character

December 10, 2014 by David Leave a Comment

Experiencing Resilience…I hope

Don’t fall out of your chair – Yes, this is a blog entry from David E White – and I confess that it has been far too long, with some difficulty in between.

“An easy life is rarely meaningful and a meaningful life rarely easy.”
― Oliver North, Counterfeit Lies

What do you do when you feel that you are losing your bearings? I am not referring to ball-bearings, which would amount to mental marbles in this case (which, in hind-sight, may actually work) – but rather the coordinates for your life journey.

Let me cut to the chase – this past year has been a difficult one for me. For a variety of reasons, I found myself in unfamiliar territory. I have been depressed before – but never like I was during several significantly low periods this past year. Ironically, the speaker, writer, facilitator and consultant (aka: expert) on the topic of resilience, was starting to look like he wouldn’t be so resilient himself. Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: character, confidence, courage, fulfillment, hope, peace, Purpose, resilience

June 17, 2014 by David Leave a Comment

For Strength, Character and Resilience, just add Heat!

A leader’s life is filled with a barrage of external challenge of adversity, change and crisis, as well as with personal failures and lapses in judgment or will power. As leaders, we all want to finish well, but at times we may be tempted to quit.

American author and Presidential advisor Napoleon Hill once said, “Character is to man what carbon is to steel.”
Steel is forged in fire. The evidence of resilience in any great leader will be forged in the fires of daily life, and it is the very heat of the challenge that forms the strength of character that makes us resilient. Though carbon is used for steel, it is also used for pencil lead. As such it is soft and smudges easily on paper. This would be our character, and our resilience, without the fire of challenge. Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Courage Tagged With: character, courage, hope, leadership, Perseverance, Purpose, resilience

June 11, 2014 by David Leave a Comment

The Uncertainty Principle; Practical advice for embracing mystery

Search “uncertain future” in Google and you will receive 56,000,000 results in .04 seconds. If you are feeling the negative affects of uncertainty in your emotions, take heart – others who also are feeling it surround you!

Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with many people experiencing the effects of uncertainty, and the price they (we) have been paying emotionally, mentally and even physically is significant. Some of these people are going through work-related uncertainty due to role changes and/or the possibility of dismissal because of corporate downsizing. Others are going through health-related uncertainty, such as the second round of cancer therapy or a battery of tests to determine the unknown cause of symptoms they are experiencing.

As I reflect on our collective wrestle with uncertainty, I find myself wondering: Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Courage Tagged With: Anxiety, character, encouragement, hope, peace, Purpose, resilience, vision

May 12, 2014 by David Leave a Comment

Welcome Conflict with 3 Resilient Leadership Practices

I don’t like conflict. Sometimes it angers me, and at other times I come away feeling depressed. I am not always clear as to who owns the blame, or who is in the right or wrong within the conflict — but I have come to understand that conflict can be a good thing.

Conflict can arise in any relationship, and relationships are intrinsically woven into the fabric of lives. They are hardwired to purpose, and they bring a richness and depth to our meaning. A life without relationships would know nothing of love, encouragement, laughter, or celebration. Even solitude, as enjoyable as it can be, would lack its attractiveness and beauty without the contrast of relationship, being relegated to boredom and monotony. There is no part of our personal or professional lives that is not affected by relationships.

There is also a vital connection between relationships, commitment and our growth, Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: character, Partnership, resilience

May 6, 2014 by David 6 Comments

Be Unstoppable: The Brilliance of Singles

I love baseball. I am not the kind of fan that follows all the trades and statistics, engaging in vigorous debate. In truth, I often don’t even know the names on the full roster of my favorite team.

I know where I was when Joe Carter hit his walk off home run to lead the Toronto Blue Jays to a come from behind victory in the over the visiting Philadelphia Phillies in the 1993 world series, and I know that Jackie Robinson was the first colored ball player and wore number 42 (thanks to the movie), but I couldn’t tell you much more for dates and big events. I just love the game. Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Culture, Team Tagged With: character, confidence, Purpose, resilience, strategy, success, vision

April 29, 2014 by David 2 Comments

3 Ways to Stop Being Lonely at the Top

If you are, or ever have been involved in a leadership capacity, you may relate to feeling lonely. It’s not a simple social-disconnect loneliness, it’s more about carrying a weight of responsibility that you feel the people around you can’t relate to.

Worse than unrelatable, at times it would be impossible – even inappropriate – to share your concerns with the people you lead. These concerns may be about the business at hand and include potentially negative impacts to your employees and/or others that they are connected with, such as the need for corporate downsizing or behavioral correction.

Delivering loneliness in epic proportion, is the fear of vulnerability and weakness – especially Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: character, confidence, courage, grace, Partnership, passion, Posture, resilience

December 2, 2013 by David Leave a Comment

Courage — to serve?

Ever reach out to connect or collaborate with someone, thinking it was all about a “project” to find yourself trying to comprehend the quality of the person you were reaching out to; how separate from convention, how extra-ordinary they truly were? I did, and I am still processing it.

As many of you will know, I have recently completed the draft writing of a new book: Resilience; How culture enabled the rebirth of Ford Motor Company (iBooks). Writing a book is the easy part, I hear, and promoting it is where the real work begins. So I have committed to engaging the process, so as to be true to the message. I thought it would be helpful to get an endorsement from Ford, and so I set out to see if this was possible. In the end, I did get the endorsement, but the experience of encountering Alan Mulally (President and CEO of Ford Motor Company) in the process of achieving it, was a greater gift; far more moving than Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: character, confidence, courage, culture, engagement, Purpose, resilience, values, vision

November 25, 2013 by David Leave a Comment

Poverty, Prosperity or Peace

I have been engaged in several conversations of late wherein we have discussed the felt impacts of deep challenge. Some were under attack at work, others finding too much month at the end of the money, and still others longing for more meaningful impacts through what they do.

In all of these situations I find myself remembering that there is a blend of BE-ing and DO-ing — unto BECOMING. Who we are and what we do will lead to what we become. Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Courage, Leadership Tagged With: challenge, character, courage, peace, resilience

May 6, 2013 by David 2,124 Comments

Something to Ponder

I have written previously on the concept of “being and doing unto becoming”, and my favorite source for this reflection has been Dr. David G. Benner. This week, I will share an excerpt from one of Benner’s weekly “Something to Ponder” e-letters. As is often my experience, I find his words here powerfully succinct.

“Action and contemplation are two faces of the same coin. Contemplation without action is escapist. But action that is not grounded in contemplation is dangerous because the result will always be raw reaction rather than truly free action. Sometimes spiritual writers put too much distance between being and doing. Contemplation grounds us Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: character, resilience

January 26, 2013 by David 2 Comments

Character & Courage

Leadership is not defined by the position we hold. We all lead others, for someone is always watching us. We lead people to make decisions in or out of alignment with what we are doing by what they observe in us.

Leadership is also not defined by how many are following; everyone is a leader at the core, for each of us must lead our “self”. In a way then, we lead each other within “an influence relationship”. Some are leaders and some are active followers. An active follower is a leader as well.

If we are all leaders of some magnitude, then Please Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: character, courage, Posture, promise