As we celebrate the year and this special season for remembering, we are reminded of the wonderful opportunities Ki ThoughtBridge has had to work with outstanding individual leaders and a wide array of incredible organizations across the business, philanthropic, education, and community sectors. We've learned much from our clients.  The following are some of the lessons we've learned this past year. In sharing these, we wish for you the gift of time to reflect on your leadership and the lessons you will take from 2009.

The lessons learned....

Everyone is a follower, but not everyone is a leader.
The label "leader" is too important to give to everyone or anyone without considerable thought. Those who bear it have a special responsibility for getting significant work accomplished. Significant work involves the use of such adaptive skills as accurately reading reality, envisioning a preferred future, managing change, resolving conflict, and developing trust. It includes mobilizing the hearts and minds of others to work on achieving a common purpose. It is transformational not transactional.

Leaders value history.
One of the first lessons Ebenezer Scrooge learns in the tale The Christmas Carol is the importance of understanding and respecting history. Honoring one's unique history offers the courage and strength often needed to move with confidence into an uncertain future. Claiming and celebrating corporate and community history also reminds leaders where they came from, how their collective story has unfolded and evolved over time, and helps leaders to mark and celebrate the successes achieved in the course of their journey. In understanding history, we come to recognize what is enduring and sacred as we envision the future. From our work with several statewide and regional leadership programs this past year, we have noted the importance and value of taking time to share the community history with leaders who are working collaboratively to discern and evoke a new future. Reviewing history helps leaders to claim their place in the fabric of their community and invites the future expression of individual gifts and contributions. In developing a shared understanding of history, leaders begin to comprehend the legacy which is theirs To Hold in Trust^© long into the future.

Read the complete article to find out about the additional lessons learned.

Quotable Quotes

"Most important, leaders can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts."
 - John Gardner

"Humans are ambitious and rational and proud. And we don't fall in line with people who don't respect us and who we don't believe have our best interests at heart. We are willing to follow leaders, but only to the extent that we believe they call on our best, not our worst."
 - Rachel Maddow

"The price of greatness is responsibility."
 - Winston Churchill

News

Coming in 2010 - Two Exciting New Resources

1) KI ThoughtBridge's  Conflict Management Kit

Ki ThoughtBridge is excited to announce a new, Conflict Management Kit designed to help organizations, teams and individuals manage conflict more effectively. The research is clear, conflict is not only a normal by product of putting any group of individuals together to solve a problem or achieve a goal, it is essential to get maximum creativity, productivity and commitment.  However those good outcomes are achieved only if the conflict  is handled constructively. Ki ThoughtBridges' new Conflict Management Kit defines the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy conflict management, outlines a four step process for managing conflict constructively and gives users a series of tools to use at each step in the conflict which maximize the probability of a constructive outcome to a conflict.

If you, your organization or team would like to be notified when the new Conflict Management Kit is available, please sign up now to receive email notification.

2)  Coming Soon a New Book on Negotiation, Bringing Your, "A Game," to the Negotiating Table.

What makes this book unique is that it not only identifies the components that are critical to conducting your,  "A game negotiation,"  it shares stories and examples from the real world of how clients have achieved success using these components. Stay tuned for more information in the next eBridge newsletter.

Suggested Readings:

Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World, Sharon Daloz Parks, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston 2005

Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age, Juana Bordas, Berrete Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 2007

Three Characteristics of Trust, Katherine Tyler Scott, Ki ThoughtBridge

Here's What You Will Find in the February Issue of eBridge:

Very little is written in the literature about the role of the arts in leadership development. Ki ThoughtBridge sees significant parallels between the process that artists go through to prepare themselves to perform and what leaders must do to lead. Join artists and leaders in the next issue and learn some exciting and creative ways in which both disciplines enrich the other.