transition

  • How to Get What You Want

    Can I be real with you?

    For the past 25 years, I have guided business executives and influential leaders across the globe to go beyond self-imposed limitations to new levels of leadership. I am an international keynote speaker and author of three books on leadership. I have transformed accomplished individuals around the country and initiated cultural change with major corporations like Microsoft, Merck, Georgia Pacific and Firestone. I recently completed my first film, Climb For Freedom, a documentary about the transformation of seven men summiting one of the world’s highest peaks and the profound impact of that journey on their lives and relationships.

    Why am I sharing all this with you? To brag? Certainly not. I’m sharing this with you because my life almost went a very different direction – a direction not aligned in my truth and purpose in this life.

    You see, in 1994 I decided to leave a very prosperous position as an investment banker. In theory, I had it all. However, for me the work I was doing was not integral. Our business practices were out of alignment. I left banking to pursue the entelechy of my Soul. I let my insurance lapse and found myself in the emergency room, from a weight training accident. They gave me a strong medication to remove a blood clot and I can remember leaving my body. I spent the next 8 days in intensive care. This was a great gift to me, because I had time to ruminate on my life.

    This experience was clarifying for me and I feel as if I received information on leadership that I have been teaching ever since. It was a pivotal time for me, as I left the finance world and came away with a sense that anything is possible.

    I’m not suggesting you experience a life-threatening experience like I did. But maybe this sounds familiar to you. Maybe you’re stuck in serving other people’s expectations of you at the cost of your own. You’ve reached a certain level of success … but you want more. You feel like, if you just keep pushing harder and harder, you should be able to break free, achieve more, earn more, impact more, and reach the level of excellence that you are made for.

    The problem: something keeps getting in the way, doesn’t it? You know this; you feel this. I’ve been there. There is a solution.

    I’m inviting you to Join me beginning April 3, 2017, for AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP: Supercharge Your Productivity & Team’s Engagement, and Achieve Even More Incredible Success in Business, a FREE online series designed to guide you in accessing your inner wisdom so you can be an authentic, courageous leader, while increasing your productivity and effectiveness.

    This is a Joint Partnership opportunity with my friend and executive business coach colleague, Judi Glova. Judi is spearheading this special limited series with me and over 20 other experts in the field to share our secrets and strategies for authentic leadership.

    A few words from Judi…

    Join Stephen, me and 20+ other leaders for this special free online series where, you’ll discover how to create a clear path forward—from where you are now to exactly where you want to be in your life, leadership, and happiness.

    Here’s exactly what you’ll get:

    • Develop a clear picture of what Authentic Leadership is, what it means for you, and how to start living it, so you can enjoy being an incredible leader while achieving and maintaining that level of excellence about which you’re so passionate.
    • Discover how you are getting in your own way of being the kick-ass leader you were meant to be and what to do about it, so you can get the most out of your team and get the results you want.
    • Learn the importance of a powerful mindset and how to move beyond your self-imposed limitations, for good.
    • Learn powerful tools and strategies to dramatically increase your ability to experience more focus, productivity, success, and money in business.
    • And more.

    By now, you’re beginning to understand that pushing harder isn’t necessarily the answer. And you know giving up isn’t in your nature. The good news is that with what we’re sharing with you on the AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP: Supercharge Your Productivity & Team’s Engagement, and Achieve Even More Incredible Success in Business, you’ll discover that you don’t have to push, and you certainly shouldn’t give up.

    When you discover how to access, deeply access, your own intuition and own your value—which we’ll show you how to do—you can unleash a force stronger than you ever thought possible and become the leader you have the potential to be.

    I know this from experience: for nearly 20 years grinding through the corporate world I bought into the “fake it ’til you make it” philosophy. Constantly trying to prove my worth, I burnt out. I started my executive coaching and leadership development business 12 years ago to ensure other brilliant leaders, like you and me, don’t make the same mistakes. This free online series is the culmination of several years and considerable financial investment in tapping into the strongest, most productive leaders from around the world.

    Now, we’re coming together to share our practical, proven strategies for becoming the best, most effective, most authentic leader you can be—and it’s FREE.

    Sign up here to reserve your spot for the April 3rd kick-off. Space is limited and this program is likely to fill.

    Be The Best Leader You Can Be <<< Reserve Your Spot At No Cost

    If you’re ready to get real, embrace courage, and unearth your greatest potential, this is your chance!

    To your success

    Stephen and Judi

    P.S. When you put to use the strategies we’re sharing on this online series, you’ll find that you don’t have to push hard to be a better leader. When you’re in the zone, everything flows! Plus, when you sign up to join us, you’ll receive special gifts from most of the experts, designed to guide you toward successful, effective, authentic leadership. So sign up now, here:

    Get Out Of Your Own Way <<< Discover Authentic Leadership

  • The Art of Transition

    Today, rather than posting my own thoughts of Life and Leadership, I am posting a fantastic article on the art of transition.

    In my keynote speech in October 2016 in Aspen, at the “Lead with Love” conference at the Aspen Institute, I spoke to this very same idea. As leaders we must find ways to stay in the transition, and even moreover, learn to love the feeling of transition.

    Enjoy the writings from Danaan Parry:

    Trapeze by Danaan Parrytrapeze-thumbs-up

    Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I’m either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I’m hurtling across space in between trapeze bars.

    Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I’m in control of my life.

    I know most of the right questions and even some of the answers.

    But every once in a while as I’m merrily (or even not-so-merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It’s empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that, for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well-known bar and move to the new one.

    Each time it happens to me I hope (no, I pray) that I won’t have to let go of my old bar completely before I grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar and, for some moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar.

    Each time, I am filled with terror. It doesn’t matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing I have always made it. I am each time afraid that I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between bars. I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow to keep hanging on to that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives. So, for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of “the past is gone, the future is not yet here.”

    It’s called “transition.” I have come to believe that this transition is the only place that real change occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get punched.

    I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a “no-thing,” a noplace between places. Sure, the old trapeze bar was real, and that new one coming towards me, I hope that’s real, too. But the void in between? Is that just a scary, confusing, disorienting nowhere that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible?

    NO! What a wasted opportunity that would be. I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing and the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void where the real change, the real growth, occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored. Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out of control that can (but not necessarily) accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in our lives.

    So, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to “hang out” in the transition between trapezes. Transforming our need to grab that new bar, any bar, is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void, we just may learn how to fly.