am writing ‘How to Think Like a Leader’ because it feels like a calling; it is a book that wants to express itself and a labor of love for those who have asked me write down what leadership is all about. I am writing not just from personal life experiences but rather from the perspective of accumulated and compiled lessons learned over the years.
‘How to think Like a Leader’ will support and guide you as you seek to increase and reinforce your capacity as a leader. You have the skills and abilities to be an even stronger leader, and there is also always a next level, and a next step waiting for you. This is whether you are a CEO, or seek to become one, an aspiring manager, a professional, an activist or currently a student. The book will help you to move from where you are today, into the realm of expanded leadership thinking.
You have the foundation for great leadership, and in some areas you may have highly developed strengths, while in others there is a greater potential you can reach. So this book will be for wherever you are you are on your leadership quest. To document optimal leadership thinking is deeply challenging and rewarding, a formidable task, my current focus and what I work on during both waking and sleeping hours.

Posted in Leadership

Starting with What is Personal

berdusco — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:54:34 +0000

Leadership is personal. It includes beginning with who you are. Once you have a solid, sustainable and enduring personal approach in place, leadership outcomes for you also depend on planning, and the outlining of a strategy to carry you forward. This will serve as a roadmap for you, and is outlined in the second section of ‘How to think Like a Leader’.
All leadership also involves others, not much as followers, but as collaborators. The third major component of leadership to delve into is people and relationships. This includes bringing out the best in yourself, and in others. Finally, as leadership by definition includes catalyzing change, think about the major components of change and how to influence it.
The personal, planning, people and change categories of leadership are the same four categories that over a hundred of the major leadership models in the literature can be grouped into. This is also why these are the areas for you to focus on. They are the four major areas to be thinking about as you gain further clarity on where you are in your personal leadership expedition.
But start with what is personal, and who you are, to set you on your way.

Posted in Leadership

Where are the Leaders?

berdusco — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:53:49 +0000

Leaders, whether you or others, permeate your personal and professional life, and as has been so frequently noted, leadership truly does belong to everyone. You are already a leader, but leadership is a continuum, where you develop new targets that will take you into new phases of your learning. To grow is human and to seek development is our special differentiator. Positive leadership exemplifies humanity at its very best, with the enduring capabilities that make life a rich combination of change and discovery.
You have a potential that seeks expression, a set of inner possibilities ripe for realization, and a world of opportunity that beckons your participation. Now is the time to respond to the leadership challenge with breakthrough exploration and elevation, into the realm of a transformed future.
Now is the time.

Posted in Leadership

Luck for those who Look

berdusco — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:00:10 +0000

People believe in luck, and so do I, but I also believe you can make your own luck by thinking about that which you want. Your thoughts matter when it comes to luck. From leadership thinking, we can learn the optimal things to think about, best practices in thinking, and essential thought patterns to understand and reinforce.
Since there is much for you to think about, it is helpful to pattern your thinking optimally, and have some help deciding and understanding where you thoughts can best be directed. Being more attentive and conscious of your thinking will help you to better guide it. Your thoughts do matter, and they affect outcomes for you because they direct your beliefs, determine your feelings, help establish your actions, and then ultimately create outcomes for you. Create your thoughts, create your luck. My book is available.
Hooray, ‘How to Think Like a Leader’ came together with a stroke of luck, and much hard work!

Posted in Leadership

Goals Initiated and Goals Completed

berdusco — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:51:37 +0000

A new year brings new plans and renewed optimism as various projects near completion and endpoints appear in sight. Before long ‘When will your book be finished?’ will be replaced with ‘When can I read it?’ The vision of a book in hand drives me forward and images of those I care about perusing it make the final stages manageable as my impatience grows.

‘How to Think Like a Leader’ is comprised of skills and habits that will take readers forward on a personal leadership journey, where they will look closely at sixteen specific and essential skills for leadership; habits to practice and reinforce so they become very natural. If you are looking to better understand who you are and your role and you will new insights through a more comprehensive understanding of what leadership is comprised of, and the supporting scientific and cognitive research that supports a strength based approach to leadership. This will also lead to a more practical understanding and direct application to help you build and expand your thinking.
This means you will have greater opportunities to choose your own leadership direction, and determine outcomes you wish achieve for yourself, and those you lead. As a result you further the causes and initiatives that are meaningful to you and ultimately make a difference.
There is no better time than a new year to find your place, explore your purpose and discover the leader in you.

Posted in Leadership, Optimism, Skills

What is Right, not What is Wrong

berdusco — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:49:41 +0000

Many of us have been expressing a long collective sigh of relief in recent years, because in the world of psychology, the focus has finally shifted from what is wrong in personal behavior, to what is right.

Like many others who first embarked on the study of psychology decades ago, I was drawn to the question of why people do what they do. As a student, I felt that the human mind was worth investigating because it initiated everything that we as humans impact in the world. The choices we make, and our responses and endeavors all seemed to arise out of established personal thinking patterns.

How the mind works, and how individuals respond differently to the same experiences, as well as lessons learned moving forward, and best practices based on solid data, seemed to be worthy of investigation.

What students found, however, was a field still in its infancy, where abnormal psychology reigned, and there was an overwhelming focus on extremes in behavior, and a cataloging system to differentiate among them. I learned quickly that the understanding of normal human behavior was a young discipline and that much work remained to be done.

And it has. While abnormal psychology focuses on what goes wrong with people; mental disease, depression and issues related to aggression, the tables have turned. Psychology now also systematically focuses on human strengths, the things that go right for people.

An entirely new discipline has developed in recent years, referred to as positive psychology. This is not so much about positive thinking, although it plays a role, but is about the psychology of a healthy population. This approach now better balances how clinical psychologists have focused on less unhappiness. There is now greater emphasis on satisfaction and quality of life, and building on what is working, rather than focusing on what is not.

Human strengths include creativity and curiosity, courage and kindness; valued characteristics that can be measured and increased. The building a scientific discipline on normal psychology, in addition to the longstanding study of abnormal psychology has been a welcome breakthrough. The flourishing of the field of positive psychology was worth waiting for, and is enormously satisfying.

With appreciation,

Maria Berdusco

www.LeadershipInternational.com

Posted in Optimism, Skills, Uncategorized

Optimism on the First of May

berdusco — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:43:08 +0000

May 1, 2008 feels like the perfect day to begin my leadership blog.

Practicing leadership goes beyond onetime successful initiatives to a level of practice, where through awareness and repetition of essential skills, great leadership becomes a habit, and successful outcomes become everyday occurrences.

Spring’s newness, a vibrant potency in the air, and apple blossoms just outside my window framing this morning’s sunrise convey hope and optimism of the future. This is exactly the setting that drives us forward with a sense of positive expectancy of the future, through appreciation of the abundance of the present.

You have many opportunities to lead, at your workplace with teams and colleagues, in your organization and various communities, in your home life and with your family. Leadership is influencing change, and what better time is there to contemplate positive change and how to influence it then when nature, in its continual regenerative cycle leads you through the process of renewal, growth and strengthening.

Nature’s patterns also can serve to remind you that waves of action and enthusiasm naturally flow in a rhythm, where you give pause and recharge, taking time to balance energy before a creative burst of innovation and activity.

A sense of optimism not only lures and challenges you into the action mode, but it is also the foundation for resiliency and persistence, and carries you forward when a sudden obstacle threatens to obstruct your path.

Optimism is a positive outlook for the future that assures well being and a glimpse into the fullness of promise. Sunrise and blossoms are perfect metaphors for life’s possibilities on the first day of May. Carpe Diem!

Feeling Optimistic,

Maria Berdusco