Resonate. Integrate. Co-Create.
My Story
I remember the exact moment when the lights came on for me! Some years ago, in the year 2000. I was sitting in the British Columbia Public Service’s pilot to its new Leading the Way program for mid-managers in Kamloops, and there it was: a totally new paradigm that changed my life forever. It was my wakeup call. That weekend, I went home and wrote out my very first personal vision statement and a personal learning plan. For the first time in my life, I clarified my values and crystalized my future.
What happened over the next decade is what Adam Creek calls Gold Medal Moments. My career skyrocketed. At work, I became the second youngest individual to earn the title Regional Manager for the government department where I had only recently joined. By applying the tools learned in the Leading the Way program, I quickly progressed through five more job titles and became an expert in the fields of real estate, negotiation, project management, and leadership. I started speaking at conferences and teaching project management to other government employees. I even started my own business to teach project management, negotiation and leadership to non-government organizations.
A couple of years later, something very exciting happened. Within the span of two weeks, I had the honor of having two back-to-back speaking gigs: the first at EcoCities World Summit in Nantes France, and the second back to Victoria British Columbia for the very university I had graduated from a couple of years earlier. At the Victoria event, I got to meet one of my very favorite leadership authors in person, legendary Barry Posner himself.
As fantastic as that was, that wasn’t the highlight of this event. What really got my interest going is what was starting to happen at the intersection of psychology, leadership and the mindfulness movement. For the first time, it seems, I felt that science was beginning to validate what many of us in the field of leadership knew in our heart of hearts all along.
In 2014, I attended a one-week workshop at the Cape Cod Institute with Richard Boyatzis, co-author of several best-selling books on resonant leadership and a leading expert on the psychology of effective leadership. There I wrote down a new personal vision.
This was a “tipping point” for me. When it came to leadership, I had learned from the very best. Still, I was struggling with what’s missing? A step-by-step system to get from where I am now at to where I want to be three months, six months, a year, three years and beyond.
There are so many books on leadership. My perspective is different because I live at the intersection of Leadership, Project Management, and Personal Resilience. In the book Medici Effect, author Frans Johanson states: “When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas.” And thus was born Resonate to Co-Create: A Transformative Learning Adventure Into Positive Leadership featuring the DREAM Master Key Positive Leadership System.
My DREAM Master Key
The DREAM Master Key
The Whole Life Garden
Inner Outer Life Iceberg
The DREAM Master Key is the only planning system designed to bridge the gap between leadership, project management, coaching, communication, negotiation and so much more. It's a roadmap to positive leadership that starts with a simple idea of the One Page Plan.
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Discover yourself and where you are at right now (the current situation).
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Reach for the stars or what you want and where you want to go (desired outcome).
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Engage and Elaborate and co-create a plan to get from one to the other on one page. Then through progressive elaboration, iterate the One Page Plan into a more detailed plan.
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Act and put the plan into action with people, money and other resources.
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Measure your progress and Motivate yourself and your team.
The Whole Life Garden is an assessment to measure your personal level of satisfaction in the 12 most important areas of your life grouped in four quadrants.
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ME: Personal including spiritual; mental; and physical health. This is a keystone quadrant that affects all the other areas of your life.
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WE: Relationships including significant other; family and friends; and team. Relationships have been proven to be the most significant contributor to your happiness.
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US: Financial including job, career, business or vocation; income; and wealth. When it comes to job, career, business or vocation, it matters what you call it because not all means of earning money are created equal or bring the same level of happiness.
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+: Community including environment; community membership and contribution; and adventure.
An important part of the positive leadership method is to increase self-awareness. We use the iceberg as a metaphor to indicate that much of our brain activity is subconscious. The challenge is how to make the unconscious conscious to increase self-awareness.
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Subconscious brain activity is thinking that we are not even aware of. It's estimated that this comprises 90% of our brain activity. Also, 90% of it was programed before the age of seven, and we are not even aware of it.
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Conscious brain activity is thinking that we are aware of. This is what separates humans from other animal species. We are aware that we are aware.
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Visible is what others see such as behaviours and habits.
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Invisible is what others don't see like thoughts, emotions, values and beliefs.