This will help you prepare for conversations with me.
I believe the world that we are currently living in has become divisive due to the rapid spread of the extremes that were always present in our world but now have an outsized voice. Our world is rapidly changing just like the world after the printing press that brought us the reformation. When I heard about the world wide web when i was at AT&T Bell Labs I realized that we all need to be sure that voices are heard that can built up our companies, our country and our world as there are always voices of destruction and gloom. I want to be one of those voices and with RALI to bring other voices to organizations looking to build up our world.
I was a Psychology / Computer Science / Business major at Duke University and my father was a pastor and grandfather an entrepreneur so it makes my tastes in authors somewhat eclectic.
In business and technology it would be Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, Paco Underhill, Guy Kawasaki, David Maister, Geoffrey Moore, Peter Thiel, Al Ries, Tiffani Bova, and Edward Bursk.
In psychology it would be Larry Crabb, Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, William Moulton Marston, Vince Brown & Janet Reid, Os Guiness, George Gilder, C.S. Lewis, John Calvin, Buck Hatch, John Owen, Anders Nygren, Evagrius and Augustine.
Os Guiness in "The Call" said this about entrepreneurs ...
So - as you can imagine, the entrepreneur needs everyone's help as they are carrying a "burden" to make a change in the world. It comes from their "desire". I was privileged to hold one of those burdens early on in my career, and now I'm thrilled to be coming along side 40+ entrepreneurs who are partners with Rali as well as our found Larry Mohl so that he can "intuit" his way to the change in the world and have a team that wants to see that change and believes it will be profitable for us all to do so. These people are guided by their vision and are "warrior" often accomplishing with little much more than others who have much.
Executives on the other hand are best described by Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive"
So, the executive is a "doer" and are ultimately responsible. Their abilities come from being able to commit themselves and their organizations to particular outcomes in a particular way and in a defined period of time and money. While vision matters, execution matters more.
Each journey is decades in the making. Each one has its own "identity" and requirements. I'm here to help both types of people to understand the key lessons that can help them to full maturity in their respective profession and become a senior leader, by understanding both journeys.
I connect with you when we can "give and receive" in relationship. I can show you my struggles and you can enter into my struggles and offer to be with me instead of "solving my problem". You connect with me when you see my struggle and also see my greatness and give me courage or compassion. It's a moment where our souls touch and possibly even deep emotions are stirred. It occurs when we enter each other's stories as brothers or sisters instead of authority figures or amateur counselors.
When I relate from my competency then I'm engaging from my identity as XX in my case CEO. While you may or may not be impressed with my understanding of the business and the task at hand something deeper is missing in our interaction. It is that part that is the "connecting".
It has taken me years to realize that there is a deeper life within me that impacts people far more profoundly than my competence and resources. Connection is to challenge the terrifying reality that we are all "just people" and to stop depending on the resources I control and to present myself as a mere person so that we meet on the level of our personhood. I believe that if you carefully look beneath all the nonphysiologically caused problems that therapists label as psychological disorders, you will find disconnected souls, people whose attempts to live life in their own strength have left them isolated, detached, and alone. If we focus our helping efforts on uncovering and resolving the unhealthy psychological forces operating within them, we miss the core problem. The problem is the problem of loneliness and being known.
The deepest urge in every heart is to have relationships with people who delight in them. Me included. The longing to connect is one of the things at the core of being human.
Larry Crabb in his book called "Connecting" states that there are lots of "bad" reasons for connecting...
So yes there are good and bad "connections". We must know ourselves to know if what we are offering is free of an agenda, and we must receive from the other without being in bondage to them for their offer. Love freely given and freely received is beautiful, when it binds us it can become controlling or aggressive.
Carl Jung and William Molton Marsten are the conceptual fathers of many of our modern personality tests. Recommended journeys to go deeper include...
See Rali Change Journeys on Personality for Teams(getrali.com)
Larry Crabb - Connecting
Brene Brown - Daring Greatly
Dennis Bakke - Joy at Work
Guy Kawasaki - Selling the Dream
David Maister - Managing a Professional Services Firm
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